Crone’s Moon argi-5

by M. R. Sellars

  “The what?” I asked, furrowing one eyebrow and squinting at her.

  “The Don’t Be Brothers,” she repeated. “It’s a play on…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” I told her as I nodded my head. “I’m just not sure I want it.”

  “They’re really good, Row. I’ve heard them play before.”

  “Okay, so speaking of playing, what DO they play?”

  She shrugged. “Irish folk songs, what else?”

  “You mean Irish drinking songs.”

  “Of course, they’re playing in a Pub.”

  “So that means we have to sing along.”

  “Your point?”

  “I don’t know any of the words, and I doubt if Ben or Allison do either.”

  “Aye,” she said as she shook her index finger at me. “But I do.”

  “Okay,” I gave in, reaching to my belt and grabbing my cell phone. “I’ll give him a call, but I don’t make any guarantees.”

  I wasn’t actually sure if I would be able to reach him, but I was willing to try. If I was correct, and the earlier call had in fact been from Allison, maybe they had managed to patch things up by now. An evening out might even be just exactly what they needed. After all, it was Friday. They were adults. Their son was old enough not to require a sitter, so that shouldn’t be an obstacle. Looking at it that way, there was really nothing to keep them at home.

  I thumbed in the speed dial code and put the phone up to my ear. I heard the ringer at the other end issuing from the earpiece, but halfway through the trill it suddenly became muffled. As I listened, a heavy, rhythmic thrum was starting to fill my ears and was effectively dulling the ambient sounds. I glanced around expecting to find a car with a radio blasting heavy metal music somewhere nearby. If that was the source of the noise, however, I couldn’t locate it.

  When the second ring sounded, a coppery metallic taste began creeping up the back of my tongue, and I instantly tensed. The sensation wasn’t new to me, and I desperately feared what I thought it was about to bring. The false sense of security I had felt a few moments ago was now fleeing in earnest.

  A tidal wave of deja vu slammed into me full force, and I knew it was more than just a trick of an overactive imagination. I had been here before, experiencing an unwanted psychic event from the passenger seat of my wife’s Jeep. I opened my mouth to warn her of what was about to happen only to have my words halted in my throat by the sound of Felicity’s own frightened voice.

  “R… Ro… Rowan…” she stuttered, a note of confused terror like I’d never heard from her before was interwoven through the syllables of my name.

  I turned my head only to see my wife’s normally beautiful face drawn tight into a pained grimace. Her teeth were clenched, and her back began to arch, pressing her body hard against the shoulder belt. A split second later she was shaking uncontrollably. Her head snapped back, thudding against the headrest as her eyes began to roll upward.

  The Jeep suddenly lurched forward as her feet slipped from the clutch and brake, her right foot landing momentarily on the accelerator. I dropped the phone, grabbing at the steering wheel as I wrenched the stick shift into neutral. The engine coughed then settled to an idle, but we were still rolling forward.

  “Felicity!” I screamed, but she couldn’t hear me. I could only barely hear myself as the driving rhythm continued to grow inside my head.

  Her body was bucking in violent spasms against the safety harness, and she continued to vibrate with the physical tremor. Her arms were drawn up to her chest, turned inward, and her hands were postured like tight paws, her fingernails digging into her palms.

  A trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth as she frothed, and I could see that she was biting her tongue. The back of her head continued to slam against the padded headrest, and I mutely thanked the ancients for it being there.

  Sharp but distant noises began to invade the heavy beat in my head, and I recognized them as blaring horns. A quick glance forward told me that the traffic signal had switched to green. We were moving forward, rolling by the grace of leftover momentum, but it was far from what traffic would bear. Still, it was too fast for my liking considering the circumstances.

  “Felicity!” I called out again, ignoring the futility of the action.

  I was struggling to guide the rolling Jeep while at the same time unbuckling my own seatbelt. My first thought was to get my foot on the brake and bring the vehicle to a stop, but I wasn’t the most limber individual on the face of the planet, and I wasn’t sure I could get around my wife’s stiffened legs. In a hostile attempt to assume control of my emotions, a wave of panic began sweeping over me as it elected to challenge my desperate concern for Felicity and move itself into the top position.

