Chapter 1

The beginning of the book. Sam has a stressful run-in with an unexpected resident on his parents' property.

It was a windy day on the east coast, but for Sam it was perfect. He enjoyed walking along the shoreline on a windy day, watching barely visible gusts of wind push and pull the water as if to command the sea itself. Often, he would take his shoes off to enjoy the cool sand between his toes and as he walked he would breathe in the stinging salt-water smell through his nostrils. Having parents with private land near the ocean was great for a 17-year-old, and he was always ready to take advantage of its beauty and wonder. As he walked, barefoot, letting the sand find its way into the crevices between his toes, he saw a figure lying on the ground ahead of him, letting the tide caress its body. Sam froze for a minute. He was supposed to be the only person on the property. Sam became stressed as he passed his fingers through his straight, blonde hair and began to sneak towards the resting figure.

            It was a woman, roughly 19, completely naked in the sand. Sam stared at her for a minute, but she seemed inattentive to his presence. He tried to awake her from her stupor by asking her what she was doing there, but his effort received no answer.

            “Hello? I am talking to you. This is private property,” he growled, trying to sound threatening. “Answer me!” But the girl would not. She seemed to be unconscious.

Frustrated, Sam shook her and splashed water on her face, but her body remained motionless in the sand. Out of ideas, he sat down next to the bare body of the girl, staring at it in awe and wonder. Her smooth chest rose slightly and then fell. She was alive, and this caused Sam to let out a sigh of relief.

“Can’t believe I didn’t notice that before. Good thing I didn’t give her CPR….” He paused and observed her body. She was thin and beautiful, with long, brown hair flowing down her shoulders. Her skin was pale and soft, melding with the sand almost as if it belonged there on the white beach.

“How did you get here?” he whispered. “And why are you knocked out?” He waited, hoping someone might answer him, but he was not granted that luxury. “I must be crazy talking to you, but I can’t just leave you here…you need to wake up.” Sam rose and poked the girl’s soft skin with one finger, trying to wake her. When this small touch did nothing, he hesitated before sheepishly laying both hands on her bare shoulders. He blushed as he touched her naked body, knowing that some of his friends, given this opportunity, would’ve done rather terrible things. He backed away, releasing the girl’s shoulders; his nerves surged through his stomach and he felt nauseous, but he composed himself by taking a deep breath inward, letting the air fill his lungs slowly. Then, he exhaled, releasing his stress and fear with it. When his breath had ended, he clenched his hands, awkwardly, on her shoulders and weakly shook her. “Come on, wake up! Please!”

            “You’ll get no response from her,” came a voice behind him. Startled, he jumped away from the girl, feeling caught and ashamed. Whoever it was, he felt a cold shiver run down his spine, knowing that there was no possible way this situation could look innocent. He slowly turned around to see a bearded man in a large, brown cloak. No feature of his body was visible besides his face, which seemed kind, yet strong. Fear suddenly churned in Sam’s gut and he backed away.  

            “Who are you?” asked Sam, regaining his composure “and what are you doing on my property? Get off right now or I’ll-”

            “You’ll what?” asked the man “remove this unconscious, helpless girl from your property? If my assumptions are correct, you would not leave her here to die.” The man tilted his bearded head. “Or would you?”

            “I…she can’t stay here on the beach! If my dad finds out…I mean….she’s naked!”

            “This girl is hurt and needs medical attention,” the man said, sternly “I need your help, Sam.”

            “You know my name?”

            “I know much about you. You are out on a walk because your parents are not home and you needed some fresh air, am I correct?”

            “H-how did you know that?” Sam stuttered. The man just smiled.

            “That’s not important,” he said “the important thing is that this girl is taken care of.”

            “Taken care of?” inquired Sam, observing the girl “She looks fine. Perfect, even. There’s not a scratch on her. What medical attention could she possibly need?”

            “It is not her body, but her spirit that is damaged. Trust me, if it were just bodily injuries we would not have a problem. She has gone through a lot, and she will need help finding her place in the universe again.”

          “I don’t understand,” Sam told the man.

