Darkness.
Cold, lifeless, complete darkness.
Falling.
Screaming.
Silence.
Light.
I’m standing somewhere. I’m standing nowhere.
There is something in my hand. I look down and notice that I am holding a cane. My hand is encased in a white glove. I am dressed in white.
Formal.
A white tuxedo with tails.
“ Hello, Mister,” a small voice calls from the void.
I turn to find a small child. A young girl with silky, strawberry-blonde hair tied up with perfect, white satin bows. She is dressed in a lacy, white, party dress and Mary Janes. She’s looking up at me with large, curious eyes. She holds out her tiny, gloved hand to me and then waits.
I take her hand.
A scream.
Silence.
The young girl is tugging on my coattail.
“ Give him the tickets, Mister,” she tells me.
“ What?” I ask. “Who? What tickets?”
“ Tickets, please.” There is a faceless man standing before me.
In my hand, I hold two smooth rectangles. I turn them over in my hand. I don’t know where they came from or why I have them. I can only assume that they are the tickets the man wants.
At first glance, they appear blank.
At second glance, they appear patterned.
At third glance, they appear familiar.
I look at them closer.
The Seven of Pentacles.
“ Mister, give him the tickets, or we’ll miss the show.”
The young girl continues to tug on my coattail in frustration.
“ Hurry.”
I give the faceless man the tickets. I don’t know why.
We are sitting.
We are in a theatre.
Seats seem to extend forever into the shadows. They are all empty. The young girl and I are the only audience.
There is a program in my hands. It is printed on a single sheet of fancy paper and folded in the center. The symbol adorning the front of the page is the Seven of Pentacles. I begin to peel open the crisp parchment.
“ They’re starting.” The girl nudges me and points to the stage before us.
I look up. The tall vermilion curtain is swinging open slowly. A grey mist is beginning to spill from the slit forming in the center.
The curtains are open wide, suddenly, as if they had never been closed.
A faceless woman with strawberry-blonde hair, dressed in elegant white lace is standing center stage. She is flanked on her left by a faceless brunette and on her right by a faceless blonde. They are all dressed alike.
The grey mist spills over the edge of the stage and is filling the theatre. It hangs wetly around my ankles, creeping incessantly up my legs.
A scream.
A splash of red spreads across the breast of the woman at center stage, and her body heaves violently as a gurgling voice calls out, “Why, Rowan, Why?”
I try to get up. I can’t. The cold grey mist has crept up over my knees and into my lap. It is holding me in the seat. I can’t move.
I look over at the young girl. She is staring intently at the stage.
A scream.
I look back to the stage. I don’t want to, but I can’t help myself. A crimson stain bursts forth on the chest of the faceless brunette woman. She begins crumpling to the floor, shrouded in the mist. A new voice gurgles, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name…”
The mist has made its way farther up my body now. It floats about me mid-chest. I look over to the young girl. I expect her to be completely covered in the paralyzing fog.
She isn’t.
She looks back at me curiously as the fog licks at her but never touches. I open my mouth, but I can’t make a sound. She turns back to the stage.
A scream.
Blood, thick and red, flows from the chest of the blonde, quickly forming a Pentagram, then blending into a formless blotch. She begins to slip downward into the fog, her gurgling voice reaches my ears, “Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?”
The woman center stage is still standing. She continues to shake violently, her head rolls forward, and a face forms where there had only been void. Her eyes open, and she looks directly at me. She begins to slide away into the grey mist, and her mouth begins to move, “Why don’t you stop him, Rowan?”
Her body disappears. Standing in place behind her is a hooded, robed figure, a bloody dirk held firmly in his grip. He looks at me, then to the young girl, then back to me again. He appears faceless, but even at this distance, I can see his eyes.
Cold.
Cold, grey eyes.
The thick fog erupts before him. A plume rises quickly, then dissipates, falling back to the floor almost as quickly as it had risen, leaving behind the lace clad form of yet another young woman. She screams.
The scream echoes forever throughout the shadows. The robed figure raises the dirk, then plunges it downward.
Blood.
Dark crimson, thick with the young woman’s life. The life that flows out of her in time with her waning scream. The hooded figure thrusts his hand into her chest, then wrenches it back as her dying body crumples to the floor.
The mist is just below my chin. I’m completely unable to move now, and I’m finding it hard to breathe. I look over at the young girl next to me.
