Flash 5:34: A Haunting in Highland, Book 2 (A Haunting in High...

It came and went too fast, technically, for human comprehension. It was an infinitesimal piece of a moment-already history before any coherent thought could be formed. Yet, as all who experienced it knew deep down, something as significant as it was inexplicable had just happened, something mysterious that had never happened before ... In a moment that's gone almost before it arrives, everything changes. What the townsfolk come to describe as a "flash" dramatically alters the lives of every person who experiences it. At first, it is the animals: the pets, the cattle, and the wildlife of the small Midwestern town of Highland, Illinois. Soon enough, the insidious symptoms spread to the people of Highland. A besieged police chief, his best detective, and the city manager try their best to understand and confront the evil gradually taking over their world. It keeps growing, though, and they soon realize that it might be bigger than all of them. This is a book that will capture you - and then won't let you go - starting with the very first page. It is the most haunting story since "Night of the Living Dead."

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Flash 5:34A Haunting in Highland, Book 2By Andrew CarmitcheliUniverse, Inc.Copyright © 2010 Andrew CarmitchelAll right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4502-2755-1 Chapter OneOctober 2nd - 5:34 P.M. It came and went too fast, technically, for human comprehension. It was an infinitesimal piece of a moment-already history before any coherent thought could be formed; yet all who experienced it knew, deep down somewhere, that something as significant as it was inexplicable had just happened. Something that in some mysterious way had never happened before ... Bart Melleville was driving home from work to his home in Highland, heading east on Interstate 270 from St. Louis into Illinois. For him, it was a bright flash that was long gone by the time he was able to even form a thought. He involuntarily grimaced, grit his teeth hard and instinctively took his foot off the accelerator, waiting for whatever was next. An explosion? He held his breath and watched with widened eyes, but nothing happened. Five seconds went by. Then ten. He put his foot back on the gas pedal tentatively, suddenly aware that he was dangerously slowing on a high-traffic highway. He checked his mirrors then and saw quickly that there was no danger. All the other cars had slowed too. Jim Ray Crawford, after a long day of construction work, was outside in the dusk on his farm near Alhambra pouring feed for his cattle when it happened. For him it was like grabbing hold of an electric fence. He was aware of what seemed to be a microsecond of light, then felt an unpleasant tingle from head to toe. He too found himself gritting his teeth. He had been in the process of pouring grain into a trough when it happened. The jolt made him spill some, and he quickly took several steps back. The cows at the trough quit feeding and looked up at him. Jim Ray looked first up at the darkening Autumn sky, then out across the pasture behind the animals. He saw nothing unusual. He realized then that he was holding his breath, for some reason, so he took a deep one and tried to reason out what had just happened. His mouth felt dry. He looked at his cows, and they looked back at him. Whatever had happened had affected them too. He took another deep breath, poured the rest of the grain into the trough, then turned to go back toward the house. He looked back before he got to the back door. The cows still weren't feeding. They seemed, instead, to be intently watching his every step. Brenda Crawford dropped the bowl of mashed potatoes that she was carrying to the table when it happened. "Earthquake!" was her first thought, though nothing was moving and all was silent after the bowl shattered. Brenda stopped and stared at the mess on the floor, then at her own hands. They were shaking. She listened intently, expectantly, for something. She heard only the ticking of the kitchen clock. Then it hit her. Her daughter! Where was her daughter? Before her mouth could even form the word "Marsha!" and yell it loud enough for it to be heard in her upstairs bedroom, the 8 year-old came running into the kitchen, seemingly out of nowhere-and then past her mother towards the back door. She opened and went through it so fast that she nearly collided with her father, who was on the bottom step of the back porch, on his way in. She ran past him without a word, and he turned and watched with amazement as she sprinted toward the cow pens. Brenda was still standing there, frozen over her dropped mashed potatoes when the back door opened again and her husband Jim Ray walked in. Officer Ben Christopher was sitting in his "speed trap position" on St. George Road in Highland when it happened. He wasn't thinking about catching speeders, He was instead day-dreaming about the cold beer and good dinner that was to be coming his way soon, and was just checking the time to see how close he was to finally being off-duty when he felt his scalp tingle sharply, and saw the hairs on his arm stand up as if suddenly electrified around his wristwatch. He winced, closed his eyes and pulled back into his seat. For him, it was a horrid, instantaneous flashback to his time in Iraq. It was the millisecond before the bomb went off. When nothing happened in the following few seconds he opened his eyes and saw all the rush hour traffic on St. George Road slowing, at once and together. A jeep even pulled off the side of the road, and into the ditch. Bobby Meachum had just taken the first toke on his second joint of the young evening. He was sitting by his open second-story bedroom window, as usual, to make sure all the smoke drifted out and away from the house. His mother, who was cooking dinner in the kitchen directly below him, smelled it anyway, as usual. She simply turned on the oven's overhead fan, as always, so that no trace would be left when Bobby's father got home. She was long past the fight with Bobby. When it happened Amanda Meachum felt a quick, sharp