Prologue
Collision
Breathing hard, Kamaria Sawyer dropped her head back so it lolled against the headrest, trying to comprehend what had just happened. She had never been in a car crash before, but she knew that it wasn't supposed to work like this.
Her hands shaking, she unstuck them from the steering wheel, wiping the sweat off onto her jeans and looking around. The entire front end of her car was crumpled like an accordion, that much was obvious. She had felt the impact, and then the car slid forward about three more feet. Where her hood should've been, there was nothing but crumpled medal. Kamaria supposed she was lucky her legs hadn't been crushed. In fact, she was lucky she wasn't injured at all.
However, still. Something about the physics was off about this crash. Way off.
Nervous and a little bit scared, Kamaria opened her door with some difficulty. The crushed metal of the hood made it difficult to get the door open. Upon her success, she stumbled out of the car and, standing about a yard and a half away from it, surveyed the car and the area around it.
Nothing besides the front end of the car was damaged, but the damage that was there was enormous.
"Impossible." Kamaria said out loud. "Impossible."
It would've made perfect sense if she had hit a brick wall. Or a guardrail. Or even a telephone pole. But, no. She hadn't hit any of those things.
She had hit a person.
It truly was impossible, Kamaria thought. The impact between her car and the person she had hit would've sent the person flying down the road. It might've killed them. But, no. The impact had crumpled the entire front end of her car. And, on top of that, mere seconds after the crash had occurred, the person had jumped up and scampered off into the woods, completely unharmed.
No, not 'the person'. Kamaria knew now that the thing she hit could not possibly be human. There was no way. Nobody could've crumpled a car like that and escaped uninjured.
And, to Kamaria, that was not the scariest part. The scariest part was that Kamaria had caught a glimpse of the humanoid thing she hit just before the crash. And the humanoid thing looked like a screwed-up version of her long-lost daughter.
Paula Sawyer had disappeared off the face of the earth four years ago. She had simply vanished. It had been one of the most baffling cases in centuries. Kamaria was just barely starting to get over the fact that she might never see her daughter again. And, now, the inhuman thing she hit looked slightly like Paula… only different. With blood-red eyes.
Perhaps it hadn't been Paula in any way, shape, or form. Perhaps since Paula troubled her mind so often, she just thought she saw something that looked like her. Or maybe…
Kamaria's train of thought stopped abruptly. For she had crept closer to examine the damage to her car. And, amid all the crumpled metal, one could distinctly make out the image of a handprint in the damaged bumper. As though the thing had thrown out its hand at the last moment, right before the car hit.
On a normal person, the hand would've been crushed, or ripped right off. But this thing was strong enough to put a handprint right into the car.
Shaking, Kamaria dropped to the pavement. This was absolutely impossible. Or was it?