“ This is just the dress rehearsal,” she tells me matter-of-factly, looking up at my face with large bright eyes. “I’ve got to go now, Mister.”
I try to speak as the girl slides off her seat and begins skipping up the aisle, a fogless void enveloping her. Nothing comes out. She disappears.
“ All…Is…Forgiven,” a deep, demonic voice filters into my ears.
I look back to the stage. The hooded figure holds his hand aloft, vermilion streaks dripping down his bare arm. In his hand there is grasped a still-beating heart.
The fog has reached my face. I try to hold my breath, but it slides in anyway. It creeps into my nostrils and into my mouth. It tastes foul.
It continues to rise and now covers my head.
I can hold my breath no longer.
Darkness.
An endless scream.
Once again, I awoke to the sound of my own tortured scream. As Felicity had suspected days ago, the nightmares weren’t going to end until this was over. Not until the real killer was found and stopped.
As neither of us had foreseen, the episodes were growing more intense. Each nightmare was more disturbing than its predecessor-more vivid, more maddening. Each dream was drawing me closer to what could only be an inexorable convergence with the cancerous insanity eating away at the mind of the murderer.
My wife straddled me in the bed, gripping my shoulders and shaking me violently. I continued to scream.
“Rowan!” Her mouth formed the word, my name, but her voice couldn’t penetrate the banshee wail that filled my ears. “ROWAN!”
A stinging sensation suddenly radiated through the side of my face as my head wrenched to the side, and silence faded quickly into the room. It had taken the shock of Felicity’s hand impacting my cheek to awaken me from the pain of the nightmare.
“I’m sorry,” I heard her say, rapt concern flooding her voice.
I pulled her close.
It was my turn to cry.
“How many?” she asked softly after my sobs had waned. “How many of these nightmares have you had?”
“Four,” I choked, pulling back from her and pressing the heels of my palms against my eyes.
“They’re getting worse, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” I affirmed, “they’re getting worse.”
My wife rolled to the side and fluidly got out of bed. She continued to stare at me as she slipped into her bathrobe, her expression rapidly beginning to show irritation on top of the concern.
“Why haven’t you told me about this?” she demanded angrily as she knotted the belt.
“I started to this morning.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and hauled myself up. “But that media circus was waiting for us, and then everything else…” I let my voice trail off.
“Well, everything else is over,” she flatly rebutted my objection. “We’re going to talk about it now.”
“I’ll be all right,” I protested. “We can talk in the morning.”
She glared back. “Now.”
The tone of her voice told me in no uncertain terms that I shouldn’t argue. I finished pulling myself from the bed and stood shakily, still rubbing my eyes.
“Can I take a shower first?” I queried.
“I’ll be in the kitchen,” she answered.
I felt somewhat better after standing under the cool spray of the shower for a few minutes. At the very least, I was no longer drenched in sweat, and I had stopped shaking for the most part. Felicity was seated at the breakfast nook, cradling a mug of freshly brewed coffee in her hands when I entered. Salinger, Dickens, and Emily lined the wide window sill, staring back at me through slit eyes, ears cocked out to the sides of their heads as if they were three wise, albeit small and furry, prophets.
I pulled down a mug from the cabinet and poured myself a measure of the black caffeine-laden brew.
“Feeling better?” Felicity asked as I poured.
“A little,” I replied and then slid in across from her. I had quickly recorded my latest nightmare in my Book of Shadows before showering, and it was now tucked beneath my arm. I pulled it out and dropped it to the table with an audible smack. The trio of felines followed its course in unison, from my hand to the table, and then looked back at me expectantly. “I’m still feeling rattled though.”
“So you want to fill me in, then?” My wife peered at me over the rim of her cup before taking a sip.
I tapped the bound sheaf of papers that was my dream diary. “I’ve written them all down. The first one was Saturday when I fell asleep on the couch.”
“I remember,” she confirmed.
“I didn’t have one that night though,” I continued. “I guess I was too exhausted.”
“So, is it a recurring nightmare?”
“In some ways I guess it is, but not really.” I thoughtfully fingered the rim of my coffee cup. “Ariel is always in them. She’s always dressed in white lace, and by the end of the nightmare, she’s always dead.”
“That’s pretty straightforward,” Felicity told me, analyzing my words carefully. “Just think about what you’ve seen.”
