Then, quiet, settling like an after-shock.
“Tracy!” Susan shouted through the house, but they were well aware that Tracy was gone. Her goodbye note was the front door as it remained wide open, still creaking from the air outside that pushed it to and fro.
They looked out the front door and saw the team’s van and Susan’s Taurus behind it, but Tracy’s jeep was gone.
“She’s taken off,” Dylan said.
“We’ve got to go get her!” Sidney’s angst sounded a warning bell.
“Wait,” Dylan said, moving his eyes around in surveillance. “It stopped...listen.”
They looked around the ransacked mess as the trembling ceased amid a settling quiet, as though it had never occurred. The turbulent pounding and booming that had rocked the house now left them in a muted aftermath, interrupted only by the sounds of the creaking door and the broken pieces of plaster that fell to the floor.
“I’ll try her cell,” Leah said, dialing from her own handheld. After one ring connected, a loud beep, the kind used to alert medical professionals, belted from below them. Tracy had left her cell phone behind, and it rang out from the table downstairs where she’d left it, along with her purse.
Minds merged on the same wave length; now it was even more imperative that they find Tracy, and quick.
“All right,” Dylan said, “let’s try to figure out where she would have gone.”
* * * *
Tracy looked back at her house as she’d pulled away from the driveway. She didn’t see any of them, but she knew they would come looking for her. She had to get away. The insurmountable stress had been building, erecting a mountain upon her shoulders and buckling her. Her freedom, if only momentarily, was a must, and she needed a drink.
Had she acted rashly in asking them to handle the situation? Maybe she needed more time to herself before having all those people in her house, trying to make contact with David and God knows what else. What if she’d just said nothing: would all of this be happening? Some part of her wondered why she didn’t just accept the way things were. What was she so afraid of in the first place...David?
Delusions of what life would be like consumed her: she in the living, and David in the beyond, coexisting together until such time as fate saw fit. She thought of the evil, taunting specter that disrupted everything. Crazed thoughts clustered her mind and fear rampaged her body, but ahead, relief gleamed in the form of a neon sign.
Ted’s Bar-N-Grill blinked in red, announcing itself against the night time backdrop, with an equally neon arrow pointing to the entrance. She and Marcia came here often to dull the day’s edge that came from working at the hospital. The gravel crunched under her tires as she pulled into the parking lot.
* * * *
“I think she definitely went for a drink,” Leah said.
“I’m afraid you’re right.” Susan’s voice was a mixture of fear and regret. “I should have done more to stop her from drinking, but I had no idea she was going to run out like this.”
“None of us did,” Sidney breathed a heavy sigh of nervous apprehension.
“Okay.” Dylan lifted his hands, a gesture for all to wait and think rationally. “Since we’ve only known Tracy for two days, where do you think she would have gone?” The sharp sting of his question was directed at Susan.
“It’s hard to tell,” she said. “Tracy was determined not to tell me anything.”
“Well, Doctor, that doesn’t seem to help us much now, does it?” His irritability was a soft slap in her face, and Leah spoke up.
“Now, wait a minute. Let’s not go blaming anyone for this. We should have realized that this may have been too much for her.”
“She shouldn’t have been drinking,” he said. “I told you all something like this could happen.”
“What could we do, Dylan?” Leah’s voice climbed a decibel. “It is her house, and we didn’t think she was going to take off like that, nor could we predict the magnitude of what just happened here.”
Dylan was at an impasse. Leah was so young, but so often right. His eyes were cast down at the floor, and everyone breathed and tried to focus. Sidney stepped forward and spoke.
“What about this friend of hers, this Marcia person? Could she have gone to her?”
“Marcia Ross,” Susan said. “It’s worth a try. If she doesn’t know where Tracy is, she might know where she could have gone.”
Sidney handed her the phone. “Call her.”
* * * *
The inside of Ted’s Bar-N-Grill smelled like old fashioned, black licorice intertwined with the aroma of freshly tapped beer, cigarette smoke, and the occasional Shirley Temple, that classic barroom scent that took one back over a century. She ordered a beer and sat alone at the bar. Ted was the balding, fifty something proprietor who knew Tracy as a semi regular, in every now and then with her friend and sometimes by herself.
“Nurse Tracy,” he said. “How’ve you been?” He noticed her distant stare and that look in her eyes: the one of fear, paranoia, and too much alcohol, and the bulging, dark circles underneath that looked like sunken tea bags. “Everything all right?”
She managed a slight grin.
“Oh, okay, I guess,” she said, smiling curtly. She wasn’t about to reveal to him the details of her life over the past few days, especially now as she struggled to contain the slight slur that slipped from her tongue through the trail of her tainted breath.
He had the look on his face of most bartenders, the one where the voice asks an honest question of concern, but the eyes secretly say, “Yeah right,” to the watered down response.
“Just as long as the sun’s still shining, right, Tracy?” He laughed, attempting to give the right answer for her.
“Yeah, I guess.” Her smile masked the day’s turmoil, concealed the inner frenzy she felt in resurging waves. Cheerful voices surrounded her, and the juke box played along with the occasional hoots and hollers, all normal sounds that made her feel like reality had begun again, if only for this fleeting moment.
