ethereal connection to things past. The murmuring voice inside my head stepped upward as if someone had just twisted the volume knob to full. I still couldn’t make out what was being said, but it was becoming clearer with each sound it uttered.
I wasn’t able to keep literal track of the seconds as they ticked by, but I knew my hesitation over my own doubts had already cost me part of the already short span of time. I now began to wonder if thirty seconds would be enough to accomplish what I needed to do.
I took another glance out the driver’s side window and saw Felicity. Though I could no longer hear her, or anything other than the preternatural noise inside my skull, I saw her lips moving in slow motion and could make out the words, “ Damnu! Rowan, open the door! ”
A few feet behind her I saw Ben snatching a Slim Jim from a state trooper and turning toward the car. My hoped for thirty seconds was about to become something closer to fifteen or twenty at the most.
I realized then I couldn’t wait for the connection to take its normal course. Unfortunately, the only way I knew to speed it up added yet another layer of peril to the unbridled risk I was already taking. Given that fact, I might well be glad to be pulled out of here in twenty seconds instead of thirty.
Ben was already nearing the car, sprinting in an extruded slow motion through my distorted view of the here and now. If I wasted any more time, this whole undertaking would be for naught.
I grasped the steering wheel with my left hand, slapped my right palm onto the passenger side seatback, and then leaned back against the headrest as I purposely stopped grounding and allowed all of my psychic defenses to fall by the wayside.
There was a bloom of color then a bright flash of blinding white. After that, my world was no longer my own. In that instant, I was no longer who I was, I was no longer where I was, and I was no longer what I was.
I simply wasn’t.
CHAPTER 29:
Anger…
Sadness…
Betrayal…
And back to anger yet again.
The emotions are shifting through me like a storm… Random, but always beginning with anger and ending with the same, as the semi-jumbled cycle repeats once again.
Memories flood around me, none of them familiar because none of them are my own. They don’t stop to acquaint themselves with the stranger grasping at them. Instead they flit past, as if in a hurry to escape something yet unseen.
I catch only the barest glimpse of what they might be but nowhere near enough to grasp what they truly are.
I see nothing but their flickering trails as they fade into the distant void to remain a private mystery.
I feel nothing but the circular list of painful emotions.
Then I feel nothing at all…
Thirst…
Want…
Need…
Thirst…
A new flight of feelings penetrates my soul. Something is different about them-something beyond the obvious.
They are darker…
More ordered…
More frightening.
I try to embrace them anyway, but they recede at my touch. They have as much fear of me as I have of them.
Falling…
Falling…
Falling…
I feel as though the brass ring has been ripped from my grasp. The answers I seek are now nothing more than Doppler-shifted pinpoints in the distance.
I am left only with questions.
And, frustration…
I try to scream, but no sound can penetrate the emptiness.
Falling…
Floating…
Falling…
Absolute darkness surrounds me.
There is no longer anything in the void.
No emotion.
No memories.
Nothing…
Only me, and I am nothing.
A chorus of screams echoes in my ears as light blooms in my eyes. They come to an abrupt end as once again silence falls swiftly like a sharp guillotine blade.
There is a complete end to all sound.
The light dulls to blue-black night. Muted colors bleed into a grainy landscape before me as my eyes try to adjust. Sound fades in once again, but all I hear is the beating of my own heart and the rhythmic rush of blood in my ears.
I am standing on an empty street. A lone streetlamp casts a dim sodium vapor glow around me, sending my own oblique shadow across the cracked asphalt to meld with the darkness.
I stare at the shadow where it falls across the curb. There is a storm drain to my right. The street is dry, but a narrow river is flowing along the gutter and into the gaping mouth of the sewer.
But it isn’t water.
It is red…
And thick…
It is blood.
I look up and away from the horrid sight. In front of me is a boarded up house. I try to focus on it. It is old, and the brick facing is streaked black where smoke and fire once billowed out. Fallen leaves choke the stands of browned weeds that cover the yard.
A short flight of concrete stairs leads up to the front door. They are in a state of extreme disrepair, pocked with holes where chunks have been broken off through years of abuse and neglect. The vinyl soffit is scorched, now hanging in drip-like slags where it eventually cooled, frozen in time. Warped and greying plywood covers the windows. Graffiti marks the boards with names and crude drawings, but the weather has faded them beyond recognition.
It appears that even the vandals have abandoned this place.
I stare at the unlit porch light to the left of the door. It is really nothing more than a metal protrusion jutting from the outer wall. The glass globe is long missing, and a dead yellow bulb sags beneath as the detached socket in which it is set dangles from the frayed electrical wires. The motion draws my attention to the area below where reflective numbers step downward across the brick at a shallow angle.
2 – 3 – 0 – 2.
The last 2 in the sequence is canted to the right, apparently missing the top fastener that held it to the brick. The curve at its back rests against what remains of a frame for a now missing storm door.
