floor was now slamming itself hard against my face.
CHAPTER 9:
I wasn’t sure what the noise echoing in my head actually was. It was struggling to be heard over the blood rushing in my ears, which in and of itself, was already in heated contention with an unnatural ringing sound that permeated my skull. At any rate, my violently distorted thought processes attempted to assign a familiarity to it.
One possibility presented itself as the rumble of a weak earthquake. Another was that it was a small explosion. There were several others, but in retrospect, those two were the only ones that came close to anything even remotely possible. What I later found out was that it hadn’t been any of the above. In reality, what it had been were the frantic steps of several feet thudding against the hardwood flooring as everyone ran to the front of the house.
Right now, however, as far as my brain was concerned it was an unsolvable and very perplexing mystery. The vibration rolled toward me down the hallway, growing in intensity as it traveled through the polished surface. Upon reaching me, it joined with my cheek, made its way inward through some bizarre osmosis, and reverberated throughout my skull. The final effect was that of turning the sound into a tactile sensation as much as an auditory one.
I could feel myself being rolled over as my back arched and my muscles stiffened once again. Pain I can only describe as a full body leg cramp assaulted me, and I felt my breath catch in my throat. The physical sensation was accompanied by an elevation in my mental confusion-an elevation a full order of magnitude beyond anything I had experienced thus far.
In that moment, the source of the noise no longer mattered.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the seizure reached its zenith then plunged immediately to an anticlimactic end. My body fell limp, and the hot air that had been trapped in my lungs expelled in a violent rush. I wheezed loudly as I sucked in a fresh breath, at once gasping and then choking on the coolness.
Light flared in a kaleidoscope of colors and then slowly began fading back to muted normalcy. A tangle of voices competed for attention as my short-circuited neurons reset and began processing sensory input once again. Heavily contrasted shapes were moving around me, and I struggled to focus in on them.
“Rowan?” Ben’s voice bled in behind the rapidly declining rush in my ears. “Rowan? You okay?”
Felicity’s concerned tone mixed in with his. “What happened? Ben? Rowan?”
“Is he okay?” Cally was asking from somewhere above me.
A male voice I recognized as R.J. weaved its way between the others. “What’s going on?”
“Oh no…” Shari’s voice began a different sentence.
“…is he okay?” Her twin sister Jennifer finished it.
I was surprised that I was able to understand any of the words, much less make any sense of them, considering that they were all speaking at once. However, I was at least able to pick out those few fragments. I blinked hard and willed my eyes to adjust to the dim light of the hallway. It still seemed darker than it had before the seizure had overtaken me, but as clarity returned, I found myself staring at the reason.
Everyone but Nancy was huddled in a tight circle above my prone body, blocking out what little illumination there was within the corridor. I felt a quick wave of claustrophobia but managed to suppress it as I focused on their faces.
“Rowan, are you okay? What just happened?” came Ben’s voice once again, firing the words in a rapid staccato.
“I’vff fallen and I canth geth up?” I croaked the first thing that popped into my head. My tongue was filled with a series of sharp pains, and I took notice of the fact that when I spoke my pronunciation was thick and blunted.
“Jeez, Row,” my friend admonished as he screwed up his face. “This ain’t the time to be crackin’ jokes. What’s goin’ on here?”
“Aye,” Felicity added. “Ben’s right.”
“Thorry,” I told them as I pushed myself up on one elbow and used my other hand to massage my jaw where it had impacted the floor.
I opened my mouth and touched my fingertips to the end of my tongue. When I pulled my hand away, it was wet with saliva-diluted blood.
“You’re bleeding,” Cally gasped.
“I think I bith my tongue,” I said.
“Yeah, no kiddin’,” Ben spoke again as he offered me his hand. “That still doesn’t explain what just happened.”
“I donth know,” I answered as I gripped his forearm. “Buth I think I know whath an epilepthic seizure feelth like now, and ith not pleathant.”
Everyone in the group shuffled back as I stood. I didn’t have to exert myself much as Ben did most of the work, levering me upward with a steady pull. Felicity stepped forward the moment I was upright and touched her hand carefully to my face, moving it from side to side as she inspected it. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I heard a frantic voice calling out in the distance. I listened hard, but my ears were met only by the ambient noise of the house.
“Was it some kinda Twilight Zone thing?” my friend asked.
“I donth know. Maybe. Probably.”
“Well shit, white man, what DO you know?”
“I know my fathe hurths.”
“I’m not surprised,” he returned. “You tried to dent the floor with it a minute ago.”
“Aye, into the bathroom with you then,” Felicity ordered with a slight nudge then directed her attention to the others as she assumed command. “Shari, do me a favor and grab some salt and a glass from the kitchen, please. Cally, you go check on Nancy. The commotion may have disturbed her, and she shouldn’t be alone if she’s awake. The rest of you go on back to the dining room, and I’ll see to Rowan.”
“I’m fthine,” I objected.
“Aye, so you say, but I’ll be the judge of that, Rowan Linden Gant,” she returned.
“So, was it one of those visions or something?” Ben threw out the question.
“In a minute, Ben,” Felicity instructed him as she made a shooing motion with her hand. “Let him at least rinse his mouth out with some salt water, then. Go ahead with everyone else, and we’ll be along shortly.”
The group split apart, and Cally headed up the stairs. Shari hurried several steps ahead of the rest of us on her way to the kitchen at the back of the house. As Felicity took my arm and started guiding me along, I heard the faint voice again. This time, I could actually make out the words, and unless I was mistaken, the disembodied vocalization was calling Ben’s name.
“Didth you hear that?” I asked as I halted and cocked my head sideways.
Felicity continued for a half step past my sudden stop, then looked at me. “Aye, hear what?”
Again, tinny words floated into the air, “Helllloooo! Benjamin! Talk to me!…”
I slowly turned back to my friend who was bringing up the rear. Without a doubt, the sound was coming from his direction.
A look of embarrassed realization washed across his features as he stared back at me then down at his hand and muttered, “Dammit.”
I followed his gaze then gave him the answer to his earlier question. “Thtell her I think ith’ll be fine.”
As Felicity and I continued down the hall, he had his cell phone pressed against his ear and was both apologizing to Helen and explaining what had just transpired.
I spit a mouthful of salt water into the washbasin for the fifth time. The first go around it had been bright red,
