Knowing

by Laurel Dewey

  She stepped back and observed him, shining the light on him like a back alley suspect. For a moment, she felt as if two people were staring back at her. Gradually, one of them drifted behind the other and Harlan’s terrified eyes took over.

  “What am I gonna do, Jane?”

  She had an idea. A ridiculous idea. “Sit back and relax.” She lifted up the cooler from between the two leather recliners and shoved Millie’s chair closer to Harlan. Returning back to her car with the cooler, she put away her computer. The air was turning nippy, signaling another spring snowstorm on the horizon. Figuring the cooler would retain a bit more of the outdoor chill and preserve what food they had left, Jane propped it up on the hood of her Mustang. Grabbing a few blankets from the trunk, she locked the car and walked back into the house.

  Harlan was still in Larry’s chair, feet propped up, with a worried expression. “What are you plannin’, Jane?”

  After handing a blanket to Harlan, she slid into Millie’s recliner and lifted the footrest. After a moment of thought, she spoke up. “Maybe I can help you.”

  “What are you talkin’ about?”

  She told him about the electrical shock she got when she touched his leg the night before and the strange disjointed images that pulsated simultaneously. “I can’t promise anything,” Jane explained, “but maybe I can…I don’t know…”

  “See what I’m seein’?” he asked, screwing his face into a curious twist.

  The minute he said that, Jane grimaced. This was the kind of stuff people only do in Boulder or Crestone and even then, there are usually candles, incense, some sort of metal chime and monotonous, three tone music playing to accompany the event. “You want to just give it a shot?” She draped the blanket over her body.

  “What makes you think you’re even capable of doing this?” His tone leaned toward insulting. “You’re a cop, for God’s sake!”

  “I’ve experience some pretty weird shit over the past couple years, Harlan. I can’t explain it, except that…” She tried valiantly to come up with a suitable explanation. “I can’t explain it. Maybe…I can be your eyes.”

  “What do I got to do?” he asked guardedly.

  “Just lay back. Relax. Go to sleep.”

  He waited. “Yeah…Then what?”

  “I’ll just put my hand over your hand and close my eyes.”

  He stared at her with those obtuse orbs. “You ain’t comin’ on to me, are you?”

  “No, Harlan. I’m not coming onto you. You want to give this a try or not?”

  He let out a puff of air and settled back in the recliner. “Okay. Let ‘er rip.”

  Jane turned off the flashlight, leaving them in total darkness, save for the subtle moonlight that crept across the wooden floor. It took Harlan about five minutes to relax and fall asleep. She waited until his breathing changed before gently cupping her right hand over his left hand as it rested on the arm of the chair. She closed her eyes and waited but nothing happened. Thirty minutes passed and she was still waiting while Harlan snored like a stuck foghorn. She finally opened her eyes and shook her head, silently belittling herself for entertaining such a bizarre plan. The day’s events quickly caught up with her and exhaustion set in fast. Maneuvering her body into a more comfortable position, Jane let out a breath and, with her hand still cupped over his hand, allowed Morpheus—the god of sleep and dreams—to embrace her.

  She felt herself floating as if on a cloud. Sinking deeper, she fell into a paralyzing slumber. And then it happened. First, Jane felt pinpricks of electrical energy sparking off the knuckles on her right hand. While she was conscious and aware of it on one level, another part of her was an observer. With her eyes still shut, a curious pinpoint of blue light appeared in the center of her vision. Yes, this is what Jane remembered Harlan calling the “blue light special.” Seemingly powered by the electric connection between she and Harlan, the light expanded. Jane opened her eyes, expecting to see a blue light beaming into the house from an outside source. But there was only darkness and that cushion of moonlight in front of her. With her hand still on top of Harlan’s, she closed her eyes again and let out a hard breath.

  Within seconds, the electrical charge between them increased. She could hear Harlan’s breathing become labored, signaling the onset of another chaotic nightmare. The blue light appeared once again and grew quickly until all Jane saw was a pulsating spectrum of intense sapphire luminosity. Just when she thought she couldn’t take the intense glare, a high-pitched tone rang in her left ear and continued, as it moved through the center of her head and triggered the same tonal frequency in her right ear. A cyclone of energy felt like it was spiraling in the center of her brain. Jane likened the experience to being plugged into a jet that was about to take flight. Just like the rumbling of the jet’s powerful engines as it speeds down the runway, the sharp tone lingered and intensified until when it reached a crescendo, she could swear something ignited inside her head. At the exact moment of ignition, the penetrating tone suddenly stopped and she was slammed forward into the sapphire light.

  Strangely, Jane felt no fear as she looked down at the cool, wet dirt beneath her. Looking around, she saw an expansive farmland, cradled in a valley between two mountain ranges. The aroma of freshly harvested potatoes still hugging the dark earth enveloped her. Hearing footsteps through the tall grass, Jane turned. There was a dark-haired boy about ten or eleven years old with a round face and piercing blue eyes, carrying a small rifle. She watched him closely as he methodically hunkered down between the blades of green grass and, resting the rifle on his knee, took aim and shot. Following him through the grass that bent with the wind, they walked about one hundred yards until he stopped and picked up the body of a rabbit. She found herself wanting to say something but she couldn’t speak. Somehow she understood that words were useless in this place and communication was only possible through the mind’s eye. With that realization, she attempted to send the boy a message that she was there and watching him. To her utter amazement, he turned around and looked at her. Without moving his lips, she heard his young voice.

