Even the squawking radios and idling engines that tainted the night with their continuous disharmony seemed nothing more than a normal slice of reality. They neither belonged nor didn’t belong. They were very simply just there.
The bare truth was that nothing mattered to me now. Nothing but the yellow rectangle of light pouring through the open door of the townhouse apartment, a haunting incandescent spill that was being easily absorbed by a thirsty sponge of darkness.
Regrettably, it looked like I was going to have to answer some serious questions before I got anywhere near that doorway. At least that was the impression I was getting from the stern look molded onto Detective Benjamin Storm’s features.
I hadn’t seen my friend since meeting him for breakfast earlier in the month. It wasn’t surprising really, what with the holidays barreling in upon us-Chanukah had already arrived, securing first place in a yearly contest; with Yule, Christmas, and Kwanzaa lining up in the queue. Schedules were tight-being full of parties, relatives, and even in light of the season, work. I had hoped that the next time we saw one another, it would be at a gathering of family and friends where we could share a drink and forget about the everyday rigors of the world.
Of course, this was my bizarre life, and something like that wasn’t about to happen.
I guess I should have known I wouldn’t be blessed with such normalcy considering the circumstances, not to mention the fact that just over one year ago my very existence had veered off course to follow this far more tremulous path. On a sweltering August night, an ability that would soon become my life’s bane had exited thirty plus years of shadow to come fully into the light.
It was on that night that a perverted serial murderer had taken the life of one of my friends-a student I’d instructed in the ways of The Craft. Her final passage across the bridge into Summerland had cost me dearly.
I would never again be the same. In fact, I often wondered if what that really meant was that I would never again be sane.
It was during the investigation of her death-as well as the subsequent victims-when I discovered that a cigar is not necessarily always a cigar. I had learned that for me at least, a nightmare is quite possibly a harbinger of reality; that an intimate supernatural connection with the “other side” was my talent as a Witch-and at the same time, my torment.
Just as unfortunate was the fact that the random visions and nightmares didn’t always make much sense-like right now. And they were very often accompanied by a headache that would make a migraine seem like a welcome relief. Sometimes a sensation would even manifest as an unexplained pain localized in some other part of my body-once again, just like now.
The only saving grace was that this didn’t happen all the time. There were actually long stretches where I was able to experience “life as usual.” But, torment did happen frequently enough to keep me off balance and always wondering. I just never knew when or where to expect it.
Judging from the current circumstances, this was obviously one of the when’s, and wherever I was at the moment was, well, one of the where’s.
And once again, as I’d known for some time that I would end up, I was smack in the middle of something I’d rather have no part of. Especially given the fact that I was parked in the chilly back seat of a Saint Louis City police cruiser, wearing a pair of handcuffs and staring out the window at my best friend’s incredulous face.
As I said before, how I’d come to be here I wasn’t entirely certain. The last thing I remembered for a fact was climbing into bed next to my wife, Felicity. From there, to the best of my recollection, I had gone to sleep.
The next thing I even begin to remember after that is chasing after the glowing yellow rectangle. Upon adding up the imagery with the circumstances and carrying the remainder, I had concluded that the luminous shape was none other than the doorway to the apartment in the near distance. It didn’t help that said doorway was quite obviously the entrance to an active crime scene.
“Rowan? Jeezus…” Ben’s voice came to me, initially muted by the tempered glass of the windows, only to have the rest of the sentence leap in volume as he jerked open the car door. “What the fuck?!”
From what I could tell, the woman’s thoughts that had commandeered my synapses were pretty much gone, for now at least. At the moment, I was feeling relatively lucid, though there was still a definite fog hanging over me that kept threatening to obscure rational thought altogether. I hoped it would hold off long enough for me to figure out what was going on.
“Hey,” I answered sheepishly.
“Jeezus H. Christ, white man,” he continued. “What’s goin’ on? What’re ya’ doin’ here?”
“Honestly?”
“Hell yes, honestly, Rowan!” he barked. “This is a fuckin’ crime scene, not a shopping mall.”
“I don’t know.” There it was. The omnipresent and wholly unsatisfactory answer to a serious question that had become my pat answer. But as much as I wanted to give him something different, once again it was all I could conjure at the moment. I shrugged then continued, “I was actually hoping that you could tell me.”
“No way, Row.” He shook his head. “No way. You’re gonna hafta do better’n that.” With a thick frown pasted securely to his face, he huffed out a heavy sigh and stepped back, pulling the door open wider as he did so. “C’mon, get outta there.”
I rocked myself forward, and scooted across the stiff upholstery of the cold bench seat, then twisted toward the opening. Impatiently, my friend took hold of my upper arm with one large hand and guided me out onto the curb, telling me to watch my head at just about the same instant the back of it impacted with the doorframe. I’m pretty sure he timed it that way on purpose because it was more than plain that he wasn’t at all happy with me right now.
As amazing as it seems, even in the middle of the night, if you happen upon a crime scene, you will find at least a handful of onlookers seeking a morbid thrill. At the moment I was apparently the object of that thrill. If that wasn’t enough embarrassment for one sitting, we were being paid even more intense regard by a clutch of reporters and cameramen. Blue-white cones of artificial brightness instantly glared outward from their powerful lights, making the two of us the centerpiece of the harsh setting.
“Friggin’ assholes… Don’t turn around, Row…” Ben instructed me in a clipped voice, helping me forward with a rough hand as he stepped quickly in behind me.
We walked at an even pace, him guiding me with a hand planted firmly on my shoulder, weaving through cops and evidence technicians until we were positioned in the shadows behind a Crime Scene Unit van. Out of sight of the cameras and prying eyes of the reporters, we came to a halt and he told me to stand still.
I heard the clinking of metal, followed by a muted ratcheting noise, and my left hand was suddenly free. I rolled my shoulder and felt it give a slight pop as I brought it back to its natural position. A moment later, the metal was no longer chafing my other wrist, and I repeated the motion for my right shoulder as I turned around.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Yeah, thank me later after I kick your ass,” my friend told me. “Now what gives? What’re ya’ doin’ here?”
“I was serious, Ben,” I answered with a shake of my head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know how I got here.”
“Hell, that’s easy,” he told me while jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “Your goddamned truck is parked right over there in the middle of the fuckin’ street blockin’ traffic.”
“Who was murdered?” I unconsciously dismissed his statement and blurted out the question while looking past him at the glowing doorway.
“No… Me first, Row.” He shook his head vigorously. “Is there somethin’ about this I should know? Is this some kinda Twilight Zone shit here? You havin’ one of those visions or somethin’ like that?”