Blood Moon argi-9

by M. R. Sellars

  “Excuse me,” I called to the young lady preparing my drink. I pointed in the direction of the restrooms and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  She smiled and nodded that she understood my gesture.

  Fortunately, the facilities weren’t occupied so I was able to take care of business fairly quickly. As I was washing my hands, however, the migraine suddenly elected to ramp up several notches at once, sending a sharp lance of pain through the back of my head. Semi-blinding became near total, as light bloomed throughout my field of vision and I squeezed my eyes shut. I stumbled then caught myself and leaned against the basin for support as I gasped in response to a sudden repeat of the attack.

  The side of my neck had been stinging, and it now erupted into an agonizing burn. Dizziness started creeping in, and a wave of nausea undulated through my gut. I reopened my eyes in hopes that focusing on something would help. Unfortunately, the first thing I saw were the stark splatters of bright red on the edge of the sink, trickling across pristine white porcelain as they formed spidery rivulets. I watched as the blood languidly intermixed with the still running water, tingeing it with overblown color before spiraling down the drain.

  The sound of the faucet roared as if amplified down a long tunnel. It was punctuated by the chaotic thump of my heart as it pounded out an erratic cadence against my eardrums.

  A familiar weakness started to overwhelm me, and I could feel myself begin to crumple where I stood. A moment later the floor came up and slammed painfully against my knees. I gripped tighter on the edge of the sink with my right hand then brought the left up to my neck. As I expected, I didn’t feel any sort of wound, but I also wasn’t surprised that when I pulled my hand away, bright red blood was smeared across my palm and fingers.

  I heard my own echoing voice as I muttered, “Dammit. Not again… Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  Another sharp wave of nausea washed over me, and I squeezed my eyes tightly shut a second time. But, instead of darkness, I found myself staring at the moonlit lake I had seen in my nightmare. As before, the water was smooth and still, without even the faintest ripple. There was, however, a pronounced change to the landscape as I remembered it. No longer was there the corpse of a black swan on the shore.

  Now, there were two.

  “ Help us… ” a young woman’s plaintive voice begged deep inside my ears.

  The image slowly faded, and with it the nausea began to subside. I opened my eyes and stared at the water rushing from the tap in front of me. The bloom of light collapsed in upon itself, and the appearance of my surroundings slowly returned to normal. A half second later, sound lost its unnatural tone as the auditory spectrum fell back into sync with reality as well.

  My mind flashed on the fresh avian corpse alongside the lake. I let out a heavy sigh and rested my forehead against the cool surface of the basin.

  I couldn’t say that I was particularly surprised by the event. For me, hearing voices was obviously nothing new. But I had to admit that there was something about this one that went beyond many of the others. It was a kind of insistence that carried with it a cold sharpness. And it had that keen edge that cut straight to my core then slowly and deliberately began to twist.

  When added up, I knew all too well what everything meant. In that instant, the nausea returned in force. Only this time, it was born of the earthly realization that I had no choice but to surrender.

  With a tired groan, I pulled myself back to my feet then slowly started ratcheting the towel dispenser at my right. After a few cranks I tore off the length of rough brown paper and stuffed it beneath the spigot to soak up some water while I carefully slipped out of my jacket.

  It took several minutes for me to clean up, during which time my luck held out and no one else needed the restroom. After finally gathering myself, a quick look in the mirror told me that I still wasn’t anywhere near presentable. My shirt was wet where I had attempted to wash it out, and my light jacket still had enough blood on it to raise eyebrows at the very least. Fortunately, the restroom itself didn’t look any worse for wear, unless you went rummaging through the waste can and found the bloody paper towels, of course. I didn’t have to do a double take to decide it would be best to simply forego picking up my coffee order and just head for the exit, which is exactly what I did.

