Sidney pulled the swivel chair out from the work station slowly, and the keys continued to type, unaffected. He sat down and scooted closer to the screen.
“I am Sidney,” he said. “Who are you?” There was a brief silence, and they stared for seconds at the blinking, taunting cursor. Then the typing began again.
David
“It’s him,” Leah said, the excitement building in her voice.
“David, this is Sidney. We have come here to help you.”
The typing came quicker this time.
help tracy
He looked at Leah, both of them feeling the pulse of excitement, fear, and apprehension.
“Yes,” he said, glancing back at the screen. “We are helping Tracy, also. Tell me, David, where are you, outside of being here, right now?”
light
Sidney said the word aloud.
“What light, David? Where is it coming from?”
gods light
“God’s light,” Leah said, repeating the words on the screen. A current like lightning ripped through them both, and they felt their souls being gripped by some great and heavy hand. Sidney swallowed hard, and the sweat drenched his forehead, realizing that the pipeline connection was far and above anything they had ever expected, and now they were in possession of proof beyond any doubt.
tracy
The keys typed her name again.
“Yes, David,” Sidney said. “She’s worried about you, frantic that you’re not at rest. She wants you to move on, David. We are trying to help you do that. That is why you’re here, David, because you can’t move on.”
A wave of quick movement swept the keyboard and was gone. On the screen, the ghostly writer displayed a chilling message: the one typed word that would make them understand.
wrong
“Wrong?” Sidney’s heart began to pound. “Then why are you here, David?”
Leah stepped away from the camera at the instant she saw him. He stood over Sidney’s right shoulder. She saw the formation of a face, a facade of deep sadness growing more visibly distinct than the remaining countenance. That expression of sorrow seemed somewhat like a warning, an SOS, and the rest of him began to develop like a Polaroid.
“He’s standing near you, Sidney!”
“David, talk to me,” Sidney said, closing his eyes. “Just talk to me. I listen.”
The deafness engulfed him again, and what had once been David’s voice boomed inside his head, surging another shock throughout his system.
“TRACY!”
The sound of it swept a school of butterflies through his stomach and at the same moment, Leah saw Tracy’s name type out again. She kept watch with eyes moving back and forth from the ghost typing, to the vision of what had once been a vibrant, young man, now a phantom taking shape, trying to ground itself in a forgotten world.
The next two words typed out on the screen, but Sidney heard them wailing in his mind simultaneously.
save her
The deafness in his ears died away, so did the vision that captivated her eyes. There was no more typing, nothing now except the blinking cursor and the few words left behind. Sidney and Leah looked at each other, their eyes wide with not only fear, but the dawning of a realization that may have come far too late.
“Oh God,” Sidney said, the hair on his arms raised while the chill of gooseflesh rippled from head to toe. “Do you realize what this means?”
“David has been at rest,” Leah said. “He’s come here to warn her!”
She took a deep nervous breath, and the fact that they both agreed pushed the fear factor one notch higher. Their eyes locked together in a heightened grip of terror.
“We’ve got to get to her now!” Sidney jumped from the chair, feeling the panic rush through him as his mind began to put the pieces of the mysterious puzzle together. He remembered what that specter had said to him.
The sands are slipping through the hourglass, Sidney.
He envisioned an hourglass with precious little sand at the top, sifting through to the bottom, subtracting the time they had to save the person they were meant to save all along--Tracy.
They abandoned the house and ran to the van outside. Sidney pressed the speed dial on his cell; he would alert Dylan that they were coming to help locate Tracy—before time ran out.
Chapter Fifteen
Dylan rode shotgun as Susan drove, and after the day’s tension between them, the awkwardness was a brick wall separating the driver and passenger sides. Small talk about the area and the quickest way to get there served as no wrecking ball, but it helped. Brett sat in the backseat, keeping conversation alive, offering shortcuts to the fastest way to Route 22. They were minutes from Ted’s Bar when Dylan’s cell phone rang.
He answered.
