What is happening to eighteen-year-old Jay?

Why is she changing?

How did she manage to lift a bus?

What was the blue light that flooded from Jay’s hands?

Who was the boy being eaten alive by rats?

Could she ever risk having children – knowing her mother had laid an egg?

What was she really, this product of an unlawful genetic experiment?

Why were the British Prime Minister and the Vice-President of the USA, trying to kill her?

How long can Jay survive?


To find out the answers you will have to read the book.Download a copy now from:

MYSTIC MOON PRESS.COM

Different

A Teaser

Jay dressed with care for her date with David and when she came downstairs into the living room her Granddad raised his eyebrows. "Wow," he said, and grinned at grandma. “Hey, Anna, it look as though our Jay’s got herself a date.”

Grandma frowned. “I thought that you were going out with Mary?”

“I am,” Jay said, feeling sure that her grandmother would be able to tell that she wasn’t telling the truth. “We’re going on a foursome to the cinema.”

“Well make sure that your mobile’s charged before you go. Just in case you’re late and need your grandfather to pick you up later.”

Jay hid her relief by rummaging inside her coat pocket for her phone. “I’m sure it is.” She pulled it out of her pocket and stared in horror as the small packet of condoms came out with it, and dropped onto the carpet. She stood paralysed with embarrassment as her grandmother picked them up and then looked her in the eye.
But what Jay saw in the older woman’s eyes, wasn’t the look of shock, dismay or disgust that she was expecting. Her grandmother’s eyes were filled with fear.

She reached out and gripped Jay’s arm so hard that it hurt.
“How long have you been doing sex?” she demanded, and shaking her.

Jay who’d never heard her grandmother shouting before was scared, and confused, because it was so out of character. Grandma Anna had always seemed so broadminded until now.

“Answer me!” Anna shook her even harder.

“Anna!” Granddad Tom was on his feet now, his face ashen. “Let go of her,” he said in his normal gentle voice. “It’s not Jay’s fault, love. We should have told her, but we kept putting it off didn’t we? We kept hoping that this day would never arrive.”

Anna released Jay and started to sob and instinctively Jay put her arm around her and realised just how thin and frail her grandmother had become.

“It’s all right, Grandma,” she said, blinking back her own tears. “I haven’t done sex yet. I brought them just in case. Anyway I’m almost sixteen so what’s the big deal? Lots of the girls are already sleeping with their boyfriends.”

“There’s no need to explain, love,” Tom said. “It’s just that you’re...”

“You’re not like the other girls,” Anna sobbed. “You’re different Jay. You’re not the same as any other girl in the world, God help us!”

What the hell was her grandma talking about and why was Tom looking so sad.

“Sit down Jay,” he said. “There’s something we have to tell you.”

Jay felt numbed as she sat down and Anna, still weeping, sank down on the sofa, beside her. Different to any other girl, her grandmother had said, and as Granddad perched himself on the arm next to Jay and took her hand in his, she somehow knew that her world was about to be pulled apart.

“We love you to bits, Jay,” he said. “We’ve always loved you. Ever since the day I found you sealed inside a rubbish bag, and dumped into a stream.”

“You what?” Jay couldn’t take it in. It was too weird, too…

Tom nodded. “It was just over thirteen years ago in a stream on the edge of Catherstone Chase. We used to live in the village. Anyway I found you taped up inside a black rubbish bag amongst the reeds just like Anna said I would. You were so cold that I thought would die of hypothermia, for sure.”

“He came rushing across the fields towards our cottage,” Anna said, her eyes seemed bright behind her tears as she remembered. “He was holding you so tight it’s a wonder her didn’t crush you to death. Anyway you were so cold your lips were blue but I gave you a teaspoon of Brandy and got some hot soup inside of you and in no time at all you were fine.”

“We couldn’t tell anyone we’d found you,” Tom said, grimly. “They’d have come and taken you away. They would have made a better job of killing you and disposing of your body next time.”

“Killing me?” Jay stared at him in shock. “My parents wanted to kill me?”

“No! Not your parents, Jay,” Tom said. “The Americans, that’s who killed your parents.

“I don’t understand,” Jay said. Understand? She was beginning to think that her grandparents had gone crazy. “You said that Grandma told you where to find me.”

“Yes, Tom didn’t find you by accident,” Anna said. “I sent him out looking for you because of my dream, if that’s what it was. It was so vivid and clear. I suppose some people would have called it a vision.”

Vision! Jay suddenly knew that her grandparents were telling her the truth. “What did you see, Gran,” she asked, trying to keep calm. She felt detached as though she was a spectator, separated from and looking down upon the three of them.

“It was horrible Jay. Something I’d never want to experience again. The only good thing about it was finding you.” The old woman shivered as though with cold and paused for a second, closing her eyes as though remembering.