“You don’t have to yet,” he replied “You will find, when she awakes, that this girl will have no memory of herself. I have inspected her thus far and have found the internal damage to be too great for her to survive on her own. You must bring her to your home and keep her safe for a few weeks, as she has no home of her own and needs a place to heal. As for her well-being, I suspect through my observations that I can trust you to treat her well until she awakes.”  

            “Observations?” Sam was feeling rather creeped out now, but when the man only nodded, Sam looked back at the girl in wonder and awe. “What happened to her?”

            “Perhaps, someday, you will learn that. For now, you must wait. Three weeks will pass and then she will have to face her destiny. Until then, farewell young Sam; the universe is in your debt.” The man’s body then began to disappear, leaving Sam alone with the naked girl on the beach. Sam stood there for a second, rather befuddled. He pinched himself to see if he was dreaming, but when he found the situation to be real, he looked down at the girl in the sand. She was more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen before, with perfect skin as smooth as a skipping stone. Her body curved and flowed like the waves which crashed against her, and her breath was as calming as the patient and quiet earth.

            With great hesitation, Sam picked up the sleeping girl in his arms, allowing her head to rest on his shoulder. He tried his best to keep himself from accidentally touching anyplace he thought he shouldn’t as he raced towards his home. As his feet crashed against the sand in haste, the waves grew more ferocious. A storm was growing on the horizon, and as soon as Sam saw it if he did not get the girl indoors soon, she may freeze to death. So many questions flooded his mind as he stumbled towards his father’s house. How long had she been out on the sand? Who was the man he had talked to and how did he disappear? Who was she and what happened to her? He hoped that, once she had awakened, she would tell him and his parents all he wanted to know.

            The rain had just started to fall as he burst across the front lawn of his parents’ home. It was a nice, two story building with Sam’s room on the top floor. No lights were on, nor was there a truck in the driveway, so Sam clambered through the front door and into the living room. He made his way around the furniture and further into the back of the house where he found the guest bedroom. He lay the girl down on the soft bed and covered her in warm, woolen blankets and rested her head on a soft pillow made of fleece. Stepping back to catch his breath, he still observed no movement from the girl, even in response to the warm bed. When Sam’s lungs finally caught up with him, he went upstairs to his room to fetch some clothes for her. He found some old sweatpants and a t-shirt, which, along with some socks, were the best he could manage on his own. Thinking quickly, he slipped into his parents’ room and found some of his mother’s undergarments. After clumsily running downstairs, he made his way back into the guest bedroom and placed the clothing on a chair near the bed.

            The girl still remained completely immobile, as if she were inanimate. The storm raged outside and as the lightning cracked across the sky, Sam sat in the living room thinking and wondering what his parents were going to do. Surely his mother would send her away to the police, but the old man he had talked to warned him that the girl must stay in their home and get better. The man hoped for them to adopt this girl…which was lunacy. Still, she was beautiful. Sam saw no reason why they wouldn’t be able to take her in. He figured he would be able to at least convince his father. He was a kind, caring soul who always looked at life in different ways. There was always a meaning to everything in his eyes, and he enjoyed surprises and lucky happenings.

“Still, what am I supposed to say? ‘A mysterious guy showed up and gave me a girl. Can we keep her?’” Finally he heard a car pull up the driveway. His time had run out, for soon enough headlights flashed through the drenched windows and the garage door opened, causing a loud roar to echo throughout the house. His parents had come home and Sam was still without a story. After much banging in the garage and the loud creak of the door sounded, his father entered the room, worry splashed on his face. He stopped in the hallway, towering over everything in the room, and looked at Sam. His eyes looked as if they were ready for action.

            “Where is she?” he asked, and Sam froze. He looked towards the guest bedroom and his father glanced there, then nodded. “You lay her down on the bed, then? Good.” He turned back to Sam and smirked. “Guess we have a new family member.” At that moment, his mother came in with a paper bag full of groceries. She was a medium-sized woman with short, brown hair and pure blue eyes. She struggled with the bag for a bit, but managed to get it onto the kitchen counter. She was set on her work as usual when something stressful happened within the family. Sam felt the tension fill the room as she began to work, trusting his dad to take care of the situation as she supported him. However, the tension dispersed when her voice rang through his ears, sounding cheerful and nonchalant.