  A prolonged whimper emanated from my wife as she jerked against the tensed muscles of her body, and I realized it was a scream that couldn’t escape. The other realization that struck me square in the face was that the tables had turned. I was helplessly watching her go through all of the things she had stood by and watched me suffer so many times before.

  I managed to release the catch on my shoulder harness and twist toward her, levering myself against the back of the seat. As I brought my leg up, my knee cracked hard into the dash, sending a lance of pain through the joint. I barked out an expletive as I pitched forward, and the back of my hand raked against the jangling key ring that hung from the ignition switch.

  It was then that I realized the panic had taken over long before I’d ever noticed its icy fingers clawing at my stomach. A brief but welcome stab of lucidity hit me, and the logic it brought along set off a chain reaction in my brain. I reached for the keys and gave them a hard twist, switching off the engine. That done, I quickly wrenched the gear shift into first with a hard shove, doing little good for the transmission but bringing us to a lurching halt.

  The dark music was pounding inside my skull as I scrambled from my seat amid the dulled blare of horns. Angry motorists were pulling around our stalled vehicle and speeding off, narrowly missing me in the process. The commotion began to die down only after I could be seen pulling my wife’s still-seizing body from the driver’s seat.

  It was official. I was no longer in a good mood.

  CHAPTER 8:

  “Lemme get this straight…” Ben’s voice came at me over the cell phone. “Firehair went all Twilight Zone this time instead of you?”

  Firehair was just one of the nicknames he had for my wife, but it was by far his favorite.

  “Yeah, kind of,” I answered. “Or maybe in addition to.”

  Felicity and I were parked diagonally across from one another in a booth at Seamus O’Donnell’s. She had pressed herself as far into the shadows of the corner as she could get, and I was keeping a close eye on her.

  The pub wasn’t my first choice of places to be given the situation, but it was the closest for what she needed. Fortunately, the evening rush had not yet started, so I was able to carry on the phone conversation without yelling over the noise of a crowd or stepping outside.

  “What?” he chirped, a note of concern leaping into his tone. “You were both all zoned out in a moving vehicle?”

  “No, not exactly,” I explained, still trying to get a handle on what had happened myself. “I had some ethereal background noise in my head, but I never stepped over the line. I did that this morning before you came by.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Do what?” he barked again. “So you did the la-la land thing this mornin’, and you’re just now tellin’ me?”

  “I didn’t have anything to connect it with at the time, Ben,” I replied. “Then the whole thing with the kidnapping happened… I mean, give me a break.”

  “So you think it all has something to do with the Brittany Larson abduction?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Don’t be so goddamned overconfident, Rowan,” he chided.

  “Cut me some slack, Ben,” I replied stiffly. “I’m still a bit rattled. This
kind of thing has never happened to Felicity before. I’m not real happy about it, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Yeah… Sorry. You’re right,” he apologized. “So listen, where are you two right now? Home?”

  “No.” I shook my head out of reflex as I spoke. “We’re in a bar down on Oakland called Seamus O’Donnell’s.”

  “What’d ya’ go to a bar for?” he asked, a note of confusion in his voice.

  “It was the closest place where I could get her out of the heat and let her rest up,” I told him. “Besides, it’s actually where we were headed for dinner anyway.”

  “She doin’ okay?”

  “Seems to be.” I looked across at Felicity. She was still at the far end of the booth but had leaned forward now, elbows on the table, eyes closed, and fingers slowly massaging her temples. “But judging from the looks of her and speaking from experience, she’s got a killer headache at the moment.”

  “What about you?” he pressed. “You gonna go all loopy or anything?”

  “Like I actually know when that’s going to happen, Ben?”

  “Yeah, forget I asked.” He huffed out a heavy sigh then muttered, “Jeezus fuck, white man. What am I gonna do with you two?”