“It’s Sid. We’ve got problems.” The familiar voice of his gifted, goofball friend spoke with the gasping heaves of a fleeing fugitive.
“Where are you?” There was a hint of alarm in Dylan’s voice when he recognized the sound of a moving vehicle in Sidney’s background.
“Have you found her?” Sidney asked, ignoring his question.
“We’re almost there. What—”
“We are on our way there. Keep her there until we arrive.”
“Sid, what happened?!” The alarm in his voice grew.
“We had a visitor while you were gone...David.”
Alarm turned to confusion, and Brett and Susan listened as the voice squawked from the small cell.
“He made a pipeline connection,” Sidney said, the announcement a finality in Dylan’s ears. The visitor he’d been awaiting had finally shown up, after he’d stepped out. He felt a bittersweet anticipation. Dylan’s loss for words allowed Sidney to continue.
“It was the computer,” he said. “We noticed words being typed on the blank e-mail we left open. Leah filmed it all, and she saw him. He spoke not only in my ear, but on the screen.” Sidney struggled to spit out the point. “He hasn’t come to haunt her, Dylan. He’s come to warn her!”
Dylan sat for seconds in silent comprehension, assimilating this revelation and pondering the next course of action. “All right, I’ll call you when we find her,” he said. “We will bring her home.”
“Wait for us,” Sidney said. “I think this was a particular kind of warning, not a general one, and that’s what scares me. The apparition told me something about time in an hourglass, Dylan. I think our time to help her is limited; we can’t let anything happen to her—”
“We won’t, Sid. We will bring her home and sort this all out.” As the leader, Dylan always had a way of sounding assured, composed, hopeful. But Sidney felt a dark cloud shadowing over him like the total eclipse of a full moon. Something wasn’t right; he could feel it, but only the approaching dawn would know the outcome of the night’s events.
They hung up, and Dylan turned to Susan and Brett.
“We have to make it there, fast. David made contact with Sidney and Leah. Tracy may be in trouble.”
He explained everything.
* * * *
The double yellow lines of the highway slipped underneath the jeep two by two until she steadied the steering wheel and stayed on the right side. The right-hand exit to the back roads wasn’t far. She would take that route to get back into town.
It was a darker but familiar route, one often used by many college-age party goers to bypass city traffic and evade DUI checkpoints throughout the main roads. It curved and twisted through hills and over embankments, unlit except for an occasional streetlamp, and overshadowed by the mighty Oaks and Maples that towered throughout the low lying valleys. But it was the faster way home, and tonight, Tracy was eluding checkpoints also.
She turned at the right-hand exit, and the back roads to home sprawled out in front of her. She lifted her foot lightly from the gas pedal, careful not to speed nor swerve, lest some traffic officer lie waiting with lights off, hidden in the Fall foliage.
Fears and thoughts about he
r house began to consume her, creating a jagged feeling just below the ribcage and turning her stomach inside-out. She wondered how bad it had been after she left. What about the fire? Was there even a house to go back to? A vision of the strange streaks of water running down the walls kept haunting her, a subliminal advertisement playing over and over in her mind. She felt like a teenage runaway, wanting to get back home but fearing what awaited her when she got there.
She wanted to call first, but she’d left her damn phone behind in the confusion. The thought of using the phone at Ted’s came to her five minutes after she pulled away from the parking lot. Oh well, she thought, like the prodigal teen, she’d just have to face the music. One way or another, this night had to end.
Another realization came to her as the dark, lonely road unwound beneath the purple twilight: this familiar route was the same one David had driven the night of the accident. She hadn’t traveled it since then, and memories of that night began to flood her like the streaks of water that streamed down her walls earlier. She fought to keep her mind on the road.
She gripped the steering wheel, feeling the vibration beneath her fingers as a newly found, false courage to face this enigma gathered inside of her. The fleeting feeling of nothing left to lose began to erect with concrete certainty.
