The Other Ring.

Start of nightmare

                        THURSDAY 10:00 P.M.

Daria lay collapsed on the hotel room bed, changing channels with just the merest flick of her thumb. She had brought along Going After Cacciato in case she had the time and the desire to read, but after the harrowing day Jane and she had experienced, with nothing to show for their efforts and agonies except a few possibilities checked off their list, she was too physically and emotionally exhausted to absorb the story. So she entertained herself through the only means left to her, the television.

At least, that had been the plan, but it seemed that the TV had other plans. Even with the cable connection, static filled the screen as the picture rolled up and down; it was doing this on every channel.

Even the little bit of image that Daria could catch between the snow was disappointing; Daria couldn't identify a single object, but everything looked in black and white. All she could get are some words from it. It sounded like four different sentences. With words being cut off. She writes it down to help figure out was going on with them

What it said was this.

Car...sin...an...mon...

Sad...Yam...child...o...Car...save..fro..Well...

Loud...fam...change...Chu...wi...kill...

Kim...Poss...Ghost...face...scream...

She was certain that she had paid for a better room than this, but there were more important things to do with their time tomorrow than make complaints. Finally, she gave up and just turned it off, lying staring at the wall in front of her.

Off to her side, she could hear Jane's pencil scratching. Jane was determined to reclaim her talent, and from the second they had returned to their room from their last hospital stop she had been attempting to capture the figures and faces of the more colorful characters they had seen since coming to Baltimore Wednesday morning, at the harbor and the police station and the hospitals.

Her concentration was intense, her eyes boring holes into the paper held in her hands, so Daria had not interrupted to see how things were going.

But now, Daria noticed that the scratchings were becoming rapid and harsh, frantic even; she swung her head over to see Jane holding her pencil like a psycho wielding a knife, attacking her sketchbook with the point, first pressing down with such force that the paper buckled, and then actively stabbing, ramming the point through the leaves again and again and again.

Then, with a bellow of raw anguish, she shot to her feet and hurled the sketchbook across the room, and stood there fire-faced, chest rising and falling as she sucked in air, eyes wild.

Daria: Training for Olympic sketch throwing.

Falling back on the familiar since she had no idea of what else to say,

Daria: Or are you planning on going pro?"

Jane: My art has been hijacked! I can't stop it! There's nothing left in me but that!

She waved in the direction of her pictures, now lying against the far wall. Daria opened her mouth to say something she hoped would be comforting and reassuring, but switched gears when she noticed a dark line on Jane's face.

Daria: Jane, your nose is bleeding.

Jane put her hand up to her face, and her fingers came away wet with the red fluid. Hissing an obscenity through gritted teeth, she ran to the restroom to wash her face.

Daria pushed herself up from the bed and walked over to where the sketchbook was lying open, picked it up, and began to flip through the last few filled pages.

At first, it looked as though Jane was starting to succeed; there were several renderings of dockworkers and some of the criminals they had caught glimpses of at the police station, all done in Jane's inimitable style, but in each case the face was obliterated.

Then, further on, all those disappeared, and the last few pages were filled with nothing but rings, small, large, thick, and thin, all of them scratched out with little consideration for neatness or elegance, just passion. And, in the center, there was a single human figure: a woman whose long black hair covered her face. The figure was disconcerting, unsettling; Daria

felt that her mysterious hidden face was staring out at her from the drawing.

Nervously, she carefully closed the cover and laid it back down on the floor, not wanting to have any more to do with it. Through the entrance to the restroom, Daria heard Jane's voice raised in irate frustration.

Jane: I'm gonna kill Wind! 

But Daria had a feel that was happening is the start of something. Not just to them but others. The feeling that their not the only ones that are have this problem.

The problem of something's after them.