Chapter Thirteen
She reached the top of the stairs and felt the upper level of the house shaking. She watched as objects were thrown to the floor, windows broke, and her kitchen cabinets tottered and wobbled precariously close to collapse. The breaking glass, the pounding, the slamming, all noises blended together in an endless cacophony. She didn’t care anymore; she wanted out. She snatched the keys to her jeep from the countertop and fled.
The cool October air struck her as she broke free from the front door, drying the beads of sweat on her face with its cool wash of wind that reunited her with reality. She ran up the sidewalk, opened the door of her jeep, and hopped into the driver’s seat. Her tires screeched as she pulled away from the house.
* * * *
Sets of feet stormed up the stairs in single file, cautious not to tumble backward down the narrow enclosure. They reached the upstairs and glanced around at the havoc that had been wrought, the near devastation of a once tidy, well kept, domicile. Kitchen chairs were overturned, papers were strewn, glass was broken, and a door on one of the kitchen cabinets swung away from its hinges, falling to the floor. The quivering cabinet range almost followed.
Then, quiet, settling like an after-shock.
“Tracy!” Susan shouted through the house, but they were well aware that Tracy was gone. Her goodbye note was the front door as it remained wide open, still creaking from the air outside that pushed it to and fro.
They looked out the front door and saw the team’s van and Susan’s Taurus behind it, but Tracy’s jeep was gone.
“She’s taken off,” Dylan said.
“We’ve got to go get her!” Sidney’s angst sounded a warning bell.
“Wait,” Dylan said, moving his eyes around in surveillance. “It stopped...listen.”
They looked around the ransacked mess as the trembling ceased amid a settling quiet, as though it had never occurred. The turbulent pounding and booming that had rocked the house now left them in a muted aftermath, interrupted only by the sounds of the creaking door and the broken pieces of plaster that fell to the floor.
“I’ll try her cell,” Leah said, dialing from her own handheld. After one ring connected, a loud beep, the kind used to alert medical professionals, belted from below them. Tracy had left her cell phone behind, and it rang out from the table downstairs where she’d left it, along with her purse.
Minds merged on the same wave length; now it was even more imperative that they find Tracy, and quick.
“All right,” Dylan said, “let’s try to figure out where she would have gone.”
* * * *
Tracy looked back at her house as she’d pulled away from the driveway. She didn’t see any of them, but she knew they would come looking for her. She had to get away. The insurmountable stress had been building, erecting a mountain upon her shoulders and buckling her. Her freedom, if only momentarily, was a must, and she needed a drink.
Had she acted rashly in asking them to handle the situation? Maybe she needed more time to herself before having all those people in her house, trying to make contact with David and God knows what else. What if she’d just said nothing: would all of this be happening? Some part of her wondered why she didn’t just accept the way things were. What was she so afraid of in the first place...David?
Delusions of what life would be like consumed her: she in the living, and David in the beyond, coexisting together until such time as fate saw fit. She thought of the evil, taunting specter that disrupted everything. Crazed thoughts clustered her mind and fear rampaged her body, but ahead, relief gleamed in the form of a neon sign.
Ted’s Bar-N-Grill blinked in red, announcing itself against the night time backdrop, with an equally neon arrow pointing to the entrance. She and Marcia came here often to dull the day’s edge that came from working at the hospital. The gravel crunched under her tires as she pulled into the parking lot.
* * * *
“I think she definitely went for a drink,” Leah said.
“I’m afraid you’re right.” Susan’s voice was a mixture of fear and regret. “I should have done more to stop her from drinking, but I had no idea she was going to run out like this.”
“None of us did,” Sidney breathed a heavy sigh of nervous apprehension.
“Okay.” Dylan lifted his hands, a gesture for all to wait and think rationally. “Since we’ve only known Tracy for two days, where do you think she would have gone?” The sharp sting of his question was directed at Susan.
“It’s hard to tell,” she said. “Tracy was determined not to tell me anything.”
“Well, Doctor, that doesn’t seem to help us much now, does it?” His irritability was a soft slap in her face, and Leah spoke up.
“Now, wait a minute. Let’s not go blaming anyone for this. We should have realized that this may have been too much for her.”
“She shouldn’t have been drinking,” he said. “I told you all something like this could happen.”
“What could we do, Dylan?” Leah’s voice climbed a decibel. “It is her house, and we didn’t think she was going to take off like that, nor could we predict the magnitude of what just happened here.”
