I was floating.
Or maybe I wasn’t really floating. I had no visible point of reference in the darkness, so I couldn’t really say for sure. All I knew for certain was that it felt like I was floating, and I was happily willing to accept that as fact.
I blinked for no other reason than to make sure my eyes were actually open. Again, it felt like they were open, so I took the sensation at face value.
There was little else I could do, and the truth was, I didn’t really care.
I was comfortable.
In fact, I don’t think I’d ever been this comfortable in all my life.
Since I couldn’t see anything, I decided I would just listen.
Actually I wasn’t any more interested in listening than I was in seeing, but I did it anyway. Why? I had no idea other than the fact that there was this little nag in the back of my head.
It told me it needed to know something. I don’t know what information the nag was after, but it wanted something, and it wanted it now. I tried to ignore it, because after all, I didn’t see any point. It wanted to know something, not me.
The nag was on a mission. It told me I needed the information too.
I tried to reason with it. Given that I couldn’t see, and for all intents and purposes, I couldn’t feel, I didn’t really know that I could hear either. So, why bother trying?
The nag wouldn’t listen. It wanted me to try hearing in the worst way, and it wasn’t going to give up until I did.
I told it no.
It nagged harder and became an annoyance.
I told it to go away.
It wouldn’t. Instead, it just kept growing beyond annoyance and became a pain.
A real pain.
Physical.
Tangible.
Now I was no longer comfortable.
I gave up and listened. I doubted that it would do any good, but I did it anyway. I was willing to do just about anything to make the nag go away.
Had I cared, I would have been chagrined when I started to pick up the faint sounds around me, fading slowly in from nowhere to eventually fill my ears with ambient noise. But, I didn’t care about such things. I just wanted the nag to go away, so I kept listening.
Cicadas warbled out their song, the buzz rising and falling, fading away, then starting anew.
Okay, I could live with that. Why the nag wanted me to listen to cicadas I couldn’t fathom, but if it made the nag leave me alone, I was happy.
But, the nag didn’t want to hear the insects. It wanted to hear something else, so I listened harder.
Metal scraping against earth sounded softly in the darkness. How I knew it was metal against earth I couldn’t begin to say. I just knew it as simply as I knew two plus two equaled four. It was a fact.
The ambience grew as I listened intently. The cicadas, the metal, the earth, the wind… The crunch of dry leaves began sneaking through, adding themselves to the mix and setting up a rhythm.
Scrape, crunch, thud, warble.
Scrape, crunch, thud, warble.
Underscoring the odd rhythm was an off-key hum, and the nag became very interested in it. I focused on the hum and noticed that it ran in an audible parallel to a severely muffled background of driving bass.
I despised the nag. It was making me take notice of my surroundings, and now I was starting to be curious. I didn’t want to be curious. I wanted to be comfortable like before. But, that was slipping further away with each scrape, crunch, thud, and warble.
Now I was noticing that labored breaths interrupted the hum at random intervals, falling in and out of cadence with the crunch and scrape that seemed to be setting the beat.
On the heels of a metallic clunk, a tinny stream of noise masquerading as music suddenly vomited into the blackness. Severe notes, squealing outward from what might have been a guitar, intermixed with the heavy bump of a frenzied drumbeat. In reality, it wasn’t very loud at all, but given the disparity of it against the otherwise quiet darkness, it may as well have been a thunderclap.
The nag started down a new path.
It wanted to know about this driving thrum that insisted on being called music. I was just about to appease the annoying little monster when a hot stab of pain shot through my chest.
I felt myself jerked upward, without warning or apology.
Stark, blue-white brilliance exploded in my eyes, hot and fierce like an arc of lightning.
The afterimage of a swirling tunnel and a wooded grove began fading from my retinas.
Blackness.
Crashing luminance, intense and stark.
Nude flesh. Pale, flaccid, and marred.
Blackness.
Again, the impressed image began to fade.
The violent strobe burst, casting a woman’s body in harsh light.
Woman. Corpse. Blood.
Blackness.
Scrape, crunch, thud, warble.
Light, coming faster and faster.
Blood. Shoulders. Blood.
Blackness. Light. Corpse. Blackness. Light. Blood. Blackness. Light. Shoulders. Blackness. Light. Head. Blackness. Light. Shoulders. Blackness. Light. Face. Blackness. Light. Brittany. Blackness. Light. Blood. Blackness. Light. Brittany. Blackness. Light.
Headless.
Pain.
Pain.
“…Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.” I heard Cally’s steady but frightened voice calling out.
With each number she recited, focused pressure drove into the center of my chest, released, and then instantly repeated. I felt something tightly pinching my nose and something pressed against my mouth. Hot air rushed down my throat, and I was suddenly overcome by a need to cough. I tried, or at least I thought I did, but nothing happened.
I spasmed suddenly and felt my body jerk as I sputtered and gagged. With a heavy wheeze, I drew in a deep breath.
Whatever it was that was trying to smother me let go of my nose and moved quickly away.
I tried to cough again and this time I succeeded.
Then the cough came hard. I felt my shoulders lift from the floor as I sputtered and hacked.
The next breath was easier.
“He’s breathing.” This time it was Felicity, relief in her tenor.
Soft fingers pressed against my neck, and I heard Cally announce, “He’s got a strong pulse.”
