“Yeah he was okay except a broken ankle.” He frowned. “Why? Do you have anything to report about Mr. James?”
Bernice raised an eyebrow. “Anything to report? What do you mean?”
The doctor cut in, looking at the monitors she was hooked up to, “If you wouldn’t mind, Officer, I’d like you to wrap this up. The stress she’s undergone―”
“Yes,” the officer said, not turning to the doctor. “Yes, of course. Ms. Martin. I know you don’t have many memories. But is there anything you can tell me that might help us pinpoint this woman? Any landmarks you recall? Anything she said?”
“Um …” Bernice stared out the window, thinking. Come back to the swamp, come back to the swamp. Well, there was the alarming fact that Rebecca did seem to show up, raving about being in pain, whenever a branch was cut in the swamp. Unless she was in her hibernation state. But no way was Bernice going to tell the cop any of that. She wanted to keep all that insanity under wraps. She didn’t want anyone thinking she was crazy. She was not crazy. Nope. All the weirdness could be explained by drugs. The time loss, imagining the Space Mantis cast, the voice―yes, somehow the voice that was playing on repeat in her head over and over nonstop was just a residual drug thing. “Uh, well I did see her most frequently in the research plot. But I don’t think that really means anything. Doesn’t mean she hung out there frequently. Just that I did. Ya know?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Sure.” But he wrote something down anyway.
While he wrote, the room filled with silence and the voice in her head got even more annoying. “I’ll let you know if I think of something else,” she rasped to fill the silence. “Something is bound to come to mind.”
The cop frowned at his notebook. She was not giving him much to go on.
“Oh,” she said. “If you get me an aerial photo or a topo map or something I can show you the approximate place I was when I … uh, snapped out of whatever she’d done to me. She was with me when I woke up. Maybe you can find something there. Since she was there. Ya know?” Wow, her throat was sore. Bernice continued, “Like maybe she left behind some footprints in the mud or whatever. But would footprints be much help to you? I bet since you probably found footprints when you were searching the swamp before for me and that never got me found―”
“Great,” the cop cut in, standing up. “Yeah, I’ll get you those maps. That’d be great if you could pinpoint that location to the best of your ability. And if you’re able to circle any other spots you think you might remember being, that’d be great, too.”
She cleared her tired throat. “Sure. Happy to help. I really want to do anything I can to help you get that old woman. If I think of anything else I’ll let you know. I―”
“Thanks, Ms. Martin. I’ll send someone over with those maps. You get some rest.”
“Thanks, Officer,” Bernice said. As he walked out, she turned to the doctor. She needed to start a conversation with him. Come back to the swamp, come back to the swamp. “Any word on my blood tests?”
The doctor shook his head. “Nothing conclusive yet.”
“Oh,” Bernice sighed. She really wanted to get those results. She was hoping like crazy they’d find some sort of official results involving crazy hallucinogenic mushroom spores. Something that would give her solid proof that everything weird she’d seen and experienced could be explained away by drugs and not anything supernatural. It would take some doing for her to convince herself that those moving vines had only been a hallucination, but if she wanted denial strongly enough she was sure her brain would help her out.
The doctor walked over to her, checked her vitals, and instructed, “Get some rest, Bernice. Is there anything else you need?”
“Yeah, could I get a TV in here?”
“You need your rest, Bernice. You’ll have plenty of time to catch up on TV later. Get a good night of sleep, and then we can have a TV brought in tomorrow morning.”
Bernice swallowed. She needed background noise. Come back to the swamp, come back to the swamp. “I need a TV,” she demanded, her voice wavering weirdly. “Or a radio. Something. Some sound. I really just need it.”
The doctor narrowed his eyes and studied her. “Is something wrong?” His eyes flicked back to the monitor at Bernice’s bedside and he watched the visual evidence of her elevated heart rate.
“No. I just … I’m fine. Just can I get a TV?” she asked, cringing at the panic in her voice that she could do nothing to disguise. She was not crazy. Everything was fine. Everything was fine.
“Sure, Bernice. Sure. If it’s that important to you, sure,” he said soothingly. “I’ll have a nurse bring one in.”
“Thank you,” she exclaimed, her gratefulness excessively heartfelt for the circumstances.
The doctor raised an eyebrow, studied her face for clues about her weird behavior, and said, “I’ll check in on you later.”
“Thanks.”
“Rest,” he said, walking toward the door.
Once he’d gone, she began to whisper, “The sun was shining on the sea, shining with all his might. He did his very best to make the billows smooth and bright. And this was odd because it was the middle of the night …”
CHAPTER NINE:
THE VOICE
Maybe Bernice shouldn’t have screamed at her nurses, ripped her IV out, and checked herself out of the hospital against her doctor’s wishes. But the nurses had insisted on making Bernice turn off the TV that night, so she had had to leave. She needed the TV. She needed it loud. She needed to stop the voice. And she couldn’t explain it to them. They’d just think she was crazy. And she wasn’t. All she was was stressed out. Anxious. Maybe she should have told them about the voice. Maybe. But no. She could probably get locked up at a mental hospital for that kind of thing, and if she got locked up then she couldn’t leave and go to the swamp. Not that she was going to go to the swamp. She wasn’t going to listen to the voice. It wasn’t a real thing. It wasn’t the swamp calling to her. It was anxiety. She just needed to block it out, get it out of her head, calm down, quit this downward spiral of anxiety. The stress was feeding on itself, getting worse and worse. If she could just chill out and breathe and get some distraction, she’d be able to break the cycle and the voice would go away and everything would be fine.
