“Yo whyman,” Ben’s voice boomed through the house. “Wheresa squaw?”
“Coven meeting,” I called back.
“Spooky,” I heard him say, then pause. “Why you ain’t there?”
“Long story,” I answered.
“Tell me a shtory.”
“Some other time,” I said.
After adding the fresh grounds along with a small pinch of coarse salt to the filter basket, I poured in the water and switched the device on. I started to return the grinder and bag of beans to the cabinet but decided against it and left them where they were. I had a feeling it was going to be a long night.
My own earlier introspection was still floating around in the back of my head, but I consciously put it aside for the time being. I had my suspicions about why my friend was currently parked on my couch in a state of advanced inebriation, but my brain was also developing new theories with each passing second. The only way I was going to know for sure was to hear it directly from him.
Still, whatever it was that had brought him to this state, he had sought refuge here for a reason; and it was a good bet that the reason was to talk.
He was loyal to a fault and had been there for me more times than I could count, so the very least I could do was listen and be there for him.
I walked back into the living room to find my friend in a staring contest with Dickens, our black cat, who was perched on the end table quietly inspecting the boisterous human anomaly. As I pulled my rocking chair around to face the sofa, I took the opportunity to look him over myself. The fact that I could see a pistol riding on his hip and his badge clipped to his belt immediately dispelled one of my theories- he hadn’t been fired or suspended.
“Coffee will be ready in a few minutes,” I offered. “Here’s an idea. Why don’t you tell ME a story?”
He pointed at Dickens and then looked over at me. “I thing yer cat hase me.”
“I think he’s confused by you,” I replied. “Can’t say as that I blame him.”
“You confused,” he asked, his head bobbing as he tried to focus on me.
“A little, maybe,” I returned. “Mainly wondering why you’re sitting in my living room totally wasted.”
“‘Caush I’ve been drinkin’.”
“No kidding. But I’ve known you a long time, Ben. You don’t drink like this.”
“New hobby,” he mumbled.
“You might want to think about picking a different one.”
“Yathink?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“‘Kay, I thought ‘bout it,” he said almost immediately.
“Yeah, well you might want to try it again when you’re sober,” I instructed. “So, why don’t you tell me what’s up.”
“Opposite of down,” he cackled.
“Yeah, you’re a regular comedian,” I returned with a frown.
“Oh’yeah,” he said suddenly, a distant but serious look washing over his face. “Iss her.”
“What?” I asked with a shake of my head.
“Her,” he repeated, tossing his hand limply outward in an uncoordinated attempt to point. “Iss her.”
I followed the haphazard thrust with my eyes and looked back over my shoulder at the muted television. A news update was playing out on the glowing screen, with a picture of Tamara Linwood inset at the upper corner.
“You mean they identified the remains?” I asked as I turned back to him.
“Uh-huh,” he grunted. “Iss her.”
I wanted to seize on that point and run with it, but I knew he was in no condition to follow through. I resigned myself to the fact that this was something that would need to be addressed later. How much later was the question.
“I don’t think that’s why you came here, Ben,” I pressed.
“Hellno, I came here ta’ visit my friend. You seen ‘im? Shortguy, rise a broom.” He cackled again.
I was just about to sit back and give up on the conversation when I heard the hissing burp of the coffee pot as it finished its brewing cycle.
“I’m going to go get us some coffee,” I told him flatly as I rose.
In the kitchen, I pulled down a pair of mugs from the cabinet and filled them. I started to pick them up then thought about the lack of coordination my friend had just displayed. Figuring that hot coffee and he were not about to mix, I carefully poured a third of his cup back into the pot.
After a quick wipe of the counter with a dishtowel, I hefted the mugs and headed back for the living room. I was beginning to get the impression that Ben was too far on the other side of sober to actually talk about what had driven him to this point. Still, I was hoping that with a little luck, the java might nudge him back in this direction and get him rolling.
