How could I hear her voice in my head?
Maybe I was just thinking of what she would say.
But it wasn’t in my voice. It was in hers.
I start feeling nervous.
What is going on with me?
I walk into the store and immediately head to the back to put down my backpack and get a coffee. It is pretty vacant in the store at this time of day. The rush usually starts around 5:30.
All was quiet except for Elisha, who was listening to her iPod at the cash register, tapping her pen on the countertop and chewing gum. We have been friends since kindergarten. We are inseparable. She has been my partner in crime in many juvenile pranks. We grew up going to the same church and youth group. We have been through each other’s dramatic boyfriend issues. We went to prom with our dates together. We graduated together. We both got part-time jobs together. We both go to the same university.
We have different majors, though, way different. Elisha has always been the free-spirited one. She is into art, writing, and music. I stand in front of her for a second and smile as she taps to what sounds like Silversun Pickups. She looks up at me with a do-I-have-something-on-my-face look.
“Let me ask you something, Elisha. Do I look okay? I mean, do I look different?”
“You look fine. Hey, there was some guy in here earlier asking if you worked here. Said he knew you from class. I told him that I was new to the job and didn’t know all of the employees yet. He’s pretty gorgeous. Are you holding out on me? Do you have a ‘special friend’ you haven’t told me about?” Elisha smiles coyly and sits back in her chair.
I’m paying little attention to Elisha’s banter. I’m thinking on everything that has happened today. It occurs to me that it isn’t just today. My hearing voices happened a couple of times last week, too. I thought it was just my thoughts. But what happened just now makes me see it in a different light. I wasn’t hearing my voice at all.
Elisha touches my shoulder. “Hey! Jesca! Earth to Jesca!”
Elisha obnoxiously pops her gum. I quickly download the day’s happenings to Elisha. The freaky details about the cutie that I almost lashed out at and the crazy drug trafficking going on in the side alley by the Starbucks.
“Jes, you have always been ‘out for justice’. Maybe today was the token vigilante day of the week for you. This crap goes on around us all the time. Maybe you’re just sensitive to all of it today. You may be looking for it in some weird way. I mean, you are pretty weird when it comes to scoping out the not so obvious. It’s like you have radar for it or something.”
I don’t want her to explain it away that easily. Something is going on with me.
“What about the freaky face on that guy?”
“Easy, Jes. Something on TV last night triggered that image, and it popped into your pretty, little head this morning because you are so tired from not sleeping. By the way, your mom and dad are pretty concerned about your lack of sleep. They keep calling me and poking around to find out about their baby girl. You need to give them a call. Apparently, you haven’t called them in a week. God forbid!”
I bat my hand at Elisha. “’Kay, I got it! I’ll call them tonight!
I start to walk to the back room and turn toward her once more. “And I have not always been ‘out for justice’!”
Elisha responds with a half laugh. “Yeah? Okay, Super Girl.”
The Art History and Economics sections need restocking. I get to work on the boxes. I vaguely hear the front door open to two soft-spoken guys. Elisha and I both look up. Elisha greets them, then turns to me. Elisha’s blue eyes are wide. She is relentless. She mouths, “Hotties!”
I smile, roll my eyes at her, and turn back to continue stocking. I hear a clicking sound and then humming. It sounds like the air-conditioning kicking in. I stand up and go over to the air-conditioning vent to see if that is where the sound is coming from. Elisha leans over the front desk and looks at me.
She mouths, “You okay?”
I whisper, “Can you hear that humming sound?”
She stops chewing her gum and looks up while she listens. “Uh, no. Do you?”
I look at her, then close my eyes. “Never mind. I thought I heard thunder.” I walk quickly back behind the stacks.
I lied to my best friend. I don’t want to explain to her what I hear, especially when I don’t know what the hell I am hearing from the get-go. I feel my heart flutter with nervousness. The hum is now taking on a physical presence in my body, a vibration in my chest. It starts small, like a flicker of a sensation. Then the vibrations radiate to my arms. Then to my head.
