Jonas Salinger thought he heard a train heading straight for him.
Startled, he looked up from the flowers he was watering and stared in the direction the sound was coming from. Of course, it was impossible for a train to be anywhere near him since he was standing in the formal garden of his employer, the Honorable Robert P. Hucksinger, esquire.
To his left was the fence that separated the house from the street, to the right, the herb garden and the stables, behind him a wall and directly in front of him, the parlor. Therefore, he confirmed to himself that it was, indeed, impossible for him to have heard or felt, as the ground was also shaking, a train.
He looked to the sky, as clear and blue as was possible, not even a wisp of a fluffy cloud to be seen. So, that ruled out a thunder storm.
Then, the sound grew, the ground shook even more and the air around him began to shimmer.
He found himself moving toward the street, not sure why. He looked up and he felt as if he were looking through water.
The shimmer began to ripple and a woman fell from above, landing on the walkway nearby.
Her clothing was strange, she was wearing coarse blue pants and less than a proper woman’s chemise, her lower legs and feet were bare. Instinctively he knelt to see if she were all right. She was beautiful, her skin soft and unmarred on the side he could see, but by the trickle of blood seeping into the ground, he realized she must have cut her face when she landed. The spattering of light freckles across her nose made her look young and innocent. Then he looked at her large, blue eyes staring lifelessly at him and jerked back.She was very dead.
Shock overtook him at the thought of dead, half-dressed women falling out of nowhere to land at his feet.He stepped backward.
What he hadn’t realized was that the shimmer was not only in front of him, but surrounding him as well; and when he took the step back, he was pulled off of his feet. He lost all control; one minute there was a mysterious dead woman at his feet and the home of his employer in front of him. Then there was nothing but shimmering light, and the air being sucked from his lungs.
Then as quickly as he’d been pulled in, he was spit out, landing face down. What little air he had left was forced from his lungs when he contacted the hard ground.
“Oh, my God. Are you all right? And where the hell did you just come from?”The voice sounded like an angel and Jonas wondered for a moment if he were dead. He felt himself being turned over, causing his head to explode and every part that had connected with the ground to protest the move; and he knew he wasn’t lucky enough to be dead.
As he landed on his back a face appeared above him. A beautiful face surrounded by a halo of soft golden hair.
The face of the woman who’d just fallen at his feet. Dead.“What the hell?” he murmured before giving into the pain and blacking out.
