Sam Sawyer Chapter Ten

Sam Sawyer
Chapter Ten

 

Kits’
bitterness was not lost on Sam. “They forced my parents to love me.” He told
her, as they drew closer. “It only made things worse so…” His voice trailed
off.

Kit finally
smiled and nodded. Kathy reached out to her. The young girl let Kathy grasped
her hands.

“So, you’re
alone, and,” she hesitated, “homeless?”

“I forage, make
do, my powers make it easy to live off the land and steal. I can eat anything,
just can’t wear anything. Sometimes it gets too hot, wet, cold and sometimes I
miss…well.”

Sam sidled
up to her and gently placed his right hand on her tiny shoulder. “They hurt you
just like they hurt me. Well, you’ve got a home if you want one.”

“You mean I
can stay in your woods?”

“No Kit, my
home, you are not an animal. People live in houses. From now on you live in mine,
if you want.”

“Sounds good,
but I might be more trouble than you know.” She glanced over her shoulder.
“We’re not alone, you know.”

“Yeah, the
Nordics.” Sam said.

Kits eyes
grew large, “They’re real?”

“Oh yeah, you
don’t know about them?”

“I’ve been
warned about them, but I thought it was a scare tactic,” Kit replied.

“Who warned
you?” Sam asked.

“Oloran, he,
they, are always around, then there’s the rest of us changelings. Some are good,
kinda, some are beasts, more animal than human, and now you tell me the Nordics
are a real thing.”

Kathy cuddled
close to Sam. “You didn’t know about this Sam?”

He shook his
head, then replied, “Oloran said there were others, but I thought he was lying.
They never said anything about the Nordics. I always thought they were just
another UFO myth. Maybe there are no myths just other realities we haven’t discovered
yet.”

 

“We hide,”
Kit continued, “Oloran gave us the world, but not a lot of freedom. They are
always peeking around the corners of our minds, yanking the leash when we show
too much, do too much, ‘cept in your case, not sure why. They let you dance
with the sun. ‘Course none of us can do that, even the ones that fly.”

“Oloran
can’t give anyone the world. It’s not his to give.” Sam said, his eyes
involuntarily scanning the woods, “This is all news to me Kit. I had no idea.
How many?”

Kit shrugged,
“We’re scattered all over the world, so I’m not sure. Wouldn’t know about any
of them if some of them hadn’t tried to recruit me when I was living at home. Shadows
started appearing, moving, at first, I thought it was Oloran then they touched
me, Nat Stone a real tool, stepped right out of the wall, acted like I was his
property or something. I fought him off, wrecked the house and lost my home. And
now you pull this light show stuff, which had to be sensed by changelings
everywhere. They will literally start coming out of the woodwork, coming for
you. Then again, you seem to be Oloran’s favorite, so maybe they wouldn’t dare.
But I’m here, with you, telling all this, and I don’t feel them, squirming in
my head. I don’t know everything.

 I’m sure the changelings think we’ll have strength
in numbers. That’s why they wanted me. But I don’t want to fight Oloran and now
you tell me the Nordics are real. Hey, if they had you, how did you get away?”

“Actually,
pretty easy,” Sam answered, “I was in a force restraint, naked and being gawked
at by these three giants. Didn’t like that so I clothed myself broke free and
teleported here with Kathy, I think she’s one of us now, at least that’s what the
Nordics think.”

“Crap you
are different-better a lot stronger and stranger. I wonder if Oloran made you
to fight the Nordics, kinda looks like the rest of us were just failed
experiments. You were what they were aiming for.”

“Wow Kit,
you gotta big brain in that cute little head!” Sam said.

She blushed,
then flickered from sight for a moment. Kathy didn’t notice. She seemed fixated
on her hands.

“Kathy are
you alright?” Sam asked.

“No!” She snapped
at him. “I don’t want to be here. I want to be with my kids. I’m sorry Kit, Sam.
But this is so much, too much. This is not where I live. I don’t think I can,
live here.”

“I can take
you back,” Sam said turning toward her.

“No, you
can’t. No one can. It’s all changed now. There’s no going back. What are we
going to do? Fight, run, hide, wait, for what, for me to change? I don’t want
this. I love my life, loved. It’s gone now.”

“None of us want
this Kathy, well most of us don’t,” Kit said quietly, “I can can’t go back
either, they don’t want me back. I’m sorry, it all really sucks.”

Tears welled
up in Kathy’s eyes. “Oh Kit, I’m sorry. I’m being a selfish fool.”

“No Kathy,”
Sam chimed in, “be angry, be human, be selfish. They did this to all of us.
This is our world, our bodies.” The moment he said our bodies, he remembered
his parents dream memory. Oloran had implanted him twenty- three short years
ago. But they could have made him long before that. For all he knew they ‘conceived’
him on the Oloran home world eons ago and only recently genetically altered him
for human gestation and life on Earth. He had no way of truly knowing what he
was. He felt human. But he was different. He was more powerful than the others.
But why? Was he some sort of plan ‘B’ held back just in case the Earth’s
experimental people didn’t pan out? They still have no right to be here, but then,
neither did he! He would keep that to himself, at least for a while. The waters
were plenty muddy already, no sense over thinking, over complicating things
just yet. Wait for answers to float to the surface. If they don’t, then take
that deep dive into the past and hope to accept whatever truth was waiting for
him down there in the dark.

“They had no
right to touch us,” he continued, “much less change us. They’re the bad guys
here, Oloran and the Nordics, and whatever else crawls out of the sky or sea or
wherever to steal and pervert. We’re going to take back our lives, our world.”
His words ran a bit hollow in his ears.

Sam sidled
up to Kathy, “Let’s go home.”

“Your home?”
Kathy’s voice was tense.

“Yes, until
we know more about the Nordics, I think you’d better stick close to me.”

“No, I am
not just disappearing. I’m not putting my family through that. You take me back
to school or I’m walking there.”

Kit smirked
up at Sam, “I’m liking her more and more.”

Sam rolled
his eyes, “Fine I’ll take you back to school. You can explain to your friends how
you just vanished. Besides, if something bad happens I can hear your fear and
be by your side in an instant. I’m thinking the Nordics and Oloran want to stay
hidden, they have so far. The Oloran are stricken with insatiable curiosity,
I’m thinking the Nordic are not that different. Both love to sit back and
observe, guess it makes feel superior and in control. Open conflict with Earth
would be destructive. Earth’s people would die by the millions.”

Kit piped
in, “I know they see Earth people as an oddity, a very valuable oddity.”

Sam nodded
in agreement, “They are advanced but shallow. This might sound quite weird and
spooky, but I think they envy out souls. Obviously, there is something about us,
uh, earth people they find fascinating, priceless. On the outside Nordics and
Oloran have us beat ten ways from Sunday, but on the inside there’s just not a
whole lot there, that’s what I sense anyway.”

Kathy pulled
away. Her features were slack. She seemed distracted. Leaning her head back
until she was looking directly into the treetops, she walked away from them.

“Kathy” Sam
asked as he stepped up behind her and gently clasped her right shoulder. A
streak of what they mistook for sunlight, suddenly burned through the canopy setting
her face aglow drawing her up like a leaf caught up on an updraft as it pushed his hand away.

“Not another
one,” Kit groaned, just before Kathy settled back down to the soft tan pine straw.

“Darkness,”
the word escaped Kathy’s lips on a wisp of white breath vapor they could all
see. She fell back into Sam’s waiting arms as she came back to herself. “Your
words Sam, they cracked the door and I pushed through. They are dark, so dark
on the inside, hollow and hungry. They want our souls. They want to live,
forever….”