When Jimmie Knight was ten years old, he foresaw other peoples’ suffering. He hesitated to act on a vision, and a girl drowned, leaving him devastated by guilt. Now, after seven years of dormancy, this local high school rock-star's gift re-awakens, showing him a vision of the town's children tortured by an evil force which lays beneath the surface of the pond where the girl died. Overwhelmed by his visions, Jimmie begins to alienate himself from his friends in a desperate attempt at redemption.

Ember Grace, the most popular girl in high school, is also Jimmie's crush, and she struggles to hold together her own failing friendships as she tries to understand her own unique gifts. Cast from her circle by vindictive friends, she finds herself drawn to Jimmie, his music, and his visions. When strange and evil events plague the town, Jimmie realizes that time is running out and all will be lost if he repeats his failure to act.

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Chapter One


Seven years ago.

Jimmie stared into Ore Pit Pond, a black oval of deep water darkening a pine forest. It was a horrible place for his tenth birthday party, he thought. The kind of place that ate children’s souls.

He wiped sweat from his brow and hopped down from the truck. He wanted to catch up with his parents at the country store but he couldn’t take his eyes off the pond. Something was wrong. Even with kids playing in it, the water was quiet.

A teenager cannon-balled off a wooden dock, a crow cried, and a Spaniel pup howled at two girls who walked through the woods toward the water.

The air shifted, and a church bell clanged in the distance. Jimmie ran to the nearby country store and weaved through narrow aisles, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the rustic gloom. Birthday candles. Find them. Anything to take his mind off the bell and whatever awful thing was about to happen. He wondered if a birthday wish could work in reverse. Instead of making a good thing come true, could it make a bad thing go away?

In a back corner of the store, two angled shafts of sunlight strained through grimy windows and cast pale gold rectangles on the top shelf, illuminating a box of candles. Maybe a wish would make it all go away.

As he clutched the candles, fire ripped through his gut. Pain wracked his stomach, and he doubled-over. He scrambled into a broom closet, hoping his parents wouldn't find him like this.

“Jimmie!” his mom called from a distance.

“I’m okay,” he tried to shout, but it came out as a whisper. He picked up the candles. Bits of wax and stringy wicks slipped through his fingers and fell to the floor like broken wishes.

He climbed to his feet and shuffled into the aisle, his foot catching the leg of a beef jerky display. He tripped and stumbled into a tower of olive jars. The greenish-gray orbs stared back at him like the eyes of dead people, their pimento pupils glowing red. They were crammed in so tight, submerged, and he felt breathless. Was this the message? Would contaminated olives make someone sick?

He grabbed a jar and turned it slowly. An outdoor image appeared within and expanded to fill his mind. As the scene shimmered into focus, a warm breeze brushed his face with the scent of lilac and honeysuckle. A girl his age stood on a dock at the water’s edge. Her hands covered her mouth to stifle a scream. Her eyes remained fixed on the water where a little girl in a purple bathing suit flailed. A woman paddled toward the girl but she wouldn’t make it in time.

Jimmie shook his head and rubbed his eyes to break the vision, but the drowning girl and her burbling screams wouldn’t go away. He stepped forward. Glass jars rattled inches from his face, but he couldn’t see them. He stumbled blindly down the aisle, clutching the olives with a sweaty, trembling hand while feeling for the end of the aisle with the other. His nostrils filled with the earthy smell of pond water and his skin chilled as though he’d stepped into winter.

“Jimmie,” his mom said, her voice close. “There you are. Come—”

“Just a second,” he said, looking in her direction. His chest tightened, but he tried not to show the cold or reveal that he couldn’t see her. He was sure he was feeling what the girl felt: cold skin, lungs filling with black water, and overwhelming fear. Her hands reached out of the bottomless pit and grasped at nothing before her fingers vanished into the water again. A pink hair ribbon bobbed on the surface a few times before sinking, leaving only an expanding pattern of rings on the water, and the girl was gone.

“Jimmie,” his mom said, her voice crackling with panic. “What’s wrong?”

The jar slipped from his grip and shattered on the floor. Cold olive juice soaked into his canvas sneakers while the sharp smell of vinegar dissolved the vision. As the girl’s last cries faded to echoes, his eyes took a moment to readjust to the store’s darkness.

“Talk to me,” his mom said. "Are you alright?"

The vision was the scariest one yet, using all his senses, but it was confusing, too. Other than a barking dog and a cannon-balling teen, the pond was calm just a few minutes ago.

Still, he wanted to run out there and save a drowning girl. But he froze. Maybe the vision was wrong. Maybe it had happened long ago, or maybe it wouldn’t happen until years from now. He drew a deep breath and convinced himself it was all a mistake.

“I broke the jar,” he said, turning to his mom. “It slipped. It was an accident.”

“You’re all sweaty.” She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I don’t—”

The screen door at the front of the store banged open. An overweight man barreled to the checkout. “Call 911!” He struggled to catch his breath. “My daughter… Melody… the ore pit!”

Daughter. The dog had been barking at two girls who were walking through the woods toward the water.
Jimmie raced to the front of the store and blasted through the screen door into sunlight. With his dad a dozen feet behind, he charged past the older girl on the dock and dove in, swimming underwater to the middle of the pond and surfacing near the woman who had appeared in the premonition.

A scream rang out from behind. He spun in the water toward the dock where the older girl clenched her hands close to her face. “Mom!” she shouted. “Can you see her?”