  “Wish I could help you there, Chief,” I told him. “I’m wondering the same thing myself.”

  “Not what I wanted to hear,” he replied. “So listen, stay right where you are. I’m pretty much done here, so I’m gonna shake loose and come down there.”

  “We’ll be waiting.”

  I thumbed off the phone and clipped it back onto my belt then turned my full attention back to my wife. Her eyes were still closed, and she was carefully working her fingers from temples to forehead and back again. Her lips were parted slightly, and I watched the rise and fall of her chest as she struggled to regulate her breathing. I knew exactly how she felt, and it was killing me to see her like this.

  Of course, I suppose now I knew exactly how she felt when the roles had been reversed.

  “I’d like to tell you it gets better,” I said softly. “But, it’s more like you just get used to it.”

  “Fek,” she muttered the colloquial Irish profanity.

  “Yeah, I know,” I agreed.

  “How do you do it?” she asked then moaned, still not opening her eyes.

  “I wish I could answer that,” I replied. “I just do. If it’s any consolation, I’d rather not.”

  “Aspirin,” she murmured.

  “Let me see if I can get you some,” I told her as I started up from my seat.

  “Purse. Side. Tin,” she told me, exaggerated economy in her selection of verbiage.

  I pulled her purse across the table and rummaged about in the side pocket. Under any other circumstances I wouldn’t have dreamed of sticking my hand into the carryall. As I had told my wife countless times before, a woman’s handbag seemed to me to be a kind of tame black hole: a place where an impossible number of items disappeared and could only be found by the woman who owned the receptacle in the first place. At the moment, hers was definitely living up to that assessment.

  “Left. Bottom. Yellow tin.” She offered another set of terse instructions.

  I pushed my hand deeper into the pocket and finally managed to withdraw the sought after container of aspirin. I sat it on the table and pushed it over to her then started sliding out of the booth as she slitted her eyes and reached for the tin.

  “I’ll go get you some water,” I told her.

  “Black Bush,” she asserted.

  “No whisky with aspirin,” I replied. “Water.”

  “Black Bush,” she repeated.

  “Water.”

  She tossed the tin in front of her and it bounced across the table, tablets noisily rattling around inside. Then it slid off the edge and clattered to the floor.

  “Black Bush.” This time it was a demand.

  I knew exactly where she was coming from, and I didn’t fault her a bit. The truth was that the aspirin really wouldn’t do much good for the kind of headache she had anyway. Not that booze was any better remedy, but it would help take the edge off.

  “Shot or rocks,” I conceded with a soft sigh.

  “Bottle,” she replied.

  *****

  “Slow down,” I said to my wife as she drained the tumbler and clacked it back onto the wooden table with a heavy thunk. “That’s your second double.”

  Her hand was still wrapped around the glass, and her head was tilted back, face pointing upward to the ceiling. She drew in a deep breath and then exhaled heavily, puffing out her cheeks as she did so.

  “Aye, but I said bottle, not double,” she stated as she lowered her gaze down to meet mine.

  “Give those a chance to work,” I told her. “They aren’t even in your bloodstream yet.”

  She frowned back at me but didn’t argue. She slouched down in her seat, and a moment later I felt her sneaker-clad feet slide up onto the bench next to me. She reached up and pressed her palms against either side of her head as if she were trying to squeeze it back into shape.

  “This sucks,” she moaned.

  “I know,” I replied.

  I was fully aware that the words were of little consolation, but they were the best I had to offer at the moment. I wanted desperately to ask her about the experience. But, she needed some time to come to terms with what had happened, so I didn’t broach the subject.

  Usually such an ethereal event came with some manner of built-in, albeit obscure, reference to something in the here and now-although, admittedly, mine from earlier this day had held no such prize. Neither had the similar ones I’d suffered through at the beginning of the year.

  Patrons were starting to fill the establishment as round one of the dinner rush came upon us. It hadn’t reached the point of obnoxious as yet, but the noise level was rapidly approaching that of annoying static. It didn’t seem to be bothering Felicity, though.