Her jaw opened wide in a yawn that watered her eyes. She closed and opened her eyes and quickly steadied the wheel. Eons of broken sleep were bearing down upon her. She thought to turn on the radio to let the loud music revive her, but instead, the radio turned on by itself.
* * * *
Susan Logan’s Ford Taurus pulled into the same gravel parking lot that Tracy’s Cherokee tore out of not ten minutes before. The filled spaces in the lot seemed to confirm the happy shouts of a lively crowd as voices boasted from inside, escaping the front door that continually swung open and closed. Tracy’s jeep was nowhere in sight, but the Taurus swerved into the spot it had just fled, a strange irony they would never know.
“It doesn’t look like she’s here,” Susan said, parking the car.
“We’ll just have to find out,” Dylan said, and unstrapped the seat belt.
They left the car and walked to the front door.
The smells of black licorice, beer, and cigarettes wafted to their noses as they stepped into Ted’s Bar & Grill. Their eyes scanned the bar, searching for Tracy, but their hearts dropped to their stomachs when none of the laughing, talking, faces were hers. They moved to an open spot, and Dylan spoke to the bartender he didn’t know.
“Can I help you?” Ted said, almost shouting over the blaring jukebox and standing not far from where Tracy had sat.
“I’m looking for Tracy Kimball.” Dylan used an equally loud tempo to outmatch the music, and Ted leaned forward with his ear as closely as possible.
“You just missed her,” he said, pointing the stool off to his right. “She sat right there, jumpier than a queen off to the chopping block. I don’t know what was up with her, but I was doing something back here and when I looked up, she was flying out the door.”
“When was this?” It was hard to hear the urgency in Dylan’s voice over the music, and the laughter was a chorus that grew louder through a domino effect.
“Couldn’t have been ten minutes ago,” Ted said, turning his right shoulder to glance at the clock behind the bar. “Like I said, she didn’t say anything, just sucked down two beers and took off before I had a chance to say ‘so long.’”
“Did anyone here see which direction she may have driven off in?” Susan’s question sounded a little unrealistic to Dylan but not impossible. Ted asked aloud if anyone had seen her drive away--no one had. Ted shook his head and shrugged.
They stepped back out into the parking lot where the sounds of the full swing party were softly stifled. Dylan pressed his speed dial, but there was no need. Up ahead, they saw the team’s white van cruising the highway, coming towards them, the turn signal blinking admission to the parking lot. Sidney was driving and Leah was in the passenger’s side. The gravel crunched underneath the van’s tires as Sidney thundered into the lot.
“Nice timing, Sid,” Brett said aloud. “Crack up the van, or get stopped for speeding. That will find her a hell of a lot faster.”
They walked toward the van as Sidney and Leah jumped out, and the five of them stood in the parking lot, trying to figure out the next move.
“Where is she?” Sidney’s voice belted. His breathing was heavy and asthmatic, a result of shock, anxiety, and the stress of knowing that a timetable to save Tracy was looming specifically for him. The possibilities of what could happen to her in her current state unfolded in an endless list.
“We just missed her by almost ten minutes,” Dylan said. “You’ve got to calm yourself, Sid, we can’t—”
“There’s no time!” Sidney yelled, and the roar caused Dylan to step backward in surprise. “We made pipeline contact with David. I heard him and watched him type on the goddamn screen! She saw him!” He pointed to Leah, as though the sights in the eyes of the seer were indisputable proofs. “He’s trying to save her, and he can’t!”
They heard Sidney tell it again, this time, to their faces that drooped like masks of melting clay. They all exchanged glances of worried confusion and Dylan swallowed hard, seeing the fear in Sidney’s eyes and hearing the strain in his voice.
“Dylan’s right, Sidney,” Susan said, stepping forward to ease him. “We can’t find her if you go off the deep end.”
“He won’t, but you need to listen to him,” Leah said. “I saw David. He’s a very troubled spirit. We need to figure out where Tracy would have gone from here.”