“It was just as though I was floating above the land that we used to call ‘The Devil’s Footprint,’ because of its shape. It’s about sixteen miles long and four or five miles wide. It used to be a horseshoe shaped opencast mine in the old days before it got flooded. Now it’s a sixty foot deep and a half-a-mile wide swamp and more than one person has died by getting themselves sucked into it. The Ministry of Defence own the land and erected electrified fences topped with razor wire to keep people out.
Any way as I said I seemed to be floating above the trees and looking down.



‘Two young people, a boy and a girl, were sitting by what looked like a campfire, when things started to explode all around them. As they fell to the ground some men who were shooting at them with rifles attacked them. The boy was hit, and I think killed outright, but the girl fought like a tigress.
She moved so fast it was unbelievable. She snapped the neck of one man and tore the throat out of another. The third man blasted her arm off with a shotgun, but before she fell she hit him hard enough to knock him off his feet.

Another man, the American, a man called Russell, was the one who’d ordered his men to kill the young couple. They were children that a scientist, called Dr. Maylor, had been illegally using for genetic experiments.”
Anna frowned I don’t know how I knew who or what these men were. Jay, but somehow I did. Anyway Russell came out of a hut carrying a heavy looking rubbish bag and when the girl saw it she started crawling towards it.

“Give me my baby,” she cried struggling to her feet. Incredibly she was beginning to grow a new arm. In her other hand she held a large pink egg pressed protectively against her chest.

“Jesus Christ, she's got a bloody egg,” the man she’d knocked over cried. "She's laid a bloody egg!"

“Let me see!” Dr Maylor, almost ran to the girl and peeled the blanket away revealing a shiny pink egg ,which was the size of a small melon. “When did you ... When did you lay it?” he asked.

Russell raised his shotgun and fired.’ The blast hit her full in the face and decapitated her. It was awful; she fell down spraying blood everywhere and the egg lay shattered in the dirt. I got the impression that Russell hadn’t intended to shoot her, it had been more of a reflex action, but now he stood staring down at the tiny baby that lay in the ruins of its egg. It writhed for a few more seconds before it died.

Then a Land-Rover appeared and some other men and a woman climbed out. Russell gave the bag to another man who looked inside and said it was a wonder that the child inside it hadn’t suffocated.

Suddenly another boy was bowling them all over and he picked up the rubbish bag with one hand and the scientist by his coat lapels with the other and then ran with them to the edge of the marshes. He gave a strange cry and a solitary white flower rose up in the centre of the bog. The boy flung the bag so that it landed on the flower and it sank from site.
“Jay be Free,” He cried and then turned and ran into the trees and, still carrying the scientist.

And then just for a moment the swamp changed and it was like looking into clear water. I could see the bag containing the infant had sunk to the bottom but it was moving. The current of the underground stream was dragging it along. Every time it met with an obstruction the child’s legs thrust out moving it steadily along. I could see that it was heading past the marshes and would surface in the stream on Catherstone Chase.’


“That’s when I came awake again and went and told Tom what I’d seen.”

“I guess you think we’re crazy,” Tom said.
,br> Jay got slowly to her feet and shook her head. “No, I don’t,” she said. “It’s horrible and scary, like something out a horror film, and I know now why you were scared when you thought that I was having sex. It was in case I’m like that other girl, the one that laid an egg, but I’m not. I have monthly periods just like all the other girls. I’m no different to any of them.”

“I’m afraid you are, love,” Tom said. “You’re very different and it’s time you were allowed to remember.”

“What do you mean allowed to remember? And why didn’t you go to the police?”

“We couldn’t go to the police without telling them about you, and they’d have taken you into care. What do you think that American, Russell, would do if he found out that there was a survivor, a witness?”

“We told all our neighbours that you were our granddaughter, one of your uncle Peter’s children. Do you remember Uncle Peter?”

“Yes, he came to fifth birthday party. I can remember meeting my cousin, Scott I liked him.”

“That’s right Peter flew the family over from the States. Before he arrived I used my training in physiology and hypnotised you in order to block out some of your memories, so that you’d act the same as any other girl. But now it’s time to remove the block I put in place. It’s time for you to remember, Jay.”

“Not now Tom,” Anna said, “or she’ll be late meeting Mary and the others. Besides she’s got a lot to think about.” She pressed the pack of condoms into Jay’s hand. “Just in case,” she said.

Jay nodded and put them into her pocket. “I don’t think I’ll be needing them, though,” she said. “I feel like some kind of freak.”

“No!” Tom said angrily. “You’re a wonderful, beautiful girl, different perhaps, but not a freak. You go and enjoy your film and we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“Do I have any parents? And what did the scientists do to me?”

“I don’t know about your parents, but from what I gathered from my dream they were adding reptile genes to your own. They wanted to see if it was possible for humans to re-grow a missing limb.”

“Like that girl,” Jay said; “and the boy who killed himself.” She took a deep breath and tried not to let her fear show. What if she was some kind of freak? One thing was for sure. She couldn’t risk having sex with David or anyone else. It wasn’t fair.

Why her?

Why couldn’t she just be the same as everyone else?




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