Everything would be fine.
It felt strange to be showered and wearing brand new clothes. Everything felt foreign. At least she had her old backpack that the cops had gotten out of evidence for her. She strode through the hospital lobby and out into the warm night air. She took a deep breath. The humidity was strangely soothing. She used to hate humidity. But that had been before the swamp. She supposed her body had just grown accustomed to living without air conditioning in the past year.
She welcomed the sounds of the cars driving down the road. The voice was fairly easy to block out with all the background noise of civilization.
Before checking out, Bernice had nearly called a friend for a ride, but she didn’t feel up to the pity or the curiosity or the awkwardness. Her friend and old freshman roommate, Kate, had tried to visit her in the hospital, but Bernice had been all too happy to use her doctor’s excuse of needing rest. She could do reunions later. Right now, the idea of a conversation with a pitying, morbidly curious person was so horrible that she wanted to avoid it even more than she wanted distraction from the voice.
She pulled a printout out of the front pocket of her backpack―some people at the hospital had given her a list of hotels she could stay at free of charge; some charity or something had heard about her situation and had sent over some resources for her, saying something about how since she had no family they wanted to help her get on her feet after her ordeal. Once Bernice had her life together a bit more, she intended to write an epic thank you note for the hotel options, the new cell phone, the new clothes, and the rather huge amount of money.
It was
weird to think that her apartment had long ago been rented by someone else and that all her stuff was in storage. It was a very disconnected feeling, having no place or stuff of her own. Not even her own clothes. At least she had her backpack. It still had mud crusted on it from the swamp, which made her oddly happy.
She spotted a taxi and was about to hail it when she heard a guy yell, “Hey, Bernice! B!”
She spotted him running down the sidewalk toward her from the hospital parking lot. She squinted through the semi-dark of the late evening. “Kevin?” she gasped. She waited for him to trot the rest of the way up to where she stood. He’d cut his hair short, and shaved his beard. His khakis and nondescript blue button-up shirt were not at all the usual art-slacker Kevin attire. “What the heck?” Bernice asked, gesturing to his getup and his clean-shaven face when he halted in front of her.
He didn’t answer her, but just said, “Wow,” staring at her. He exhaled a steadying breath. “It’s really you. I had to see for myself. You have no idea how good it is to see you alive, B.” He really did sound very happy. There was something in his voice―a desperate sort of relief―that confused her.
“Yeah. Same here, man. I was sure that old lady killed you with that stuff she blew in your face.” How strange that, for him, an entire year had passed, but for her it felt like almost no time at all.
He was still staring at her with that agitated, intense relief.
Come back to the swamp, come back to the swamp.
He shrugged aside the mention of the old lady. “Oh, that? Man, that was nothing compared to what happened next.”
Bernice felt a spike of rage toward Rebecca. “What― Did she find you later and do something to you?” she hissed.
He blinked. “Um, no.”
“What then?” Bernice asked.
He swallowed, his gaze dancing around nervously. “No one told you?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Uh …”
He cleared his throat. “B, they thought I murdered you.”
“What?” Bernice screeched. “They what?”
Kevin ran shaking hands through his now-short hair. “Yep.”
Bernice spluttered incoherently.
Kevin nodded in agreement.
“No way,” she breathed. “No. Like did you go to jail?”
Kevin nodded. “Yeah, for a while. But they couldn’t find any evidence―obviously―so they had to let me go. I’d probably still be there if I weren’t rich and white. But, still, no one believed me. Rich whiteness couldn’t get me that far,” he said with a bleak laugh. “And of course I couldn’t tell them what really happened or they’d think I was―” He broke off and looked around as though he’d forgotten until that moment that they were standing in front of the door to the lobby of the hospital. “You got somewhere to be? I can drive you. You got a car? Wanna go somewhere and talk?” Bernice could see he was really eager to talk. Poor guy must have been going nuts the past year with no one to talk to about what had really happened in the swamp. And people though he was a murderer. A murderer. Kevin. Insane. The poor guy.
Bernice had thought she wanted to be alone. But Kevin was different. Kevin would understand stuff. Kevin had seen Rebecca snap her fingers and make a vine come to life … except of course vines were already alive. But Rebecca had made it move. And Kevin had seen it happen. It had wrapped around his wrists and held him in place while she’d blown creepy drugs in his face. Thus, he knew Rebecca was … what? Magic? A witch? What? “Yeah, let’s go somewhere.” Come back to the swamp, come back to the swamp. “Somewhere loud.”
#
Kevin turned up the radio as he steered his car onto the onramp to the expressway. They had opted to just drive around aimlessly while they talked, instead of chatting about insanity and murder accusations over lattes at a coffee shop.
