Work Text:
Alex hadn't spoken to her mother in a couple of days. She felt bleary when she finally got out of bed that morning, and the sky was gray and dim, which was perfect couch weather. But her doctor had recommended regular activity for insomnia relief, and her mother… Her mother wasn't very excited about the prospect of Alex spending weeks out in the wilderness.
So she piled into the car and forced herself just far enough away from the house to enter the nearest cell reception bubble.
The engine was still clicking cool when her phone rang. Frowning, Alex dug it out of her purse without stopping to undo her seatbelt. "Hello?"
"Alex Reagan."
Alex's eyes went to the doors (still locked) and then the space ahead of her. The road was empty. "Simon."
"You've been very hard to get a hold of lately," Simon said, after a long pause.
"I'm not … Simon, how are you calling me? I didn't think you had phone privileges." Or her phone number. Though it was conceivable he'd found it online … Or, no, had someone find it for him.
Not that she could imagine anyone helping Simon make a phone call. She had a brief pang of wondering if he'd swiped a doctor's phone and hidden with it somewhere. It was too easy to picture a hospital employee sprawled on the floor of a storage closet or crammed underneath a cot.
Richard's voice was in her head: Don't tell Simon you're alone in the woods. He must have called repeatedly, to get through just when you had signal. People are very distractible, and it's easy for a determined person to pickpocket. Even in a controlled environment.
Simon laughed and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. "Don't you want to ask how I knew when to call you, instead?"
One hand tight on the steering wheel, she checked the rearview mirror. No one standing ominously on the road behind her. But there were woods to either side. Thick, gloomy woods, shifting in the wind.
"I think I'd rather know what you called about," Alex said. "I guess you've been listening to the show."
Was it just her imagination, or was it getting darker? The road ahead was long and straight and it seemed like she could barely see the end of it. The forecast had called for no actual rain. That seemed to be way off the mark, the way the sky overhead was threatening.
"Are you recording this?"
"Should I be?" Yes, she should, but no matter how many times she tapped the icon for her recording app, it wouldn't pull up. Could not establish network connection, her ass.
"It's not necessary. Maybe I was just calling to chat," Simon said. "Maybe I just wanted to hear your voice."
"Simon, you could have had the hospital contact the show offices again," Alex said. She didn't think she heard any background noise behind his voice. But the wind was whistling through the trees around her, and even with the windows all shut tight it was the only other thing she could hear.
He made a dissatisfied noise. "As I said, you've been very hard to reach. Why are you in the middle of nowhere? Don't you realize you have work to do?" he asked. "Important work?"
He's just making guesses. It's the same way people do cold readings, Richard-in-her-head told her. It would be easy to suppose you were somewhere rural, without signal, if his previous calls couldn't be completed.
"I think where I am is irrelevant to this conversation."
"You don't know what's relevant to this conversation, Alex."
"Then how about you tell me?" she asked, sweetly. She was repeating every sentence he said in her head, although she doubted how much of a recalled conversation she could reasonably put on the podcast.
"Okay." Simon paused for a moment. It was definitely, definitely getting darker outside. "You should be worried, Alex. About Dr. Strand. About yourself."
Alex scanned the road again, but there was still no one around. "Is that a threat, Simon?"
"It's not a threat to state the facts."
"What are the facts?"
"You're so close, Alex," Simon murmured, his voice drifting softly and making her shudder.
There were lots of dark shapes outside - tall, dark shapes - but they had to be trees. She didn't see a head or an arm or a leg among them.
"You're so close," Simon repeated. "You can't stop now. You haven't even hit the good part yet. Don't you want to see the second act?"
"I have no intention of stopping my investigation. Do you maybe want to give me some clues? You seem to know more than you're letting on."
"That would be telling."
"It seems the least you could do for interrupting my vacation."
"Vacation. Is that what this is? I think you've been doubting yourself. I think you've been wondering whether to stop. But you can't stop, Alex. You've put it all into motion. It's going to keep going. Do you want to go with it, or get dragged along behind?"
Alex could feel her heart in her throat, now. "I think that's enough."
Simon suddenly seemed irritated. His voice pitched up. "I'll tell you when it's been enough."
A tree branch slammed into the side window and Alex screamed.
The phone fell between her seat and the center console and she cranked the engine back to life. The branch tumbled off the car as soon as she'd driven forward a few feet.
Heart pounding, she twisted in her seat to see … just a branch torn off its tree by the wind. No one wielding it by the side of the road. No one on the road at all. The phone was still lit up, between the seat and the console, but she didn't want to hear one more word out of Simon Reese's mouth.
It was so dark now that as she hastily made a U-turn in the middle of the road she had to turn her headlights on. The wind pulled the trees to lean out over the middle of the street, and slashed shadows across the lights.
---
Before even turning on the lights at the house she dumped the recycling bin out: empty soda cans in front of the front and back doors, ready to rattle if they were moved.
Then she microwaved some cocoa and drew a blanket tight around her shoulders. The middle of the couch felt like the safest spot in the cabin. She could see out the front window, and her back was to the wall.
"Could have gone to Hawaii," she muttered, staring down at the weak glow of her phone. Zero bars. "But no, this was so much more convenient."
Eventually it did start to rain. The air was so thick with water that it looked glimmering in the dark. This must be the actual last winter storm. Alex listened to the water hitting the roof and the trees rocking in the wind and queued up some podcasts on her phone to drown out all the creaking. If she sat here all day picturing Simon walking around the house she was going to have a heart attack by night fall.
Instead she tried to focus on learning about fracking, and airplane crashes, and cheese. It must have worked at least a little - before she knew it she was picking her head up off her shoulder and blinking awake.
It had been a short nap but she felt less like death. She peeled herself off the couch.
"Okay, it's… April nineteenth, one-thirty in the afternoon." Alex said. Was it a bad sign that her first reflex on waking up was to make a sleep note? "Pitch black outside. It's been raining for… hours… I guess the noise helped me nod off. Surprising, since I got a call from Simon Reese at…"
Her voice trailed off. She'd pulled up the call log, to double-check what time Simon had phoned her.
The last recorded call was to her mother, a few hours ago. It had apparently lasted for twenty-eight minutes.
After recording a full minute of silence she shut the app off and went to her texts. Two photos from her mom, of thriving houseplants, sent in the middle of their phone conversation.
She deleted the unfinished sleep note completely.