Jimmie’s dad stood at the water’s edge. He pulled his shirt over his head before diving in. A moment later he surfaced nearby.

“Dad, I can reach her.” Jimmie drew a deep breath and plunged straight down. Rays of sunlight danced all around as he swam toward the bottom, and twice he felt his dad swimming beside him. After half a minute, his ears squealed under pressure, and it was so hard not to think about turning back for air. He wanted to inhale, but he kicked harder and pulled deeper because he couldn’t ignore the bell, and something purple twisted in the murk below.

Shadows rippled on an old crane abandoned long ago by the ore miners who had hit the water that filled this rock quarry making it a pond. Jimmie took hold of the machine and kicked. He pulled himself toward the bottom, hand-over-hand along its slippery, algae-covered beams.

Sunlight barely reached the water below as the crane’s metal framework plunged into darkness. The bottom was deep, but maybe his dad could pull her to the surface so someone could resuscitate her. He turned to give his dad a thumbs-up, but he found himself alone.

Invisible screws twisted into his ears now squealing with the slow release of pressure. He’d fought the instinct to inhale as long as he could, but he had to turn back for air. Then he could take a deeper breath and pull himself down along the crane with enough time to find the girl and help raise her to the surface.

He turned a half-somersault and kicked toward the light.

A blaze of heat lit up the left side of his head as he smacked into the rusted crane. A jag of steel slid into his ear and tore everything. Its barbed edge gouged his ear canal and dotted his cheek as he wriggled free. He screamed a muffled, underwater roar. Water filled his mouth and gushed down his throat as blood from his ear clouded the water with scarlet streamers.

He struggled, his chest on fire, until he couldn’t move. Every muscle tightened, and he jerked for a moment until his arms floated limp at his sides. His legs dangled. He floated in silence as though time had stopped and suspended him in the deep.

Calming waves rippled through him. He rose slowly and looked up at rays flashing gold and blue in the water above. Pinpoints of light darted before his eyes like playful little fish, and the fire in his ear and chest faded as he rose toward the light.

Peace. Calm. From the first whisper of the church bell, Jimmie knew someone would die, but he sure didn’t think it would be him. He smiled, thinking it was funny to die on his birthday. A weight lifted. No worries. No pain. No homework! He thought he should be sad about the whole thing, but he wasn’t. He simply closed his eyes and waited for his angels to come.

But something tugged under his armpits and yanked him to the surface. His lungs heaved while someone – maybe his dad – ferried him to the dock. Hands reached down and hoisted him out of the water. He flopped face down on the dock and coughed and heaved what felt like an ocean.

His mom knelt beside him and stroked his face and hair. Tears ran down her cheeks, but he couldn’t hear her crying because of the searing pain in his left ear. Footsteps vibrated through the dock, but like everything else they were silent.

He leaned over the edge and searched the water for any sign of the girl – Melody. The shadow of a face appeared beneath the ripples, but it wasn’t hers. Maybe it was just a pair of eyes glowing like the last two embers of a dying fire. Staring into those pimento-red eyes, Jimmie sensed gnarled fingers reaching for him, grabbing at some part of him, wanting to claw him into the deep. He rolled away from the water, but the ghostly fingers reached into him and pulled.

He croaked out a syllable, but choked on it.

“Easy, Jimmie,” his dad said. “Don’t try to talk.” He wrapped a towel around Jimmie and hugged him. The gnarled fingers released their grip and faded.

Jimmie touched his left earlobe. Wet heat spread down his hand and forearm to his elbow, where it dripped to the dock in thick red droplets. Sickened from the sight of his own blood pooling around him, he weakened. His head clunked to the dock, but he remained conscious.

Someone had recovered his dad’s shirt from the lawn and wrapped it around his bleeding head. It bathed Jimmie in the scent of his dad’s aftershave. He was reminded of being a kid, nestled on the couch with his face in his daddy’s shirt while the bat-cracks and gentle cheers of a Yankees game floated from the television. Through open windows came the hum of a distant lawn mower and the scent of freshly-cut grass and honeysuckle. That was a warm place, a safe place. Jimmie curled now, cold. He drew his knees to his chest and felt none of those comforts here.

“That was so brave,” his dad said, his voice filled with fear. The words resounded in Jimmie’s right ear, but his left ear heard nothing. “An ambulance is coming.”

“For the girl?” Jimmie rasped between breaths. He pushed away the image of the girl’s body resting in the pond’s darkness. She’d been reaching for her mom and dad and big sister, who would never come. Had she looked up and seen him struggling toward her? Someone must have gone down after him and rescued her, someone who swam better than he did.

“For the girl?” Jimmie repeated, feeling like a wind-up toy whose spring had unwound.

His dad looked away without answering. At the water's edge stood the heavy man who had burst into the store. He held the woman and the older girl. They fell to their knees and cried.

“The— girl?” Jimmie asked again as daylight dimmed in his eyes. “Melody?”

“Jimmie,” his dad said with his hand on his heart. “I’m sorry, son. She’s gone.”

The ear pain sharpened, pushing Jimmie to the edge of consciousness. He opened his mouth to speak, but words clotted in his throat.

“I’m so sorry,” he managed to say, as though the drowned girl could hear him across the gray divide between this world and the next. “I could have saved you if only I had—”

His tongue slackened.

Darkness came, sudden and complete.