PART ONE
A GENTLE BREEZE caressed and tossed light brown curls, as a lover might. Amelia Chirac was blissfully unaware of that fact. Unaware of where she was and more, who she was. She stood quite still—stooped over—head bowed. An expanse of neck exposed to the heat of the midday sun, which beat down on her from a clear blue sky. All her concentration appeared focused on a pair of dainty bare feet but the truth was, her unfocused eyes saw nothing.
Seconds passed as hours, and hours were as millennia as time lost all meaning. A heartbeat, then another, a lone bead of sweat drew a line and crept out the hairline to trickle down the slope of forehead, gaining momentum as it went, so that it shot down the long thin straight nose. It paused a moment, maybe in contemplation, as it hung from the tip. Gravity commanded it. The drop gave way and fell. Troubled eyes caught sight of the tiny jewel and followed its progress. A brow furrowed. Eyes narrowed. The bead landed squarely between pink feet. Amelia watched the tiny crown of droplets splash upward and out, as if watching the playback of a close-up slow motion shot.
Blinking in surprise, realization dawning, Amelia jerked her head upright. A wave of nausea assailed her senses, she grabbed her head as dizziness threatened to topple her, physically. Squeezing her eyes shut, Amelia steadied herself both hands clasped either side of her head, as, with knees bent, she sucked in breath like a newborn taking its first. Bile bit the back of her throat as she slowly sank to her knees, the warm earth rising up to meet her.
Amelia crumpled to the ground, drawing herself up into a foetal position, knees tucked in against her chest, one side of her face resting on dry brittle grass. Short sickly blades dug into her cheek. She ignored the strange sensation, eyes still tightly shut, as she let her world right itself. Long pianist’s fingers clasped the fabric of the faded Levi blue jeans she wore.
It took several more long moments before the seasick-feeling passed. Taking slow even breaths that filled her nostrils with the earthy smell of dry dirt, Amelia opened her eyes to see the world from a new perspective. A tiny creature crawled up the length of a blade of grass. In child-like curiosity and from this new vantage lying on the baked soil, she watched its progress till it fell and vanished from sight. In simple reaction she reached out a hand to the blade letting a finger trace its length. She stopped, frowned and brought the hand close to her face to stare at it. As if her mind were having trouble grasping not only what it was but, for that brief moment, what it was called. She didn’t have time to debate as another wave of nausea made her dry-retch.
Stomach roiling in protest, Amelia all but buried her face in the dirt clinging the earth, as if at any minute it might throw her off.
‘Merde!’ She quietly wished the world would stop spinning.
The sun overhead lengthened its stride, and moved. Long thin shadows reached out across the stunted yellow grass toward Amelia, who pushed herself slowly into a sitting position. Finding herself upright without the world tilting, she rubbed a clenched knuckle into each eye, as if that might help her see better, her mind not quite convinced of the veracity of her own eyesight.
Random thoughts jumped through dark corners of her mind. Moments of illumination came and went, as she slowly looked about her still unsure where she was and how she got there. Dressed, as she was, in only a pair of jeans and a white, soft linen blouse, and, she noted, shoe-less.
Taking in her surrounds for the first time, Amelia let her senses find a moment of balance. The long thin shadows turned out to belong to those cast by a rough wooden fence on her left that ran the length off into the distance. But which also stopped just to her right, blending into the framework of a stylized square-framed arch (that some foggy memory supplied as belonging to a ranch, right out of some Western) before it too continued some distance hence.
Legs now out in front of her; Amelia realized she sat in the middle of a patch of scrubby crab grass between the sturdy looking fence and, at her back, a deep-rutted dirt road a familiar redbrick colour.
Road? Whatever it was, it followed the fence line, dipping down to her right, like the fence, to be lost from sight. As if the purple-tipped mountains beyond had sucked road and fence into its base on the horizon-line.
The whimsical thought helped turn the corners of her mouth. Smile in place, Amelia gingerly rotated her head in some vein hope of clearing the jumble of thoughts, while running two dirty and now grass-stained hands through damp hair, feeling her sticky scalp beneath. The vain act, though, doing nothing much for her over-all appearance.
Looking up, Amelia strained to see over the fence and what lay beyond, catching sight of a number of things she was sure she hadn’t been there before or, at least, she hadn’t noticed before.
Rising slowly, and standing on slightly unsteady legs, Amelia stared in blank comprehension at the large wood-built house made up of white slatted boards, and the imposing array of windows that faced her. A broad impacted-dirt driveway led directly from the framed entrance to a set of rough-hewn wooden stairs, sat beneath what must be the main door that abutted an open veranda, which seemed to circle the whole house.