I hear a thick voice. “She knows…”
I feel the little hairs on the nape of my neck shift direction. Someone is near me, behind me. I turn around quickly, but no one is there. I can still hear whispers, but it is far away now. I slowly shift to the other side of the aisle and peek between books to try to find where the voice is coming from.
The thick whisper comes again from a different voice. “She won’t say anything.”
I close my eyes and try my hardest to clear my thoughts of everything but the heavy whisper. I search for the sound that I caught and lost a few seconds earlier.
The hair on my neck shifts again. I can feel someone, no, two people now. It is like these two people speaking are on either side of me. My breath comes faster.
“Do you realize how destroyed her reputation would be if anyone knew what she did with five of us last night? She won’t say a word, IF she remembers.”
I am tempted to open my eyes and look for them, but I don’t. I keep my eyes closed and calm my breath so I can stay focused in the moment. If I open my eyes, I will lose the voices and what they are saying. What did they do to this poor girl? I wanted to get up, find them in the aisle they are conspiring in, and confront them. The feeling of solid flesh next to me slowly begins to fade. My anger is distracting my focus. I refocus on calming myself. I need to hold on to the voices. I need to hear the rest. I need to know if she is all right.
“Man, I don’t know. Are you sure we didn’t hurt her? When we left, she was crying a lot. What if someone found her and got her to talk?”
All I can feel is hate for these two guys. I feel tears on my cheeks. The feeling tilts my focus, and I start to lose the conversation again.
“We are not having this conversation any more, man. Jana said she would cover for us. Make her think she knew what she was doing and was okay with it! We are clear, man. We are golden.”
I hear one of them scoff. It is amazing how one small sound can set you off. My eyes pop open. I start to move forward to find the voices when the dizziness hits me like a ton of bricks. Then the nausea hits. My stomach feels like it is knotting up.
I close my eyes, but that makes the spinning feeling worse. My body has a mind of its own and is pulling me down; I am out of control. I lean against the stacks for balance. I feel myself slide down until I am sitting on the floor. I open my eyes, but all I see is flashes of light.
Oh no. I am going to pass out.
I hear the bell at the front door.
I mumble loudly, “Elisha. Don’t let them leave.”
My voice sounds tired and breathless.
I hear Elisha rush to me. “Jes! What are you doing?”
“Those jerks were just talking about…they were with this girl, and there were five of them, and…”
Elisha puts her hand on my head. “You’re burning up, Jes. Hold on.” She leaves me for a minute. I hear water running in the bathroom; I figure she is getting a wet cloth for my head.
I open my eyes. She is back with the wet cloth and puts it to my head.
Elisha has a worried look on her face. “You are so pale, Jes. Just sit here for a minute. I will be right back.”
I am too weak to ask her where she’s going.
She is gone for a bit. The cloth on my head is helping. My stomach is unknotting, and the dizziness is going away.
I want to try standing. I p
ush my hands under me and start to pull my legs up to stand when Elisha comes back; she pushes me back down softly.
Elisha sits down in front of me and looks at me. Her look is uncomfortable.
“What?”
Her smile weakens. “Jes. I’m your best friend, and I love you. That is the only reason why I’m telling you what I’m about to tell you.” She puts her hands on both of my arms. “I think you may be on the edge of insanity. I mean, you are acting really loco!” She lets out a short laugh.
I push her arms away slowly and roll my eyes.
More seriously, Elisha says, “Look, you need to go home. You pulled in extra hours last week. I will cover you. Just take care of yourself! I know those nightmares have come back full force. Your mom and dad told me. And now you’re fainting at work. I don’t want my bestie being put away in a loony bin when she has her whole life ahead of her!” Elisha gives me a weak, sarcastic laugh. I can hear some fear in that laugh, too.
Elisha sits with me until I feel somewhat normal again. I pack up my things in the back room and think of how insane I must look to my best friend. I can only shake my head.
