Miranda: A Rowan Gant Investigation

by M. R. Sellars

  “Yeah, Row, I got that. I ain’t spreadin’ it around, obviously, but I know the score. We just gotta find who.”

  “No… Yes… I mean…” I sighed again as the opiate clouded my thoughts and used my exhaustion to nudge me closer to sleep. “I mean…whoever she’s using…that person already knew the victim… He was probably a friend or close acquaintance.”

  “Why do ya’ say that?”

  I sucked in a deep breath and widened my eyes as I struggled to stay conscious. “Something Miranda said in Texas…” I explained. “She told me she could make the voices stop… That means she already had the spell planned… It wasn’t spur of the moment… She knew this victim before I ever came back to Saint Louis…probably longer…”

  “Okay…” Ben replied with a nod. His voice seemed hollow and distant as the room began melting around me. “I’ll tell my L. T. Saint Flora coppers and MCS are already doin’ a door ta’ door. Maybe we’ll get lucky an’ somebody knows ‘im.”

  “Conmmm ban?” I asked.

  “What?”

  I huffed out an exasperated breath as I tried to make my tongue work in sync with my lips. “Commeen bag?”

  “Comin’ back?” he repeated. “Yeah Row, I’ll be back later. Right now, you just rest.”

  “It’s okay, Rowan,” Constance told me. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here.”

  “Goond,” I mumbled then tried to add, “Nemmer know…my hab sssome…”

  Apparently I didn’t finish the sentence as I heard the echo of Constance’s voice drifting into my ears, “Some what, Rowan?”

  However, even if I had managed to make my mouth work, I wouldn’t have been able to answer the question. It was simply too late.

  I was already falling toward the muddy, roiling water.

  CHAPTER 32

  “Rowan…you came for her,” Ariel says.

  I open my mouth to reply, and the words tumble onto the ground, unspoken and unheard. They shatter, exploding into shimmering gemlike shards, then rain outward only to disappear into the darkness.

  “Come with me,” she says. “She’s been waiting.”

  We are walking…

  The darkness is all around us. I can feel it clinging to me like a shroud. I look down at my own hands but see nothing more than the endless black.

  I look over at Ariel and can see her clearly.

  I don’t even try to ask. It isn’t for me to know.

  We are walking…

  The hollow peal of a telephone ringer worked its way into my ears. It was both infinitely distant and infinitely close by. My brain tried for a moment to make sense of the sound and its proximity to me.

  It was completely out of context. But then, so was I.

  My brain gave up. It knew I belonged somewhere else right now. I had something important to do, and it didn’t involve a telephone.

  “She’s been waiting for you,” Ariel says.

  We are standing in front of a large wooden door with intricate carvings.

  It is more than just familiar.

  It has become a part of me.

  The pain that lives beyond its threshold belongs to me.

  It calls me.

  “It is good that you have come for her,” Ariel says. “She’s waiting.”

  “Thank you,” I tell her.

  The words, like all those before, drip from my mouth in silence. They dribble down my chin then fall, only to land on my chest where they leave bloody stains upon my shirt.

  Ariel says, “Go to her, Rowan.”

  I look up and see the door is now open. I search for Ariel, but she is gone.

  I step through the opening and into a new void.

  The darkness is replaced by grey.

  I’m standing in the center of a small room.

  The walls are close.

  Too close…

  Claustrophobia claws at me.

  I have been here before.

  I turn in place, searching for her.

  In the shadows of the corner an ivory skinned woman waits.

  I go to her.

  I kneel in front of her.

  I reach out and gently touch her.

  Slowly, she brings her face up and stares at me.

  She smiles and says, “I knew you would come.”

  “Felicity?” I ask.

  Sharp pain arcs through my stomach.

  I can no longer breathe.

  I look down and see that I am bleeding.

  The woman begins to laugh.

  She withdraws the knife slowly then plunges it back into my abdomen.

  I look at her and the pain rips through me again.

  She smiles again and says, “Yes, little man. I knew you would come.”

  I’m standing in the darkness.

  I am alone.

  I am standing in the light.

  I am no longer alone.

  Ariel shakes her head then tells me, “Some people just don’t want to stay dead.”

  The comment confuses me.

  I feel something and look down.

  She has my hand cupped in hers, my open palm facing upward.

  I watch as she slowly drops a necklace into it. I’ve seen the piece of jewelry many times before.

  “Now yours,” she tells me.

  I feel something in my other hand. I look and see that the mirror image of the necklace dangles there.

  I turn to Ariel.

  She nods at my palm and repeats, “Now yours, Rowan.”

  I carefully lower the bauble into my hand to join its mate. As they touch, my skin begins to tingle, then burn.

  Ariel closes her hand around mine, folding my fingers over the pair of necklaces.

  Harsh pain chews into my flesh.

  An unearthly fire sears my palm. I can feel my skin blistering as it fries.

  I try to pull away and let go, but Ariel holds my hand in place, squeezing it tightly in both of hers.

  I look back to her face.

  “For one to live, one must die,” she tells me.

  Her eyes are imploring.

  “Some people need to stay dead, Rowan,” she says. “Even if they have to die again.”