Unfortunately, my hopes were immediately dashed when I returned. My friend’s head was tilted face upward against the back of the couch, his mouth hanging wide open and his eyes closed. Dickens was draped half across his shoulder and half across the back of the sofa, purring with an in and out warble.
“Ben?” I said aloud.
He didn’t respond.
“Ben?” I said again as I sat his cup of coffee on the end table and then gave his arm a nudge.
Nothing.
I let out a sigh and cocked my head, letting my gaze drift out into space. I took a sip of my coffee then walked across the room to the bookshelf and picked up the telephone.
If my suspicions were correct, Ben being trashed stemmed from what little I had overheard the day before. I could well be wrong, but I was guessing that he and Allison were at odds. Still, from the looks of things, he wasn’t going to be moving for quite awhile, and there was no reason for her to worry about him when he didn’t come home, even if they were angry at one another.
I tucked the device up to my ear and heard nothing but a hollow clicking sound. Puzzled, I tapped the off-hook switch a few times. Still, I heard only the hollowness. I settled it back onto the cradle and with my coffee in hand, trudged back into the kitchen to check the phone there. I found the same thing. Next, I ventured back through the living room, down the hall and into the bedroom. There, I found the reason for the dead line. The phone next to the bed was on the floor, along with everything else that had been on the nightstand. In the wake of the carnage were two lounging cats, Emily and Salinger, glassy-eyed and surrounded by the remnants of a catnip-stuffed toy mouse.
“Hope you two didn’t make any long distance calls,” I said aloud as I picked up the phone and married it back to the cradle.
After giving the line a moment to reset, I lifted the receiver and got a steady dial tone. As I stabbed in Ben’s home number, I mutely wondered how long the phone had been off the hook and if anyone had tried to call.
“Hello?” a familiar voice answered after the third ring.
“Hi, Allison, it’s Rowan,” I said.
There was an overt silence at the other end then her voice issued again. This time it was a stilted mix of trepidation, confusion, and maybe even annoyance. “Oh, hi, Rowan.”
I was taken aback by her tone, but I decided to ignore it and ventured forth. “So listen, I’m sorry to call this late, but I didn’t want you to worry. Ben’s okay but he’ll probably be sleeping here tonight. He’s passed out on my couch.”
The silence crept in once again.
“Why would I worry?” she finally asked.
“Umm, uhh,” I stuttered. “I just thought maybe you might be concerned when he didn’t come home.”
“He hasn’t told you has he?” she asked, her voice audibly softened with a note of understanding now in place of the confusion.
“Allison, he’s too drunk to make a coherent sentence,” I replied.
I heard her sigh at the other end. “Rowan… Ben and I separated at the beginning of the month. He hasn’t lived here for two weeks.”
It was my turn to fall silent. In all of my imaginings of what might be wrong, the foremost had been something between the two of them. But, not once did
I even consider that it was something this bad.
“Rowan?” she said.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here,” I answered. “Listen… Allison… I’m…”
“It’s okay, Rowan.” She stopped me. “I’m sorry I was so cold when you called. I just assumed he’d told you.”
“We are talking about the same Benjamin Storm, right?” I asked.
“I know what you mean,” she answered.
I stared at the phone, searching for something to say; anything at all would do, so long as it pushed aside the embarrassed silence.
“So, Allison,” I finally offered words that no matter how sincere in intent, still sounded tired and overused. “If there’s anything Felicity and I can do…”
“Just take care of him, Rowan. God knows someone needs to,” she told me, then without another word she hung up.
I pulled the handset away and held it for a long moment, pondering the painful news. I’d known the two of them for what seemed like forever. They had been together ever since we’d met, and the idea of them splitting up now was completely foreign. Even though there was no mistaking what Allison had just told me, I was still having trouble wrapping my head around the concept.
I had just settled the phone back onto the base when the squeal of locked brakes and skidding tires sounded on the street in front of the house. I headed out of the bedroom and back up the hallway, only to be greeted by the dogs bellowing at the door as a frantic pounding began against it.