Squinting, Amelia muttered under her breath. ‘Toto, how the hell did we end up in Kansas?’ Or was that, Wyoming, or Montana? Certainly, she was a long way from Manhattan.
Not only had she never seen this house before, she had no idea where she was. In confusion, brow once again furrowed, Amelia did a slow three sixty and took in the whole vista. World swaying, she stumbled toward the fence and, with focused concentration, made for the entryway onto what she supposed was someone’s ranch, the support of the weathered wood sure beneath her hands. Solid. Reassuring.
What was it, though, with the dizzy spells? She wondered, as she stopped to let another wave of nausea pass, leaning in against the sturdy posts of the entrance. She looked up, eyes drawn aloft by a squeaking sound. Hinges in need of an oil creaked as a wooden plank moved in the light breeze. Amelia focused in on the letters burnt into the wood, of what she thought was probably the name of the ranch.
She caught sight of the first word.
C
It was repeated.
C
CC? It didn’t make sense.
Moving away from her support while sucking in a calm steadying breath, as her dizziness gave way to a feeling of light-headedness, Amelia came round to stand in front of the arched entrance, hands on hips. The deep V between her brows more pronounced than before.
The sign read: CC BELLEVUE.
What bizarre person named their ranch, CC Bellevue? Hell, what did they raise here, horses, convicts?
Bemused at the unusual name and the connotations it threw up, Amelia nonetheless walked beneath the arch onto the property. It was almost instant. Her body registering the transition from one side of the fence, to the other, even if Amelia hadn’t, as the dizziness abated and her stomach quietened. Oblivious, she turned to look back up at the reverse of the sign, just to see what was written there. All the while a little unsure whether it was healthy to go see who resided on a property with such an unusual name.
Images of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis popped into her head, as scenes from ‘What ever happened to Baby Jane’ played through her mind’s-eye.
Expecting a repeat of the ranch’s name, Amelia was surprised when she saw just two words.
BE TOGETHER.
What the hell did that mean? Be together.
Arms pulled in tightly about her, Amelia shivered, something or someone had just walked across her grave. A sign that didn’t always bode well, at least, as far as she was concerned. She turned and looked over her shoulder toward the house, almost expecting to see the shadowy figure of someone staring at her. But this wasn’t the Bates Motel. At least, she hoped it wasn’t.
Furtively glancing about her, Amelia saw nothing untoward. All she heard was the creaking sign. She gave it the ‘once-more’ with a shrug of her shoulders and, turning, gazed at a loose strand of trees stood to the right of the main house, fronted by several small boulders of varying sizes. Geological leftovers from an Ice age, she wondered who had taken the time to neatly arrange them, given their weight and size. Zeus may have played marbles with these guys way back in his day, but she seriously doubted even a handful of horses could have had the nervous energy to help haul this lot to their present location. Maybe an entire company of Army Engineers, though she doubted that.
Following the fence, more for moral support should another wave of nausea hit, Amelia headed toward the intriguing array of boulders intent on at least sitting in the shade where, she hoped, she could ponder the ‘where’ she was, along with the ‘how-in-hell did I get here?’ question.
In all direction the views were spectacular, in a rugged sort of barren way. Gorgeous rich colours in the far distance were all very impressive. Was that why the owners had named the property Bellevue? Surely not after the racetrack or the prison but maybe in whimsy, or being of French ancestry, like her, thinking, ‘ah, c’est une belle vue’.
If so, that just left, who was the CC of the wonderful view?
Cecil and Cecelia? Chirac and—
With another strange shiver, not sure what it was that prickled at the back of her brain, Amelia turned away from the safety of the fence, and walked across the luxuriant, thick, and quite green lawn. Queen Elizabeth the First herself could have happily played bowls on the tempered even surface. She bent down and ran her hand lightly across the well trimmed and perfectly manicured blades. Quite the contrast to the other side of the fence, she thought. But, for the moment, missing the significance of that fact.
Amelia found a half-hearted wry smile. Talk about the grass is greener on the other side. The quirky smile faded with a soft sigh. None of this made sense.
Picking out the smallest boulder that looked marginally comfortable, Amelia sat pulling both legs up so as to rest her chin on her knees in an Alice in Wonderland pose. She stared out at nothing in particular, giving full reign to her puzzled thoughts. Two of those upper most in her mind that she would have to make the acquaintance of the property’s owners—sooner rather than later—because one, she was in desperate need of a leak, and two, she was as thirsty as hell. Besides that, she needed a phone. Though just who it was she thought she might call, was quite another matter.
Something was decidedly out of place. And that something, she concluded, was her.
MORE COMING SOON!