She chugged the mug of cold draft beer almost gone, and the foam set over her lips in a mustache, reminding her of David. She glanced around the bar and realized that none of these people had ever experienced what she was going through right now, or had they? Maybe it’s why they were here: to drink away the ghosts, the poltergeists, the old times, and the sweet memories that bit and tore at the heart even worse than the hurtful ones.
There didn’t seem to be any confusion, pain, or unhappiness, just a continuous good time that went on and on with good noises dubbing over whatever bad noises played in the background. Reality had struck Tracy Kimball far worse than any happy hour could erase. She looked at them all.
If they only knew...
She pulled the ten dollar bill from her pocket to pay for the beer; it was all the money she had absent her purse.
“On the house, Trace; it’s happy hour.” Ted put a freshly poured mug in front of her and took the old one away.
* * * *
They sat in the kitchen, listening to the speaker phone dial Marcia’s number in a tone about ten notches too loud. After five frustrating rings, she answered.
“Yes, Tracy?” Her voice boomed out, and Susan turned down the volume.
“It’s not Tracy, Marcia. This is Susan. We need your help.”
“What happened?” She spoke the words flat out, seeming certain that something would happen, but unsure of what. Susan made a long story short.
“Tracy became extremely upset and stormed out of here. She doesn’t have her phone, and she’s had more than a few drinks. She’s in no condition to drive.”
“Well, why the hell didn’t you all stop her?” Marcia scoffed, and Susan was about to reply.
“Look, we didn’t have time to stop her,” Dylan said, interrupting with a clear lack of patience in his voice. “We had some trouble here in the house, and she ran out before we could stop her. We need to find her, now!”
“Who is this
?” Marcia’s head nurse attitude had returned. “What trouble? Is everything all right over there?”
He apologized with a sigh and introduced himself.
“Yes, everything is fine now, but we need to find Tracy, that’s all. As we said, she is in no condition to drive, and she may be drinking even more. We need to get her home.”
Marcia mentioned the only place she could think of: Ted’s Bar on Route 22.
They were closer to Route 22 than Marcia was, they would get there faster.
“Thank you,” Dylan said. “We’ll try there.” Then, Marcia’s voice shot out quickly before the disconnect.
“Do you need me to come over there?” Dylan assured her they didn’t. “Then tell her to call me, as soon as you bring her home.”
He said he would and pressed a button on the speaker phone, ending the call.
“We’ll take my car,” Susan said, and Dylan agreed.
“Sid, you three stay here in case she comes back,” he said. “Also check out the downstairs, see if everything is all right. We have our phones, if you need us.”
“Gotcha,” Sidney said. “Call us as soon as you find her.”
He agreed and they drove away in Susan’s car, leaving Leah, Sidney, and Brett to the house where the dead would speak yet again, tonight.
Chapter Fourteen
The three of them looked around the house, their eyes estimating the small catastrophe that left much of it in ruins. The mess created by the earlier disturbance was only a minuscule fraction of what beheld them now, as a quiet, calm, serenity hushed through the house. They would never reveal how much this stark and freakish contrast had frightened them serving as an omen of the dark, paranormal force they were up against. This time, it came, it raged, it destroyed, and now it was gone, leaving behind only a window display of its capabilities. The fact that the poltergeist seemed to disappear with Tracy was another fact they wouldn’t mention; their goal was to help David, or so they thought.
Susan peeked outside through the front door curtains, watchful if any neighbors had heard the noise or saw Tracy’s flight from the house; she saw no one.
They trudged through the broken glass, dust, and plaster, and made their way back down to the den. They’d left the fireplace unattended amid the confusion, but now the fire had dwindled down to a light on a single burning log. Leah had shot pictures of the upstairs, and now the click of the camera and wince of the flash were directed downstairs at the soot stained stones above the hearth.
The blaze had raged here, then died, and the water streaked walls showed only tracks like lakes on a map. The carpet soaked in patches and spots of different sizes, but the water was gone, ebbed as surely as it had flowed.
“I hope her computer is all right,” Brett said, and sat down on the swivel chair. The blank e-mail that Dylan had left up on the screen remained, and Brett touched a few keys to test the keyboard. He examined the modem, the monitor, and the electrical wires that remained untouched by the water. “Everything checks.”
They sighed in relief, realizing that the worst of the damage was to Tracy’s kitchen cabinets and some upper cracks in the upstairs walls, but the foundation of the house still seemed intact. The technical apparatus remained unaffected, and Brett attended to one of the video cameras that had continued recording.
He hit the playback button and saw what happened after they’d left the den. He called Sidney and Leah over to him, and they gathered behind his laptop, watching recent history. The playback showed the vacated den when the sifts of plaster from the ceiling, and the water dripping from the walls had come to a sudden halt.
The camera had been poised at a direct shot of the main computer area, and there, they began to see a white formation move toward the screen. A giant smoke ring in appearance, it began floating and twisting, then shaping into some cohesive outline, moving as though human in countenance. The eerie semblance had lingered over the computer, hovering and rotating, hesitant and uncertain.