  When I reached my truck, I went ahead and downed some aspirin dry and hoped that I already had enough caffeine in my system to do the trick. My head was throbbing more than I could ever remember, and it was a struggle just to see straight. Reaching to my belt, I pulled out my cell phone and stabbed at the keys. After three tries I managed to get the number in and press the send button. My call was answered on the second ring, and I started talking before Ben even finished his greeting.

  “Black swans, Ben,” I said, holding my forehead in my palm as I leaned forward. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Yeah, actually it does,” he replied without missing a beat, his voice even and tone matter-of-fact. “Our Jane Doe had a tattoo of one. Why?”

  “There’s more to it than that,” I replied. “It has some kind of significance. I just don’t know what.”

  “Well, maybe I do. We found some shit on the computer about ‘em. Some crap about a swan society or somethin’ like that. Apparently they’re a group of wingnuts who let the other wingnuts drink their blood. Pretty fucked up, huh? Anyhow, we’re already chasin’ down some leads in the local freak community. No offense, Row, but you’re a little late to the party on this one.”

  I let out a heavy groan.

  “You okay, white man?” my friend asked, concern edging his voice. “You don’t sound so good.”

  “Tell me about it,” I sighed. “Listen, Ben, I may be late, but this party is just getting started.”

  “Whaddaya…” he began, then his voice lowered to a mumble. “Jeezus, Row… Twilight Zone?”

  “Yeah.”

  After a pause he asked, “So are you sayin’ what I think you’re sayin’?”

  “Yeah, Ben,” I replied. “There’s another victim. The body just hasn’t been found yet.”

  “Fuck me… Okay, so since you’re callin’ and tellin’ me this, should I assume you’ve officially fallen off the hocus-pocus wagon?”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid so,” I told him. “And right now it seems there’s no point in even trying to get back on.”

  “So, what now?”

  “I don’t know. I guess you wait for someone to report a body. I’m going to hope this aspirin kicks in soon, so I can try to get home before this headache gets any worse, if that’s even possible.”

  “Home? Where the hell are ya’ right now?”

  “Not far away. I had a meeting. I’ll be fine.”

  “Ya’ sure? You need me to come and pick you up?”

  “Really, Ben, I just need a few minutes and I’ll be fine. But, I do have a bad feeling I’m going to need a bigger bottle of aspirin before this is all over.”

  CHAPTER 10:

  The dogs were yipping as the garbled notes of the front doorbell echoed through the house in a rapid staccato. I tried not to think about it, but the racket definitely had a different idea in mind. A vague memory flitted through my brain, and I remembered hearing a very similar combination of raucous noises a bit earlier. At least I think it was earlier. I couldn’t be sure about the actual passage of time, not that it really mattered much.

  At any rate, I was fairly certain the original clamor was only a dream, so I had ignored it. Just like I had ignored the telephone-both my cell and the landline-when they intruded on my slumber as well. Eventually, the earlier cacophony had faded into nothingness and simply went away, which seemed to prove out my theory that it was all in my head.

  Or so I thought.

  Now, the ignoring didn’t seem to work as well. Instead of a few evenly spaced tones and a handful of random barks, the obnoxious chime was assaulting me as a neverending non-rhythm of dings, dongs, and pings-not necessarily in any rec
ognizable order. And based on the yelping, the dogs weren’t exactly pleased by this development at all.

  I dragged the pillow up and clamped it over my head with one arm. My new theory was that if I couldn’t hear it then it wasn’t real.

  “Go…the fuck…away,” I groaned out of frustration.

  The insane din finally stopped and I let out a sigh. However, before I even finished expelling the air from my lungs, I heard the phone in my office begin to ring. The muffled bell pealed four or five times before eventually falling silent. A moment later the William Tell Overture began to warble through the bedroom. I tossed the pillow to the side and opened one eye. My cell phone was dancing in a vibrating semicircle atop the nightstand as the tune spewing from it rose through the scale, starting at mildly audible and arriving somewhere near flat out blaring.

