Chapter 1

It felt like someone was swinging a hammer against the inside of Eliza’s skull.  The early morning dew caused a damp muskiness on the earth that blended with the mold and dust that burrowed beneath the thick layer of leaves where she lay her aching burden; assaulting her nose and adding to her misery.  Her chocolate colored eyes felt pinned shut, but her hearing was abnormally acute.  By the sounds around her, she sensed her surroundings were familiar ones.  If she was correct, she was near the small cave that was nestled in a knoll that began the acres of woods at the far end of her family’s farm.  It was a place that she’d discovered at a young age and had frequented whenever she required alone time.  Her surroundings weren’t the greater mystery.  How she got there was.

As her faculties returned to normal, she sat up and realized that how she got there wasn’t the biggest mystery after all.  It was superseded by the fact that she hadn’t a stitch of clothing on. 

None of this made sense. How did she get there and what happened to her clothes?

Straining her mind, she reached into the fog for a replay of the night before.  She’d gone with her best friend, Reba, to a newly opened dance club. The place was packed, and dance partners were plentiful.  The exertion from dancing combined with the excessive body heat made the air feel so stifling as to be practically unbearable.  She remembered stepping outside for a bit of fresh air.  Did Reba join her?  She struggled to remember, but the visions in her head showed very little.

Squeezing her eyes shut almost to the point that it hurt, she forced her mind to function.  She needed to remember the chain of events that led to her waking up naked in a field at the edge of the woods.  Had she gone home from the club and sleepwalked?  Or had something sinister occurred?  She just didn’t know.

Although sleepwalking wasn’t completely out of the question, it had been years since she’d done it.  It was a regular occurrence for her up until the age of fourteen when her parents took her to a therapist to help her stop.  Now, ten years later, she might have started up again.  The difference being that, although she’d end up in the field near that very same cave in her early years, she’d always retained her clothes.  She’d also not suffered with a headache like she was this time.

The question of foul play crossed her mind.  Had she been drugged, abducted, and dragged there to be raped?  Common sense told her that the possibility was miniscule. Why would a rapist  snatch her from the nightclub in a city twenty miles away and then drag her to the cave at the edge of her farm to rape her and steal her clothes? The more probable explanation was that she’d sleepwalked.  Even so, why didn’t she remember going home?

With a scowl of frustration pasted on her face, she picked herself up off the ground and did her best to wipe the dirt and grime from her tender flesh.  A rustling in the overgrown shrubbery about twenty yards away caught her attention.  Peering into the thick greenery, she spotted a pair of eyes looking back at her.  When she didn’t move, the head of a wolf slowly eased out from between the twisted branches with their abundant leaves. Had her mood been different, she would have taken the time to admire the beauty of it’s rich, white coat.  As it was, the glow of the rising sun behind it created a sinister silhouette around  the scene that made her shudder and worry for her own wellbeing.

An immediate rush of adrenaline surged through her veins. Abandoning her quest to remember the chain of events that led her there and mindless of the fact that she was stark naked, she forced her long, lean legs into action.

The pounding of her heart as she pushed her body to its maximum capacity competed with the hammering in her head. She slowed down enough to look over her shoulder to scope for the wolf.  She didn’t see it, but she wasn’t about to take any chances.  Wolves weren’t known to attack humans in her area, but there was always the possibility of a rabid one wandering about.

As they aged, her parents had slowly, but steadily downsized the operation of their farm until it was a mere shell of what it used to be. Had their land been less, they could have easily dubbed it a gentleman’s farm with only a few cows and goats for milk and homemade cheese, a pair of plow horses to maintain a rather large vegetable garden, some chickens, and a few pigs.  Even so, having grown up on a fully functioning dairy farm and being surrounded by a variety of livestock exposed her to far too many perils that befell both beast and human.  She’d kept alert and aware of them but tried not to become so preoccupied as to be obsessed and paranoid.

Racing into the house, she rushed past the kitchen where her startled parents sat at the breakfast table with wide eyes and gaping mouths.

Slamming shut the door to her room, she leaned against it while she caught her breath and waited for her heart to calm down.  Then, grabbing a robe, she left her room and headed for the one bathroom that she and her parents shared.

As she stepped back out into the hall, she could hear her mother beginning to ascend the stairs while bellowing her name.

“I’m okay,” she bellowed back.  “I’ll be down in a minute.”

Stopping mid-stairwell, her mother called out with concern, “Where are your clothes? Why were you out naked? How did you get so filthy!”

“I’ll be down in a minute!” Eliza impatiently shouted as she rushed into the bathroom and locked the door behind her.

It was a logical question for her mother to ask, and understandable for her to be concerned, but it still irritated Eliza.

 The only child of Viviane and Arthur Eaglesworth, she’d grown up feeling stifled by her mother’s attention and excessive affections. After experiencing the freedom of single life in the city, she’d had her doubts about moving back in with them a few months earlier, but the work and financial setbacks that she’d experienced after the veterinarian she’d worked for since graduating high school died earlier that year had left her no choice.  Now, she’d have to deal with their one-hundred questions until they were satisfied with her explanation.

 The problem was that she had no explanation.  Not yet, anyway.

Reaching into the medicine cabinet, she grabbed the bottle of headache pills and popped two into her mouth. Bending so that her lips  met the stream of water coming from the faucet, she sucked in the cool liquid to aid in swallowing the pills.  Then, after splashing some onto her face, she turned off the faucet and removed the robe.  Hanging it on a nearby hook, she eagerly stepped into the shower.

With any luck, once she was clean and fresh with a head that didn’t feel like it harbored a runaway jackhammer, she’d be able to decipher just what had happened.