The clamor of hurried footsteps met my ears, reverberating through the hardwood floor before halting with a heavy thump.
“An ambulance is on the way.” RJ’s frantic tone now entered the mix of voices.
“Rowan?” A handed patted my cheek lightly as Felicity called my name. “Rowan?”
The back of my neck was on fire, and it felt as though it was creased with an open, festering wound. My head was already starting to throb, and I involuntarily let out a low moan.
There was a frightening image dancing around inside my skull, insisting that I share it. My stomach soured at the very thought of trying to describe the horrific tableau. I wanted nothing more than to chase the vision from my mind and slam the door behind it, but a tickle in the back of my skull said no.
The vision was beginning to fade, and I tried desperately to let it. The tickle objected. It was important even if I didn’t want to think so. I had to tell someone before it was lost forever.
“Rowan?” Felicity called again.
“No head,” I heard myself whisper.
“What?” she asked.
I felt the warmth of her face near mine as she bent closer.
“No head,” I repeated as my short brush with consciousness rushed toward its end. “Brittany. No head.”
“His vitals are fine. He’s coherent; he knows his name, day of the week, the year, who the President is…” the paramedic was telling my wife, letting her voice trail off as the list grew. “I’m sorry, but there’s not much we can do if he refuses to go with us.”
Her partner was already loading equipment back into the life support vehicle, which was still lighting up our front yard with its wildly flickering light bar. I hadn’t checked, but I was sure that neighbors were standing on porches and peering out from behind their drapes at the commotion surrounding the ‘Witch house’. This wasn’t the first time we’d provided a light show, and unfortunately, it probably wasn’t going to be the last.
As was procedure, a police officer from the local municipality had responded along with the paramedics. He had stepped out onto the front porch himself, and I could see him through the glass of the storm door as he was speaking into his radio.
In sharp contrast to the activity in the immediate vicinity, Ben was still sprawled on the sofa, unconscious and oblivious to everything.
Luckily enough, the afghan Cally had laid over him earlier was still in place, hiding his sidearm and badge, so we didn’t have to explain to one cop why another cop was passed out in our living room. Although, there had been some question as to why he was sleeping through the ruckus. We had simply explained it away as us not letting a friend drive drunk, and fortunately, that had been satisfactory.
“But, his heart stopped,” Felicity insisted, still trying to convince the paramedic to cart me off to the hospital.
The young woman shrugged and shook her head apologetically. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’ve got no proof of that. His EKG looks perfectly normal.”
“Felicity…” I started.
“Your heart DID stop, Rowan,” Cally pitched her offering into the fray, cutting me off.
I shot her a glance and frowned. I knew she was just being concerned, but at the moment, I needed someone on my side not Felicity’s. Fortunately, RJ was staying out of the way in the kitchen with the twins, Shari and Jennifer, who had arrived with Felicity’s Jeep somewhere in the middle of all this. I’m sure they were hearing the whole story from beginning to end.
Still, if there was a silver lining to the situation at all, at least the seizures were happening to me again instead of Felicity. For that, I was thankful. It also didn’t hurt that I was now back on the side of the fence I was used to occupying. For all its pressures and pitfalls, it was still a path I had grown accustomed to walking.
“Look, Felicity, I…” I continued.
“What if I tell you to take him?” Agent Mandalay took her turn at interrupting even though her question was directed at the paramedic. She had already flashed her badge and federal ID when she arrived on the scene moments behind the paramedics, so it was no secret that she was an FBI special agent.
“Is he in your custody?” she asked.
“He can be if that’s what it takes,” Constance replied.
“Constance!” I appealed again, louder this time. “Felicity! Both of you. All of you. Listen to me. I’m fine.”
She turned to face me and shook her head as she shot me a concerned look. “Rowan, what I walked into here a few minutes ago doesn’t exactly inspire me to believe that.”
“You know what it was as well as I do,” I told her, trying to skirt around specifics in the presence of the paramedic. If I started talking about ethereal visions, then she might very well change her assessment of me. I glanced over at my wife and continued. “You too Felicity. Especially you. I don’t need to go to the hospital.”
“Row,” Felicity replied. “Cally and I performed CPR on you. I think I know what I’m talking about.”
I looked back at her with pleading eyes and spoke in a deliberate tone. “You know what it was, Felicity.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“I am,” I stated, lacing my voice with all the confidence I could muster. “And, I don’t need to go to the hospital.” Once again I repeated a declaration I had already made over a half-dozen times in the past fifteen minutes.
She stared at me for a moment as if visible evidence that would dispute my claim would suddenly appear. As it was not forthcoming, she finally turned her gaze away and closed her eyes.
“What would you like to do?” The paramedic asked, addressing Agent Mandalay. “Am I taking him or not?”
“It’s up to you, Felicity,” Constance told my wife. “If you want him to go to the hospital, I’ll make it happen.”
I didn’t say anything more. The two of them had allied with one another almost as soon as Constance arrived. Once that happened, my opinion became instantly moot. Arguing with them had accomplished nothing so far, other than provide fuel for my headache.
Felicity finally let out a heavy sigh, and when she spoke, her normally lilting accent thickened, underscoring her words with a serious edge. “No. If he’s wrong, I’ll just kill him later, then.”