            “All right, I got some good food to eat tonight. Chicken nuggets and mashed potatoes,” sang his mother as she began to unpack the bag. “You love chicken nuggets and potatoes, don’t you, dear?”

“I do,” said Sam, rather confused. “Uh, there’s this girl…”

“We know,” said his mom with a smile. “But we’ve all had a bit of a rough day. . Figure we’ll sit down and talk about this over a nice dinner, huh? After all, it’s not that big of a deal.” She looked up from making the potatoes and smiled. “I’m proud of you for saving her.”  Sam didn’t respond, so she got to work pre-heating the oven and preparing the meal. His father, who had disappeared to check on the girl, emerged suddenly from the hallway.

“She seems stable. Only resting now,” he said, then paused before continuing. “Her breathing is very faint, but her body appears to have no damage. Was she like this when you found her?”

“Yeah,” he said, and then hesitated “Completely, uh, naked….and not even a scratch,” Sam responded, then quickly changed the subject. “How do you know about all this?”

“It’s very…strange,” said his father. “A strange man in a large cloak came to your mother and I in the grocery store…he told me that you had found a girl on the sand and had brought her here because of her injuries.”

“A man in a large cloak?” asked Sam “He was there when I found her!”

“He said that,” his mom chimed in, “He said he told you to take care of her and to keep her safe for a while. Is that what he told you?”

“Yeah, then he just…disappeared.”

“Come on now, dinner’s ready!” chimed Sam’s mother.

 “Already?”

“I used the microwave, come on over to the table and eat! You are both stressed beyond belief and you need a good meal. Come on, over here now! Jesus, if I had a nickel for every minute it took me to get you to the dinner table. Always doing something, whether it’s playing video games, doing yard work, worrying about an unconscious girl, et cetera, et cetera.”

Sam’s dad smirked and waltzed over to the table, and Sam did too after staring into space for a split second. When they had all sat down, Sam’s dad began to tell the tale of how the man appeared to them.

“It was as if he just appeared out of thin air. Your mother and I were walking down the aisle looking at soup and the man walked up to us, all covered in black. His face seemed kind, though. I felt that we could trust him.”

“I didn’t,” interrupted his mother. “Personally, I thought it was a trick. That this whole thing was a charade to get us to buy a vacuum cleaner or something! And I still haven’t been proven wrong.” She smiled across the table at her husband, who chuckled.

“Your mother freaked. It was hilarious. Anyway, the man told us that you had just talked to him and that you were currently carrying a very important girl to our house.” Then he smirked. “Of course, my initial reaction was ‘Good for Sam!’ but then the man told me about her condition. She’s got amnesia and apparently a pretty bad case of it. That’s why we need to take care of her for a while. She has nowhere else to go that she can remember.”

“And that’s when I told your father that we should call the police. Didn’t I say that?”

“You said that way too many times, and I already told you, Diane, this is not a police matter. She’s just a girl who needs a place to stay for a while. We have plenty of food and space. I don’t think one more person will do us much harm.”

“But what if someone is looking for her?” asked Diane “What if they miss her dearly and want to know she’s safe and alive?”

“If there’s anyone that knows anything about her, it’s that man,” reasoned Sam “and he told us to keep her safe. I agree with dad, I don’t think this is a police matter either.” Sam’s father put his hand on Sam’s shoulder and grinned.

“Well, then it’s settled. By God’s divine will, we will keep this girl in our care for however long he wishes.” He then looked at Diane. “It’s two against one…sorry.” Diane fiddled with her meal before getting up to clear her plate. After a while of clanking dishes in the sink, she finally turned back to the family.

“I suppose I have always wanted a daughter,” she laughed and Sam’s father got up and hugged her. Sam just sat there finishing his chicken nuggets, going over the prayer of his father. It didn’t seem to fit. This wasn’t God’s doing. This was something else.

Author's Note

Hope you like it. I enjoy the entire story.

Reviews

[The Dudeman (Kenneth T)]

Love the imagery. Because I know about this story, I was able to pick up on it.

[Exxii ((Lauren)) Chem]

Awesome job! You're an amazing writer!! Keep writing!

-Lauren P.