“Yes. A little.”
“And your channeling the victim, aren’t you?”
“Yeah… That’s my guess, anyway… Why?”
“Because this doesn’t happen to you when it’s someone else’s investigation, that’s why… Here, sit down.”
My wife all but shoved me onto the sofa-not that it took much for her to do so given my present state. She took a moment to situate me to her liking then began covering me with an afghan after shooing one of the cats from it.
She had a point, even if it wasn’t entirely on base. This sort of thing still happened to me even when it wasn’t one of Ben’s cases, but never to this extreme. I suppose even the tortured spirits of the dead had enough sense to know whether or not I had access to someone who would actually listen to what I had to say rather than having me hauled off for psychiatric evaluation.
“You stay right there,” she told me after she finished more or less tucking me in. “I’m going to go make you some sage tea.”
“Okay,” I told her.
There was really little else I could do. Even if I wanted to bring up the fact that I’d been using salt and try to argue the point with her I wasn’t feeling up to it. Oddly enough, however, my lack of fight wasn’t because I was in any major pain. In fact, I no longer felt a single ache. The pervasive weakness had actually transformed into a sense of absolute comfort and the earlier cold that had started to seep into my bones was now replaced by welcome warmth.
I allowed my eyelids to droop as the pleasantness washed over me. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so completely relaxed. I was on the verge of giving myself over to the darkness of sleep when I felt a quick flutter in my chest. It was followed by a second, and then a tickle started somewhere deep inside my brain.
I tried to ignore it, but it was on a mission. It persisted in the same way a nagging question would turn into a mindless obsession that kept you awake at night. As if giving in to just such a need to go check and make sure a light is turned off, I allowed the relentless itch to force me to move my arm. Had I been in any other state of mind I don’t know if I would have considered the unnatural degree of effort it took to accomplish that task to be worthwhile. But since the growing nag was going to continue pecking at me until I satisfied the curiosity it had awakened, I complied.
After what seemed an endless stretch of time, I managed to bring my hand against my neck. However, the action did little to quell the tickle in my grey matter because I discovered in that instant my fingers were now completely numb. Unable to feel anything at all, I gave up and allowed my hand to fall away as I offered myself to the comfort of the encroaching darkness.
At that same instant, I could have sworn I heard Felicity’s near panicked voice screaming my name.
CHAPTER 7:
I didn’t recall much of anything between hearing the echo of my wife’s voice and coming to once again. Of course, whether or not I had actually lost consciousness in the first place was a minor point of contention. I thought I had, but according to Felicity, she didn’t think so; or if I had, it was for no more than a split second. Since the whole event was all really just a blank spot in my head, I had to take her word for it.
The only thing I could say for certain was that I had suddenly found her concerned face hovering over me while she pressed her hand hard against my neck-hard enough to hurt, in fact. Prior to that, about the only thing I could remember was the sensation of floating in a dark, silent void. Of course, that was nothing new. Unfathomable darkness and general disorientation were all just part of the scenery when the dead were demanding my attention. It seemed to be their way of trying to gain the upper hand, and much to my chagrin, it usually worked.
What it came down to in the final analysis was that Felicity was probably dead on with her estimate about how much time I had spent unconscious-even if that fraction of a second had felt much longer to me. But, that was to be expected. Time had an odd way of becoming an unreliable reference point on the dark side of the veil, especially when you didn’t belong there.
It didn’t really matter now anyway. Fifteen minutes had noticeably ticked away since then, and in the world of the living, time still retained its illusion of being a dependable benchmark. Of course, while one-quarter hour wasn’t exactly the distant past, it still made a difference; for now there was no longer darkness and peaceful quiet wrapped around me-just harsh light and the sound of running water.
“Really, honey, I’m fine,” I said aloud, my voice a tired drone. The words themselves were inherently positive, but my timbre painted them with a gloomy hue, which effectively defeated my purpose for making the comment in the first place.
I leaned forward with a heavy sigh, resting my hands on top of the bathroom vanity, and looked into the mirror as I struggled to actually believe the untruth that had just tumbled out of my mouth. Given what I saw staring back at me, I was going to be hard pressed to do so. On top of that, I wasn’t even taking into account that the all too familiar dull thud in the back of my head had finally arrived, which definitely wasn’t going to make things easy. The symptom list of signature aches associated with my curse was sounding off one by one. But the truth is, as residual effects go, the headache was probably the lesser of my worries at the moment.
Shifting my eyes slightly, I could see Felicity’s face reflected in the pane of silvered glass as well. Judging from her thin-lipped frown, she wasn’t buying into my empty reassurances at all, so it was really a waste of time for me to even continue pretending.
After a thick pause, she replied flatly, giving me a verbal confirmation of her disbelief while she finished wringing out a washcloth in the basin. “No, Rowan, you aren’t. Look at yourself…”
I certainly couldn’t blame her for being disagreeable. After all, I was lying and not very well at that. Under the circumstances, she obviously wasn’t interested in wasting time with the game of verbal hide and seek. I had to admit that I didn’t really feel up to playing either. I suppose I was just doing it out of habit.
I moved my gaze back to my own reflection and took in the not so pretty picture once again. Smears of red still glistened in haphazard swaths along my jaw line and down my neck. A rusting crinkled pattern ran across my shoulder and upper chest where my now discarded shirt had recently been plastered to my body by the sticky wetness. I was an absolute mess by most any standards. In my own eyes at least, I pretty much looked like an extra from the set of a low budget slasher movie.
I continued watching in the mirror as my wife reached up and carefully wiped away more of the blood with the wet cloth then folded it over and made a second gentle swipe. Since it had already started coagulating, there were thick, crusty trails left behind on my skin that were going to take quite a bit more coercion to remove.
“This is insane, Row,” she muttered. “Just insane…”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Tell me about it.”
“And this was how the victim died then?”
“Uh-huh,” I answered. “At least that’s what I was told. Apparently, the way Ben outlined it, she appeared to have been purposely bled to death, which would kind of explain this…” I gestured at the blood with my free hand. “Except there was no blood at the scene, which obviously doesn’t explain this.”
“I see,” she returned. “I guess I should be grateful it wasn’t something a bit more immediate or you might not be standing here right now.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I guess that last bit is why he asked you about vampires, then” she announced, ignoring my objection.
“Yeah, I think so. I guess I can’t blame him too much for thinking something like that,” I said. “I mean after everything we’ve asked him to accept on blind faith over the years, why not? To someone like him, I don’t think he sees it as that much of a stretch. Witch, vampire…”
“Maybe so, but what next? Zombies?”
I couldn’t help but snort out a half chuckle. “I really doubt it. In his defense he was talking about the people in a particular subset of the Goth subculture who claim to be vampires.”
“I still say it’s insane,” she replied then made a point of displaying the bloody washcloth to me and adding, “Especially this.”