  “You look like shit.” Ben’s voice cut through the hum of the growing crowd.

  I looked up to see him standing over my shoulder, his gaze locked on my wife.

  “But you’re still a hell of a lot prettier than paleface over here.” He jerked a thumb at me as he added the comment.

  A waitress sidled up to the table and shot me a questioning look. “Do you folks need anything?”

  “I’m good,” I replied.

  “Black Bush, neat, double,” Felicity chimed in.

  “Felicity…” I admonished.

  “All right then.” She cut me off with an annoyed tone lacing her words. “Jamieson, neat, double.”

  I shook my head and waved my hand in surrender as I looked up at the waitress. “Give her whatever she wants.”

  “Black Bush,” my wife chirped.

  The waitress craned her neck and looked up at Ben. “How about you?”

  “Beer,” Ben told her.

  “We have Guinness on tap,” she offered.

  “No honey.” Ben shook his head. “Beer isn’t s’posed to be black. Bring me somethin’ in a mug that’s cold, fizzy, and beer-colored.”

  “Whatever you say.” She shook her head back at him then before she turned and walked away, she added rhetorically, “Do you want me to bring you a straw with that?”

  “Friendly place you picked here.” Ben made the sarcastic comment as he slid into the booth next to Felicity.

  “Aye, you’re in a pub, Ben,” my wife informed him, still lounging in her seat. “Quit bein’ a Colleen.”

  “She’s doin’ the accent,” he remarked as he looked over at me. “The Twilight Zone thing do that to her?”

  “Leave me alone,” Felicity muttered.

  “I’m sure it wore her out, but I think the two double Irish whisky’s are to blame,” I replied.

  “Yeah, okay.” He nodded, glancing over at her then back to me. “She’s not gonna start talkin’ that gibberish is she?”

  “Duairc,” Felicity chimed.

  “That answer your que
stion?” I asked.

  “She just called me a name, didn’t she?”

  I shrugged. “Probably.”

  “I said you’re a rude man,” she offered.

  “Well, at least this time you got the gender right.” He shook his head and looked back to me. “So explain it to me. What’s up with the squaw doin’ the la-la land thing? I thought that was your gig.”

  “Me too,” I answered with a nod. “I’m not sure what’s going on there myself.”

  “Will you quit talking about me like I’m not here, then,” Felicity insisted.

  “Okay. Chill.” Ben jumped the tracks and boarded another train of thought. “So what about this mornin’? What’s up with that?”

  “Again, I don’t know.” I shrugged. “The episode was almost exactly like the ones I had back in January.”

  “You mean when you were floppin’ around like a fish outta water when Porter was…” his voice trailed off at the mention of the name.

  “Yeah,” I acknowledged and finished the sentence for him. “When Porter was trying to kill me.”

  “Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “Didn’t mean to dredge that up.”

  “No problem. It’s not something I’ve managed to forget yet anyhow.”

  “So I thought those stopped after he was locked up?”

  “They did. Until today that is.”

  Ben frowned hard and stared back at me. Without a word, he reached to his belt and pulled out his cell phone. After an aborted attempt, he managed to key in a number with his thick finger and tucked the device up to his ear. I had a feeling that I knew what he was getting ready to do, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer he was seeking.

  “Yeah, Roy?” he said after a moment. “Yeah, it’s Ben Storm. Not much, you?… Yeah, so listen, I need a favor. Can you check somethin’ for me? Yeah, I need status on an inmate… No, don’t have his number, but you’ll probably remember ‘im. Uh-huh… Name’s Eldon Andrew Porter… Yeah, thought you would… Yeah. Not a problem. Yeah, on my cell. Great. Bye.”

  As Ben ended the call, the waitress came toward the table, expertly maneuvering through the crowd with a drink-burdened serving tray held above her shoulder. In a practiced motion, she swooped it down and plucked a tumbler full of whisky from it then slid the glass in front of Felicity. Next, she placed a pint glass of beer in front of Ben. In a reverse motion, she hefted the platter back up to her shoulder and regarded my friend.