Unfortunately, something new was cropping up in my brain that had me preoccupied. I puzzled over it for a long moment, concentrating between stabs of pain, then gave up and asked my wife, “What did you mean when you said you told Emily Foster’s spirit ‘it was yours’?”
“Oh, that. I can show you,” she replied.
I scrunched my forehead in confusion. “Show me?”
She shot me a broad, toothy smile, but by the time I realized what I was seeing it was too late. She had already buried her fangs into my neck, and I was trying to scream.
*****
I felt myself gasp as the scream caught in my throat and formed a hard lump. Light bloomed in my eyes and slowly settled to a contrasty blur that eventually became the tile wall of the autopsy suite filling my vision once again. I was still seeing it sideways and from floor level, but I didn’t care. It definitely beat what I had been seeing a split second before.
I heard Doctor Sanders calling out to someone. Her voice was calm but held a strong sense of urgency. “I can’t stop the bleeding. Get the paramedics now!”
A quickly moving wave of panic washed over me upon hearing the string of syllables, and a solid sense of deja vu informed me that I had been here before. This time, however, no darkness encroached upon my corner of the world. No hospital room, no Goth nurse wearing swan print clothing, and most especially, no vampire wife.
I still couldn’t move, or even speak. My heart hadn’t stopped thumping inside my head and neither had the noise of the blood rushing in my ears, but unlike before, I could hear everything going on around me as clear as crystal.
Ben’s businesslike but very dire voice was sounding nearby. “Yeah, this is Detective Benjamin Storm. We need paramedics at City Medical Examiner’s office on Clark. We have a male in his early forties hemorrhaging from his neck. Uh-huh… Yeah… Yeah, Doc Sanders is already on that…”
“Tell them to come in the back entrance,” Doctor Sanders instructed. “It will save time.”
“Yeah, the back entrance…” my friend repeated. “It’s closer.”
From somewhere behind and very near to my head I heard Felicity blurt, “The drawer!” Her voice was a rapid burst and just to the low side of a shout.
“What?” Ben barked in return.
My wife didn’t take time to answer. I could hear the soles of her tennis shoes squeak against the tile floor as she scrambled up and skirted around my prone body. Even though I couldn’t actually see it happening, I knew it was she who was attached to the noise.
A heartbeat later I heard her normally singsong voice now brimming with unbridled rage as she recited aloud, “Emily, it’s time to go, I want you gone as you well know. Goodbye now, and stay away, unless I call another day.”
As my wife’s words were still tumbling from her mouth, I heard the sound of the rollers on the drawer hissing and clattering as before, beginning with a slow ka-chunk then ramping up to a fast chatter. A heavy thump came a second later, and the clacking rollers stopped in the same instant. The dull noise was followed by the hollow clank of the insulated stainless steel door slamming shut.
Thick silence filled the room as the oddly final sound dissipated into the cold air. After a tense moment I heard Felicity growl with bitter calm, “And don’t make me stuff your eternal arse into a shoebox, saigh.”
CHAPTER 24:
“Do me a favor and smile really big,” I said to my wife.
I had just finished glancing at the IV tube running into the back of my left hand and the pulse oximeter probe attached to a finger on my right, so I was once again feeling an overwhelming and terribly unpleasant sense of deja vu. At least we weren’t in a hospital room; however, we were at a hospital, sitting in a treatment room in the emergency ward. Well, actually, she was sitting; I was laying on the table, albeit at an incline.
I knew the instant I opened my mouth and asked her to smile that I was letting irrational paranoia guide the odd request. But under the circumstances and at this particular moment, I wasn’t entirely certain I could reasonably distinguish reality from lifelike ethereal visions, and I needed to be sure.
Felicity’s brow pinched up as she cocked her head to the side and stared at me. “Why?”
“Just humor me,” I said, the tone of my voice adding an obvious if unspoken please.
She shook her head as if she thought I had lost my mind, but still curled her lips into a quick smile.
“Bigger,” I urged. “So I can see your teeth.”
“Is this about that vision?” she asked.
“Kind of…”
She sighed then repeated the smile, this time baring her clenched teeth and rolling her eyes. After turning her head side to side, she relaxed her mouth and asked, “There. Was that good enough for you?”
“Yeah, thanks. By the way, how is your arm?”
“It’s fine.”
“You’re sure you didn’t twist it or anything when we fell?”
“No. I already told you I’m not that fragile.”
“Okay, as long as you’re sure.”
She didn’t even try to mask the bother in her voice as she responded. “It was just an errant vision produced by your imagination, Rowan. That’s all. It was something put together by your subconscious because of everything that was happening on top of everything else that has happened in the last few days. You’ve been through this sort of thing before. You know that’s what it was.”
I reached up and felt my neck for what was probably the sixth time. There was still nothing there that shouldn’t be.
She watched me then shook her head and asked, “What do I have to do to convince you?”
“Don’t suddenly sprout fangs would be a good start.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
In a sharp huff she let out an exasperated breath. “I think the blood loss must have affected your brain.”
“Maybe so, but the whole thing felt pretty real, so I have to figure there’s something to it.”
