She reached out and touched Sidney’s hand; he scoffed under his breath. This perfect emergency bandage provided by Dr. Logan had gained her a seat on not only the team, but on the society’s board, and Sidney would be seeing much more of her on a permanent basis.
“Well, isn’t that convenient?” Sidney said. “So, now what? We still have to meet with her parents and Marcia. We are telling them the truth, which means I have to look them in the eyes and explain that it is my fault that Tracy’s dead.”
So Sidney was now accepting blame, Susan thought, much the same way Tracy had over David. So many eerie coincidences and similarities, as though history were repeating itself.
“Sidney, are you to blame for Tracy’s alcoholism?” Susan spoke as the psychiatrist now, exposing a fact she’d discovered much too late. “Tracy had been avoiding me because her drinking had escalated. It was alcohol that had caused David’s accident and subsequently Tracy’s. She never healed from losing him, Sidney. But what I didn’t see then, because she had abandoned our sessions, was that she couldn’t heal because she’d progressed into an alcoholic.”
“I did put my foot down, Sid, when I first noticed her drinking,” Dylan said, “but everything in that house was happening so fast I—” He broke off, unable to finish, not wanting to remind them how they had silenced him.
Couldn’t miss out on the discovery of a pipeline connection? The thought was implanted in Sidney’s mind, yet he refused to say it. There was enough blame to go around. He began to sweat and felt one of those headaches he’d felt lately when the deafness came upon him, and the voices of the dead spoke out.
“In many ways,” Susan said, “this is my fault, Sidney. It’s not as though I’m lying.”
A somber silence hushed the room as guilt and failure hung in the air, then Brett broke the silence.
“I have analyzed all of the footage taken, Sid. There is more than enough proof of not only poltergeist activity, but a pipeline connection as well. There was danger in that house, and it fed off of her turmoil, her grief, and then her drinking.”
The video footage, as well as the audio recordings, had been seized by the society heads who were now reviewing them behind closed doors at some clandestine location. They would be the reason that Roman Hadley would soon be paying them a conference call. Dylan thought it unwise to reveal this to Sidney right now.
“You figured it out on your own, Sid,” he said. “David was trying to warn her, to save her from herself. You didn’t fail; Tracy failed herself.”
Sidney kept envisioning the hourglass, remembering the voices that first whispered, then shouted, guiding him in the race against time. After the crash, the voices had remained silent. He imagined that they saw him as the failure he’d seen himself as.
“Do none of you understand?” He spoke with sharp rebuttal. “I had help. I possess something the rest of you don’t, except you.” He pointed to Leah, the tears streaming down his face. “I had visions and heard the voices. It was my job to stop what was going to happen to her!”
“So, who do you think you are? God?” Leah’s eyes narrowed in on him. “We are not heroes, Sidney. We have something we don’t fully understand and we never will. You need to let go of your pride! There is much in this world of which we have no control.”
“But what about that thing we saw? The warning that came from it. Why didn’t we see this coming?” Sidney spoke through defeated sobs, his jaw in a tightened grip of anger that raged inside. He felt a pulsing in his right temple, and another wincing pain shot across his head in a circular orbit. “Why didn’t she heed the warnings?”
“Because we don’t ever heed warnings, do we? That is human nature, Sidney.” Leah now leaned forward, facing him down from the opposite side of the table, her voice a subtle but brisk retaliation. “We don’t ever heed warnings, regardless of where they come from. We ignore warnings until it’s too late, and often it is. We hide truths as we live with lies, and then we clad ourselves in armor, as though we are invincible. But don’t you see, Sid, you could never have known what those visions would ultimately mean.”
“Then what’s the point of having this curse?”
It was the first time she had ever heard Sidney refer their abilities as a ‘curse,’ and she sat back in dismay.
“Tracy gave her life in exploring the most important knowledge ever pondered,” she said. “Something so much bigger than any of us could imagine: the fact that life somehow continues, and that God does exist. Tracy helped us prove it. You saw what David’s spirit typed on the screen: God’s Light. You know it. That’s what he wrote, Sidney, God’s light. And we ignorantly assumed that he was some lost spirit, stranded in some sort of recurring oblivion.”