  Dark water rushes up toward me…

  The muddy surface roils with tight eddies that appear then disappear.

  I see a flash of light on metal…

  I hear a woman scream…

  I feel pain as she strikes the hard surface of the water…

  I feel panic as the swift current pulls her under…

  I feel death as the silty river flows into her lungs…

  Then, I feel nothing…

  I started awake at the end of the nightmare, just as I had each and every time before. This go around, the wobbling peal of an electronic telephone ringer was assaulting my ears. I had a vague recollection of having recently heard the very same sound, but exactly how recent that had been I wasn’t at all sure. Where time was concerned, it seemed my perception was more than just a little altered.

  The phone started to chirp again, but this time it was cut off at the very beginning of the warble. As the abruptly truncated sound disappeared, it was immediately replaced by a familiar female voice.

  “Hello?” Constance said, her tone hushed. A short and seemingly relaxed pause followed her greeting, but only a second later I could literally feel the silence become tense and purposeful. The sensation was unexpected and jarring. My brain was still swimming in the twilight of half-sleep, but the sudden tingle of gooseflesh along my arms forced me to breach the surface. When Constance spoke again, her voice, while still held low, had taken on a vastly different timbre than had underscored it initially.

  “When did this happen?” she asked.

  I allowed my eyes to open, though they remained half-lidded with drowsiness. I found the room cast in darkness, which was notably different than it had been when I drifted off to sleep whenever ago. The contrast registered; however, it evoked little more from my sluggish synapses than a passing n
otice. It was light then, it was dark now. Nothing more.

  I fought to tread the waters of sleep and hold my head just above unconsciousness. Slowly, my bleary eyes scanned the blue-black shadows of the room. Unlike the preternatural void I had been wandering before, this was purely an earthly absence of light, grounded firmly in reality. My head was rolled to the left, and I could easily make out Constance’s shape as she stood next to the bed. A dim glow, probably from the vitals monitors behind me, spilled into the darkness, bringing a surreal illumination to the surrounding space. I took notice that the outline of Constance’s body seemed to indicate that she was turned toward the door. Her stance was far from relaxed. But again, it was merely a notice. It meant little in the moment.

  I listened as she continued her whispered, businesslike intonation. “He’s still sleeping. Yes, so far. So do you have a description? Uh-hmm… Uh-hmm… Okay. Any sign so far? Okay, have you called Parker yet? No problem, I’ll do it.”

  She turned in place, and then there was a dull plastic click. A second later I heard her starting to stab out a number on the telephone keypad. I pushed myself a little farther above the surface of sleep and groped for my voice.

  “What’s going on?” I managed to croak out in a groggy half-mumble. It seemed like the thing to ask. I saw her outline move again as it twisted toward me.

  “I’m sorry, Rowan,” she replied softly. Judging from the lull in the other sounds, I assumed she had stopped dialing. She added, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “Didn’t,” I grumbled, dipping back below the surface briefly and then popping up once again. “Mmmm… Nnnnn… Nightmare did.”

  “Sorry. Well, this is nothing for you to worry about. It’s just a routine status check. Go on back to sleep…” As she finished the instruction, I heard her click the phone receiver then start dialing again.

  I tried to believe her, but my skin wouldn’t allow it. Now the hair follicles along the nape of my neck danced a painful ballet, insisting that something was wrong. I sucked in a deep breath and slowly let it filter out through my mouth as I focused on remaining awake.

  As I continued to lay there, unmoving, I heard Constance speaking again. This time her attention was squarely focused on the answering party at the other end of the line. “Parker? It’s Mandalay. What’s your status?”

  I watched her silhouette as she turned away from me. The petite FBI agent lowered her voice even further as she continued speaking into the telephone. In less than two syllables, her volume dropped from merely hushed to an almost inaudible whisper. The hiss of the one-sided conversation sounded calm but most definitely urgent. However, as was her apparent plan, I could no longer make out exactly what she was saying. After a minute or so of the secretive discourse, she turned back around and settled the handset onto its base.

  Between the foreboding of my goosebumps and being conscious of the fact that she had called Agent Parker, I now had a slight churn spinning in the pit of my stomach. I pressed my still sleepy voice into service and asked in a tired drone, “Is something wrong? Is Felicity okay?”

  “She’s fine, Rowan,” Constance whispered. “Like I said, this is just a routine check in. There’s nothing for you to worry about. Go back to sleep.”

  I didn’t say another word, but I followed her with my eyes as she left the bedside and stepped over to the window wall. There, using her finger she pulled back the edge of the curtain ever so slightly and then carefully peeked out through the slim gap. A wafer thin shaft of light sliced across her face then splashed its collateral glow over her cheek. It harshly illuminated the severity of her expression and grim set of her jaw. I caught a slight movement in her right shoulder and then noticed a telltale bend to her elbow.

  The delineated shadows grew larger, taking over from the light once again as she lowered the curtain carefully back against the frame and turned to her left. She began stepping lightly toward the door, and though I was not fully awake, I was no longer being pulled under by sleep, so I spoke again.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s really going on?” I asked.

