It felt like someone was swinging a hammer against the inside of Eliza’s skull. The early morning dew caused a damp muskiness on the earth that blended with the mold and dust that burrowed beneath the thick layer of leaves where she lay her aching burden; assaulting her nose and adding to her misery. Her chocolate colored eyes felt pinned shut, but her hearing was abnormally acute. By the sounds around her, she sensed her surroundings were familiar ones. If she was correct, she was near the small cave that was nestled in a knoll that began the acres of woods at the far end of her family’s farm. It was a place that she’d discovered at a young age and had frequented whenever she required alone time. Her surroundings weren’t the greater mystery. How she got there was.
As her faculties returned to normal, she sat up and realized that how she got there wasn’t the biggest mystery after all. It was superseded by the fact that she hadn’t a stitch of clothing on.
None of this made sense. How did she get there and what happened to her clothes?
Straining her mind, she reached into the fog for a replay of the night before. She’d gone with her best friend, Reba, to a newly opened dance club. The place was packed, and dance partners were plentiful. The exertion from dancing combined with the excessive body heat made the air feel so stifling as to be practically unbearable. She remembered stepping outside for a bit of fresh air. Did Reba join her? She struggled to remember, but the visions in her head showed very little.
Squeezing her eyes shut almost to the point that it hurt, she forced her mind to function. She needed to remember the chain of events that led to her waking up naked in a field at the edge of the woods. Had she gone home from the club and sleepwalked? Or had something sinister occurred? She just didn’t know.
Although sleepwalking wasn’t completely out of the question, it had been years since she’d done it. It was a regular occurrence for her up until the age of fourteen when her parents took her to a therapist to help her stop. Now, ten years later, she might have started up again. The difference being that, although she’d end up in the field near that very same cave in her early years, she’d always retained her clothes. She’d also not suffered with a headache like she was this time.
The question of foul play crossed her mind. Had she been drugged, abducted, and dragged there to be raped? Common sense told her that the possibility was miniscule. Why would a rapist snatch her from the nightclub in a city twenty miles away and then drag her to the cave at the edge of her farm to rape her and steal her clothes? The more probable explanation was that she’d sleepwalked. Even so, why didn’t she remember going home?
With a scowl of frustration pasted on her face, she picked herself up off the ground and did her best to wipe the dirt and grime from her tender flesh. A rustling in the overgrown shrubbery about twenty yards away caught her attention. Peering into the thick greenery, she spotted a pair of eyes looking back at her. When she didn’t move, the head of a wolf slowly eased out from between the twisted branches with their abundant leaves. Had her mood been different, she would have taken the time to admire the beauty of it’s rich, white coat. As it was, the glow of the rising sun behind it created a sinister silhouette around the scene that made her shudder and worry for her own wellbeing.
An immediate rush of adrenaline surged through her veins. Abandoning her quest to remember the chain of events that led her there and mindless of the fact that she was stark naked, she forced her long, lean legs into action.
The pounding of her heart as she pushed her body to its maximum capacity competed with the hammering in her head. She slowed down enough to look over her shoulder to scope for the wolf. She didn’t see it, but she wasn’t about to take any chances. Wolves weren’t known to attack humans in her area, but there was always the possibility of a rabid one wandering about.
As they aged, her parents had slowly, but steadily downsized the operation of their farm until it was a mere shell of what it used to be. Had their land been less, they could have easily dubbed it a gentleman’s farm with only a few cows and goats for milk and homemade cheese, a pair of plow horses to maintain a rather large vegetable garden, some chickens, and a few pigs. Even so, having grown up on a fully functioning dairy farm and being surrounded by a variety of livestock exposed her to far too many perils that befell both beast and human. She’d kept alert and aware of them but tried not to become so preoccupied as to be obsessed and paranoid.
Racing into the house, she rushed past the kitchen where her startled parents sat at the breakfast table with wide eyes and gaping mouths.
Slamming shut the door to her room, she leaned against it while she caught her breath and waited for her heart to calm down. Then, grabbing a robe, she left her room and headed for the one bathroom that she and her parents shared.
As she stepped back out into the hall, she could hear her mother beginning to ascend the stairs while bellowing her name.
“I’m okay,” she bellowed back. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
Stopping mid-stairwell, her mother called out with concern, “Where are your clothes? Why were you out naked? How did you get so filthy!”
“I’ll be down in a minute!” Eliza impatiently shouted as she rushed into the bathroom and locked the door behind her.
It was a logical question for her mother to ask, and understandable for her to be concerned, but it still irritated Eliza.
The only child of Viviane and Arthur Eaglesworth, she’d grown up feeling stifled by her mother’s attention and excessive affections. After experiencing the freedom of single life in the city, she’d had her doubts about moving back in with them a few months earlier, but the work and financial setbacks that she’d experienced after the veterinarian she’d worked for since graduating high school died earlier that year had left her no choice. Now, she’d have to deal with their one-hundred questions until they were satisfied with her explanation.
The problem was that she had no explanation. Not yet, anyway.
Reaching into the medicine cabinet, she grabbed the bottle of headache pills and popped two into her mouth. Bending so that her lips met the stream of water coming from the faucet, she sucked in the cool liquid to aid in swallowing the pills. Then, after splashing some onto her face, she turned off the faucet and removed the robe. Hanging it on a nearby hook, she eagerly stepped into the shower.
With any luck, once she was clean and fresh with a head that didn’t feel like it harbored a runaway jackhammer, she’d be able to decipher just what had happened.