Chapter 2
I feel like I slept for days. Truthfully, it is almost a full day. Twenty-two hours, give or take. I woke up around 8:30 a.m. long enough to use the restroom and get a glass of water. The sound of the heater turning on is what finally wakes me up from my self-induced sleep marathon at 3 p.m. It is so strange how the smallest, yet distinct sound can catch your attention. The click of a heating system as it kicks on. The sound of the warmth moving through the air ducts above. As my body wakes, my eyes remain shut, taking in the sound. I imagine being the heat moving through the aluminum, swaying from one side of the piping to the other, like I am on an inner tube on a crazy water ride. I open my eyes. The sun is retreating behind the almost-barren trees. I lie there thinking of the events of my life lately. It seems like a distant, crazy, insignificant set of circumstances that I could chalk up to being sleep deprived. I am hoping the sleep I have gotten takes care of the craziness in my life.
I feel energized enough to head out for a run. Mom always said that running brought me to my center. It definitely helps me work things out in my head. I desperately need that time right now. I leave the apartment and head northwest toward Kennesaw and the lake. It is a good distance, about seven to eight miles round trip. It is a familiar trek, though. Running it reminds me of the fun and comforting times with Dad.
The concrete turns to gravel, then dirt, and then rock. I enter a trailhead in the Kennesaw Mountain National Park. I descend into a more densely wooded area. The sun is shimmering on the fallen leaves and damp mulch. The cool air that hits my face and legs is much appreciated. I focus on my breath, on the ground, on the music, and on the movement of my arms and legs. All my senses are centered, and I am aware of everything. Dad and I used to call it being “in the zone”. This is different, though. It feels like every part of me is hypersensitive and hyper-focused on what is around me and inside of me.
Then, I hear the humming. Then twigs begin to break close by. I stop and look around. I feel the vibration start as soon as my body stops moving; it is strong. I feel my heart flutter in my chest and my stomach twitch. The dizziness doesn’t come this time. My heart is pounding. Not just from the run, but from anxiousness. I see a dark flash out of the corner of my eye. It is upright, not low to the ground like an animal. I turn my music down just to be more in tune with my surroundings. I pick up my pace. My legs begin to take larger, faster, stronger, unnatural strides. My vision and hearing is fine-tuned. The crumbling, bright green leaves under my feet sound like a trash compactor crushing plastic. My arms work quickly to push away stray shrubs, twigs, and twine in my path. I sense something, a presence coming up on me. It is closing in quickly. I have had this feeling before in my nightmare.
I quickly look behind me while running. I see a black, smoke-like entity. It doesn’t have a face or details to reveal if it is human. It is like a blur of darkness in the landscape. Its quick movements and ability to shift around the wooded obstacles heighten my anxiety. The humming is even stronger now, clouding my thinking. I can feel the vibration throughout my body like a jackhammer. I see an opening to the trailhead, a clearing.
It has to be the lake.
I put more power into my pumping arms and stretching stride. The sunlight becomes brighter as the trees open their canopy to unleash me from the woods. The pull of the darkness from behind releases me like a rock in a slingshot.
I am out of the trail. I stop and turn to look back into the wood. I am close to the ground.
That’s odd.
I look down at myself. I am in a combat crouched position. My breath is ragged sounding. I try to focus on calming it.
I stay crouched for a while. Nothing appears in the shadows at the trail’s edge. Just rustling leaves on the rocky ground. I stand and slowly pace in front of the opening to the wood, looking, watching, and waiting as my breath becomes more even. I must look like I am stalking prey with the way I am pacing. The humming sound is diffusing quickly, and the vibration is minimal compared to my racing heart.
I turn and look out at the lake. A man is staring at me from a boat.
Mr. Ezra Kahn?
I feel my cheeks get hot from embarrassment.
I was crouching like an animal.
