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, but this time it had only a slight pinkish tinge. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand then poured the rest of the solution down the drain and twisted on the faucet. After rinsing out the basin and washing my hands, I took a seat on the closed lid of the toilet.
Felicity offered me a hand towel, and I took it. She reached up and pulled the free strands of her hair away from her eyes as she stood over me and inspected my face once again. With extreme care, she tenderly pressed the tips of her fingers around my cheekbone until she hit a spot where I winced noticeably.
“Aye, nothing broken, but you’re going to have a bruise,” she announced as she cocked her head to one side. “Tongue.”
“What?” I asked.
“Show me your tongue, then,” she directed.
I opened my mouth and did as she told me; I knew it wouldn’t get me anywhere to argue. She leaned a bit closer and squinted for a moment then nodded. I closed my mouth and peered back at her.
“So, what’s the verdict, ‘Doc O’Brien’?”
“You chewed on it pretty good, that you did,” she answered. “Still bleeding a bit, but not too bad.”
“Yeah. I figured as much.”
“Your speech has cleared up.”
“That’s a plus.”
“Aye, it is. So what did happen out there?”
“Like I told Ben.” I shook my head as I spoke, “I don’t know. It just hit me out of nowhere.”
She took a step back and crossed her arms, regarding me silently for a long moment before speaking again. “So, are you thinking it might have been Randy trying to communicate with you?”
“Don’t know. Maybe,” I answered. “There was that whole thing back at the M.E.’s office.”
“Aye, I wondered about that.”
“You and me both.”
“What really bothers me is that you still seem to be well-grounded, then. You shouldn’t be affected this way.”
“You won’t get any argument from me there. This is kind of weird too. Usually I ‘see’ something or get sucked into an empathic experience; even if it is usually pretty obscure.”
“So?”
“So there’s been none of that this time. Just a nondescript scream and now this seizure thing.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Do you think it’s something else then?”
I shrugged. “Believe me, I’m just as confused by this as you.”
“Aye, but remember, you did start out with one of those headaches this morning.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I did.”
“Did you have any nightmares to go with it?”
“Never really got to sleep.” I shook my head. “So there was never much of a chance for one.”
“How is that, by the way?”
“What, the headache?”
“Aye.”
“No better I’m afraid. Actually, a bit worse I think.”
She stepped forward and swung open the right side of a tri-fold mirror over the sink. After a quick glance, she closed it and moved on to the center. A moment later, she was twisting the cap from a plastic bottle and shaking some of the contents into her hand. She tilted the container back and let the pills rattle back into it, deftly retaining three rust-colored tablets in her palm. She shoved the heavy dose of ibuprofen into my hand then filled a glass halfway with water and held it out to me.
“Go ahead, then, take them.”
“You know this won’t do anything for this kind of headache,” I said in a puzzled tone.
“Aye, that I do.” She closed her eyes as she nodded. “But they aren’t for that. They’re for your face. It will be hurting soon enough, and you don’t need that on top of the headache.”
“Oh, yeah, okay.”
I popped the trio of pain pills into my mouth and took the glass of water from her. Unfortunately, the medicine was only midway down my throat when, for the fourth time this morning, a bloodcurdling scream pierced my skull.