“It’s bad enough seeing her die over and over,” I outlined. “But she always says something like, ‘Why don’t you stop him?’”
“Subconscious reaction to a feeling of helplessness?” she proffered. “You want to be able to save her, but you can’t. It’s probably your own psyche saying it.”
“That’s what I thought at first too,” I partially agreed. “But there’s too much detail, and the variations in the dreams seem to form a pattern. It’s as if Ariel is trying to tell me something. Like she’s trying to give me clues to the identity of her killer.”
“So you don’t think these are just nightmares then?”
“Not since the third one,” I answered. “They’re just too damn real…And they keep getting more intense.”
“What kind of clues do you think she’s giving you?”
“I’m not exactly sure. One of the things that has recurred in the past two nightmares was the Seven of Pentacles.”
“The tarot card?”
“Yeah. In the third dream anyway.” I flipped through the pages of the Book of Shadows halfway hoping an answer would leap out at me. “Ariel always was fascinated with tarot.”
“What do you think it means?” Felicity queried.
“The inherent meaning of the card is something like hard work and patience brings growth… and something to do with money, if I’m remembering correctly. I was never that interested in the cards.”
“Neither was I,” she echoed then paused. “You said it was a tarot card in the third dream. What was it this time?”
I scribed in the air with my finger while taking a sip of my coffee. “The symbol, from a card, only it was on a pair of tickets and a program.”
“What, like concert tickets or something?”
“Tickets to a play. Or I guess it was a play.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” I sighed. “In this nightmare, I went to what appeared to be a play, but there was this little girl with me. I’m pretty sure she’s Ariel as a child,” I explained. “Anyway, she told me that it was just a dress rehearsal.”
“What was the play about?”
“The murders,” I answered flatly. “The curtain opens up and there are three faceless women on the stage. A strawberry-blonde in the center, a brunette on her left, and a blonde on her right.”
“Ariel, Karen, and Ellen.”
“That’s what I’m figuring,” I agreed. “Anyhow, all three of them are dressed in white lace gowns, and there is this grey mist that keeps spilling off the stage. It creeps across the floor like some kind of fog and just keeps getting deeper. It paralyzes me and holds me in the seat, so I have to sit there and watch as this shadowy figure kills them one by one. Ariel, then Karen, and then Ellen.”
“What does the little girl do?”
“She just sits there and watches. For some reason, the fog never touches her.”
“And she told you it was just a dress rehearsal?”
“Yeah. After the shadowy figure kills all three women, this plume of mist rises up, and then as it dissipates, there is this other woman…” I stopped mid-sentence as the portion of the nightmare I had just described replayed itself in my mind like an endless loop of film. The realization suddenly struck me like a fist between the eyes. “DAMMIT! How could I have missed it!” I exclaimed.
I leapt from the table, sending the heretofore-quiescent cats into a frenzied rush to escape. They bolted in three separate directions and in the same direction all at once, sending saltshakers and other table adornments to the floor. Coffee sloshed from my cup, and my wide-eyed wife shot upward from her seat.
“Rowan! What’s wrong?!”
“Another woman appeared on the stage, and the bastard killed her too,” I spoke quickly, advancing across the room and snatching the telephone from its cradle. “He killed again! The son-of-a-bitch has killed again!”
I punched the lighted buttons, frantically dialing Ben’s home number.
“Aye, are you sure?” Felicity appealed as she tended to the spilled coffee.
“It has to be,” I answered confidently and then began impatiently urging the phone. “Come on, come on, pick up!”
I pressed the handset tightly to my ear, listening to the electronic vibrato of the ring at the other end of the line. If nothing else, this portion of the nightmare was suddenly clear to me. Ariel was telling me that there was either going to be another murder or that another had already occurred. A gnawing hollowness in the pit of my stomach insisted that it was the latter.
“Rowan, don’t you think…” Felicity started.
I brought my hand up sharply and waved to cut her off as on the fifth ring, the receiver at the other end was picked up.
“Hello,” a rough, hazy voice, still thick with sleep issued from the earpiece.
“Ben, it’s Rowan,” I blurted into the handset. “There’s been another murder.”
“Do what?” Ben’s voice came back to me. “What are ya’ talkin’ about?”
“The killer, Ben. He’s still out there, and he’s killed again,” I insisted urgently.
“Slow down, man. Where are ya’?”
“I’m at home.”