  With a heavy grunt I gave in and rolled myself up into a sitting position and reached for the device. Before I could wrap my hand around it, however, it stopped jittering and fell silent. I allowed my chin to fall against my chest then reached up and rubbed my face. Twisting around, I squinted at the digital clock and saw that it was pushing 4:30 in the afternoon.

  Rocking forward, I stood up, then stumbled around the bedroom. As I found my bearings in the semi-darkness, I began moving on some sort of automatic pilot. Somewhere along the line I must have snatched up a shirt, though I didn’t remember doing so. All I knew was that I noticed it in my hand sometime after my haze-filled brain figured out how to open the door. Lumbering forward on pure instinct, I decided maybe I should put it on and managed to slide one arm into the wrong sleeve after three tries.

  My head still felt like it was going to explode. I didn’t think it was any worse than it had been earlier, but it definitely wasn’t any better. Of course, I hadn’t really noticed the pain until a few moments ago when the person at the door found it necessary to roust me from the relative comfort of sleep. For that very reason, I was already displeased.

  By the time I staggered up the hall and through the living room to the front door, the insane rattle of the bell had been replaced by the sound of someone pounding on the wooden barrier. I started to yell but quickly decided against it because I had a sneaking suspicion doing so would only add to my agony.

  Out of reflex I squinted and put my eye up to the peephole as the door vibrated under the hammering fist. I wasn’t surprised to find Ben on the other side. After all, my cell had been chirping the ring tone I had assigned to his numbers, and it was pretty unmistakable. The phantom memories I had been trying to pass off to my subconscious as mere dreams were now solidifying somewhere in the back of my head, so even in my foggy state I was able to make the obvious connections between the back-to-back calls coupled with the frantic knocking.

  I took a couple of steps away from the door and shot a quick glance at the pendulum clock hanging in our dining room, just to double check myself. It read closer to quarter past four, which meant I’d forgotten to account for the intentional fifteen-minute time warp on Felicity’s alarm clock. In any case, if my addition was correct, only a little more than four hours had gone by since I had last talked to my friend. Of course, it had been my experience that a lot could happen in four hours, most of it not necessarily good.

  I sighed heavily, slipped my arm out of the now upside down shirt, then managed to twist it around and drag it partially back on before unlocking the door and swinging it open.

  “Dammit, Ben, just stop, will you?” I said as I squinted at him. “Even the dead can’t sleep.”

  The look on his face might have been amusing under different circumstances, but right now I didn’t care.

  “Jeezus fuck, Row,” he exclaimed. “I’ve been out here for fifteen minutes. You okay?”

  “Do I look okay?” I grunted, a highly detectable bristle in my voice.

  “Not really.”

  “Well then I guess that’s your answer.”

  I finished wrestling my way into the shirt and began fumbling with the buttons as I stepped aside to allow him entry. A moment later I looked up to see that he was still standing in the doorway. Near as I could tell, he hadn’t budged.

  “Well, are you coming in or what?” I asked.

  My friend looked me over with a half-curious, half-embarrassed expression and said, “Ya’know, you’re actin’ pretty pissy. I didn’t interrupt you and Firehair or somethin’ did I?”

  “Hell no, she’s not even here right now,” I replied. “Besides, if you had, she would probably be the one you’d have to worry about, not me.”

  “Okay, so then you’re half undressed and actin’ like an asshole why?”

  “I was in bed trying to sleep off this damned headache,” I told him. “By the way, I’m half dressed, not undressed.”

  He shrugged. “Half full, half empty. Same friggin’ difference in my book…”

  “Give me a break and just come in, will you?” I huffed.

  He came through the opening, and I elbowed the door shut behind him.

  “I can’t remember the last time I saw you like this, white man. Do I need ta’ get ya’ to a hospital or somethin’?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “You know it’s not that kind of headache, Ben. Why do you even ask?”

  “Dunno. Maybe ‘cause one of these days I figure you’ll say yes or somethin’.”

