There it was again, that distant, tinny voice.
This time it had said, “Major Case Squad.” Then it said, “Chloe and Russ.” Now, these things actually made sense. A by-product of that sense was an answer to one of my earlier questions.
Maybe.
From the sound and content, I thought that what I was hearing might be the audio from a television newscast. A partially revealed memory lumbered through the inside of my skull, and I took hold of it.
I was watching the morning news at home in my living room before heading upstairs to my office and getting to work. I got up from my chair during a commercial break and went into the kitchen. I poured myself a fresh cup of coffee, then turned and went back into the living room.
After that, the remembrance grew a bit fuzzy around the edges. Well, actually it was completely obscured from my view because the real truth was that I had absolutely no idea what had occurred in whatever span of time had elapsed since I had poured that cup of coffee.
Still, maybe I wasn’t hallucinating as I’d earlier thought. Of course, if I could get the rest of the memory to come into some kind of focus, I might get a better handle on my current situation.
The thud in my skull was actually starting to subside, for which I was more than grateful. The bizarre in and out thrum, however, continued rumbling in my ear, competing with the sound of the television. I started taking stock of the other sensations and happened across the fact that while my forehead was freezing, my neck was actually warm- very warm. In fact, it was downright hot.
I thought about that for a moment and then realized that there also seemed to be something soft but weighty involved. As I continued pondering this latest sensation, I started feeling pressure against my left cheek that seemed to be moving in time with the warbling hum.
I took another shot at opening my eyes, and slowly my left eyelid responded to the instruction. I looked out of the corner of my eye and found that the majority of my limited field of vision was filled with black fur. The soft pads of a pair of feline paws continued pushing against the side of my face as Dickens, one of our trio of cats, kneaded in rhythm with his own purr.
Some semblance of clarity was beginning to creep back into my head as the various pains began to subside. I rolled my eye forward and saw a close up view of polished hardwood strips stretching out before me, although the tableau was a bit on the fuzzy side. While this was a vastly different angle than to what I was accustomed, I recognized what I was seeing to be my living room floor.
A few inches in front of my face, I could see shapes rising out of the horizontal plane. These were also tinged by blurriness but still identifiable as my eyeglasses and as the fragmented remains of a ceramic coffee mug. I guess that would explain why the side of my head was wet.
Well, at least now I knew where I was, which was a plus. Unfortunately, I also had a nagging suspicion that I knew why I was in my current, uncomfortable position. I felt my stomach do a double flip at the very thought and decided not to go there. Not yet, anyway. Maybe I was wrong, and this had been nothing more than me being a klutz. At least, that’s what I tried to tell myself. In the back of my head, I knew better.
I let out a groan and gently shoved the now drooling feline off my neck then pushed myself up to my hands and knees. I let my head hang for a moment and took a deep breath. A chilly draft tickled my bare arms, and the reason behind my semi-frozen forehead became immediately obvious- I had been lying directly in front of the air conditioning vent.
The television was still chattering in the background when I dragged myself to my feet. The newscasters had moved on to another, far less horrific story, and the screen was filled with the image of a hyperactive blonde feature reporter whose actual name escaped me at the moment. Synapses were continuing to fire with fewer misses each time around, so I tried to grasp at the obscured bit of information for no other reason than to take my mind off the things I didn’t want to face. But, it didn’t help. I could still sense the foreboding tickle growing in the back of my brain, and in the end, all I seemed to remember was that she was named after a state.
I stared at the screen for a moment longer and then gave up. I knew it wasn’t important and wasting my time on it would probably just make my headache worse. I reached up and rubbed my palm across the lower half of my face then gently touched my fingertips to my tongue. When I pulled my hand away and had a look, I found blood just as I knew I would.
My tongue still felt like ground meat, and I hadn’t yet rid myself of the metallic tang that was invading my mouth. My head was continuing to throb with a dull ache, but other than that, the rest of my body’s agonies seemed to have fled as fast as they had arrived. That was both good and bad. Good, of course, because the pain was gone. Bad, because that meant they had been phantom pains. Oh, they had felt real enough at the time, but that was the extent of it. They only felt real. There were no wounds, abrasions, or bruises. There was no physical evidence to explain why they had been there to begin with. And, unfortunately, this lead me back to my earlier suspicion.
My stomach twisted into a knot once again, and I felt a brief spate of nausea come over me. This was exactly the kind of thing that happened whenever I was experiencing someone else’s physical pain. And for them, it was real pain, not imagined.
This had been a psychic episode, and it was all too familiar. Sometimes they were the same, and at other times they were vastly different. Usually they came in groups that were so similar as to not be able to tell them apart. But, no matter what, they maintained the common thread of blackouts and migraine-like headaches that seemed to linger forever. The types of phantom pains, odd tastes, auditory anomalies, or anything else always depended upon exactly what was being experienced by the other person.
The last episode I’d had like this one had actually been a series of them, but that had been something like four or five months ago. As abruptly as they had started, they had ended. I’d tried to forget about them, but I couldn’t. I knew then that it was only a matter of time before they would return.
The sickening part was that every time this sort of thing happened to me, somebody died. Worse yet, it was usually more than one somebody.
I guess that’s what I get for being a Witch.
CHAPTER 2:
I was rinsing my mouth out with warm salt water when the phone rang. I gave a final swish and spit the pink tinged liquid into the basin, then grabbed a hand towel and blotted my bearded chin as I walked out of the bathroom. The electronic warble issued again, making the telephone sound just about as impatient as any inanimate device could be.
“Chill out! I’m coming, I’m coming…” I said aloud, as if a verbal scolding would make it stop. It didn’t.
I was still wiping my chin when I rounded the corner into the kitchen and glanced at the caller ID box on the wall. OUT OF AREA and a row of dashes was showing on the liquid crystal display, so I lifted the receiver then allowed it to drop right back into the cradle. I had no interest in dealing with a salesman who believed it was okay to ignore the no-call list, not to mention that I still had that headache.
I continued walking over to the counter and retrieved a mug from the cabinet, then filled it with water from the filtered tap. I had just placed it on the turntable in the microwave when the phone began pealing for attention again. I slammed the door on the microwave shut, then quickly punched in three minutes and hit start before stepping back over to the phone.
OUT OF AREA and a row of dashes displayed yet again, and once more I lifted the receiver then let it drop with a heavy clunk.
The microwave was humming away behind me as I stepped over to the multi-tiered spice and herb rack mounted on the wall and began my search for dried willow bark. The search was going to be a huge pain in and of itself, and that just made my head ache more.
Had I been in charge of the rack, the task wouldn’t have been a big deal at all, as everything would be in alphabetical order. My wife, Felicity, however, was the keeper of the herbs, and she had her own way of categorizing the bottles. Little groups of related and semi-related spices, barks, herbs, and teas lined the rack. The organization of such simply defied any explanation I could muster.
However, put Felicity in front of it, and she could easily snatch up a bottle of whatever you asked for without