“What, you actually think I’m a vampire?” she quipped. “Now I know something’s wrong with your head.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I just think there’s some significance to the vision that I’m missing,” I explained then tilted my head back and stared at the ceiling. After a minute or so of silence, I looked over at Felicity again and said, “By the way, I think I probably forgot to say thank you. That was some pretty quick thinking you did back there at the morgue.”
“What? You mean salting a dead woman’s corpse into submission?”
“Hmmph. Well, I couldn’t really see what was happening, so I didn’t know about the salt. But I could definitely hear you rattling off the banishing spell. How long have you been carrying that one around in your pocket, cocked and ready?”
“I haven’t.” She shook her head. “I made it up on the spot.”
“See there… Like I said, quick thinking.”
“Aye, it was a lucky rhyme. I was angry, and anger trumps everything. I could have recited a recipe for crab dip as long as the intent was there. Miz Foster’s spirit should actually be glad I didn’t pluck a hair out of her dead little head and do some real damage.”
“Yeah, I caught your addendum as well.”
“Apparently she did too, because she left,” she spat.
“So… You sound like you’re still a little on the angry side.”
“I suppose I am,” she admitted.
“At me?” I asked.
“No.” She punctuated the reply with an animated shake of her head. “Not at you… At the situation. To be honest, I think it’s really frustration more than anything else. I mean, you were perfectly grounded, and on top of that you had me anchoring you as well.” She shrugged and threw her hands up in exasperation. “But look what happened anyway… There was just no way to control it.”
“I know,” I told her. “But for the whole process to work I have to let them in, and once the door is open… Well… You’ve
been there… You know…”
She nodded. “Aye. They’re like houseguests from hell who refuse to leave.”
We both heard a sharp knock then the door to the treatment room slowly swung open and Ben poked his head through the gap.
“Hey, white man,” he greeted me as he continued pushing the door open wider and stepped inward then allowed it to pivot shut in his wake. “How ya’ doin’?”
“As well as can be expected, I guess,” I replied, glancing up at the IV bag and pointing to it. “They’re topping me off or something.”
“Heya, Firehair,” he said, glancing over at Felicity.
She nodded.
“So listen,” he began as he looked back over to me. “The description of your Twilight Zone nurse pretty much fits with our Jane Doe. As much as you were able to give us anyway. So just ta’ be safe, they’re gonna run the name Amanda against missing persons.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, right?” I asked.
“Maybe. We’ll hafta see. Woulda helped ta’ have a last name.”
“Sorry about that.”
He shrugged. “No need to apologize, it was la-la land stuff. I get that even if they don’t. But the big problem is the name could be an alias or something, so we could get false hits. And if she was never reported missin’ in the first place, then we aren’t gonna get any hits at all. If that happens then we still have a Jane Doe… Or an Amanda Doe… However you wanna look at it.”
“But, what you aren’t saying is that no matter what you get, it still doesn’t bring us any closer to figuring out who is doing this or to finding Judith Albright,” I offered as I laid my head back and closed my eyes.
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t gonna point that out. Not just yet, anyway,” my friend told me. “But don’t count it out. Something as simple as a name can still produce a lead.”
I let out a long sigh then spoke aloud to myself as much as them. “Emily kept saying, It is an honor to be chosen, I won’t be afraid.”
“Yeah, you already told me that,” he grunted. “No offense, white man, but that ain’t a whole lotta help either. Now, help, I’m being held at xyz house on whatever street would be a definite step in the right direction.”
“I know,” I replied. “And you also know it doesn’t work like that.”
“Yeah. Trust me, I’ve been tryin’ to explain that to the brass.”
“If I can figure out what she meant about it being an honor to be chosen, maybe it will set us on the right path.”
“Well, based on the amount of time between when she disappeared and when her body turned up, maybe it’s some form of brainwashing, then,” Felicity suggested. “Like a Stockholm Syndrome type of thing.”
“Yeah, they tossed that idea out there when I called all this in a little while ago,” Ben replied. “Then when I mentioned you said she heard chanting, they started in with the whole Satanic ritual murder angle.”
“They just love that one, don’t they?” I replied.
“Yeah, well some things just ain’t gonna change, Row.”
“I guess I can’t blame them,” I offered. “Even with what I know, I have to admit that some kind of ritual murder scenario crossed my mind too.”
“So you think maybe there’s some kinda cult operatin’ in the area?”
I shook my head. “I really don’t know, Ben. Unfortunately I’m just as confused by all this as the rest of you. But I have trouble believing there is a whole mob involved in the killing. Two killers, I can wrap my head around. But several killers working in conjunction, I just don’t see it.”
“Or maybe you just don’t wanna…”
“You know, Ben, as much as I hate to admit it, you may be right about that.”
“Yeah, I was afra…”
Another knock sounded at the treatment room door, and this time the ER doctor who had been assigned to my case entered. When he saw Ben standing there, a look of annoyance screwed itself onto his face.
“We don’t really allow…” he began.
Ben slipped his badge case from an inner jacket pocket then quickly flashed his shield and ID inches from the doctor’s nose. “You were saying?”
