Silent Echo Read Online Free Page A

away at me.
    With thoughts of death, losing my mind, and disease, it’s no wonder I can’t sleep. And as I lie there and flit in and out of consciousness, waiting for death, waiting for Numi, wanting to be alone, but not wanting to die alone, my cell phone rings from somewhere. It sounds far away, and the ringing somehow merges with the chaotic images in my thoughts. I know that the ringing is coming from my cell phone, but I don’t care. I don’t even care that my mind seems broken and scattered and gone. I especially don’t care about my dying body. But I do care how good it feels to rest.
    So nice,
I think.
So nice…
    Sometimes the swirling images, the indescribable prisms of lights, morph into people. But often just one. Usually this person seems to be standing nearby, often in the corner of this very room, watching me. I’ve even gone as far as to open my eyes to catch whoever is in the room with me, but no one is there. I’ve made it all up. My dying mind has made it all up.
    Sometimes I call out to Numi, expecting to find my friend in the roomwith me, but he’s not there. I’m all alone with my scattered, incoherent thoughts. Dying is the ultimate hallucinogen. The final hallucinogen.
    But now, as the phone continues to ring, one of these bright beings of light steps forward. The blazing white image is someone I recognize. Someone I’ve grown quite fond of. It is Olivia, Eddie’s missing wife. She has beautiful black hair that’s oddly translucent in the light. She does not smile and I see why: her mouth is bloody. So is her neck. Her neck, I see, has a deep gash that has opened down to her throat. If I look hard enough, I can see inside her throat.
    Sweet Jesus.
    I gasp and sit up, and the vision is gone instantly. I scan the room wildly, but I’m alone. Late afternoon sunlight splashes across my apartment living room. I blink hard. Olivia, complete with her open neck, had been standing right here in the light.
    My phone is still ringing. Numi had set my phone to ring nearly a dozen times before it goes to voice mail. He wants me to have the extra time needed to get to it. What Numi wants, he gets.
    Still looking around, shaken by the bloody image of Olivia, I reach for the phone and swipe it on. I don’t bother to see who’s calling. Hell, it’s all I can do not to drop the damn thing.
    “Hello?” I say. Or I think I say. My mind isn’t entirely here.
    “Jimmy,” says a vaguely familiar voice. “They found her.”

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    “Who is this?” I ask, slurring my words. “Found who?”
    “It’s Eddie. They found Olivia.”
    “She’s all right?” I ask, although I already know the answer.
    “No. She’s not all right,” he says.
    I sit up on the couch, now fully in the moment. My scattered thoughts seem to retract back, like an explosion played in reverse. I’m here in the present, which means my earlier conversation with Eddie hasn’t been a dream after all. These days, reality and dreams are difficult to differentiate.
    The vision…
    “Where did they find her?” I hear myself ask. I can feel bile rising in my throat.
    “Laurel Canyon.”
    If he says something else, I don’t hear it. I hear nothing past the words “Laurel Canyon.” I discover I’m now sitting up and sucking in air.
    Not related,
I think.
Impossible.
    Laurel Canyon holds a special interest for me. What was found in Laurel Canyon would change my life forever. I take in more air. I want to stand and pace but I don’t have the energy for it. So, I breathe and keep breathing until I calm down.
    Of course they’re not related,
I think.
How could two crimes that span twenty-two years be related?
    Dust motes flit in and out of the streaming early evening sunlight where Olivia had recently stood, at least in my vision. Olivia with her bloody throat. For some reason, I look down and I am surprised at how shrunken my chest looks. I’ve easily lost seventy-five pounds over the past two years.
    “Some hikers