“It was right there,” Sidney said, pointing to the area and looking away from the playback. But at the end of his finger, nothing lingered now.
“It was about to manipulate the computer,” Leah said.
“Yes, but there was nothing on the blank e-mail,” he said. They continued to watch the playback as the mist of white seemed to dissipate, evaporate, clearing the room, as though it had never been there.
Sidney looked up, as suddenly, all sounds were lost to him. He could hear nothing; everything was muted, just like always, and voices from beyond began to speak.
“Sidney...Sidney...Sidney...Sidney,” There were many, and they were varied: a man, a woman, a boy, different voices, different tones, different dimensions, calling his name over and over again. Then each one whispered a different word, and each whispered word was maddening.
“Hourglass... trouble... shadow… ” His mind flooded with the overlapping voices, the choir of the countless dead, competing in soft, spoken tenors. Then one voice, overpowering in its strength, overwhelmed the rest, silencing them all like a conductor.
“Sidney! The screen, Sidney, the screen!”
He heard him; it was his grandfather. He stood and looked at Tracy’s computer screen. His face contorted, his body swayed, and his mind was near convulsive as he tried to break free from the spell of deafness and a pain that felt like a seizure. His eyes began to roll in the back of his head.
“Sid, what’s wrong?!” Brett shouted.
“He’s hearing again,” Leah said.
“The screen, Sidney!”
And then it let him loose. There was a massive pop inside his head as sound returned, and he breathed hard.
“The screen,” he said, pointing to it. From only a few feet away, they watched as letters appeared on the blank page.
* * * *
She was on her third beer, and a new peace settled over her as the alcohol circulated calm throughout her bloodstream. A brief respite from the day’s events was hers even if it wasn’t a long one. She listened to the odd bits of conversation around her, awed by a newly discovered portrait of human nature, as people sat, oblivious of the world around them, ignorant of that fine dark line that borders reality from undiscovered territory not meant for human knowledge.
Did they know that David never actually left this world; that he lingers in some agonizing limbo, waiting for some change to set him free? Were they aware that her life had been turned upside down as they sat and laughed, and drank, and argued irrelevant issues? Did they know that Hell was unleashed in her house by some earthbound entity, and all she could do was watch, so she came out for a drink? Probably not. They would call her crazy, and by now, they would be right.
“You all right, tonight, Tracy?” Ted asked, his forehead wrinkled in wonder.
She said nothing, just stared at the tiny bubbles that floated to the top of the mug, forming foam around the rim. The smoke of a nearby Marlboro wafted past her nostrils when she realized he had spoken to her.
“I’m sorry, Ted. No, I’m fine,” she said, unconvincingly. She took another gulp then noticed a guy with sandy blond hair at the end of the bar. He was staring at her—those eyes, and just for a split second—
Her heart jumped in that split second; her worn eyes mistook him for David.
Stop it! She tried to regain her calm, telling herself to stop and maintain control.
The jukebox was playing the end of a song she didn’t recognize.
Then, her head jerked in a nervous twitch as someone called out...
“David, what’s up?!”
She looked over with a quick shifting of eyes that fell away embarrassed. She was beginning to see him everywhere, and it seemed endless. Her mind never strayed from him for more than three minutes, and that feeling of being the hamster in the wheel began to corner her into a confined pandemonium.
Then the jukebox began to play a song she did recognize. It was that song, the last song she remembered hearing on that night, and it blared out fro
m the beginning...
I see... the Bad Moon Rising. I see... trouble on the way.
She listened; it was real, unmistakable.
I see earthquakes and lightning...
She chugged the last of her beer and almost jumped from the barstool. The momentary peace had come to its close, rudely interrupted by an all too familiar and unchained melody. By the time Ted glanced up from his various tasks behind the bar, Tracy was out the door.
Out in the parking lot, she fired up her jeep and drove away.
* * * *
The characters were popping up on the screen one by one, and as Sidney and Leah moved closer, they could see the slight depression of the keys by an invisible, typing hand. Leah un-mounted a camera from its tripod and walked with it toward the computer, shooting footage of the ghostly anomaly wielding command of the keyboard.
“Are you getting this?” Sidney said, in a soft, cautious tone.
Leah affirmed, her one eye gazing through the picture perfect scope of the viewfinder. They walked slowly toward the screen.
“Do you see anything outside of what is happening right now?”
She pulled her right eye away from the camera perched on her shoulder and looked at the computer area with her own naked vision. She understood what he was asking, but at this moment, the seer saw nothing outside of the letters forming on the blank page, and the keys moving like an old fashioned, roller piano.
“Just what you see,” she said.
They were close enough now to distinguish the letters on the blank e-mail of the screen. The unexpected message sent a sudden jolt to his system. His eyes read the repeated word on the screen.
Sidney Sidney Sidney Sidney
“It’s spelling your name,” Leah said, shooting a perfect shot of the keyboard as the phantom hand typed. She set the camera up again on the tripod, focusing on the area.
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