Blood Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation (12 page)

The sound of the faucet roared as if
amplified down a long tunnel. It was punctuated by the chaotic
thump of my heart as it pounded out an erratic cadence against my
eardrums.

A familiar weakness started to overwhelm me,
and I could feel myself begin to crumple where I stood. A moment
later the floor came up and slammed painfully against my knees. I
gripped tighter on the edge of the sink with my right hand then
brought the left up to my neck. As I expected, I didn’t feel any
sort of wound, but I also wasn’t surprised that when I pulled my
hand away, bright red blood was smeared across my palm and
fingers.

I heard my own echoing voice as I muttered,
“Dammit. Not again… Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

Another sharp wave of nausea washed over me,
and I squeezed my eyes tightly shut a second time. But, instead of
darkness, I found myself staring at the moonlit lake I had seen in
my nightmare. As before, the water was smooth and still, without
even the faintest ripple. There was, however, a pronounced change
to the landscape as I remembered it. No longer was there the corpse
of a black swan on the shore.

Now, there were two.

“
Help us…
” a young woman’s plaintive
voice begged deep inside my ears.

The image slowly faded, and with it the
nausea began to subside. I opened my eyes and stared at the water
rushing from the tap in front of me. The bloom of light collapsed
in upon itself, and the appearance of my surroundings slowly
returned to normal. A half second later, sound lost its unnatural
tone as the auditory spectrum fell back into sync with reality as
well.

My mind flashed on the fresh avian corpse
alongside the lake. I let out a heavy sigh and rested my forehead
against the cool surface of the basin.

I couldn’t say that I was particularly
surprised by the event. For me, hearing voices was obviously
nothing new. But I had to admit that there was something about this
one that went beyond many of the others. It was a kind of
insistence that carried with it a cold sharpness. And it had that
keen edge that cut straight to my core then slowly and deliberately
began to twist.

When added up, I knew all too well what
everything meant. In that instant, the nausea returned in force.
Only this time, it was born of the earthly realization that I had
no choice but to surrender.

With a tired groan, I pulled myself back to
my feet then slowly started ratcheting the towel dispenser at my
right. After a few cranks I tore off the length of rough brown
paper and stuffed it beneath the spigot to soak up some water while
I carefully slipped out of my jacket.

It took several minutes for me to clean up,
during which time my luck held out and no one else needed the
restroom. After finally gathering myself, a quick look in the
mirror told me that I still wasn’t anywhere near presentable. My
shirt was wet where I had attempted to wash it out, and my light
jacket still had enough blood on it to raise eyebrows at the very
least. Fortunately, the restroom itself didn’t look any worse for
wear, unless you went rummaging through the waste can and found the
bloody paper towels, of course. I didn’t have to do a double take
to decide it would be best to simply forego picking up my coffee
order and just head for the exit, which is exactly what I did.

When I reached my truck, I went ahead and
downed some aspirin dry and hoped that I already had enough
caffeine in my system to do the trick. My head was throbbing more
than I could ever remember, and it was a struggle just to see
straight. Reaching to my belt, I pulled out my cell phone and
stabbed at the keys. After three tries I managed to get the number
in and press the send button. My call was answered on the second
ring, and I started talking before Ben even finished his
greeting.

“Black swans, Ben,” I said, holding my
forehead in my palm as I leaned forward. “Does that mean anything
to you?”

“Yeah, actually it does,” he replied without
missing a beat, his voice even and tone matter-of-fact. “Our Jane
Doe had a tattoo of one. Why?”

“There’s more to it than that,” I replied.
“It has some kind of significance. I just don’t know what.”

“Well, maybe I do. We found some shit on the
computer about ‘em. Some crap about a swan society or somethin’
like that. Apparently they’re a group of wingnuts who let the other
wingnuts drink their blood. Pretty fucked up, huh? Anyhow, we’re
already chasin’ down some leads in the local freak community. No
offense, Row, but you’re a little late to the party on this
one.”

I let out a heavy groan.

“You okay, white man?” my friend asked,
concern edging his voice. “You don’t sound so good.”