Feeling a little more like herself after cleaning up, Eliza took her time descending the narrow turn of the century farmhouse staircase. Her slender fingers absent-mindedly played with a small section of torn wallpaper as she stopped for a moment to listen to the faint words of her parents’ as they floated up toward her. They were whispering, but in a loud, argumentative way that made their words clear to someone with the abnormally good hearing that she possessed.“We need to tell her,” her father hissed.“I don’t know, Arthur,” her mother adamantly replied. “It could upset her. Don’t you think having that nice doctor Rosenthal die and losing her job has upset her enough? She was very fond of that man and her work. We both know that moving home wasn’t something she wanted to do. Besides, we have nothing to prove it’s true. It skipped you. Perhaps it skipped her too.”
Reba leaned against the edge of the opened door and cocked her head to the side while looking Eliza up and down. “What happened to you last night?”“What do you mean?” she asked.“You disappeared from the club,” Reba replied. “At first, I thought you’d taken off with that yummy fella you were dancing with, but he was looking for you too.”Eliza’s brows furrowed in thought. “What yummy fella?”The redhead’s blue eyes went wide with surprise as she stepped away from the door to allow Eliza to enter her studio apartment. Taking a fistful of her thick coppery shoulder length locks, she twisted her hair into a bun and secured it with a hair tie as she asked, “Are you serious?”Following her friend into the oversized room, Eliza closed the door behind her as she said, “Promise you won’t make fun if I tell you something?”Re
A hater of telemarketers, Eliza normally didn’t answer her cell phone if the number that was displayed was one that she didn’t recognize, but for reasons she couldn’t explain, she answered it this time.“What happened to you last night?” asked a seductive male voice.Reba had painted a hot and sexy picture of the man Eliza had danced with the night before. When she heard the voice over the phone that sounded as if it could easily pair with such a man, the excitement and anticipation that this just might be him caused her voice to go an octave or two higher than normal as she asked, “Who is this?”“Oliver. The guy from last night,” he said. “You gave me your phone number, remember?”Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and humbly replied, “I’m sorry. I don’t.”“What?” he said with surprise.“I don’t remember
Her nerves felt frazzled, and her legs threatened to fail her as she entered the familiar coffee shop. Her favorite barista, Scott, was working the counter. Seeing her, he flashed a smile and waved a greeting. Then, pointing to a sandy haired man sitting in the back of the room, he raised his brows and patted his chest. Eliza took this as a sign of approval from the only male she knew who was prone to compete with her for a man’s attention.Scott’s gayness didn’t bother her in the least. In fact, she enjoyed spending time with him even if it stayed within the walls of the coffee shop during slow hours.Doing her best to smooth her appearance without being obvious about it, she moved toward the man with the sandy colored hair and piercing eyes that seemed to pull her to him without her using the slightest bit of effort to move herself.Although she was considered a tall woman, he still managed to exceed her height by a go
Eliza took the dinner plate that Viviane had finished rinsing the soap off from her mother’s outstretched hand and rubbed it dry with a dish towel. More than once she’d suggested that they get with the times and install a dishwasher, but her mother’s response was always the same. Holding up her hands, she’d smile and say, “I have reliable dishwashers right here. I don’t need anything else.”“Where did you go today?” Viviane asked as she wiped at the excess water in the white porcelain sink with a dishcloth.Carefully placing the dinner plate on top of the others in the cupboard, Eliza thought about her answer. Should she admit that she met a stranger for coffee? Well, he wasn’t a complete stranger since she’d danced quite a bit with him the night before. The only problem was that this was something that she could barely remember.Since it wasn’t her habit of sharing g
It happened again!Eliza groaned with despair as she rolled onto her back and looked up into the early morning sky. Her nightmare was continued. She was naked in the field on the edge of the woods again. She’d gone to bed early without a drop of alcohol in her system, let alone any type of drug, yet the sledgehammer in her head was pounding even harder than the morning before. Like the first time, she couldn’t remember a thing on how or why she was in such a state.To add to her misery, along with the pounding inside her head, her leg burned and hurt like a sharp object had been dragged down it. A knife, perhaps?Struggling against the acute throbbing that radiated from her skull into the rest of her trembling body, she forced herself to sit up. Her vision was still a bit blurred, but it was clear enough for her to see dried and crusted blood that coated the singular, deep scratch down the outer side of her left calf. Th
After a quick shower to remove the grime on her flesh, Eliza decided that a long hot Epsom Salts bath was in order.She hadn’t completely emersed her body into the steaming water before she felt the relief it offered both physically and mentally. She’d taken headache medicine immediately upon entering the bathroom. Her shower had been just long enough to give it an opportunity to take effect. Now, with her body being enveloped by the comfort of heated healing liquid, she felt a sense of peace and tranquility for the first time since she’d woken up naked the morning before.Closing her eyes, she sank deep into the water while she allowed her mind to go blank. With any luck, not trying so hard to remember just might be the way to get the answers to what happened to make her wake up naked in the field two mornings in a row surface.As relaxation overtook her, she felt light enough to float. Her legs relaxed enough to actually rai
It was a miracle!Amazed and bewildered, Eliza inspected the leg that she’d wounded during the night. There was absolutely no sign of an injury. Cautiously putting her weight on it, she discovered no indication of a bruise beneath her kneecap. She had no idea that a hot Epsom salts bath could work such wonders, but there was no mistaking the fact that she was completely healed. There wasn’t even a scar from the jagged gash on her leg.She’d have spent a bit more time pondering such a miraculous recovery had she not been preoccupied with the idea of acting as a guide on the state lands for Oliver as he searched for his missing brother. She’d accepted his invitation without thinking about the fact that she’d been wounded. That came after the call ended. Her relief was acute when she discovered that she had no injuries whatsoever to concern herself with.Once again, she felt inclined to give a