  I let out a frustrated sigh. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

  “Calm down, will ya’? After that phone call ya’ had me worried. That, and I need ya’ to tell me what’s goin’ on.”

  “Nothing as lascivious as you obviously seemed to think. Like I said, I was trying to sleep off this headache until I was rudely interrupted by someone at my front door.”

  “Get over it, Row. I meant what’s up in la-la land. You called me, remember?”

  “I thought that was pretty self-explanatory.”

  “Uh-huh, I got the Twilight Zone part. What I wanna know is what you weren’t willin’ ta’ tell me earlier this mornin’. I’m goin’ out on a limb here and guessin’ it had somethin’ ta’ do with swans.”

  “Yeah, kind of. Last night I had a nightmare. I saw a moonlit lake with one dead swan on the bank. You’ve got a murder victim. If I had to guess, one swan, one victim. Today, I had a repeat but instead I saw two dead swans. You do the math.”

  “Is that it?”

  “What? That isn’t enough?”

  “From you, yeah, it’s prob’ly more than enough, but I got a feelin’ there’s somethin’ more.”

  “Nothing that’s going to help,” I replied. “Besides, shouldn’t you be out looking for another body or something?”

  “Don’t have to. About an hour and a half ago I got a call that County has one, and she’s wearin’ a swan tatt just like the first victim. Looks like your math is pretty solid.”

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the least bit shocked by the announcement. I had told him there was another victim out there waiting to be found. Of course, whenever I did something like this, I always harbored a sliver of hope that I would be wrong. Unfortunately, it seemed like I never was.

  “Another Jane Doe?” I asked, reaching up to massage my forehead and temples.

  “Actually no. This one’s a college student by the name of Emily Foster. That ain’t been officially confirmed yet, but that’s just a formality at this point. They’re ninety-nine percent sure on the ID. By the way, keep that under your hat for the time bein’. We aren’t releasin’ ‘er name to the circus until the family is notified.”

  Circus was the nicest euphemism Ben had for the media. Some of the others he used were much more derogatory, and still others were downright profane.

  “Who am I going to tell?” I replied.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, okay. Look, you’re going to have to give me a break. My head is still trying to reconcile the fact that it’s in here talking to you instead of making a dent in my pillow.” I replied. />
  “Yeah, no shit. So are you awake enough for that name ta’ ring a bell or no?”

  “Foster… Foster… Emily Foster…” I muttered. “Sounds familiar. Was she the student who went missing awhile back?”

  “Ding ding, give the man a cigar. She disappeared around the end of August last year, no trace, no nothin’. We know exactly where she is now though.”

  “Damn. I really hate being right about this sort of thing, you know,” I grumbled. “So, where was she found?”

  “Dumpster, just like the JD. Only difference is it was in a light industrial park off Page, here in the county instead of in the city limits. She was half ass wrapped in a clear plastic sheet and just tossed in. An employee of the company that rents the dumpster was takin’ out the trash around eleven forty-five this mornin’ and just happened ta’ see ‘er arm stickin’ out from underneath some other crap.”

  “Great way to screw up a lunch break I guess.”

  “Uh-huh. So anyway, it’s been all over the news. Since she was found in a dumpster like the first vic, I kinda figured you’d be puttin’ two and two together and gettin’ in touch. I mean, what with that call earlier and everything…”

  I started to shake my head then stopped and grimaced as my temples throbbed harder. My only consolation, as far as I could see, was the fact that my neck felt fine for a change.

  “For the past few hours, if it wasn’t the inside of my eyelids, I haven’t seen it,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “Yeah, well, doesn’t really matter I don’t guess. Right now the vultures only know what county’s tellin’ ‘em, and that ain’t much.”

  I was still struggling to wrap my aching grey matter around everything he’d said thus far. It wasn’t that it was particularly complicated by any means, but clarity wasn’t one of my strong suits just yet, so mentally I was probably a good half step behind. Unfortunately, the more I thought about it, the more I felt like I had missed something.