  “Be brave, Jane.”

  In an instant, she was sucked out of that scene and catapulted through a veil of electric colors, each one holding a different scene. She chose one of them randomly and dove into it. A kaleidoscope of images flashed in front of her, none of them allowing her to focus long enough to interpret anything. In her mind’s eye, she thought, “Slow it down!” and everything came to a halt. She was standing on a cheerful suburban street, filled with homes that sported clean picket fences and manicured lawns. Turning to her right, she saw a house with a blue picket fence. There was a mailbox with a last name on it. But she could only see the last three letters of the name: “SON.” The smell of fermented hops mingling with evergreens overwhelmed her. The second she thought she couldn’t stand the scent any longer, Jane was tossed into another rupture of light and color until she felt herself spit into another setting.

  A perfume of roses replaced the nauseating odor as a sparkling setting spun around her. She was inside a house with lots of windows that allowed the warm breeze to freely move and mingle. In a far room, she could hear a man and woman whispering to each other and kissing. Everything around her ebbed and flowed with beauty and the spark of a new life being conceived. Jane wanted to stay in that exquisite spiral forever but as soon as she wished that, she was propelled out of the peacefulness and into a dark hallway.

  Immediately, she sensed unmitigated doom. A tall, muscular man wearing a dark shirt and pants stood with his back in front of her. He moved down the unlit hallway with expert precision. Through the folds of darkness, she could see the pistol with the silencer clasped in his right hand. She followed him, somehow aware that he knew she was there. He reached a closed door at the end of the hall and stopped.

  “Be brave, Jane,” she heard his deep, commanding voice tell her.

 
The darkly clad man turned the knob and gradually opened the door. He moved inside confidently and crept to his right. Jane followed him through the door. The whole time, all she could see was his back. But around her, stood a wood paneled office with no windows. Stacks of files and papers were piled high on the desk and sundry tables that gave the room a cramped atmosphere. Reams of thick books with scientific symbols on the hard covers lay everywhere. Seated in the corner of the room at another desk was an old gray haired man. He, too, had his back to Jane. As much as she tried to see who these men were, she was unable to move past the one with the gun. Without flinching or hesitation, the man with the gun moved to the one seated at the desk. The silencer was pressed against the back of the old man’s head and the trigger was pulled.

  Blood splatter blew across the papers on the desk. Particles of brain matter slapped onto the paneled walls, drifting down the seams, driven by the warm blood. Jane observed the assassination without emotion. It was as if she was hooked into the psychotic matrix and felt indifferent to what just happened. But then a very odd thing happened, as if it couldn’t get any stranger. The assassin holstered his weapon and stood over the man’s desk. He stared for what seemed like an eternity before opening up files and going through the contents. He stacked one folder after another either to the right or left, as if he was separating the information he needed. Jane tried to move at that point but her feet were welded to the floor. Coupled with the sudden paralysis was the stark sense that she could easily feel the growing stress emanating from the assassin. The tension became so severe that her entire body felt ill.

  The longer the man stood there, opening and closing files, the more her body ached, her head throbbed and her legs felt like jelly. The aura in the room was pure evil, Jane determined. A creeping, gut-churning, unrepentant malevolence that moves with a cunning gait and doesn’t stop until its target has been conquered. It dripped with arrogance and greed, chewing through whatever it took to steal the exquisite prize. Her brain felt like it had been split open. The pain was unparalleled. She wanted to grab onto her head, fearing that her soul was being sucked from her body.

  As the man continued to sort through the files, she sensed his repulsion grow with every word he read. After what seemed hours, he gathered a short stack of files and secured them under his tucked shirt. He then quietly moved toward a floor-to-ceiling bank of wooden file cabinets that stood six feet away. The cabinets were similar to those one might see at a high-end lawyer’s office, except that instead of keys, there were touchpad code panels on each file cabinet. As he walked to the files, Jane was suddenly able to pull her legs off the floor. But when she tried to get nearer to the man’s side to see his face and to also check out what he was scrutinizing, she was prevented from doing so. The best Jane could do was to maneuver her body several feet behind his frame the entire time. She watched as he placed the palm of his right hand over one of the keypads. After about thirty seconds, he ran his index finger over the nine numbers, up and down, back and forth, until he rested the finger on one number. He pushed it and repeated the strange back and forth on the keypad another five times, punching other numbers on the keypad until a soft click could be heard. The wooden file door popped open. Inside, there were two shelves. The bottom shelf was empty while the top shelf held a single medium sized white binder.

  The man withdrew the binder and stared at the cover. Creaking it open, he stood and read the contents. Jane waited. Within seconds, she felt a biting pain in her heart. There was a sense that someone was taking a knife and slicing her chest open. Even in this altered state, the torture felt terrifying real. She endured it as long as she could until she heard herself screaming. The pain ceased instantly.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked the man, using her mind to speak.

