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 notice. 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
