“What the fuck…” Ben sounded confused. “How the hell did she…”
I turned to see what was happening just as he exclaimed, “Jeezus H. Christ!”
The van violently lurched as he yanked the steering wheel hard to the right. I fell sideways as I twisted, crashing hard against the side of the passenger seat. The van shuddered and there was the sickening sound of locked brakes and rubber squealing against asphalt as we careened off the side of the road. In the split second before we slid nose first into the ditch, I caught a shadowy flash of what had just put us there.
Directly in the middle of Route 3, with a single palm pressed stiffly out toward us, was a petite woman with pale skin and long, spiraling, auburn hair.
CHAPTER 39:
“Everybody okay?” Ben called out, voice not quite frantic, but carrying a definite edge of concern.
“Yeah,” Constance replied, nodding her head vigorously.
We hadn’t crashed so much as we had simply skidded off the road. The van was angled diagonally into a shallow drainage channel, causing us to pitch forward and to the right. We were shaken up, but that was about it.
The headlights were now cocked at such an angle that they were shining against a grassy embankment. The autumn-paled vegetation was now reflecting some of the light back, bringing a dim luminance to the interior of the vehicle.
“Row?” he inquired.
“I’m fine,” I returned, pulling myself up using the back of Constance’s seat for leverage against the odd angle.
“So did everyone see that, or am I goin’ fuckin’ nuts here?” Ben was continuing to talk even as he braced himself against the steering wheel and twisted around in his seat. I could see in his eyes that he was searching for Felicity. I got the impression from my friend’s sudden silence that he actually wasn’t expecting to see my wife still securely belted into her seat.
As soon as I had made it to my knees, I was turning to check on her myself. While I wasn’t at all surprised to see her sitting there, I was relieved that she didn’t seem to have been knocked around too badly. Her heavy-lidded eyes were half closed, but she appeared to be conscious and was even looking in my direction.
“I saw her. She was…” I heard Constance reply hesitantly, her voice tainted with awe. “But now she’s…”
“What the fuck was that?” Ben almost demanded.
I heard the query but was otherwise occupied. I scrambled over to Felicity’s seat and gently touched her arm. I wasn’t quite sure how to address her at this point, but I knew the last person I’d spoken to had not been my wife—in spirit anyway. And, even though voices were being shared through the ethereal connection, whether or not physical experiences were as well was still a mystery. I hedged my bet and simply asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” my wife replied, ignoring the chatter in the front of the van. Although her voice was somewhat weak, her unmistakable Irish brogue was fully intact and thick as ever.
“Felicity?” I asked.
“Aye, of course. Did you bump your head then, Rowan? Who else would I be?”
I smiled for what seemed the first time all day. “Nice to have you back,” I said.
She gave me a puzzled look. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
“I am now,” I told her.
“Hey,” Ben called out again. “One of you wanna answer me? What the fuck was that?”
“A glamour,” I answered without turning.
“Ya mean like that time when you made me see a spider crawlin’ on my shoulder?” He referred back to a bit of impromptu hypnosis I’d once used on him to prove a point.
“Pretty much.”
“What’s he on about now?” Felicity asked. “What glamour?”
“Yours,” I replied.
She wrinkled her brow and gave her head a slight shake. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s talkin’ about you standin’ in the middle of the fuckin’ road,” Ben interjected sternly. “You scared the shit outta me. You coulda’ got us all killed.”
“What?”
“You. Road. Swerve. Ditch,” he replied, each word punctuated succinctly by a sharp gesture of his hand.
“Like I said, a glamour,” I explained. “All three of us just saw an apparition of you standing in the middle of the road trying to flag us down.”
“No wonder I’m so exhausted then,” she said. “Although I can’t imagine why I’d do such a thing.”
“It’s good to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
“What do you mean?”
“So I guess this means we’re close, huh?” Ben interjected with a huff.
“I’d say that’s a safe bet,” I replied.
“Close to what?” Felicity asked.
“Close to finding Kimberly Forest,” Constance told her.
“How so?”
“Are you sure you’re okay, Felicity?” she asked.
“I think so,” my wife replied, trying to look past me. “I’ve a few pains I can’t explain, but mainly I’m confused.” She unlatched her safety harness and pushed herself forward. “Rowan, help me sit up.”
“I’m not surprised,” I told her, fumbling for the lever and easing the back of the seat upward. “Given what you’ve been through.”
“Aye, I had a seatbelt on which is more than I can say for you,” she said quickly. “Now what’s this about being close to Kimberly? Can somebody please tell me what’s going on?”
“What are you…” I gave her a puzzled look as my voice faded. “Felicity, do you remember anything that’s happened?”
“Aye, we’re supposed to be going across the river to look for Kimberly, and apparently Benjamin just ran us off the road.”
“Hey, don’t blame me,” my friend instructed then popped his door open. The key alarm hesitantly blipped and then began a sickly buzz. “All right, since everyone’s okay, I’m gonna check outside and get an idea of where we are.” Before climbing out, he cast a glance back over his shoulder and directed himself at my wife. “And you, stay put, will’ya?”