“Sid, are you okay?” Brett said, watching as Sidney’s face hung down, seeming to study the gravel expanse beneath his feet. The voices were starting up again, and the last thing he heard was Leah speaking up for him. The voices whispered one after another, competing in a growing mumble of ghostly chatter.
“Sidney... Sidney... time... shortcut... ”
His head slowly raised at the two words he hadn’t heard before, short cut. He didn’t understand. Then one of the voices he’d heard earlier—that of the young boy, spoke fast, almost shouting.
“Shortcut, faster!”
He lifted his head up in a state of eureka, having been handed the missing piece of the puzzle.
“He’s listening again,” Leah shouted. “Sidney!”
The voices died away when she shouted his name. What the voices said had all started to make sense; Tracy was driving home by a back road, a short cut.
“She’s taken a shortcut home,” he said. “Where are the rural roads that lead back into town?”
“That way.” Brett said, pointing to a road that turned off of the highway on the right-hand side. “You think she’s there?”
“I know it. Let’s go. Brett, you ride along and navigate.” Sidney didn’t wait for explanations; he turned and strode back to the van with Leah and Brett trailing him.
Dylan called out that he and Susan would follow in the Taurus, but before he could finish, Sidney mounted the wheel of the van and slammed the door shut. The ignition roared to life, and the tires spun gravel back at their feet as Sidney tore out of the parking lot.
* * * *
The sound of an announcer’s voice erupted from the radio, yet something was different. It was unlike a regular advertisement with the happy announcer selling brand new cars and punching incentives with the zeal of an auctioneer. This voice was filling the jeep with ominous vibes: tones that rippled the flesh, raised the hair, and alerted listeners that an unearthly hand was conducting. It sounded distorted, pitchy, and started to warp.
She pushed the power button off with one quick flash of her finger. There was silence except the hum of the jeep, and the winding road disappeared beneath the wheels. Then, that smell of his cologne that pervaded the house earlier, now seeped through the jeep, clouding around her like a mist.
A tidal wave was forming inside her stomach, surgin
g upward, urgently about to break shore, and a low-grade fever heated her body, as though she’d been wrapped tight in an electric blanket. Sweat sprayed from her forehead, drenching her face, and she knew this was the precursor to the tidal wave. She eased her foot from the gas pedal, seeing no one in the rearview mirror, and pulled off to the side of the road.
She swallowed hard, each time holding it back, hoping the wave inside her stomach would quell. Then it seemed her whole world was turned upside down like the seasonal scene inside a snow globe. She opened up the driver’s door, holding on tightly lest the dizziness drop her out onto the road.
The wave spewed out in a violent gush, both from her mouth and nose, breaking shore upon a poorly paved back-road. The gush was followed by two smaller ones, and a dry relief settled over her stomach. The smell of musk had been replaced by beer and vomit. Tracy wiped her face with her shirt and heaved the fresh, nightly air into her lungs with deep, expanding gasps.
She looked behind her, feeling a twinge of embarrassment, but no cars were approaching. No one had seen one of University Hospital’s top nurses pull over on the side of the road and puke her guts out. She seen many patients do this before, always to the tune of relief afterward, and now she was no different.
The sky above grew darker as she looked up. There was no way to call anyone, but she had to get home; there wasn’t much farther to go. She shifted out of the parking gear, and the jeep rolled slowly onward.
There was silence while the agony of stupidity seized her. She was a nurse, and she should have known better than this, but she had to escape that house. The insanity of the past few days had stretched her mourning for David into an eternal continuum, and now there was nothing left to do but confront and accept the circumstances. Either way, both life and death stood frozen in a standstill, and something had to break the uneven balance.
She increased speed with a light touch of her foot, oblivious to the slight swerve of the wheel. Her eyelids as they fought to close became heavy elevator doors that sprang back open at the touch of a tardy hand or foot. They would shut with relief, then pop back open in alert. The unexpected tidal wave had provided a much needed peace and tranquility at the worst possible moment, and her mind began to dull the reality of her hands clutching the wheel.
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