  “Only what’s necessary.”

  With that, he closed the white binder and held it to his side with the front cover facing Jane. She peered at the three letters in bold red ink: IEB.

  The sound of waves quickly rushed through her head and a wooziness kicked in. There was a sense of falling off a tall building. She closed her eyes, allowing the sensations to envelop her. She felt no fear or anxiety, just a willingness to be released into the cosmos and flung at will until landing on terra firma.

  Jane opened her eyes and was shocked to see it was morning. She was also aware that it was below freezing in that tiny house. And when she turned to Larry’s leather recliner, Harlan wasn’t there.

  CHAPTER 11

  Jane bolted from her recliner and headed out the door. The crisp blast of icy air gripped her as she stared at a fresh coat of fluffy spring snow. The first thing she noticed was the cooler on its side next to the Mustang. Food was strewn everywhere, with the tell-tail footprints of a raccoon outlined on the car’s hood. Staring intently at the two-legged footprints, she followed them around the car and down a short rocky hillside. The footprints became easy to follow because along the way, articles of clothing had been dropped. First was Harlan’s Plaxico Burress sweatshirt, followed by several undershirts, his pants and his shoes. Jane collected the clothing and continued to follow the barefoot prints in the snow, around several large boulders, until she saw Harlan in the distance. He had his back to her and he was completely naked.

  Not wanting to yell for fear of attracting too much attention from possible neighbors, she made her way through the shallow, wet snow until she stood within several feet of Harlan. He was eerily still.

  “Harlan?” she asked quietly, with trepidation.

  “Yeah.”

  His voice sounded normal, yet strangely calm. “What’s going on?”

  “Adapt or die. I don’t know where I heard that but it’s true.”

  “Okay. Has that got something to do with why you’re naked right now?”

  “You gotta expose the body to extremes and then when you’re put in extreme situations, it don’t mean as much to you.”

  “Point taken. Put your pants on.” She tossed him the pants and shirts.

  He remained still. “I feel lighter, Jane. I feel lighter than I’ve felt since my operation. I always thought it took more energy to suffer than to give up. But if I gave up now, I’d spent whatever time I got left regrettin’ that I didn’t find out what he wants. He wants somethin’, Jane.”

  “I know.”

  He slowly put on his pants and then the layers of shirts. “Thank you for what you did for me last night. I don’t how you did it…but I feel like I got a new sun shinin’ on me today.”

  She waited until he dressed and turned to her. “Well…you do have a new spotlight on you. They’re liking you for Dora Weller’s shooter.”

  He shook his head, almost expecting the bad news. “You believe me now, then?”

  Jane nodded. “If DH was working this case, there’s no way in hell we’d make that kind of leap or put out your name like that until we had enough evidence. We keep that kind of shit close to our vest and do our due diligence before parading a suspect in the media. They’ve got nothing to link you to the shooting except that you’re on the run and you’re a convenient fall guy. Your profile doesn’t fit the Weller shooting. You don’t allegedly butcher a prostitute and then take a shot at a congresswoman. They don’t follow. Even if they are pegging you as a maniac, even maniacs follow patterns. Whoever fed that information to the media has a kind of leverage and power I’ve never seen. Whoever it is, they really want you badly and they’ll distort you and your past as much as possible in order to turn everybody against you.”

  “Except for you.”

  “Except for me. And I’m just one person and I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do for you.”

  “Did you find out what he wants?”

  She hesitated a little too long.

  “You did, didn’t you?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure. I have to do more digging.”

  �
�Damn, this is beautiful. He’s been knockin’ at my door, I just didn’t know how to converse with him. Now we can.”

  Jane needed to check herself. “Jesus, Harlan, it’s not that fucking simple. Good God! How did you make it this far in your life being so naïve? What I can or can’t figure out will not make this go away. I have a feeling that even if we figure it all out, you’re still not going to be safe.”

  He smiled. “Oh, hell, Jane. I’ve been safe my whole life. What did it get me? Now I’ve got the heart of someone who ain’t lived a safe day in his life. I kind of like it now…except for the nightmares that make me want to piss my pants. Not sure why he got put inside of me, but crazier things have happened.” He looked off into the distance. “You got any idea what it feels like to have the heart of champion in your chest? I never felt like I was worth anything, Jane. I never had that moment where someone told me I could do great things. But I feel different today. My heart has been freed.”

  She motioned for him to follow her back to the tiny house. Back inside, Jane got on her hands and knees and collected every single pill that Harlan flailed across the room the night before.

  “Grab a couple dishrags and figure out how to cover up that hole in the pane of glass where you broke in,” she instructed Harlan.

  He dutifully obliged, happy to be useful. She found the last pill and snapped the cap back on the bottle.

  “Who do you know that killed himself?” Harlan asked her.

  Jane was still on the floor, working her way up to a standing position. Her silence spoke loudly.

  “You hear me?” he asked again.

  “Of course, I heard you.” She found a piece of paper and a pen. “I’m going to leave Millie and Larry a note with no names. And two hundred bucks. That should cover the damage.”