Welsh Road (The Depravity Chronicles) Read Free

of
soft green moss and the sound of cicadas singing.
    When she opened
her eyes she found herself in a hospital bed, surrounded by her parents.
    “Oh, Jena! Thank
God!” her father Hank praised through his tears.
    “What…what…”
Jena tried to ask, but couldn’t find the strength to keep talking. She figured
it was probably best, knowing a WTF comment was imminent. Her parents would not
like that one bit.
    “Don’t try to
speak, honey,” her mother Isabelle said softly. “You’ve been through a
terrible, terrible ordeal.”
    “Nicholas?” Jena
managed to call, her voice cracking. At the sound of his name, everyone in the
room stared at the floor. “Oh, God,” she moaned. That couldn’t be a good omen.
Closing her eyes again, she tried to remember something. Anything.
    Nothing.
    “What happened?”
Jena asked.
    “We were hoping
you could answer that question for us,” a quiet, baritone voice said from
somewhere in the room. A noticeably tall, dark-skinned man walked into her line
of sight. She admired his long, grey hair, streaked with black and white and
pulled into a ponytail.
    “Now is not the
time,” Hank declared to the stranger. “It’s not like we don’t appreciate it.
But you’re not even from the police department.”
    Jena felt a
strange pull toward the newcomer. “Who are you? Where’s Nicholas?”
    “I am the one
who found you,” the man said.
    “And you found
me with Nicholas, right?” Jena asked again. And the black-eyed demon, she thought to herself. But if she said that out loud, she figured it probably
wasn’t a long journey from her current room to the psych ward.
    “The police
found Nicholas in his car,” her father finally answered. “It was a terrible,
terrible accident, honey.” He paused for a few seconds too long for Jena’s
comfort. Now she understood why Nicholas had been annoyed with her saying
things twice.
    “The police
found what ?” she insisted. She wasn’t backing down.
    This time it was
her mother who answered. It was like they were playing musical chairs, but with
explanations instead of chairs. This irritated Jena to no end. “Uh,
Nicholas…um, well, he’s in a coma.”
    “What? A coma?
But I was in the car, right?” she asked. Maybe I don’t wanna know . She
was overwhelmed by her own questions, and to make things worse, no one seemed
to want to answer them. Suddenly she felt dizzy.
    “No, you weren’t
in the car,” Hank said. “This gentleman here found you wandering in the woods, two
miles from the scene of the accident. You were in some sort of trance, like
you were sleepwalking. And you were…” he tried to say, but Hank couldn’t
acknowledge the reality of what was happening.
    “I was what? Dad,
what was I ?”
    It was the
stranger who spoke. “You were covered in blood.”
    “Well, that’s
just great, isn’t it?” she asked, settling into a dark mood. Closing her eyes,
she could feel her pulse and mind racing. What was going on? She could feel a
panic attack lurking in her thoughts. She felt someone take her hand and her
mind began to calm. Her heartbeat slowed as a strange yet familiar sense of
peace spread through her body. She smelled a lingering odor of freshly cut
grass. Somehow, she knew the man who had taken her hand. She knew him well.
    “Who are you?” she asked lazily. She opened her eyes and gazed into his. He leaned
toward her, his hand outstretched in a professional but warm gesture.
    “My name is
Anish,” he said. “Anish Bearson.”
     

CHAPTER ONE
    Unanswered Questions, Old and New
     
    1
     
    It was a rainy
Friday morning in Crimson Falls. Anna stood beneath her umbrella in the small
cemetery behind St. Mark’s Catholic Church. She laid flowers on the grave of
her good friend Tim Dalton, wiping a tear from her cheek. Her son Trevor moved
closer, putting an arm around her to offer comfort. The only sounds surrounding
them were the falling rain and soft rolling thunder in the distance.
    “Do you