It was just getting dark. Slowly and quietly as fog covers it all. Officer James was driving his personal car. He was passing through the woods near the city, so he would soon be home. He reached out to turn off the radio when he felt a thud at the front of the car. James hadn't seen anything at all, so he couldn't imagine what he might have hit.
He stopped the car, took the flashlight from the dashboard, and got off, walking back on the road until he saw something. It was a bird. James turned it over with the tip of his shoe. A barn owl. His first thought was to take it to a vet. Then he thought it was too seriously injured and it would die anyway. The barn owl was struggling and making some strange sounds, probably with pain. He won’t let it suffer. He took out his gun, pointed, and pulled the trigger.
The barn owl stopped struggling, opened its eyes, wide, even too wide, and looked at James. Then a shriek sounded as if from the darkest depths of the earth. The sound struck James as a bolt of lightning. He felt it like drilling through his body from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. The owl suddenly flew away. It flew in circles around James a few times, as if above its prey, and then disappeared into the darkness. James was startled. He was trembling all over for a few minutes.
For the next few days, James felt his anxiety growing. It then turned into panic. Whenever he closed his eyes to fall asleep, he imagined the pain inside him. Like a wild animal in a rage, biting all over.
When silence abandons it, the pain held in captivity escapes from confinement all over the body. It crushes him from inside, just like serrated wheels, and the body becomes drunk from so much suffering. It is the moment from which the hours are not equal anymore. The wreck is the sad word that comes first to my mind.
My new pain now is leaving. But I know it will come back and will come back to do what it knows best.
Then, obsessively, every night he would wake up trembling in terror. A claw was strangling his throat while his heart felt as if it would explode right away in his chest. The same nightmare. The barn owl and its lugubrious shriek.
His wife left him.
“James, I can’t take it anymore, I’m going through the same torture every night, over and over again. I see you almost dying next to me in bed, then you come to yourself again and the following night I relive the same story. I’m sorry.”
Then he lost his job. He was no longer able to pass the psychological test he was periodically subjected to.
James did not consider losing his job a serious problem. He set up a private detective agency. He got in touch with some retired policemen. Five of them were really excited about the idea of earning money with their experience. James got involved in work trying to escape his nightmare with the owl and her shriek.
But it wasn’t like that. The dream repeated on and on. A former colleague recommended him to a psychiatrist. That's how he met Janice. A doctor is interested in James's story from the very beginning. She had never met a similar case. It was a real challenge for an ambitious woman.
The medical treatment had no effect. The counseling sessions did not have any positive results. The nightmare went on.
“Janice, I feel I can’t take it anymore. After each episode, it is getting harder. My heart will not make it any longer. Unless I'm going to lose my mind.”
Soon he received a call from Janice, inviting him to a meeting at her office.
“I've been thinking about some solutions I think will give results. Otherwise, you will have to be hospitalized in our clinic. It is in a quiet area. It’s near a forest on the western side of the city. You will always be supervised. So that you are and feel safe.”
“You have to do just one thing. If you cannot get rid of the obsession with this barn owl, then bring it close to you. Look for a painting work that depicts a barn owl. Take the painting and hang it on a wall in your bedroom. See the owl as often as you can. Face it. Once you get used to this owl you will not dream about it anymore. I have to tell you I've been looking for a case like yours. I found out that something similar happened almost twenty years ago. I have talked to that doctor. His patient did not dream about the owl anymore after that. Instead, the patient began to scream like an owl. This is not going to happen in your case.
The detective agency signed a contract with several associations in three areas of the city. They reclaimed a mysterious appearance that was scaring the people. Some described it as a ghost, others as a shadow of an owl. Some photos had been taken, but they were vague, insignificant. They had not discovered anything for about a week. The claimants had already asked about the results of the investigation. James had scheduled a meeting with his detectives that morning at eleven o'clock. He wanted to discuss the state of the checks. And about the next steps, they were going to take. He took the file home. He wanted to study it before the meeting. He realized that in the morning when he went to the office, he had forgotten all the case data on a bedside near his bed. He called the driver, gave him the keys to the house, and told him to bring his file. Quickly before the meeting started.
There were just a few minutes before the meeting started when James received a call. It was his driver.
"I'm in your bedroom. There’s a strange woman in your bed."
"What woman?"
"She looks like an owl, like a cloud of black smoke. She’s lying in your bed and reading a book. Or a file I think. What should I do?”
“Can you see a painting hanging above the bed?”
"There is nothing above the bed. The wall is empty.”
“ Don’t say anything, just get out of there right now.”
They found the agency's car in front of James's house. No one has seen the driver since then. The strange woman and the case file both disappeared.
In a few days, the detective agency closed. James was last seen getting in a lady's car. He had suitcases in both hands. He did not tell anyone where he was leaving.
In the media, there was no news about ghosts or other mysterious appearances. After about five months an article was written about strange and powerful shrieks. They resembled the scream of a barn owl.
They were heard from the clinic in the western part of the city.
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#fiction #shortstory #surreal #mystery #prose
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