“The killer murdered someone at your house?”
“No, no. Nobody at my house. Listen to me, R.J. isn’t the killer. The bastard is still out there, and he’s killed someone else.”
“Who, Rowan? Who’s dead?”
“Another young woman. I don’t know her name.”
“How do you know this?” Ben’s voice sounded much more alert now.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I expressed. “Just trust me on this.”
“Well, where did this murder take place?” I could hear him shuffling paper, preparing to take notes.
My mind had been working so fast I had rushed ahead of not only the rest of the world, but myself as well. I motioned to Felicity to hand me my Book of Shadows and began leafing through the last few pages, scanning them as fast as I could. As I had feared, there was nothing to indicate where the murder might have taken place.
“Rowan? You still there?” Ben’s voice crackled from the earpiece.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”
“Well? Where’d this happen?”
What I was about to say was sure to portray me as a lunatic. I only wished I had another choice. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Ben’s incredulous voice issued again. “Whaddaya mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean I don’t know where it happened, I just know that it has,” I answered in a pleading tone, knowing full well that my words now sounded hollow and empty.
“Lemme get this straight.” He ran down the high points. “The killer is still out there, and he’s killed another young lady. You don’t know who, and you don’t know where, but you just know it happened. So, you decided to call me at…” He paused, I assume to check the clock. “At quarter of four in the morning ta’ tell me all this?”
“Yeah,” I muttered.
“And how you know this, I wouldn’t believe, even if you told me?”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Try me.”
I was dejected. I was frustrated. I was angry that I had no way to make him believe me. I did the only thing I could think of to do. I told him the truth.
“A vision. Okay?” Discontent permeated my voice. “It’s something I saw in a vision when I went to sleep tonight.”
“Jeezus, Fuck, Rowan!” The earpiece buzzed as he shouted. “Are you kiddin’ me?! You called me at almost four in the mornin’ because of a goddamned nightmare?!”
“It’s not just a nightmare, Ben,” I plead. “It’s more than that. You don’t understand…”
“Hell yes I understand!” he cut me off. “You got some kinda bug up your ass about R.J. not bein’ the killer, and ya’ can’t leave it alone. Now you’re havin’ nightmares about it.”
“No, Ben, that’s not it,” I insisted. “I know it sounds that way, but trust me…”
“Look, Rowan,” he spoke slowly. It was obvious he was trying to hold back anger. “You’re just gonna have ta’ accept it. The D.A. is filin’ charges against R.J. tomorrow mornin’, and that’s the end of it. Now drink some warm milk or somethin’, and go back to bed. We’ll talk about this in the mornin’. Goodbye.”
“No, wait, Ben? Ben?”
I was talking to dead air.
I slowly settled the receiver back into its base and stared at it, silently cursing myself for being unable to convince him.
“He hung up,” I finally said.
“Aye… I got that feeling. I’m sorry Ben didn’t believe you,” Felicity told me in a mild voice. “I was trying to stop you before you called him.”
“I should have listened,” I granted. “He’s been pretty understanding about everything so far, but this…I know I must have sounded like I was nuts.”
She slipped her arms around me and nuzzled in close, slowly rubbing my back in a comforting manner. “You sounded concerned, and convinced.”
“I sounded nuts,” I repeated. “You don’t have to sugar-coat it. I’ve just never had involuntary visions this intense before. I’m not quite sure how to handle it.”
“I don’t know if I would either.”
“If I just had something tangible,” I mused. “Some kind of concrete proof.”
“Maybe it hasn’t happened yet,” Felicity returned. “Maybe there is still time to convince him, then.”
“Maybe, but I really doubt it. I’ve got a bad feeling that I’m a day late and a dollar short.”
The relative stillness of the room was broken by the clamor of the phone as it began to ring. Without releasing my grip on my wife, I reached for it just as STORM, BENJAMIN and a number played across the liquid crystal face of the caller ID box.
“Hello,” I answered, fully expecting to be chewed out by my friend or even his wife.
“Good, you’re still up.” The earlier anger in Ben’s voice had been replaced by something resembling horrific awe. “Better get dressed. I’ll be there to pick ya’ up in a half hour.”
“Someone found a body,” I ventured, already knowing it to be true.
“I’m just glad you’re on our side,” he muttered, “’cause you ain’t natural, paleface. You just ain’t natural.”