A Human Element Read Free Page A

distasteful. The nurse began to close the door when he heard another far away cry.
    The man wedged his foot in the door.
    "What was that?" He had to nearly shout over the din of the rain.
    "Nothing." The nurse looked up.
    The man risked looking her in the eye.
    "The girl is in pain and won't keep quiet." She clutched the envelope and folded her arms across her sagging bosom.
    "It sounded like another baby," he said.
    "It's just the whimpering slut. Now she's paid double for what she's done."
    The nurse took a step back as if aware she had said too much already. She glared at him. "Now go on. You have what you wanted. And so do I." She picked up the lump from the ground and shut the door in his face.
    The man in black stood there for a long moment, considering the woman's choice of words. He was sure he had heard another baby. What if another child had been delivered and the frigid woman and country doctor kept it secret? Fascinating . He decided to keep this information to himself. He would find the opportune time to use it. He was a patient man.
    But first, he had to see for himself.
    He peeled back the child's bunting and looked for the first time into its yellow eyes. For that moment, the baby fell silent.
    "Welcome to Earth X-10."
    The baby resumed its wailing.
    The man turned with his noisy package and melted into the darkness satisfied, as the doctor had been, that the night's events had provided him with more than he had asked for.

CHAPTER 3: 1987
     
    Laura Armstrong grabbed onto the moss-covered branch and pulled herself up into a nook in the biggest tree she could find.
    At seven years old, she stood compact and full of muscle from hours running through the woods surrounding her hilltop home. At fifteen feet up, the branches of the enormous, old oak bowed open to the Catskill Mountains in the distance, behind the farmhouse she shared with her parents. Its grand leaves folded outward like a green stage curtain beckoning its audience. Come, sit for a while, it called. Forget your worldly worries. Be entranced. She wanted to forget being worried. She had an anxious feeling that something bad was going to happen that day.
    Laura balanced her feet on the branches and spread her arms out wide. Her chestnut hair blew behind her in the warm, July breeze. She owned this piece of the world in the little town of Coopersville, New York. She overlooked the sloped meadows and woods around the farmhouse.
    Feeling confident in her footing in the tree, she took a deep breath and sang to the woods. She sang to the ancient craggy mountains before her. She sang to the birds claiming the sky and the creek that tumbled along its way. She sang to the squirrels and chipmunks chattering around her.
    Her young voice sprang forth with a melody of beauty and grace surprising for a child so young. But Laura accepted this difference, as she knew she was different in other ways too. She had the ability to sense the thoughts of people. At first those thoughts came through in a jumbled disconnect of words, but as she grew older, they became a clear stream of talking in her head. It happened whenever she stood close to someone. She didn't always understand what she heard.
    Sometimes frightening words came to her, often from strangers she stood next to in line at the store with her mother. But her mother and father always flowed with kind thoughts, speckled with worry about Laura or money. She never told her parents about this talent, as she didn't understand it herself. She didn't tell them about the other new talents she had just discovered either. Maybe someday she would.
    "Laura, can you help me shell peas?" her mother called from the house.
    "I'm coming!"
    Fanny Armstrong sat on the covered porch shelling peas. Laura put her arms around her mother's neck first and buried her face in her soft hair. It made the bad feeling inside her soften for a moment. Fanny laughed and squeezed her back, then handed Laura a basket of peas to shell. She grabbed