“It wasn’t actually her, Ben,” I offered. “You know that.”
“That doesn’t make it any less fucked up,” he replied.
Mandalay said, “Storm’s right, you guys. That was too weird.”
“Yeah, I’ll give you that,” I said. “But trust me, I’ve seen weirder.”
Ben continued, “Weirder or not, lemme tell ya’, two of her is one too many, ‘specially if one of ‘em is in my head.” He looked back to Felicity again and said. “Like I said, no more hocus-pocus.”
That said, he pushed the door fully open, climbed out, then carefully eased it back shut.
Felicity let out a frustrated shriek and suddenly appealed, “Dammit, will somebody please tell me what’s going on?”
“Honey, we’ve been in Illinois for better than forty-five minutes now.”
“Really?” she asked, the look on her face deeply serious. “Then where have I been?”
“Mentally? With Kimberly, I’m pretty sure.”
She grew quiet and looked as if she was trying very hard to remember. In many ways, I was relieved that she couldn’t recall the last hour; because it was one I suspected would be better left forgotten. I knew for a fact that it was a memory I, myself, wanted desperately to erase.
She finally muttered, “I suppose that would be why the glamour then.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking so.”
She pressed, “Then where are we now?”
“Route Three,” I told her. “A couple of miles north of Two-Seventy.”
“Is that where she is?”
I nodded. “She’s probably close by. And, judging from your little out of body display, I’d say VERY close.”
She started up out of the seat. “Then we have to go get her.”
“Slow down,” I told her, leaning forward and gently pressing her back. “We’re working on it.”
She looked back at me and suddenl
y furrowed her brow. “Let me see your face.”
“What?”
“Let me see your face,” she repeated. “What happened to your cheek?”
I reached up and touched the burn, wincing slightly as my fingertips came in contact with the blistered flesh. At this angle it was hidden in the shadows, but when I had leaned forward she had apparently noticed the blemish.
I turned so that she could see it, then said, “Same thing that happened to yours and Kimberly’s”
Felicity mirrored my motion, gently pressing around the wounds on her own face. She closed her eyes and let out a pained sigh. “Gods…”
“I know, honey,” I said. “But it just may be the thing that buys us enough time to get her out of there alive.”
“How?” she asked sullenly.
“For about the past ten minutes, Kimberly Forest has been speaking through you,” I replied.
Before I could go on to recap the preternatural conversation, the driver’s door of the van opened with a pop and a groan. A moment later, Ben climbed back into his seat and pulled the door shut.
“Okay, looks like we’ve got a farmhouse about fifty or so yards off the road,” he told us. “Lights are on, but that’s all I can really see at this distance.”
“Nothing else?” Constance asked.
“Nada.”
“So where does that leave us?” I asked.
“Pretty much nowhere,” Ben replied.
“There’s nothing we can do?”
“Legally, no.”
“But if Kimberly is in there…” Felicity started, urgency now fueling her.
He cut her off. “That’s the problem. We got no way to know if she’s actually on the property.”
“But, can’t you…”
“No,” he interrupted her again. “I can’t.”
“Dammit, you don’t even know what I was going to say,” she spat.
“Doesn’t matter,” he snapped back at her. “We’re between a rock and a hard place.”
“Felicity, he’s right,” Constance offered. “We need reasonable cause to enter the property. We can’t just kick the door in like they do on TV.”
“I thought you could enter if you had a suspicion that someone’s life was in danger,” I said.
“We can,” she replied. “But we don’t have that, not a reasonably explicable one anyway.”
“Well, can’t you call someone and get a search warrant or something?” my wife appealed.
“Again, based on what?” Ben asked, turning in his seat to look back at her. Then he added, “Like I’ve told ya’ before, the Twilight Zone stuff ain’t gonna cut it.”
“If I remember correctly, you’re the one who asked us to help this time,” she snipped.
“Yes I did,” he returned. “And I’d freakin’ do it again.”
“Then listen to me!”
“I am, but what happens if we get in there and they’ve moved her?”
“They haven’t.”
“You got physical proof?”
“I know they haven’t.”
“I wish that was good enough, but it ain’t. Look, we just gotta be sure we can make it stick, okay?” he explained.
“Then what do we do?” I asked.
Ben puffed his cheeks and blew out a hard breath. “We try ta’ figure out a valid reason for entering the premises.”
“We could try ‘consent once removed’,” Constance offered.
“Entry by deception?” Ben queried.
She nodded. “It’s weak, but it might fly.”
“Weak ain’t the word for it. We’re not officially workin’ this case,” he argued. “Prosecutor is gonna want to know why we did it.”
“Hey, it didn’t start out that way. We have car trouble,” she replied. “It’s a true story. I go knock on the door and ask to use the phone. I get in, look around, and we go from there.”
“Yeah, besides the fact that you’d be lyin’, even if you gain entry, what are the odds you’re gonna see anything that’ll get us anywhere? Felicity… Kimberly… Crap… Well, whoever it was said she was in the basement.”
“Maybe I’ll hear something.”