Another silence ensued, for it was a day that would be filled with them. One of the larger TV sets along the wall had been on, its volume set to mute. Dylan released the mute button when images of the reporter stationed outside the funeral home earlier, appeared on the screen. He spoke about how funeral services for the former Shadow Valley crash survivor, a University Hospital nurse, were held today, and how she had ironically become its next victim only months later.
Then the dangers of Shadow Valley Curve were debated with various sources who voiced their opinions for the camera. Dylan lowered the volume with the remote; there was nothing the news could tell them. The time was approaching where they would have to meet with the Kimball’s. Thankfully, Marcia knew a little about what had been happening; she was the one who had suggested the whole idea.
Susan was expecting some angry words from Marcia, no doubt, and Dylan was prepared to take the lead as far as the team was concerned. They had video footage to prove what had occurred in the house and how they were trapped in the den, unable to stop Tracy before she’d fled. Leah would help explain as best as she usually did, but the pressure began to mount for Sidney, who felt like a dead man walking.
Leah looked at him as he continued to stare through the glass of the table. She would drive him to Marcia’s; Dylan, Susan, and Brett were leaving together. They would meet there, where explanations would be given, and the disturbing tale would cause the grief to swell. But it had to be done.
Susan gave some parting words to Sidney, who said nothing. He closed his eyes as his head ate another slice of pain. Sidney and Leah were alone when the three left the campus.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” She’d been staring and noticed the color drain from his face. He’d taken his glasses off, lest they be soaked in tears. “You don’t look so hot.”
“I’ll be all right, I guess.”
He hadn’t told anyone about the headaches that had occurred the past several times when he’s heard the voices. He assumed they would pass, but now they came without any activity. It was probably the stress, the accident, and the fact that he still hadn’t slept. Nothing seemed real at this moment.
“I’m going to take care of a few things, then start the van,” Leah said. “I’ll be waiting for you outside.”
“I’ll lock up before I come down,” he said, without looking at her.
“We’ll get through this... I promise.” He ignored what sounded like famous last words now. She turned and left, the heavy door hissing closed behind her.
He sat alone in the room, staring off in a daze as devastation filled him, leaving all prior thoughts abandoned. He grabbed the TV remote to press the power button off, and it was a few seconds before he realized he’d hit the wrong button and shut down the cable access. Gray, snowy static filled the screen. He pushed another button on the remote, then another, but the static remained, growing louder, as the angry sweat poured down his face.
Then, all sounds stopped once again. He shook his head like a mad dog, trying to break free from the deaf world, and another pain shot through his head. Sound returned; he could hear the static again. There was a far away sound coming from it: a voice. His heart pounded hard, about to explode. The voice was warbled but then became clear.
; “Sidney...Sidney.”
He jumped to his feet with his eyes gazing deep into the screen. The pain worsened to a throbbing that turned his stomach inside out. The soft, undeniable voice that beckoned him from the leagues of death—he recognized it. It was Tracy. He gasped as the pain became a giant, jagged thorn, piercing and constricting the muscles of his face.
“Oh, God... I tried to save you.”
The pain was pulling him down.
“Sidney...”
Tracy called out from the crashing white noise in a soft, somber tone that spoke through the static. Concentration and focus were slipping away from him. The pain worsened. He began to slide to the floor as a hot, sticky redness flowed from his ears.
Blood.
Her voice called out again.
“Sidney...”
One final word kept repeating in his mind over and over again...
Pipeline.
Then the darkness overwhelmed him, and nothing but the endless drone of rushing static reverberated through his unconscious mind.
The End
Legal Notices and Disclaimers
Blue Oyster Cult, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” from Agents of Fortune. D. Rosen. prod: M. Krugman, S. Pearlman, D. Lucas; Columbia PC 34164, 1976.
Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Bad Moon Rising” from Green River. Fogerty. prod: Fogerty; Fantasy (America) M 20.090, 1969.
About the Author
Christopher Carrolli is a full-time writer, who lives in Western Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg and holds a BA in English Writing, and an AA in English. He has also won the Ida B. Wells Prize in Journalism. Pipeline is Chris’ first novel and first installment in The Paranormal Investigator Series. He has recently completed the second installment, The Listener.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ccarrolli
Blog: www.christophercarrolli.blogspot.com/
Email: [email protected]
Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/carrollic
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Pipeline Page 13