I rushed to the door, fully expecting to find someone who had just hit an animal, or worse a pedestrian, in front of my house. I twisted the deadbolt and swung the door wide, only to be greeted by RJ, a member of the Coven.
His eyes were wide, and he wore a frightened mask across his features. The moment I saw him, the anguish that made a perpetual home in the pit of my stomach was released in an explosive torrent. Hollowness filled my chest, and my body tensed. The coffee cup left my hand and shattered with an unceremonious crack against the floor, sending hot java and ceramic shards in all directions.
RJ’s mouth was open in preparation to say something, but I never gave him the chance.
Words were spewing from my own mouth automatically; the three word sentence came as a guttural bellow. “WHERE IS SHE?!”
CHAPTER 12:
RJ didn’t even try to compete verbally with my frantic shouts. He simply gestured for me to follow him as he turned and raced back down the stairs and then continued across the front yard. He was only just barely ahead of me when we hit the curb. In a quick motion, he unlatched the side door of the still running mini-van.
In the recently fallen dusk, soft blue shadows ran in oblique lines through the back of the vehicle, muting the interior. A streetlight just up from us painted a harsh glare across the tinted pane of glass to obscure it even more. Still, beyond the swath of reflected brilliance, I thought I could see movement in the back seat.
As RJ wrenched the sliding door back, dim, yellow-white light flooded the inside of the van, emanating from the dome light. The shrouded incandescent bulb struggled to chase away the darkness, while my eyes fought to adjust to the rapid changes in illumination they had been subjected to between the front door and here.
At first, I saw only Cally sitting near the door. When she looked up, I could see the same fear creasing her face that RJ had-and still was- displaying. I could see that she was rocking gently, and when she looked back down, I followed her gaze with my own. Felicity was lying beside her in the seat, body curled into a loose semblance of a fetal position. Her head was resting in Cally’s lap, and the young woman had an arm wrapped around my wife’s shoulders, holding her fast.
I knelt into the side door of the van and carefully brushed a tangle of hair back from Felicity’s face. Even in the dimness, I could see red froth on her lips and a trickle of blood running from the corner of her mouth, evidence that she’d been gnashing her teeth against her tongue during a violent seizure. The crimson trail smeared across her pale skin in an opaque blemish, but other than that, I could see no obvious injuries.
I watched her, my eyes following the rise and fall of her chest as she took slow, even breaths. I relaxed a bit and took in a deep breath of my own. In my throat, I could feel the thump of my heart and imagined that it was only now starting to beat again; although, it didn’t seem to be in any hurry to drop back down into my chest where it belonged.
I knew just by looking at her that at least part of my earlier fear had been realized. Still, my mind was already heading in more directions than I could count, so I blurted the first, most obvious, thing that came to mind.
“What happened?” I demanded, shooting quick glances at both Cally and RJ.
“It was just all of a sudden like,” RJ answered, voice almost shaking. “We had just gotten started. She was talking to us about Dark Moon spells, and just like that she stopped saying anything. When I looked up, she was staring off into space, all blank ya’know.” He waved his hand in front of his face wildly as if trying to illustrate what he meant. “The next thing we knew, she was on the floor shaking and flailing her arms and stuff.”
“Gods Rowan, it was like deja vu or something,” Cally added, shaking her head slowly. Her own voice tensed with anguish.
“Yeah, Rowan,” RJ agreed. “It was just like what happened to you at Nancy’s house a few months ago.”
“Dammit.” I muttered the word at first, but my voice grew more forceful with each successive utterance. “DAMmit, DAMMIT!”
“Oh man!” RJ suddenly exclaimed. “That’s where we were tonight, Nancy’s! Is that what it is, Rowan? Is it the house? Is it Randy’s spirit or something?”
RJ fired the questions in rapid succession, focusing the last one on Nancy’s murdered husband- a victim of Eldon Porter and the very same Randy I had referred to when Felicity had pressed me to go with her earlier.