“Tell me about it,” I sighed. “Listen, Ben, I
may be late, but this party is just getting started.”

“Whaddaya…” he began, then his voice lowered
to a mumble. “Jeezus, Row…
Twilight Zone
?”

“Yeah.”

After a pause he asked, “So are you sayin’
what I think you’re sayin’?”

“Yeah, Ben,” I replied. “There’s another
victim. The body just hasn’t been found yet.”

“Fuck me… Okay, so since you’re callin’ and
tellin’ me this, should I assume you’ve officially fallen off the
hocus-pocus wagon?”

“Yeah, I’m afraid so,” I told him. “And right
now it seems there’s no point in even trying to get back on.”

“So, what now?”

“I don’t know. I guess you wait for someone
to report a body. I’m going to hope this aspirin kicks in soon, so
I can try to get home before this headache gets any worse, if
that’s even possible.”

“Home? Where the hell are ya’ right now?”

“Not far away. I had a meeting. I’ll be
fine.”

“Ya’ sure? You need me to come and pick you
up?”

“Really, Ben, I just need a few minutes and
I’ll be fine. But, I do have a bad feeling I’m going to need a
bigger bottle of aspirin before this is all over.”

The dogs were yipping as the garbled notes of
the front doorbell echoed through the house in a rapid staccato. I
tried not to think about it, but the racket definitely had a
different idea in mind. A vague memory flitted through my brain,
and I remembered hearing a very similar combination of raucous
noises a bit earlier. At least I think it was earlier. I couldn’t
be sure about the actual passage of time, not that it really
mattered much.

At any rate, I was fairly certain the
original clamor was only a dream, so I had ignored it. Just like I
had ignored the telephone—both my cell and the landline—when they
intruded on my slumber as well. Eventually, the earlier cacophony
had faded into nothingness and simply went away, which seemed to
prove out my theory that it was all in my head.

Or so I thought.

Now, the ignoring didn’t seem to work as
well. Instead of a few evenly spaced tones and a handful of random
barks, the obnoxious chime was assaulting me as a neverending
non-rhythm of dings, dongs, and pings—not necessarily in any
recognizable order. And based on the yelping, the dogs weren’t
exactly pleased by this development at all.

I dragged the pillow up and clamped it over
my head with one arm. My new theory was that if I couldn’t hear it
then it wasn’t real.

“Go…the fuck…away,” I groaned out of
frustration.

The insane din finally stopped and I let out
a sigh. However, before I even finished expelling the air from my
lungs, I heard the phone in my office begin to ring. The muffled
bell pealed four or five times before eventually falling silent. A
moment later the
William Tell Overture
began to warble
through the bedroom. I tossed the pillow to the side and opened one
eye. My cell phone was dancing in a vibrating semicircle atop the
nightstand as the tune spewing from it rose through the scale,
starting at mildly audible and arriving somewhere near flat out
blaring.

With a heavy grunt I gave in and rolled
myself up into a sitting position and reached for the device.
Before I could wrap my hand around it, however, it stopped
jittering and fell silent. I allowed my chin to fall against my
chest then reached up and rubbed my face. Twisting around, I
squinted at the digital clock and saw that it was pushing 4:30 in
the afternoon.

Rocking forward, I stood up, then stumbled
around the bedroom. As I found my bearings in the semi-darkness, I
began moving on some sort of automatic pilot. Somewhere along the
line I must have snatched up a shirt, though I didn’t remember
doing so. All I knew was that I noticed it in my hand sometime
after my haze-filled brain figured out how to open the door.
Lumbering forward on pure instinct, I decided maybe I should put it
on and managed to slide one arm into the wrong sleeve after three
tries.

My head still felt like it was going to
explode. I didn’t think it was any worse than it had been earlier,
but it definitely wasn’t any better. Of course, I hadn’t really
noticed the pain until a few moments ago when the person at the
door found it necessary to roust me from the relative comfort of
sleep. For that very reason, I was already displeased.

By the time I staggered up the hall and
through the living room to the front door, the insane rattle of the
bell had been replaced by the sound of someone pounding on the
wooden barrier. I started to yell but quickly decided against it
because I had a sneaking suspicion doing so would only add to my
agony.