pain, as though she had somehow burned herself; even though she was walking away from the stove and toward the dining room table at the time. She stopped in her tracks, turned quickly and shot an accusatory glance at the innocent and happily cooking little stove. After a few seconds of confusion and alarm, she simply walked back over and turned off the vent fan. She had no idea what had happened, and didn't know what else to do. When the moment came for her son Bobby, who was sitting by his open bedroom window upstairs, he quickly exhaled the smoke that he'd been holding in his lungs. He held up the new joint and took a close, wondering look at it. The stuff, it seemed to him ... was amazing. What a hit! "WHOA!" he finally said happily. Jonathon Parker was grading papers at his kitchen table when the moment came. It caused him to make a long red pen mark across the first page of Alice Benson's essay. He immediately stood up and turned toward the glass door that led to his deck out back. His skin was tingling. He found it hard to take a breath. He took three tentative steps toward the door and looked out back at his yard and the pasture and woods beyond it. He saw nothing unusual, but stood and stared anyway. Seconds went by, all was silent, but he didn't move. He could hear his own breathing, and feel his whole body trembling. Police Chief Rodney Thomas was at his computer at the time. He was typing the last line of a report he wanted to finish before heading for home when the screen went dark. At the same time an odd, ominous feeling (not quite shock, but something close) came over him, and he quickly and instinctively jerked his hands away from the keyboard. The lights in his office flickered, but didn't go out. Still, the room seemed dimmer, somehow. For at least a minute afterwards he sat looking at the black computer screen in wonder, trying to figure out what had just happened. One of Highland's legendary power outages? Some kind of sonic boom that somehow ...? Nothing made sense. He found himself listening intently in the sudden silence that now engulfed his office. Though he knew that there was undoubtedly a logical answer to this, he couldn't help having an eerie feeling about it. Maybe he was just tired ... but it was as though he had somehow been transported, very suddenly, to a different place. A far away place. Then he heard a dog; somebody's dog that undoubtedly lived close to the police station. He sat listening. It was an unusual sound. An unnatural sound. It was somebody's big dog, and it was howling, not barking. A long, mournful, wolf-like howling. He listened quietly in the dim light, waiting for it to stop, but it kept going. And it seemed to be getting louder. Then Chief Thomas' phone rang. It was jarringly loud, and he jumped about a foot. * * * The phone kept ringing well into Chief Thomas' evening. Friends, other police officers, the mayor, two city council members and even a sprinkling of Highland citizens that he didn't know kept him busy for hours. Police Chief Rodney Thomas believed that the public should have open access to their top law-enforcement officer. His phone number was in the book, and he had his cellphone set up to take the "roll over" calls that came to his home. There were times, of course, when he regretted his own philosophy, and this was quickly turning into one of them. He simply didn't know what had happened, couldn't find anyone who did know, and so was left with having to repeat himself over and over again: "We're not sure what, if anything happened at this point, but I can assure you that we're looking into the matter," or words to that effect. People were reporting that not only their TV cable was out, but that even their radios weren't working right. It made no sense, he had no answers, and the calls kept coming. "Why couldn't their damn phones quit working," he mumbled out loud at one point. But it was not to be, and for another hour in his office, then in his car on the drive home, and even later, sitting at his kitchen table trying to get down a few bites of cold dinner, he took calls. And when he wasn't answering calls (as patiently as possible) he was making them. He called the city manager and urged him to look into whether or not some kind of electrical anomaly had taken place. He called each of the four officers that he had out on duty at the time to get their take. He called his friend Joe Blanton, the County Sheriff, to see if he'd heard anything (he learned that the "incident" appeared to be county-wide ... which made him feel better, for some reason). In the end though, as he walked into the living room to talk to his wife Joanie for the first time since early morning, after the last call had been made and all possible information had been gathered from every source he could think of, he knew that he really didn't know a damned thing. Not yet. Joanie was cuddled up on the couch with a blanket over her, with eyes closed, as the TV blared out white noise. Rodney walked quietly over to turn off the television, then over to his sleeping wife. When he sat down at her feet and began to rub them her blue eyes opened, a bit reluctantly, and she smiled. "Just resting my eyes," she said sleepily. It was an old joking line she used since the early days of their marriage, to cover her penchant for falling asleep in front of the TV ... no matter what was on. It was a habit that at one time, long ago, had irritated the hell out of her young husband. "Sure you were," he played along, "Just resting your eyes." He could see that she wouldn't be awake long. Indeed, her eyes were closing again. He reached over and gently brushed her disheveled blond hair off of her face and tucked it behind her ear. She smiled again. "Joanie honey, did you notice the ... thing, a few hours ago? Did you notice anything unusual? About 5:30 or so?" At first she didn't move, even as he continued to caress her. He thought that was too far gone, and hadn't heard him. But then she surprised him. Her eyes snapped open, she brushed her own hair back, and she squirmed halfway up so that she was resting on her elbows. "Yea. What was it, Rod?" she asked, suddenly fully awake. He