“No,” I replied, still stroking my wife’s forehead. “It’s not the house, and it’s not Randy’s spirit. It’s probably a spirit, but not Randy’s.”
“Whose then?” Cally interjected.
“I’m pretty sure it’s Tamara Linwood,” I answered flatly.
“Oh Gods,” she moaned. “You mean the missing schoolteacher that’s been on the news?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I think so, but she’s not missing anymore. She was murdered.”
“But why is this happening to Felicity all of a sudden?” RJ implored.
“I wish I knew,” I said. “How long ago did the seizure start?”
“About forty-five minutes I guess,” Cally replied. “Maybe an hour. We tried to call you but the phone was busy.”
“Cats knocked bedroom phone off hook,” I explained simply. “I just noticed it a few minutes before you pulled up.”
“The first one really didn’t last long,” RJ offered.
“What do you mean ‘first one’?” I demanded. “She had more than one?”
“Yeah, she had two,” he continued. “The first one just lasted a minute or so. Once she stopped shaking and could talk, we got her up in a chair. We all wanted to call nine-one-one, but she kept saying no, we should call you.”
“When we couldn’t reach you on the phone, she tried to leave,” Cally added. “But we weren’t about to let her drive.”
“Yeah,” RJ echoed. “Good thing too, ‘cause we were halfway here when she started shaking all over again.”
“Then she just went limp and passed out,” Cally said.
My hand was on automatic pilot, still stroking Felicity’s cool skin. I felt her jerk slightly, and we all turned our attention back to her when we heard movement against the upholstery. As she began to stir, she let out a low, pitiful sounding moan.
“It’s okay, honey,” I told her softly. “I’m here.”
“Caorthann?” The thin whisper of Felicity’s voice met my ears as she called my name in Gaelic.
She still hadn’t opened her eyes, but she was slowly starting to unfurl from her tight post
ure.
“Yes, I’m right here,” I soothed, brushing the back of my hand lightly against her cheek.
“I’m dead,” she whispered again.
“No sweetheart, you’re fine. You just had a seizure,” I replied softly.
“No,” she spoke again, her voice still a thin whisper, then she tried to shake her head but quickly gave up. I could see a tear beginning to glisten in the corner of her closed eyelid. “No, you don’t understand. I’m… I’m… Ohhhh…” She moaned.
“Shhhhh.” I soothed. “You’re okay.”
“Rowan… I’m… She’s… I’m dead.”
“It’s okay,” I repeated, realizing now what she meant. “Ben just told me that they officially identified the remains.”
“No,” she insisted, quiet but adamant nonetheless. “No, they haven’t found me yet.”
I had naturally assumed she was referring to Tamara Linwood, but her objection set my mind racing in yet another direction. It was suddenly apparent to me that she had seen something on the other side; or to be more accurate, this time around she remembered what she had seen.
I could feel my entire face tense as my lips hardened into a frown at the horrific thoughts now invading my already overloaded grey matter.
“Who’s dead, Felicity?” I asked.
I was afraid I already knew the name she was going to speak, and I desperately hoped I was wrong.
“Me. I’m dead.”
“No, tell me your name.” I nudged.
“Brittany,” she whispered. “My name was Brittany.”
I wasn’t wrong.
*****
The episode ended quicker than it began, with Felicity snapping suddenly back into our world without warning or ceremony. She was weak but fully conscious of her surroundings, and that was a good sign.
As soon as she was ready to move, we retreated back into the house. Even though the sun was down, the heat and humidity were still lingering in a suffocating blanket. RJ shut off the van and locked it up while Cally and I tried to help Felicity make the short journey across the yard. I say tried because she was having none of it. The most she would allow was for us to walk alongside her as she slowly trudged. To her credit, she made it into the house under her own power. While I had objected strenuously to her defiant need to go it alone, in the end she won out, mainly because I didn’t want to argue with her.
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