  “I already did, Rowan,” she replied, voice still hushed. She made a stellar attempt at keeping the concern out of her tone. Unfortunately, for her sake, she failed. “It’s nothing.”

  “Sure,” I replied. “Then you started skulking around in the dark with your hand on your gun.”

  “I’m serious. It’s nothing,” she repeated. “You’re safe. Felicity is safe. Don’t worry. Go back to sleep.”

  “I’m not worried, I just want…”

  “Dammit, Rowan,” she hissed. “Will you just shut up and let me do my job?”

  I immediately fell quiet in the wake of the rebuke. I waited a moment in the pregnant silence and then muttered, “Sorry.”

  “Me too,” she sighed quietly. “But, you just need to let us handle this, okay?”

  “You’re right,” I agreed softly.

  “Everything will be fine,” she added. “I promise.”

  “Okay.”

  There was another thick pause, and then she said, “I guess I don’t really need to tell you to stay put, do I?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  She clucked her tongue. “But then again, this is you we’re talking about… So as ridiculous as it sounds, I’m telling you to stay put. Understand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” she replied.

  I heard her exhale heavily, almost as if she didn’t believe me. Then without another word, she pulled the door open and slipped out, tugging it shut behind her.

  I lay there in the darkness, listening to the sound of my heart beating in my chest. Whatever was happening was obviously serious. Whether Constance would admit to it or not, it didn’t matter. Her actions definitely weren’t in step with a routine status check, and anyone could see that.

  My mind raced as I tried to recall what little I had picked up from the one-sided conversation. She had asked when something had happened, and then she had asked if there was a description. From the sound of what followed, I had the impression that the answer to that latter question had been a yes.

  I concentrated on the vague pieces of information, trying to fit them together but finding only frustration in the task. My body was still floating in numbed comfort as the unspent remnants of the morphine coursed through my system. I could feel that the drug was starting to overtake me once again. The phantom echo of Constance’s voice rang inside my head, “Go on back to sleep…”

  As my brain slipped back into a sluggish stupor, her suggestion seemed like as good a plan as any. I stopped fighting and let the mantle of slumber surround me. I was just slipping out of consciousness when the phone began to ring.

  CHAPTER 33

  Now, I was wide-awake.

  An unearthly chill was chasing itself up and down my spine, and the earlier ballet performed by the hair along my neck had morphed into a full-blown tap dance. The stinging sensation of the gooseflesh pulsed in time with the throb that had set up housekeeping in the back of my skull. And all of this was happening before the first ring had even come to an end.

  I waited in the darkness as the telephone blipped out another pair of warbling alerts in languid succession, but still no one came. Of course, with the door closed they probably couldn’t hear it. I really didn’t know.

  I stared at the nightstand where the phone was sitting and tried to judge the distance. In the dark and without my glasses, it wasn’t an easy task. Even so, I concluded that it wasn’t comfortably within my limited reach, and I’d already been admonished more than once for moving around too much.

  As ring four bounced from the walls, I sent my hand searching for the control pendant with the nurse call button. Unfortunately, I found nothing more than a tangle of sheets and blankets. Reaching up next to my head and beneath the corner of the pillow brought the same result. By now, peal number five was demanding attention.

  At this point, the ache in my head was bringing with it a sick
ly familiarity. I knew this wasn’t just your average ethereal migraine. It had Miranda’s sickly perfume wafting all around it, and that was almost enough to set my gag reflex into motion.

  By the sixth ring I was still laying there alone. For all I knew, Constance had declared my room off limits until whatever threat she wasn’t willing to admit had finally passed. By the seventh clatter of the electronic bell, it was apparent to me that if the phone was to be answered, I was going to have to do it myself.

  I was already on my side, so I stretched out my arm, only to have it meet resistance a full foot away from the handset. I tugged slightly and felt something pulling on the back of my hand. I withdrew my arm and fumbled about then discovered that I had snagged my IV line on the bedside railing at my back.

  I rolled slightly and, after a trio of horribly uncoordinated attempts, managed to unhook the loop and free myself. The phone was now well into its tenth ring. Whoever was at the other end definitely wasn’t giving up.

  Rolling back to my left once again, I pressed myself up against the railing and reached over the top toward the nightstand that held the phone. Once again I came up short; although this time I could almost touch the chirruping device. I sucked in a deep breath and then blew it out as hard as I could, groaning while I stretched. My fingers brushed against the plastic but couldn’t wrap themselves around it.

  The eleventh ring filled the room.

  I allowed myself to fall back to the right and summoned everything my tortured body could give. Rolling as hard as possible to the left, I thrust out my arm and lunged against the railing. My index finger hooked the handset cord, and as I fell back I pulled it with me.

  The telephone base clattered over the edge of the nightstand in the middle of the thirteenth ring, unceremoniously bringing it to an end. The device hung there by a thin wire while I maintained a tenuous one-fingered hold on the coiled cord that was attached to the receiver. Pulling my arm back, I managed to fish the handset up over the rail and wrap my hand around it. Breathing heavily from what apparently qualified as extreme physical exertion, I bent my elbow and shoved the handset up against the side of my head.