hesitated before answering. His first instinct was to quote the party line about an "ongoing investigation." But this was his wife. "I don't know," he said finally, and a bit more irritably than intended. "But tell me what you noticed, hon? What happened with you?" He looked at her intently. He knew he'd get the unvarnished truth from her. Maybe even an insight into something. He was tired, and all the stories he'd heard, even his own experience, was all getting jumbled together. She looked into his eyes for a moment, and the away toward the television. Her smile was gone. "I don't know either, really," she said distractedly, almost sadly. It was almost like a ... bomb going off, or something. Only there was no sound. Nothing at all." She looked back at him, "Except for that dog of yours," she said sarcastically. "He went absolutely nuts!" She looked away again. He thought he saw her shiver slightly. "What do you mean, nuts?" he asked. Then he turned to look at the foot of the couch, the floor below him, then quickly around the room. "Where is Mitzi, anyway?" he added. Despite her "your dog" charge, Mitzi was never, ever very far away from Joanie. At night in front of the television she was always at his wife's feet at the end of the couch, if not on her lap. "She's in the basement," Joanie said tiredly, but in a way that told him there was more to it than that. "She ran down there right after it happened, and hasn't come up since," she added. Rodney could see in her eyes that she was more than a little bothered by it. Her voice, at least to others, could be deceptive, but after all their years together, he could read her like a book. She was worried. He got up to go downstairs to check on their dog. Stupid thing. "The worst part though ... was the howling," his wife added before he could get to the basement door. "She wouldn't quit howling." Rod stopped to turn and look at his wife. She was staring vacantly at the television picture that she couldn't hear or see. Her voice had sounded different to him; as though she was talking to someone else, even herself, when she described the howling. He watched the back of her head for a long moment, but she didn't say anything more. She didn't move at all. She just sat there as if engrossed in the best TV show ever made. So Chief Thomas turned back to open the door to their finished basement. He flicked on the light, and could hear Mitzi's low growling before he even took a step down the stairs. Chapter TwoOctober 3rd 3:39 A.M. When Bart Melleville finally realized he was awake, he found himself sitting up on his side of the bed, breathing heavily, and with his heart racing a mile a minute. He was terrified, relieved and confused; a mix of feelings that only those who have suffered the most vivid of nightmares can attest to. "Jesus!" he exclaimed aloud between gasps of breath, temporarily forgetting (and perhaps not really caring) that his wife Nancy would be awakened by his outburst. He wiped at his forehead. It was covered with sweat. His heavy breathing was barely slowing down. He reached out for Nancy with his other hand, wanting to wake her now. Needing her now. She wasn't there. Knowing he was disoriented from the dream and the dark, he felt for her again. Then again with both hands. The sheets were cold. She wasn't there. Normally, there is a familiar, rapid, and ultimately reassuring progression that takes place in the fevered brain of those who wake after suffering a nightmare. Each second back into the conscious world brings blissful, predictable reality back into sharper focus, while, simultaneously, the once vivid land of dreams fades into harmless wisps of increasingly ludicrous, half-forgotten fantasy. Bart Melleville though, sweat -soaked and hyperventilating as he grasped blindly in the night for the love of his life, was the exception. The absurdity of his state-of-mind at that moment, which any "normal" dreamer might find both embarrassing and perhaps even humorous in a matter of seconds, completed eluded the successful banker from Highland, Illinois. Each second that passed, in fact, made it worse. His confusion only deepened, and each second of this mystery caused his panic to grow, his face to grow more flushed, his heart to beat more wildly, and his sense of reason to recede further and further away. So, eventually, Bart Melleville just screamed. It started as a desperate cry for his wife Nancy, but his brain was running far too many frantic calculations to send that clear an order to his tongue. In addition to trying to locate his wife, he was feverishly searching for safety, order, reason and light; so his primal scream came out as a loud, jumbled "NAHENOAHH!!" Nancy Melleville, who was sitting at the kitchen table in her own world of distress holding a cup of lukewarm coffee and a lit cigarette, couldn't have been blamed if she had made straight for the door when the Indian Warrior-like scream came. She didn't though, as she had the advantage of having been up, wide awake and in the well-lit world of rationality for the last 45 minutes. Though startled enough to spill her coffee, she just as quickly regained her composure and got up quickly to head for the bedroom and her husband. When she turned on the bedroom light she saw Bart sprawled sideways on his stomach on their bed, struggling mightily to (apparently) beat up the sheets and one of the pillows. The sudden light caused him to become even more frantic for a few seconds, then reason and understanding seemed to flood over him all at once. He froze in the new light, then a moment later dropped his head face down onto the bed in sweet resignation. (Continues...) Excerpted from Flash 5:34by Andrew Carmitchel Copyright © 2010 by Andrew Carmitchel. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

About the Author

Andrew Carmitchel, a former English teacher and school administrator, resides in Highland, Illinois. "Flash 5:34" is the sequel to his first book, "There Comes a Moment-A Haunting in Highland, " both of which take place in Highland, Illinois. He also is the author of "The Wizard on Oak Street, " among others.

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