“Is there a problem, Officer?” the doctor asked, taking a step back.
“Not really,” Ben replied as he tucked the case back into his pocket. “And, by the way, that’s Detective.”
“My apologies.”
“That’s okay. I thought you were a nurse,” Ben replied then continued speaking before the doctor could say anything. “So, here’s the deal. Rowan is one of our civilian consultants, and he happens ta’ be helpin’ us with a fairly important case right now. I just needed to talk to ‘im.”
“I see,” the doctor said with a curt nod. “You know the sarcasm was completely unnecessary.”
“Go have yourself half the day I’ve already had, then come tell me that,” my friend returned without missing a beat.
Rather than argue, the doctor turned his attention to me. “How are you feeling, Mister Gant?”
“Confused, hungry, and a little tired, pretty much in that order,” I replied. “How about you?”
“Confused?” he asked.
“No need to write it down, Doc, it’s not a symptom,” I told him. “It’s just something we were discussing about the case is all.”
He nodded and said, “I see,” again. He didn’t sound particularly happy about anything at the moment, but I couldn’t really tell if that was his natural demeanor or if Ben had set him off by sticking a badge in his face and generally being an ass.
“So, what’s the prognosis?” I asked.
“At the moment your vitals are stable,” he replied while looking through a file. “Your blood work appears normal… I am however, a bit concerned that we haven’t yet been able to pinpoint the actual source of your blood loss.”
“You won’t,” I told him.
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s a long story you wouldn’t believe even if I told you.”
He repeated his pat phrase. “I see. Well, I’d like to admit you for some tests anyway.”
I shook my head. “I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to do that.”
“Mister Gant, it’s important that you realize the risk this could pose. If you are bleeding internally…”
“I’m not,” I said, cutting him off and waving at my neck. “Remember? All the blood was on the outside.”
He sighed hard. “What is it going to take to convince you to stay overnight for some tests?”
“Nothing you have, I’m afraid,” I told him. “Seriously, you aren’t going to find anything.”
The doctor turned and looked past Ben at Felicity. “Miz Gant… Can you talk to your husband?”
She didn’t correct him on the faux pas with her name. She simply shook her head and shrugged. “What makes you think he’ll listen to me then?”
The doctor closed his eyes and hung his head for a moment before giving it a shake and letting out another sigh. “Fine. I can’t make you stay against your will,” he said then checked the nearly depleted IV bag hanging above me. “But, I do want you to stay until we get the rest of this fluid into you. That will take maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. Can you spare that much time?”
“Okay,” I agreed with a nod.
“I’ll get your paperwork taken care of and then you can go. I’d like to suggest that you get some rest and stay hydrated. Avoid alcohol, coffee, soda, and caffeinated beverages. Drink water and apple juice instead. I would also like for you to take an iron supplement. An over-the-counter one will do.”
I nodded again. “Okay.”
He continued. “If you experience any extreme fatigue, headaches, heart palpitations, or especially any more bleeding, get yourself into an emergency room right away.”
“I can do that,” I replied.
He scribbled something on the chart then stepped around Ben and exited the treatment room without another word. It was obvious he wasn’t happy with
the way the conversation had gone, but I was convinced he’d get over it quickly enough. There was bound to be someone coming through the doors at some point who needed his attention far worse than me.
While we were waiting for the IV bag to run out, Ben looked over at Felicity and said, “I s’pose now wouldn’t be a good time ta’ say I told ya’ so, huh?”
“I told you so about what?” she asked.
“Ya’know, the sayin’ a poem thing with the salt before Row did the Twilight Zone thing.”
“Aye, you’re right.” She nodded thoughtfully.
“Yeah, I thought you might’ve wanted ta’…”
She cut him off mid sentence. “I mean you’re right that it isn’t a good time.”
“Yeah, okay, but I did tell you so.”
“Ben…” she warned. “I’d hate to have to turn you into a cockroach and step on you.”
He snorted and gave her a bemused look. “Yeah right, gimme a break. Remember who you’re talkin’ to here. I’ve been around long enough to know the hocus-pocus shit doesn’t work like that.” He glanced over at me. “Right, Kemosabe?”
I shook my head. “You know, Ben, you might want to be careful. After what she managed to pull off back at the morgue, I wouldn’t put anything past her.”
“You ain’t serious, right?”
“About which part?” I asked.
He let out a nervous chuckle then mumbled, “Yeah, great… Okay…” After a long pause, he cleared his throat while reaching up to give the back of his neck a quick massage. “So, listen… I know you’re just fuckin’ with me, but at the risk of endin’ up on the bottom of Firehair’s shoe anyway, I need to ask ya’ somethin’… The powers that be wanted ta’ know if you’d take another run at this.”
“What?!” Felicity almost yelped. “Are they fekking insane?”
“Don’t worry,” he said, holding up his hand to stave her off. “I told ‘em I’d ask, but I also told ‘em not ta’ count on it. So, no pressure from me here at all. Believe me.”
As soon as a lull fell between them I spoke up. “Yeah. Tell them no guarantees, but I’ll give it a try.”
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