Glass Eye: Confessions of a Fake Psychic Detective

Chapter 28

25 Years Earlier

It came to Zandra the night after the national media picked up on David's story. Her restless eyes watched as the anchors on TV relayed the bizarre events. Nothing beats a sensational disappearance.

Zandra flipped the TV off and attempted again to sleep, just as she'd tried for hours before. She kept drifting in and out, like an infant slipping off a nipple, her mind never quite latching on to sleep. Stuck in that buffer between being awake and asleep.

The more time passed, the more vivid the images in her head became. They started as a flicker, like the opening reels of an old movie. It felt like half of a dream. She could move in it. Control it. Command it.

Free to float wherever she pleased, she brought herself into David's last moments. Followed him in her mind's eye down the street to the drug store. She stood with him over his shoulder, perusing the aisles for sun tan lotion. Close enough to feel his breath when he hollered a greeting to someone familiar across the parking lot.

Gene Carey. Asking David for a ride. It'll only take a moment, Gene said.

Something prevented Zandra from getting into the car with David. She knew what would happen next. So she stayed in the parking lot, overwhelmed by sadness at the inevitability.

The agony jolted Zandra back into reality, to the present. She felt herself sobbing into the pillow, almost as if she'd stepped back into someone else's heaving body. For reasons that would haunt her for years to come, two words worked themselves out of her lips. Most nights, it would be David's name. But tonight they formed, "Soma Falls." The waterfall marked the spot where they shared their first kiss.

The more she repeated them, the better she felt. Over and over, Zandra said the words, until she stopped crying. They offered a strange comfort to her. A sense of peace. Of closure.

"Soma Falls."

A breath.

"Soma Falls."

A deep breath. Shoulders relaxed. She sat straight up.

"Soma Falls."

Zandra gnawed on the words as if they could slip away at any moment.

The police didn't check Soma Falls out yet, right? Right. She stumbled to the telephone. Dialed the number for her 24-hour contact.

"Soma Falls," Zandra said into the phone. "Soma Falls."

"What? Oh, you mean the waterfall at the park in town. What about it?" the voice on the other end said.

"He's there. David's there. Please. Look. Hurry," she said.

The voice paused in thought. Zandra heard papers shuffling.

"OK, we'll send someone over to check it out," the voice said. Another pause. "Something happen for you to bring this up?"

"A dream, I guess," Zandra said.

The voice clears its throat. "Ma'am, I understand this is a stressful time for you, but we can't go chasing leads from dreams."

Zandra's eyes soaked the receiver in a fresh mask of tears. She tried to form words, but they came out as sobs.

"OK, OK, settle down. Look, I'll send a patrol over there real quick. I can't promise more than that," the voice said.

"Thank you," Zandra managed to get out before sliding down the wall into the fetal position.

As newspapers across the country would soon relay, that lone patrol car at Soma Falls Park soon turned into two. And another and another. Stevens Point's famous waterfall lost its innocence that night. No longer would young couples sneak off for a good luck kiss in its mist.