THE CHANGE - CHAPTER TWO

PART ONE: WELCOME TO ECHO COVE / JACUZZIS OR PIRANHAS

PART ONE

WELCOME TO ECHO COVE

MONDAY, DECEMBER 22

THE MORNING SHIFT

TWO

In her dream, the planets were aligning again.

And not just the planets. The sun. The moon.

All the other moons.

And just soooo, soooo many stars.

Martha could see it all as if she were floating among them. As if she could reach out, embrace, corral them around her like a herd of balloons at a little girl’s birthday party.

And it was precisely that level of tenderness that she felt for them now: these guileless globes, so far yet near, hovering aloft in all their strange, distant beauty.

In that moment of perfect alignment, a gleaming light like a neon thread connected them all. Not just the planets, but the stars. The moons. Herself.

And in that perfect moment, she heard a woman’s voice whisper…

I will ignite the lies inside you

…and that was when her universe burst into flame. No more space. No more solar system. Just a raging inferno that blistered her vision as it wiped the cosmos clean…

…and the voice said…

There is no smell like burning hair.

…while faintly, in the distance, other voices screamed and screamed…

,,,and the voice said…

I still see the blaze of their faces. Their crackling scalps and howling mouths.

…and Martha saw herself. She was walking through the flames. She looked thoughtful and calm. No anger. No fear…

…and then she was awake, in the back seat of the cop car, with her hands still shackled.

“Well, shit,” she said.

They were evidently now out front of some place called the Echo Cove Institute of Inquiry. At least that’s what it said on the sign. Martha watched through the windshield as the enormous steel gates parted, smiled at the guy in the little security booth as they passed.

The guy smiled back. She thought it was a good sign. Not everybody smiled in the world these days.

Like, for example, Officers Antsy and Shmantsy, the two gentlemen escorting her to wherever- this-was from their place in the front seat. They were by far the two twitchiest State cops she’d ever met, though she had to admit they probably had their reasons. All the way up from Portland – a two-hour drive – they refused to engage in even the tiniest small talk. After about forty-five minutes, she’d taken a nap out of self-defense.

But now they were here, and the sun was coming up, and at least she could finally see where she was. Once inside the gates, the grounds were so nice it almost looked like a ritzy fitness spa. And the buildings themselves, from what she could see, looked like somebody had taken a midscale Marriott and plunked it down in the middle of nowhere.

But the stone walls that surrounded it were so imposingly high that – when you put it all together – the vibe was more like she imagined you’d get with a Club Fed-style minimum-security prison.

“Oooooo,” she said, “So whaddaya think, you guys? Do I get a jacuzzi and a sauna, or a pit fulla piranhas? Cuz I’m takin’ bets.”

Antsy, behind the wheel, kept his eyes on the road. Shmantsy shot a quick glance at his fellow stoneface, refused to even look at her. But did she see just a whisper of a grin on his face, for one split-second? Or was it just wishful thinking?

She wanted to ask if it would kill them to smile more – especially Shmantsy, with his cute little pornstache – but decided she was maybe in enough hot water already.

Find the previous chapter here:

CHAPTER ONE - FIRST MIRACLE OF THE MORNING