I heard my own echoing voice as I muttered, “Dammit. Not again… Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
Another sharp wave of nausea washed over me, and I squeezed my eyes tightly shut a second time. But, instead of darkness, I found myself staring at the moonlit lake I had seen in my nightmare. As before, the water was smooth and still, without even the faintest ripple. There was, however, a pronounced change to the landscape as I remembered it. No longer was there the corpse of a black swan on the shore.
Now, there were two.
“ Help us… ” a young woman’s plaintive voice begged deep inside my ears.
The image slowly faded, and with it the nausea began to subside. I opened my eyes and stared at the water rushing from the tap in front of me. The bloom of light collapsed in upon itself, and the appearance of my surroundings slowly returned to normal. A half second later, sound lost its unnatural tone as the auditory spectrum fell back into sync with reality as well.
My mind flashed on the fresh avian corpse alongside the lake. I let out a heavy sigh and rested my forehead against the cool surface of the basin.
I couldn’t say that I was particularly surprised by the event. For me, hearing voices was obviously nothing new. But I had to admit that there was something about this one that went beyond many of the others. It was a kind of insistence that carried with it a cold sharpness. And it had that keen edge that cut straight to my core then slowly and deliberately began to twist.
When added up, I knew all too well what everything meant. In that instant, the nausea returned in force. Only this time, it was born of the earthly realization that I had no choice but to surrender.
With a tired groan, I pulled myself back to my feet then slowly started ratcheting the towel dispenser at my right. After a few cranks I tore off the length of rough brown paper and stuffed it beneath the spigot to soak up some water while I carefully slipped out of my jacket.
It took several minutes for me to clean up, during which time my luck held out and no one else needed the restroom. After finally gathering myself, a quick look in the mirror told me that I still wasn’t anywhere near presentable. My shirt was wet where I had attempted to wash it out, and my light jacket still had enough blood on it to raise eyebrows at the very least. Fortunately, the restroom itself didn’t look any worse for wear, unless you went rummaging through the waste can and found the bloody paper towels, of course. I didn’t have to do a double take to decide it would be best to simply forego picking up my coffee order and just head for the exit, which is exactly what I did.
When I reached my truck, I went ahead and downed some aspirin dry and hoped that I already had enough caffeine in my system to do the trick. My head was throbbing more than I could ever remember, and it was a struggle just to see straight. Reaching to my belt, I pulled out my cell phone and stabbed at the keys. After three tries I managed to get the number in and press the send button. My call was answered on the second ring, and I started talking before Ben even finished his greeting.
“Black swans, Ben,” I said, holding my forehead in my palm as I leaned forward. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“Yeah, actually it does,” he replied without missing a beat, his voice even and tone matter-of-fact. “Our Jane Doe had a tattoo of one. Why?”
“There’s more to it than that,” I replied. “It has some kind of significance. I just don’t know what.”
“Well, maybe I do. We found some shit on the computer about ‘em. Some crap about a swan society or somethin’ like that. Apparently they’re a group of wingnuts who let the other wingnuts drink their blood. Pretty fucked up, huh? Anyhow, we’re already chasin’ down some leads in the local freak community. No offense, Row, but you’re a little late to the party on this one.”
I let out a heavy groan.
“You okay, white man?” my friend asked, concern edging his voice. “You don’t sound so good.”
“Tell me about it,” I sighed. “Listen, Ben, I may be late, but this party is just getting started.”
“Whaddaya…” he began, then his voice lowered to a mumble. “Jeezus, Row… Twilight Zone?”
“Yeah.”
After a pause he asked, “So are you sayin’ what I think you’re sayin’?”
“Yeah, Ben,” I replied. “There’s another victim. The body just hasn’t been found yet.”
“Fuck me… Okay, so since you’re callin’ and tellin’ me this, should I assume you’ve officially fallen off the hocus-pocus wagon?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so,” I told him. “And right now it seems there’s no point in even trying to get back on.”
“So, what now?”
“I don’t know. I guess you wait for someone to report a body. I’m going to hope this aspirin kicks in soon, so I can try to get home before this headache gets any worse, if that’s even possible.”
“Home? Where the hell are ya’ right now?”
“Not far away. I had a meeting. I’ll be fine.”
“Ya’ sure? You need me to come and pick you up?”
“Really, Ben, I just need a few minutes and I’ll be fine. But, I do have a bad feeling I’m going to need a bigger bottle of aspirin before this is all over.”
CHAPTER 10:
The dogs were yipping as the garbled notes of the front doorbell echoed through the house in a rapid staccato. I tried not to think about it, but the racket definitely had a different idea in mind. A vague memory flitted through my brain, and I remembered hearing a very similar combination of raucous noises a bit earlier. At least I think it was earlier. I couldn’t be sure about the actual passage of time, not that it really mattered much.
At any rate, I was fairly certain the original clamor was only a dream, so I had ignored it. Just like I had ignored the telephone-both my cell and the landline-when they intruded on my slumber as well. Eventually, the earlier cacophony had faded into nothingness and simply went away, which seemed to prove out my theory that it was all in my head.
Or so I thought.
Now, the ignoring didn’t seem to work as well. Instead of a few evenly spaced tones and a handful of random barks, the obnoxious chime was assaulting me as a neverending non-rhythm of dings, dongs, and pings-not necessarily in any recognizable order. And based on the yelping, the dogs weren’t exactly pleased by this development at all.
I dragged the pillow up and clamped it over my head with one arm. My new theory was that if I couldn’t hear it then it wasn’t real.
“Go…the fuck…away,” I groaned out of frustration.
The insane din finally stopped and I let out a sigh. However, before I even finished expelling the air from my lungs, I heard the phone in my office begin to ring. The muffled bell pealed four or five times before eventually falling silent. A moment later the William Tell Overture began to warble through the bedroom. I tossed the pillow to the side and opened one eye. My cell phone was dancing in a vibrating semicircle atop the nightstand as the tune spewing from it rose through the scale, starting at mildly audible and arriving somewhere near flat out blaring.
With a heavy grunt I gave in and rolled myself up into a sitting position and reached for the device. Before I could wrap my hand around it, however, it stopped jittering and fell silent. I allowed my chin to fall against my chest then reached up and rubbed my face. Twisting around, I squinted at the digital clock and saw that it was pushing 4:30 in the afternoon.
Rocking forward, I stood up, then stumbled around the bedroom. As I found my bearings in the semi-darkness, I began moving on some sort of automatic pilot. Somewhere along the line I must have snatched up a shirt, though I didn’t remember doing so. All I knew was that I noticed it in my hand sometime after my haze-filled brain figured out how to open the door. Lumbering forward on pure instinct, I decided maybe I should put it on and managed to slide one arm into the wrong sleeve after three tries.