I look down and turn away from him for a minute. Maybe he was baiting his line and didn’t notice my animal-like behavior. Damn it, I have to acknowledge him. I turn back and smile.
“Hi there, Mr. Kahn.”
Mr. Kahn tips his fishing hat to me. His light brown hair is ruffled under his cap.
“Jesca Gershon-Sera. You okay?”
He saw it all. Crap. Why did it have to be Mr. Kahn?
* * *
I ran into him, literally, last semester before my class with him. He was a few inches taller than me. When I ran into him, I bounced off like I was running into a wall. For a professor of academia, he was quite sturdy. I thought then that he must have worked out. He quickly pulled me up with one hand. His light brown eyes were terrified that I had gotten hurt. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry.”
“I’m fine. Just fine. I wasn’t watching where I was going. I am trying to find the physics department.”
As we made small talk, he led me to the physics department, his department. He was the reason I decided to pursue coursework dealing with cosmology, astrophysics, and quantum physics this year. Yes, it sounds boring by title, but the content was mind boggling.
* * *
“Yes, it’s Jesca. Hey, have you seen anything or anyone odd running around before I came out of the woods?”
Looking more concerned for me now, Ezra says, “Yes, I did see a man heading into the woods about ten minutes ago. Is everything all right?”
I feel my nerves heighten again. “Yeah, yeah, everything is fine. Well, it is nice seeing you. I better head back.”
Ezra smiles. “You too. Be careful heading back, all right?”
I wave as I jog along the exterior of the woods to enter from another trailhead. I head along the edge of the woods, not wanting to get too deep into the forest. I fall back into my normal pace quickly.
I can’t help thinking about the coincidences of seeing Mr. Kahn around town lately. I wonder what his life outside of campus entails. Did he have a family? A wife? Did he live alone? Divorced? He seems like a nice enough man to have a family and maybe a couple of children. Contemplating Mr. Kahn’s life freaks me out a bit, but it passes the time perfectly to get me home without too much thought on what I experienced in the woods.
* * *
Back at the apartment, I take a much appreciated hot shower. The air turned frigid very quickly near the foothills, making the run home colder than on the way up to the lake.
After my shower, I decide to head into town to see Elisha at the store. I dress quickly, bundling up with a scarf and hat for the short, but chilly, walk. I hadn’t talked to her si
nce the twenty-two-hour sleep marathon. I owe her a big thank you since she covered for me.
On my walk, I put a call in to Mom and Dad and get voicemail.
“Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad. Just wanted to let you know that I’m doing fine. Have caught up on some much needed sleep. I am feeling so much better. Love you. Bye.”
Well, it is partly true. I did catch up on sleep. And for now, everything seems fine. Well, other than the eerie, dark someone chasing me in the woods. Oh, and the supernatural, high-velocity running I apparently possess now.
Chapter 3
I make it to the store just before Elisha locks up.
“Hey there, Jes. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be home sleeping?”
I stutter a bit. “I just wanted to say thanks for covering for me so I could rest.”
I reach in and give her a hug.
“Don’t be silly, Jes. We don’t need you collapsing at work or falling asleep during lectures, do we? You call your mom and dad? I love your parents, Jes, but you need to talk to them. They have left me eight messages and four texts in the last twenty-four hours.”
I respond with a small smile. “Already done.”
Elisha finishes locking the door. “Where are you heading now?”
“Back home. I wanted to make sure you knew I was okay. You know, in person. I think you were right about all the stress and no sleep thing.”
Elisha’s face seems to relax. That was my intention for her, since I didn’t truly believe what I was saying myself.
You don’t believe that for a second, Jes.
Elisha sighs. “Well, my mom and dad have requested me for dinner. Hope they aren’t going to spring another surprise on me. Like, ‘Sweetheart, we are considering renting our house and traveling around Europe for a year.’ Seriously, I don’t know how they can be so spur of the moment. Such a carefree and liberal lifestyle. I mean, really, c’mon.”
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