At Bernice’s request, Kevin had put the volume of the radio pretty loud, but she turned it up a bit more.
He raised his eyebrows and said loudly over the radio, “That’s a commercial for divorce attorneys, B. You pump up strange jams.”
“I don’t care what it is so long as it’s loud,” she responded. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought the voice was getting louder. She looked over at Kevin, whose eyes were glued to the road. “So … jail?”
He glanced her way and sighed. “Yep. Jail. I went to jail.”
“You went to jail.” She shook her head.
He nodded.
“Why? Why did they suspect you? You’re so not a murderer.”
“Oh man. So many reasons,” he replied. “Uh, the camera on the parking lot at the science building caught me getting into your car, and that was the last you were seen on campus or anywhere, and they worked out I was the last person who’d seen you. And then I had your backpack and your phone and your water when they found me in the swamp, and they thought I’d killed you and dumped you in the swamp and taken your stuff. They worked out some crazy story about how I was obsessed with you and you rejected me and I killed you in a jealous rage.”
Bernice felt sick. “No. Oh, Kevin … that’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”
“B, don’t. It’s not your fault.”
“But I should never have taken you into that swamp. Not after I started suspecting what she was.”
“I said don’t,” he snapped, angrily. “Don’t apologize, Bernice.”
She stared at him. The Kevin she knew did not get angry like that.
He gave her an apologetic glance, exhaled sharply, and said, “Sorry. Just please don’t apologize.” He hit the steering wheel with his fist.
Bernice said, “Geez, man, what’s up? This isn’t you.”
“It’s been a rough year.”
Bernice frowned. “Aw, please don’t tell me your cool dude slacker vibe is gone.”
He gave a grudging laugh. “It’s kinda hard to maintain. It goes in waves.”
“You’ll get things back on track,” Bernice assured. “Everyone knows you’re not a murderer now. I mean, here I am. Not dead.”
“Yeah.” He got quiet.
“You still in that band? The folky band that played that club just off campus?”
“Nah. Concerts got weird after you disappeared. People showed up yelling at me and stuff. I figured it’d be better for the rest of the band if I made myself scarce.”
Bernice frowned. “Still painting?”
“Uh, sorta.” He gave a forced laugh. “Sorry I’m being so depressing.”
“No problem. It is what it is.” Bernice turned up the music a bit more and watched the trees and buildings as they sped by. She couldn’t hear the voice, but she could feel it. Somehow, she knew it was there.
After a bit, Kevin said over the music, “Just please don’t feel guilty. That creepy old lady took you. It’s her fault. Not yours. She messed you up and she messed me up and it’s all her fault.”
Bernice nodded. “You’re right.”
“Are the cops looking for her?”
“I think so. They asked me questions about her but I couldn’t give them much. My memories are sparse. And foggy. Very confused.”
He gave a shuddering sigh. “They were all so convinced it was me. Even after they had to let me go, police would park outside my house. What friends I still had told me officers would ask them questions about me. I know they were just doing their job and all, but … I mean, I was innocent. That’s why they had no evidence. Because I didn’t do it.”
Bernice swallowed. Something else occurred to her, and though she didn’t want to hear the answer, she asked anyway, “Are you still in school?”
Clenching his teeth, he shook his head. “Couldn’t juggle the murder thing and school. No way.”
“But now you’ll go back, right?”
“I haven’t had a chance to think about it, B. Just found out you were back a few hours ago. But s
ure. Probably.” He paused. “Can we talk about you? It’s been a hell of a year, but now it’s over because here you are not murdered.”
“Not murdered at all,” she said. It really would be nice to talk to him about it. He would believe her probably. “Sure, let’s talk about me.”
“It really is so great to see you alive,” he repeated. “I mean, I sure knew I didn’t kill you, but I figured our pal Rebecca had. Why didn’t she? Like what was the point of her taking you? What’d you do out there this past year?”
“No idea,” Bernice sighed. “I mostly hallucinated. No idea what she was up to all that time, but it probably involved drugging me repeatedly and making sure I ate food and didn’t die.”
Kevin looked from the road to her with wide eyes. “That is messed up. Like really messed up. Did they get you a therapist at the hospital?”
“Yeah, I talked to her for a few minutes when they brought me in. I have another appointment tomorrow morning.” Thoughts of therapy made her think of the voice she didn’t want to talk about and the Space Mantis hallucinations she’d had. “Uh, did you see stuff when she blew those spores and stuff in your face?”
“Oh man. Dude, Bernice. That was crazy. I was the lead singer of this sweet Americana band and we toured all over and it was awesome. I only saw it in flashes, but the flashes I saw were amazingly, amazingly awesome.”
“Whoa. Fun.”
“Yeah. How about you?”
“I was in an episode of Space Mantis. Or a season. Or whatever.”
“Sweet!”
She laughed. “It was, kinda.”
“Silver lining, eh?” Kevin smiled. “Hey, so why do we have the music so loud?”
Bernice glanced out the window and frowned. Well, if she couldn’t tell him, she couldn’t tell anyone, and it sure would be nice to tell someone. She swallowed and said in a rush, “I’ve been hearing a voice in my head. It’s telling me to go back to the swamp.”
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