Page 1 of Someone to Call My Own

My head felt like vicious elves took a jackhammer to my brain, my throat was dry and raw, and I struggled to open eyelids that felt weighted down by something heavy. My first sense that sparked to life was smell when I inhaled harsh antiseptics through my nose, then I registered the sound of machines beeping near my head. My sluggish brain realized that I was in the hospital, but I couldn’t remember why. The sudden memory of River’s car careening out of control on the ice-covered bridge forced me to consciousness.

My eyes darted open, and reality slammed into me as hard as the impact of our car into the side of the bridge. One minute we were on a date for his birthday and the next our world literally spun out of control. I searched the semi-dark room for River and panicked when I didn’t see him. We hadn’t spent a day apart in over five years, and there was no way he’d leave me alone in the hospital. The pain in my skull increased as my blood pressure rose high enough to trigger a warning alarm on one of the machines I was hooked up to.

Several nurses and a doctor rushed into my room and their attempts to calm me only upset me more when they wouldn’t answer my question. “Where’s River?” It took me several attempts to get the words out of my dry, aching throat but they acted as if they hadn’t heard me. I struggled to get free from their grasp so I could find my husband, but they easily controlled me in my weakened condition. Instead, the nurses and doctor just kept repeating the same thing.

“Calm down, Mr. Jackson. We’re here to help you.”

A heavy fog invaded the edges of my consciousness, and I realized they’d injected me with something to calm me. Ativan? Something stronger? The hospital staff eased off of me once my body started to relax.

“We need to get your blood pressure down, Mr. Jackson,” a soft-spoken and kind-eyed nurse told me as I melted into the hospital bed. “You have a nasty brain injury, and high blood pressure is dangerous right now.”

“River,” I said weakly once more before my eyes drifted shut.

When I reopened them again, a different nurse was checking my vitals. “You’re looking much better already,” she said. I had no idea how good, or bad, I looked, and I didn’t care. I only wanted to know one thing. “Let me finish checking your vitals, and I’ll bring in your visitor.”

My pulse kicked up a notch as hope filled my heart, but luckily not enough to set the alarms off again. I knew that River wouldn’t have just left me alone. He must’ve gone home to get some clothes or got a bite to eat. The nurse’s comment about my appearance momentarily worried me until I remembered that River didn’t care if my hair was a mess or if I had cuts or scrapes on my face. He loved me unconditionally.My God, he must’ve been worried out of his mind. How long have I been out of it?

The nurse patted my shoulder and told me that she’d be right back. I tried to wiggle into a sitting position, but I was too weak. My face hurt to smile, but I plastered the biggest one I could muster when the door reopened. “He’s been worried sick about you,” the nurse said when she came through the door. The man who entered behind her wasn’t the one I longed to see though.

My cousin Memphis, who felt more like a brother, looked at me with so much sadness in his eyes that my heart knew what he was going to say before the words left his mouth.

“No!” I refused to believe it. I childishly covered my face with my hands, so I didn’t have to see the pity in his eyes. I willed my ears to block the sound of his voice when he told me that River was gone.

“I’m so sorry, Em,” Memphis said softly.

The days that followed were the worst in my life. I learned that River’s family claimed his body and buried him while I was in a coma. They refused to tell me where, so I had to spend what little energy I could muster on hiring a lawyer who would fight for my rights that the state laws didn’t recognize at the time. The anger kept me from focusing on the agonizing reality that my husband, my lover, and my best friend was gone forever. Whenever the anger subsided, even if it was only a brief respite, depression moved in swift and hard. I couldn’t get out of bed, and I tried to sleep as much as I could because at least I saw River in my dreams.

Those dreams of my husband soon morphed from fond memories and wishful hopes for an impossible reunion to odd predictions and pleas for my help that I didn’t understand. The dreams were broken fragments of events, all terrifying and deadly. I saw names on mail, street signs, and a shadowy figure stalking an unsuspecting young lady. The fear, agony, and despair were so strong it would bring me out of sleep, gasping for air. I knew I had to be cracking up and worried that the brain injury was graver than the doctors first suspected.

River would always revisit in my dreams, and his presence would calm me. It took me a while to realize that the dreams were actually psychic visions of things that had happened or were future events. I didn’t understand how something like that could just start happening to me. I’ll never forget the first time I contacted a police department with information on a cold case. They thought I was a nut job, but looked into the lead that I gave them anyway. Once it panned out and they discovered the body of the missing woman, the cops treated me like a suspect until they cleared me. They gave me a wide berth when they realized that I was a psychic and not a psycho. In fact, I think they would’ve understood better had I been crazy.

The truth was, Ifeltcrazy. The visions started coming closer together, and I began traveling around the country. My abilities became sharper and evolved over time. I was no longer just dreaming about incidents. I started having visions when I touched a garment or something that belonged to the victim or possible killer. Peaceful moments became frustratingly scarce as my visions came more frequently. Still, I had River to assure me in my dreams.

In one of them, River slid an envelope across our table to me. It had an address in Blissville, Ohio. I looked at River in confusion, and he gave me a smile that was equal parts sad and happy, if that was even possible.

“What’s this?” I asked my husband.

“It’s your new home. They need you there, and you need them,” he said.

“Who’s ‘they’?”

River reached over and cupped my cheek like he had every day that we’d been together. “Just trust me, Em. Know that I’ll always love you and I’ll be looking out for you.”

“You sound like you’re going away,” I tearfully said. “Don’t leave me again, River.”

“You’re going to be just fine, Em. I promise you.”

I had no intentions of moving from the home that River and I made together. It was a comfort to walk through the rooms that he had and sleep in the bedroom that had spawned so many beautiful memories. No, I wouldn’t do it.

River didn’t come to me in my sleep the next night or any of the nights that followed. It felt like I’d lost him all over again, and I couldn’t function through the depression and despair. I had given up on life, and I knew it was only a matter of time until life gave up her grip on me, and I could be with my husband again. I was wrong. Life wasn’t ready to give up on me, and the dreams of a quaint, white house in a lovely, small town kept recurring until I couldn’t take it anymore. River might not have appeared in those dreams, but I was sure he was driving them.

I packed up my things and moved to the house in Blissville, Ohio, not knowing what River had in store for me.

It didn’t require psychic abilities to know that my new neighbor didn’t like me. The house in my dreams was available to rent, and I signed a contract without touring the place. River said it was where I needed to go, so that was where I went. I had hoped he would return to my dreams after I did what he asked. I felt my neighbor’s intense regard the moment I stepped out of my vehicle on move-in day. I recalled a strong wind kicking up suddenly and wrapping around me like an embrace, but it didn’t feel welcoming to me. I felt an intense focus aimed at me and looked up to see the silhouette of a man watching me from the second story window in the house across the alley from mine.

The first floor of the home was a salon called Curl Up and Dye, which I thought was witty and cute. The second story could’ve been used for salon services also, but I had a feeling it was the owner’s personal residence. I was too far away to make eye contact with the guy, but it felt like I did anyway. I saw the man stiffen as if he felt it too, then he took a sudden step back and jerked the curtain closed. The last thing I wanted to do was alarm my new neighbor. I didn’t know why, but I knew that he was an important reason why I moved to Blissville.

The minute I walked inside the rental property, I sensed the lingering traces of evil lurking in the kitchen. I knew without being told that something very bad had happened there and not much time had passed since then. Accepting that I had psychic abilities wasn’t easy; in fact, I thought I had lost my mind. Once I realized my gifts were there to stay, I learned some basic psychic practices like cleansing a home by burning sage.