Limbo's Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

forty-two years. Her mother was somewhat gangly and clumsy and a bit of a tomboy, always mucking around in the dirt of the garden, or repairing something around the house. She looked classy and gorgeous in a dress and heels, but she could usually be found in blue jeans, often topped by a baggy sweater, sweatshirt or plaid flannel shirt, a smudge of dirt on her cheek, and a smirk on her face.
    Maggie Miller never put on any pretension that she was pretty, but Lucy had always thought her mother was very beautiful – lithe, slender and lovely – and she wished that she looked more like her. Instead of dark-brown hair, warm, brown eyes and olive skin, Lucy had sandy-brown hair, green eyes, pale skin and freckles. Instead of a tall and slim figure with a svelte waist, she was short and somewhat stocky – nearly the same width from her shoulders to her hips. “Pony-built” her mom had called it.
    She always hated the way she looked, but her mom had always tried to make her feel better about her figure.
    “Well at least you’ll have breasts! Look at me – I’m flat as a surfboard!” her mom had said once.
    “ MOM! ” was Lucy’s mortified reply.
    She had been horrified and embarrassed when her mother said stuff like that, but she had to admit, it did make her feel better.
    She could remember lots of things about her mom, but the one thing she remembered most was something from just after the accident. It was a final image of her mother in shades of gray and blue standing in a marsh on the edge of a distant, ruined city. She was yelling something, but she couldn’t tell what. She seemed so far away. There was more to it than that, but it was slipping away, like a dream.
    Of course it had never happened. It was something her mind had just invented immediately after the accident. A subconscious mental image that told her what her brain already knew – that her mother was dead. She had had flashes of visions and nightmares like that her whole life. Night terrors too. Mostly images of zombies and vampires and other dead things – the usual childhood fears. Her mother was always interested to hear about them but insisted they meant nothing, they were just manifestations of subconscious anxieties. Mom had studied a lot of childhood psychology in college. Somehow her mom could always make her feel better and banish the scary dreams away. Soon she had learned to ignore the nightmares entirely as idle chatter from her unruly subconscious.
    Yet, she had seen a lot of strange things from her subconscious immediately after the accident. And not just monsters from late-night B movies. Strange visions and people she had never seen before, and somehow they were far more vivid than ever. They were all delusions too, she told herself, crafted from her own memories and fears – that’s all. She even saw a childhood memory where she had been attacked by a duck at a pond, but the duck had been turned into some bizarre monstrosity complete with back spines and a butcher knife.
    Lucy shook her head and tried to think of something else. Even now the water stain was looking more like something, but she couldn’t tell what. The brain did funny things when under stress, and that’s all that was she told herself. Mom had been practical and always wanted her to be practical too, so that’s the way she was going to be. She wasn’t going to believe in nightmares or dead things. Now more than ever.
    The voices just outside her door kept talking.
    “And there’s no next of kin? She’s all alone?”
    “We’re not certain, but it sure looks that way. She apparently had a grandmother that died a while back, but there are no known living relations other than the mother and now she’s gone.”
    This was not news to Lucy either. Grandma Holveda had died six years ago. Lucy had only met her a few times anyway. Most kids had loving grandmothers that spoiled them. Nana Holveda was stern, dark-eyed, mysterious and distant. Her grandmother had never