“Jeez, Mandalay, that’s stretchin’ it. If you…”
Ben’s sentence was interrupted by Felicity as she suddenly let out a sharp yelp. We all turned quickly to see her tensing as she gritted her teeth. However, before any of us could say a word, there came a startling pair of sharp raps on the driver-side window.
CHAPTER 40:
Apparently, the hiatus was over.
Felicity groaned as she entered into a new round of ethereal torture. For the moment, it seemed no worse than it had when we first began this expedition, which at least made it tolerable. However, I suspected it wouldn’t stay that way for long, and that was not something I was willing to let happen. I simply wasn’t going to sit by and watch her suffer through this again, especially when we were this close.
Ben twisted his body back around and began cranking down the window. A fresh gust of cool night air swept inward, this time bringing with it the distinct smell of a burning cigar riding along the chill.
There was a brief spate of silence, and in that moment, the van filled with a disturbing unrest. The feeling struck me hard, actually competing with Felicity for my attention.
“Are you folks okay,” a husky voice finally asked. The timbre sounded odd and not quite identifiable in gender. I immediately flashed on Kimberly’s reference to ‘the dyke’ and wondered if one of her tormentor’s was standing only a few feet away at this very moment.
I tried to see around my friend, but in the darkness, caught only the orange end of the cigar as it glowed briefly then disappeared from view. I felt a stab of pain in my cheek and knew immediately that my fleeting thought was confirmed.
“Yeah,” Ben replied with a quick nod. “We’re fine.”
There was a barely perceptible but very distinct change in my friend’s mood as soon as he began talking to the person. It wasn’t something I could audibly detect in his voice, but I could definitely feel it emanating from him. It would probably have gone unnoticed but for the chaotic energy coming from outside the window. All of my senses were triggering— both natural and supernatural.
The voice came again, “Heard you skidding all the way back up at the house.”
“Yeah. Saw somethin’ in the road and swerved.”
“Probably a dog. We get a few strays around here. Lucky all you did was skid. Could have been worse.”
“Yeah,” Ben agreed. “Lucky.”
“Do you need a hand?” the voice asked with a tone that sounded more annoyed than concerned.
“Nah,” Ben replied, shaking his head. “I think we’ve got it under control.”
“Are you sure? You’ve been sitting here for a while,” the voice observed.
“Yeah, I know…”
Ben was interrupted as Felicity let out another sudden yelp. This time it morphed into a quiet but prolonged whine. I looked back at her and saw that she was leaning forward in the seat with her arms crossed.
“She okay?” Ben instantly called back to me, voice flat.
This time his tone was an obvious cue. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I simply replied with, “Yeah. She’s fine.”
“Good” came his equally emotionless reply.
“What was that?” the voice asked.
“A friend,” he said. “She wasn’t wearin’ her seatbelt, so she got knocked around a bit.”
“She doesn’t sound good.”
“She’ll be fine.”
There was a tense silence for a moment, and then the voice spoke again, “Sure you don’t need a hand?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Okay then.” There was another pause before I heard the less than sincere words “Be careful.”
“Thanks.”
I heard footsteps as the owner of the genderless voice began walking away. Ben was already cranking the window upward and had his head
cocked so that he could watch the side-view mirror. I leaned farther forward and tried to see what he was looking at.
He held out his hand to Mandalay and made a quick gesture then glanced over to her and whispered, “You clear over there?”
Constance shot a glance out her window then shook her head and returned quietly. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Shit!” he muttered.
“What’s going on?” I asked, dropping my voice to a whisper as well.
“I’m pretty sure she’s the one on the surveillance tape,” he said as he continued watching the mirrors, then after a moment, he levered the van into reverse and gunned the engine.
There was a momentary hesitation as the tires spun then took hold. The vehicle gave a slight buck and then jumped backward, rocking with a creak and groan as it rolled back up onto the highway.
“Nooooo!” Felicity whined, and then asked in a pained voice. “Wh-what are you doing?”
“Gotta move,” my friend announced.
My wife continued pleading, “But, Kimberly…”
“…Is in there. I know,” Ben hissed, cutting her off. He kept the van slowly rolling backward then came to a stop. “Mandalay, can you see ‘er?”
“Not really… Wait… Yeah, there she is. About twenty feet up the driveway. She just looked back. Okay, now she’s moving again.”
“Can you see if she’s armed?”
“…Something on her belt… Could be a cell phone… Not sure.”
“You call it. Whaddaya wanna do?” he asked quickly.
“It’s not good,” she replied, shaking her head again. “Go around and we’ll call for backup.”
“No!” Felicity demanded. Her voice was still holding a pained edge but had grown far beyond a whimper.
“Not with you and Rowan in the van!” Ben hissed. “It’s too dangerous!”
“Nooooo!” Felicity cried out again, but this time she was moving.
I felt a hard thump as she swivel-hipped out of the seat, striking purposely against my back and driving me off balance. I pitched forward and fell between the front seats and into the center console. A split second later I felt her sneakered feet stumbling over the backs of my legs.
Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation Page 30