Pipeline (14 page)

“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 from 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.

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.