The Motif

Chapter 9

It was a heavily overcast autumn afternoon, and a light mist hung over the ground. Those elements, coupled with the dying leaves of autumn, made for an ultimately dark and mysterious atmosphere as Jennifer's bus took her West along Interstate 384 to Hartford, where she had to transfer to a separate line bound for Worcester, and then Boston.

As Jennifer watched the haunting landscape fly past her window, she should not have been tired (she had slept over thirteen hours, after all), but nonetheless she somehow drifted into a slumber and was, again, visited by images of the mysterious man, woman, and Tim.

As before, the visions were all underscored by the music box melody, but this time the tune was accompanied by a whispering voice:

The notes keep playing, playing in my head

They keep repeating 'til all I see is red

The world is swaying, swaying, but soon I'll be dead

The rhythm won't stop beating, an endless night's ahead.

Jennifer snapped awake, following a vision of the mutilated corpse of the young woman. She now knew why, on some level, the music box tune had sounded somewhat familiar to her when she first heard it: the rhythm of the tune's melody matched the meter of the enigmatic poem. She hadn't made the connection until she'd heard the voice, whispering the poem along with the melody.

As a cold chill ran down her spine, she looked out her window and saw the Boston skyline, the top of the Prudential Tower obscured by the ominous low-hanging cloud cover. She'd slept almost the entire two-hour trip from Hartford to Boston, even slept through the stop in Worcester.

What the heck is wrong with me? Jennifer thought silently to herself.

By the time she arrived at the bus terminal twenty minutes later, the dark clouds finally came through on their promise of rain, drenching the city in a bitter cold shower. Jennifer futilely fought against the rain and wind with her umbrella, as she made her way to a small hotel, just around the corner from the bus terminal, and was relieved to find that they had vacancy.

Considering the miserable weather outside, Jennifer decided she would stay in for the night, waiting to hear from Tim, and begin her investigation in the morning if Tim didn't find anything by then. She figured the first school to fall victim to the mysterious plague would be as good a place as any to start.

Jennifer borrowed a couple take-out/delivery menus from the hotel receptionist, and then headed up to settle into her room, where she promptly changed out of her drenched clothing and into a set of PJs. As she called and ordered Chinese food , she began surfing through the channels on the TV. Pretty much all that was worth watching aside from mindless reality programming was either The Ring or The Extra-Terrestrial. Considering she didn't really need to give her subconscious any further darkly supernatural influences, she opted for E.T.

After the fourteen hours of sleep she'd already had today, Jennifer fully expected to be up half the night, unable to sleep. But apparently her body was not done resting yet, for she was completely passed out, dreaming of the man, the woman, and Tim, even before Elliott's first terrified face-to-face encounter with the lizard-like alien.

***

Jennifer woke up first thing the next morning and, after a quick continental breakfast in the hotel lobby, made her way to the school where the first attack happened.

"What, are you press?" the principal, a short, portly, balding man named Mr. Jerkins, snapped when she explained the reason for her visit. "I thought we were finally done with you bastards."