Out of reflex I squinted and put my eye up to
the peephole as the door vibrated under the hammering fist. I
wasn’t surprised to find Ben on the other side. After all, my cell
had been chirping the ring tone I had assigned to his numbers, and
it was pretty unmistakable. The phantom memories I had been trying
to pass off to my subconscious as mere dreams were now solidifying
somewhere in the back of my head, so even in my foggy state I was
able to make the obvious connections between the back-to-back calls
coupled with the frantic knocking.

I took a couple of steps away from the door
and shot a quick glance at the pendulum clock hanging in our dining
room, just to double check myself. It read closer to quarter past
four, which meant I’d forgotten to account for the intentional
fifteen-minute time warp on Felicity’s alarm clock. In any case, if
my addition was correct, only a little more than four hours had
gone by since I had last talked to my friend. Of course, it had
been my experience that a lot could happen in four hours, most of
it not necessarily good.

I sighed heavily, slipped my arm out of the
now upside down shirt, then managed to twist it around and drag it
partially back on before unlocking the door and swinging it
open.

“Dammit, Ben, just stop, will you?” I said as
I squinted at him. “Even the dead can’t sleep.”

The look on his face might have been amusing
under different circumstances, but right now I didn’t care.

“Jeezus fuck, Row,” he exclaimed. “I’ve been
out here for fifteen minutes. You okay?”

“Do I look okay?” I grunted, a highly
detectable bristle in my voice.

“Not really.”

“Well then I guess that’s your answer.”

I finished wrestling my way into the shirt
and began fumbling with the buttons as I stepped aside to allow him
entry. A moment later I looked up to see that he was still standing
in the doorway. Near as I could tell, he hadn’t budged.

“Well, are you coming in or what?” I
asked.

My friend looked me over with a half-curious,
half-embarrassed expression and said, “Ya’know, you’re actin’
pretty pissy. I didn’t interrupt you and Firehair or somethin’ did
I?”

“Hell no, she’s not even here right now,” I
replied. “Besides, if you had, she would probably be the one you’d
have to worry about, not me.”

“Okay, so then you’re half undressed and
actin’ like an asshole why?”

“I was in bed trying to sleep off this damned
headache,” I told him. “By the way, I’m half dressed, not
undressed.”

He shrugged. “Half full, half empty. Same
friggin’ difference in my book…”

“Give me a break and just come in, will you?”
I huffed.

He came through the opening, and I elbowed
the door shut behind him.

“I can’t remember the last time I saw you
like this, white man. Do I need ta’ get ya’ to a hospital or
somethin’?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“You know it’s not that kind of headache,
Ben. Why do you even ask?”

“Dunno. Maybe ‘cause one of these days I
figure you’ll say yes or somethin’.”

I let out a frustrated sigh. “What the hell
are you doing here, anyway?”

“Calm down, will ya’? After that phone call
ya’ had me worried. That, and I need ya’ to tell me what’s goin’
on.”

“Nothing as lascivious as you obviously
seemed to think. Like I said, I was trying to sleep off this
headache until I was rudely interrupted by someone at my front
door.”

“Get over it, Row. I meant what’s up in la-la
land. You called me, remember?”

“I thought that was pretty
self-explanatory.”

“Uh-huh, I got the
Twilight Zone
part.
What I wanna know is what you weren’t willin’ ta’ tell me earlier
this mornin’. I’m goin’ out on a limb here and guessin’ it had
somethin’ ta’ do with swans.”

“Yeah, kind of. Last night I had a nightmare.
I saw a moonlit lake with one dead swan on the bank. You’ve got a
murder victim. If I had to guess, one swan, one victim. Today, I
had a repeat but instead I saw two dead swans. You do the
math.”

“Is that it?”

“What? That isn’t enough?”

“From you, yeah, it’s prob’ly more than
enough, but I got a feelin’ there’s somethin’ more.”

“Nothing that’s going to help,” I replied.
“Besides, shouldn’t you be out looking for another body or
something?”