notice.
A sudden, heavy aching filled my chest and was paired with an acrid chemical taste forming on the back of my tongue. The bitter taste welled up through my sinuses, reminding me of the smell of bleach. I drew in a shallow breath and felt it gurgle in my lungs as if I had just blown through a straw into a glass of water. I reached up and loosened my tie even farther then fumbled with the shirt button at my throat.
I propped myself against the edge of a couch and watched on as the coroner and her assistant wheeled Sheryl Keeven’s body from the room. I tried to tell myself that maybe my connection with her was too intense. Maybe I was just experiencing a latent effect of the vision. After all, she had choked to death, and I had just channeled the experience. There were bound to be some phantom pains. Yes, that had to be it, I recited inside my head. If some distance were put between us, then the pain would surely stop.
“A collar,” I wheezed.
I sucked hard again, fighting to breathe, and the wet gurgle rattled deeper in my chest. This time not only did I feel it but faintly heard it as well. It felt like a car was parked on top of me, and I was beginning to gasp. The terrifying thought of a heart attack scrolled through my mind, and I quickly fought to dismiss it. No, I kept telling myself, this is just an aftereffect.
“Go on,” Constance urged. “You saw a collar… Like a clergyman’s collar?”
Ben had pulled out his worn notepad and was waiting patiently for me to give him something to scribble in it.
“Yes,” I sputtered and wheezed. “Black and white… like a priest…”
My voice was gurgling with an odd viscosity, and what was happening was no longer my own private secret. Abject horror was unceremoniously paroled from its prison cell in my subconscious as I suddenly realized what was happening. My one greatest personal fear was coming to pass. I was suffocating. In the middle of a bone-dry, Saint Louis apartment, nowhere near water, I was drowning.
“Hey, Kemosabe…” Ben looked up from his notes with a cocked eyebrow. “You okay? You sound like you’re havin’ trouble breathin’ or somethin’.”
“I… I…” I panted damply.
I wrestled to beat back the terror that had just ignited within my body but met with only limited success. I could feel myself beginning to tremble as I tried to tell my friend what was happening. The words only caught in my tightening throat and bubbled back down into my lungs. Each breath was becoming more labored and shallow than the last. I sucked hard and was rewarded with nothing but pain. My chest was heavy, and what little air I inhaled felt horribly thick.
Humid.
Wet.
I was growing dizzy, and the room was starting to reel and spin slowly. My ears were ringing, and everything was taking on an unnatural contrast. Lights were blooming and shadows darkening viciously. Something more than my ethereal connection with this latest victim was definitely at work. I brought my hand up and clawed at my chest. I was toeing the harshly scribed line of panic, and I was teetering precariously close to the edge.
“Good God, Rowan!” Agent Mandalay’s voice distorted in my ears. “You’re bleeding!”
I cast my blurred eyes downward to see my gloved hand covered in bright crimson rivulets. I held it out from my body and inspected it groggily as blood dripped from the latex sheath. Heavy cramps racked through my upper torso, but I didn’t need them to tell me that the open wounds on my arm were the least of my worries at this moment. I let my hand drop to my side and stared back at Constance. I couldn’t breathe.
I needed to breathe.
“Hey!” Ben screamed as he ran to the door. “Get the Doc back in here right now!”
I was having trouble remaining upright. As my knees began to buckle, I slid from the arm of the sofa and barely caught myself before I reached the floor. My legs were weak, and a bizarre tickle was working its way along the back of my throat. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bring air into my lungs.
“I dunno what it is!” Ben barked at Doctor Sanders as she met him at the door. “I think he’s havin’ a coronary or somethin’!”
A rushing noise nudged the ringing from my ears and then was followed closely by a loud thudding as my heart hammered furiously in my chest. I opened my mouth and fought to beg help, only to form wordless, wet noises.
My legs gave way completely, and I went crashing to the floor. I could see Agent Mandalay’s lips form my name as she started toward me in slow motion. Ben and Doctor Sanders were angling at me with the same lethargic movements, rabid concern on their faces. The tickle in my throat began migrating upward.
My knees impacted, and I automatically thrust my hands out in front of me as I pitched forward. My eyes were beginning to roll backwards in their sockets, and I felt my back arch involuntarily. The tickle mutated abruptly into a spastic cough, and my body heaved violently.
Water.
Water exploded from my nose and mouth and spattered on the carpet in front of me. Reflexively, I gulped in air and felt it gurgle roughly through my body. A second brutal spasm rippled up my throat, and fluid once again erupted from my lungs.
Cool air rushed in to fill my chest as I coughed and sputtered. The tightness that had occupied that space only a moment ago had fled, and my breaths started coming easier with each passing second. I was still pitched forward on my hands and knees, and I merely allowed my head to hang and gratefully gulped in the desperately needed oxygen. My body still shuddered with the adrenalin tremors of nightmarish fear, and I felt like a small, frightened child.
Slowly, the pounding in my ears began to fade, and the room lights settled to an even incandescent burn, no longer wildly blooming and casting angry shadows. Finally, I heard my name being urgently spoken.
“Mister Gant?” Doctor Sanders questioned me. “Mister Gant? Can you tell me where you are having pains?”
I felt her hand on my back. I opened my eyes then lifted my head and glanced slowly around. Constance was kneeling to one side of me with Doctor Sanders on the other. Ben was standing a few steps from us looking deeply concerned and utterly helpless.
I was breathing raspily now, but the wet gurgle had disappeared. I could feel the fresh air washing through my lungs, and my heart was beginning to back down from its frantic pace. I started shaking my head as I bit off hungry breaths and struggled to stand up.
“Mister Gant,” Doctor Sanders spoke as she helped me to my feet. “Are you having chest pains? Any pains in your neck, jaw or left arm?”
I continued to shake my head and spoke between the welcome unrestricted respirations, “No. Not chest.”
“Jeezus, Rowan!” Ben exclaimed. “Did’ya just have ta’ puke or somethin’?”
“No. Water,” I sighed as I shakily seated myself on the arm of the sofa.
“You need a glass of water?” Constance asked.
“No.” I shook my head again and pointed at the soaked area of the carpet. My breathing hadn’t yet fully slowed, and I was only able to communicate in short, choppy sentences. “That’s water. Drowning.”
“Drowning?” she looked at me quizzically.
“Do any of you smell that?” Ben suddenly asked, wrinkling his nose.
“Now that you mention it, yes,” Doctor Sanders answered. “It smells like a swimming pool.”
I knew the chemical odor, to which they referred, to be coming from the fluid I had just expelled onto the floor. It was how I knew what had just happened. I had tasted it on the back of my tongue when this all began, and the smell was permeating my nose where the liquid had elected to make an exit. I was starting to settle now- somewhat-and I tried to explain further.
Sucking in a deep breath, I pointed again to the damp carpet. “That’s not vomit, it’s water. It came out of my lungs. I was drowning.”
“You were WHAT?” Ben exclaimed.
Doctor Sanders glanced back and forth between Agent Mandalay and Ben then knelt next to the wet patch. Cautiously, she touched it with gloved fingertips. After rubbing her fingers against her thumb to check the consistency of the substance, she apprehensively brought her hand up to her nose and sniffed.
