Chapter Eight: Chapter Eight: Intervention
Booth and PCP. Two things that I thought I would never have to think, much less actually see, happen in this lifetime. What the hell happened to you? What made you do that? Why didn't I know?
Why didn't you come to me?
Brennan sighed heavily as she quickly drove towards the Jeffersonian, matching the pace of her racing thoughts. The sun had yet to break the barrier where the sky met the city's boundaries, where the now glowing pink auras touched the concrete land. Angrily, Brennan wiped her eyes as tears of frustration, confusion, and disappointment threatened to leak out. She pushed the gas pedal harder in response and growled, "None of this is the way it's supposed to be. I'll be damned if I break because Booth did." With more conviction, she talked aloud, "You were supposed to be a man of honor. Everyone has dark moments, and even if this still could have happened, the Booth I know would have gotten help. Whether he talked to me or not. Men like you don't fall from grace like that, and they sure as hell don't go to prison!" She punched the horn for no reason, releasing a deafening and prolonged honk. Sitting back in her seat, breathing quickly as her anger subsided.
"No…" she finally brought herself to say. "This isn't real. I have to be wrong; it's just not logical…"
The sun finally showed its face, and the bright white rays momentarily blinded Brennan. Lifting her hand to see the road past the glare, she gasped aloud as a man with a black cloak and hood walked in front of her speeding vehicle. Slamming the brakes, the tires squealed in protest as Brennan fought to stop the car from colliding with the pedestrian.
Too fast, too little space…gonna hit him, gonna hit him, can't stop!
The walker turned his face to Brennan as her front bumper made contact with his waist…and continued to travel right through. Brennan felt a chilling rush as a shadow passed through herself and the rest of the car, and screams ringed though her ears. The car came to a stop just as a dump truck ran a red light across the street she was about to pass. The world was still and quiet once more. Fumbling with her seatbelt, her shaking hands were barely able to eject the safety device. Throwing the driver's door open, she mentally prepared herself to see the carnage her recklessness has caused. Not a stranger to car accidents and identifying completely ruined bodies, she understood there would be blood streaming down the length of the street, that bones would be shattered, and insides would be trailing from the car…and the stench of burst organs would be rank for hours. What she was not prepared to handle was that it would be. All. Her. Fault.
He screamed. He knew it was happening. He knew. God, I'm going to be sick…
The gawkers would come. The children would be fascinated, then have disgusting, twisted nightmares for weeks…why wasn't anyone out yet? Coming around to the rear of the car, her feet became rooted to the asphalt: the road was empty and clean. Her arms dropped limply to her side as she leaned against the trunk, blinking hard. Her eyes scanned the gutters, the sidewalks…no man in a black cloak, no witness was screaming for the cops, and more importantly no body strewn into pieces.
"I heard you yell…" Brennan breathed in shock. "I heard you!" she cried out. She crouched on her haunches, and fought to control her battered thought process. "You were speeding. You saw the man. You braked. You heard the scream…where's the bump?"
She paused. Then, "Why the hell didn't I feel the shocks? The car rattles going over squirrels, much less a person…"
It's simple math, Bren. No bump, no victim. He was never there. You heard yourself screaming.
"…Lady? Hey lady! I asked if you're okay? Are you hurt?"
Brennan stood up jerkily. "Yes, yes, I'm fine." She saw that the elderly man before her had pulled his car next to her. Her eyes widened and she frantically asked for confirmation, "Sir, did you see a man in a black hood or cloak? He was in the street literally seconds ago, and now I can't find him."
The man pulled his hat off his balding head and carefully answered, as if speaking to an escaped mental patient, "Lady, all I saw was you slamming the brakes after flying down the street. Good thing too, if you hadn't. You could have been killed; that truck would have totaled your little sports car, including yourself. You almost gave me a heart attack: I thought I was about to see someone die. Old guys like me ain't supposed to go through that kinda shock." He began to ramble.
Brennan held up her hand, cutting the other man off. "Are you sure you saw no one? At all?"
"I did not. Do you need me to call for some help? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Brennan scoffed, "That's ridiculous. It's childish to believe in…." She stopped and stared hard at the street. Eerily, she asked, "I would have been hit?" The man shook his head in affirmation. She fumbled once more to find words, and haltingly, she announced, "There is no such thing as ghosts…now, if you excuse me, I need to go home."
Without another word, Brennan entered her car as the man glared curiously through the window. "Drive safer," he called out uncertainly as she started the ignition. "This is insane," she mumbled under her breath. "My emotions are overwrought: I need to go home and rest. I had a hallucination; that is all. The Jeffersonian can wait."
She drove 15 mph below the speed limit the entire way home.
Wearily, she dropped her keys onto the shelves next to her door and trudged into the darkened household, refusing to think about what occurred earlier in the street… which wasn't entirely that difficult considering that she had apparently imagined the whole thing.
You would have died.
"Shut up," she murmured to herself as she fell back onto the sofa. She closed her eyes and directed her mind elsewhere. "The human cranium is composed of 8 plates, 14 facial bones, and an additional 22 skull bones. Those more likely to be shattered when identifying a victim that has suffered blunt force trauma to the skull would be the nasal bone, the temporal and occipital bones…." She smiled as she could feel her stress release. One could always depend on bones. She sniffed the air quite suddenly and found that her apartment smelled musty. Standing up, she opened a side window in hopes of a breeze. It only grew stronger, and Brennan found herself on high alert. She recognized the familiar scent…it was old, irony, raw. Not raw as in flesh, but as in the deep and enriched earth. She knew it from childhood, as did any other child who spent long hours playing in the dirt, splattering mud in the fields after a heavy rainstorm. She knew the smell by heart, after spending the majority of her adultlife in it, identifying those who had long become part of that dirt. She knew it well; so why was it in her apartment?
"No…" she breathed as she turned to the hallway mirror.
In thick, muddy strokes, a message screamed,
Up the stairs they go,
to the war
of evermore.