Title: Vision
Author: Lisa Amowitz
Publisher: Spencer Hill Press
Release Date: 09/09/14
BLURB from Goodreads
The
light is darker than you think…
High school student Bobby Pendell already has his hands full—he works almost every night to support his disabled-vet father and gifted little brother. Then he meets the beautiful new girl in town, who just happens to be his boss’s daughter. Bobby has rules about that kind of thing. Nothing matters more than keeping his job.
When Bobby starts to get blinding migraines that come with scary, violent hallucinations, his livelihood is on the line. Soon, he must face the stunning possibility that the visions of murder are actually real. With his world going dark, Bobby is set on the trail of the serial killer terrorizing his small town. With everyone else convinced he’s the prime suspect, Bobby realizes that he, or the girl he loves, might be killer's next victim.
High school student Bobby Pendell already has his hands full—he works almost every night to support his disabled-vet father and gifted little brother. Then he meets the beautiful new girl in town, who just happens to be his boss’s daughter. Bobby has rules about that kind of thing. Nothing matters more than keeping his job.
When Bobby starts to get blinding migraines that come with scary, violent hallucinations, his livelihood is on the line. Soon, he must face the stunning possibility that the visions of murder are actually real. With his world going dark, Bobby is set on the trail of the serial killer terrorizing his small town. With everyone else convinced he’s the prime suspect, Bobby realizes that he, or the girl he loves, might be killer's next victim.
PURCHASE LINKS
EXCERPT
Bobby stared at the evergreens reflected
in the silvery water. He’d offered to bring Dad down here and carry him into
the boat. He was certainly big enough to carry him now.
“Nope,” Dad had said flatly. “My fishing
days are over. My ass is never getting in a boat again.”
With his work schedule, Bobby had never
found time to teach his eleven-year old brother Aaron to swim, so that left him
out.
Whatever.
Dad drowned his troubles in beer and guitars. Bobby could never tell if people
came to the Woods Café to see the wheelchair-bound vet strum his heart out
because they enjoyed the music or to honor his sacrifice. Didn’t matter. At
least it got Dad out of the house, and drummed up some business for Dad’s best
friend, Jerry Woods.
Dealing with Dad wasn’t easy, but
self-pity was a luxury Bobby couldn’t afford. Someone had to work, and bussing
tables at the newly reopened Graxton Grill six nights a week left Bobby little
time for anything else.
A loud splash from beside the boat
jarred him from his drifting thoughts. He peered into the green depths, hoping
to spot Mongo, Dad’s name for the legendary bass he had been trying to catch
ever since he could hook a worm.
The dark waters stirred, pulling the
boat slightly backward. Bobby dipped the oars into the water to paddle away
from the disturbance, but the gently insistent pull kept him from making
progress. The boat was being slowly dragged into some kind of current and had
begun to pick up speed.
In his whole life, Bobby had never seen
more than windblown ripples on Scratch Lake. Mongo was rumored to be huge, but
he doubted striped bass grew large enough to churn up the waters like that.
Bobby thrust the oars into the water,
paddling harder. The back of his head hurt. And the harder he rowed, the more
his head throbbed like a dull drumbeat. A whirlpool was forming. No fish could
ever disturb Scratch Lake like that.
Unnerved, Bobby yanked at the engine
cord, but the motor only coughed, sputtered, and went quiet. The boat was
captive to the steadily spinning water and Bobby could only squint helplessly
into the depths as the headache hammered behind his eyes.
The lake’s center was rumored to be
fifty feet deep. No one really knew, but as the boat sped in dizzying circles,
Bobby could see clear down to the lake bottom inside the whirlpool’s tapered funnel.
He gasped. Spread-eagled on the slimy rocks, on a bed of pond weeds, lay a pile
of bones, a split, unmistakably human skull resting on the top.
Bobby swallowed hard, breathing fast and
shallow.
It can’t be real. I’m not seeing
this.
He’d been so eager to get on the lake
that morning he’d forgotten to eat. And he should have. The headache was
creeping to his eyes, and now he was seeing things. Feeling and experiencing
things that couldn’t be happening.
The pile of bones at the bottom of the
lake was as sharp and clear as a photo.
Nausea clutched his insides. His head
felt like it was about to split open. Bobby clamped his eyes shut. Sucking in
deep breaths, he tried to slow the rising panic and listened to his heart slam
against his chest wall. He had to get a grip and get away before the water
dragged him and his boat to the bottom of the lake.
This can’t be happening.
Was it a migraine? His mother had
suffered from those.
But did migraines make people hallucinate?
In the distance, Pete’s barking bounced
off the opposite shore. The ache at the back of his head now a white-hot
knifepoint, Bobby paddled wildly to break free from the water’s pull, but he
made no headway.
The boat continued to spin slowly at the
edge of the vortex. Bobby tried to peer down into the whirlpool to make sure
the horrible thing was gone, but his sight was filmed with a deep red overlay,
a black smudge at its center, obliterating details and reducing the world to a
featureless bloodstain.
No matter how many times he blinked, he
couldn’t see the water that smacked against the metal flank of the boat. He
could barely make out the dim outline of the hand he held up in front of his
face.
What the—?
Shit.
The pain was too much. Again, he groped
for the throttle and tugged at it three times, but still the damned engine
wouldn’t catch.
The pain bore down on him, the red film
thickening to a dark mass.
He couldn’t see at all. He could only
feel the boat slowly spinning, stuck in the water’s strange rotation.
“Pete!” Bobby called out at the top of
his lungs, “Pete!”
And then, as abruptly as it had started
churning, he felt the water go still.
Pete’s nervous bark reverberated across
the lake. Unable to see, Bobby dipped the oars into the water and began to
paddle slowly toward the distant sound, praying he was headed in the right
direction.
There’d be no fish for dinner this week.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BREAKING GLASS
which will be released in July, 2013 from Spencer Hill Press, is her first
published work. VISION, the first of the Finder series will be released in
2014, along with an unnamed sequel in the following year. LIFE AND BETH will
also be released in the near future, along with graphic novel style art.
Author Links
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