Dylan was at an impasse. Leah was so young, but so often right. His eyes were cast down at the floor, and everyone breathed and tried to focus. Sidney stepped forward and spoke.
“What about this friend of hers, this Marcia person? Could she have gone to her?”
“Marcia Ross,” Susan said. “It’s worth a try. If she doesn’t know where Tracy is, she might know where she could have gone.”
Sidney handed her the phone. “Call her.”
* * * *
The inside of Ted’s Bar-N-Grill smelled like old fashioned, black licorice intertwined with the aroma of freshly tapped beer, cigarette smoke, and the occasional Shirley Temple, that classic barroom scent that took one back over a century. She ordered a beer and sat alone at the bar. Ted was the balding, fifty something proprietor who knew Tracy as a semi regular, in every now and then with her friend and sometimes by herself.
“Nurse Tracy,” he said. “How’ve you been?” He noticed her distant stare and that look in her eyes: the one of fear, paranoia, and too much alcohol, and the bulging, dark circles underneath that looked like sunken tea bags. “Everything all right?”
She managed a slight grin.
“Oh, okay, I guess,” she said, smiling curtly. She wasn’t about to reveal to him the details of her life over the past few days, especially now as she struggled to contain the slight slur that slipped from her tongue through the trail of her tainted breath.
He had the look on his face of most bartenders, the one where the voice asks an honest question of concern, but the eyes secretly say, “Yeah right,” to the watered down response.
“Just as long as the sun’s still shining, right, Tracy?” He laughed, attempting to give the right answer for her.
“Yeah, I guess.” Her smile masked the day’s turmoil, concealed the inner frenzy she felt in resurging waves. Cheerful voices surrounded her, and the juke box played along with the occasional hoots and hollers, all normal sounds that made her feel like reality had begun again, if only for this fleeting moment.
She chugged the mug of cold draft beer almost gone, and the foam set over her lips in a mustache, reminding her of David. She glanced around the bar and realized that none of these people had ever experienced what she was going through right now, or had they? Maybe it’s why they were here: to drink away the ghosts, the poltergeists, the old times, and the sweet memories that bit and tore at the heart even worse than the hurtful ones.
There didn’t seem to be any confusion, pain, or unhappiness, just a continuous good time that went on and on with good noises dubbing over whatever bad noises played in the background. Reality had struck Tracy Kimball far worse than any happy hour could erase. She looked at them all.
If they only knew...
She pulled the ten dollar bill from her pocket to pay for the beer; it was all the money she had absent her purse.
“On the house, Trace; it’s happy hour.” Ted put a freshly poured mug in front of her and took the old one away.
* * * *
They sat in the kitchen, listening to the speaker phone dial Marcia’s number in a tone about ten notches too loud. After five frustrating rings, she answered.
“Yes, Tracy?” Her voice boomed out, and Susan turned down the volume.
“It’s not Tracy, Marcia. This is Susan. We need your help.”
“What happened?” She spoke the words flat out, seeming certain that something would happen, but unsure of what. Susan made a long story short.
“Tracy became extremely upset and stormed out of here. She doesn’t have her phone, and she’s had more than a few drinks. She’s in no condition to drive.”
“Well, why the hell didn’t you all stop her?” Marcia scoffed, and Susan was about to reply.
“Look, we didn’t have time to stop her,” Dylan said, interrupting with a clear lack of patience in his voice. “We had some trouble here in the house, and she ran out before we could stop her. We need to find her, now!”
“Who is this?” Marcia’s head nurse attitude had returned. “What trouble? Is everything all right over there?”
He apologized with a sigh and introduced himself.
“Yes, everything is fine now, but we need to find Tracy, that’s all. As we said, she is in no condition to drive, and she may be drinking even more. We need to get her home.”
Marcia mentioned the only place she could think of: Ted’s Bar on Route 22.
They were closer to Route 22 than Marcia was, they would get there faster.
“Thank you,” Dylan said. “We’ll try there.” Then, Marcia’s voice shot out quickly before the disconnect.
“Do you need me to come over there?” Dylan assured her they didn’t. “Then tell her to call me, as soon as you bring her home.”
He said he would and pressed a button on the speaker phone, ending the call.
“We’ll take my car,” Susan said, and Dylan agreed.
“Sid, you three stay here in case she comes back,” he said. “Also check out the downstairs, see if everything is all right. We have our phones, if you need us.”
“Gotcha,” Sidney said. “Call us as soon as you find her.”
He agreed and they drove away in Susan’s car, leaving Leah, Sidney, and Brett to the house where the dead would speak yet again, tonight.