Visions of the Past
Previously...
Visions of the Past Part One, Part Two
Disclaimers:
Hawkman and related characters belong to DC Comics.
Other DC Re-Imagined titles can be found here.
Rating: T (Just covering my bases)
Part Three
It had felt like pouring ice over himself, but the cold shower had definitely woken Carter up and given his mind something else to mull over. The look in Hastor’s eyes as he’d led him into the temple still lurked in the back of his mind, however. Surreal and unforgettable had been the knife which sliced his neck and drawn out the blood of his nightmare, but those eyes weren’t just the delusions of an addled brain. Those eyes were the same as when he’d offered Carter the knife. It was enough to shake a man to his bones.
Carter stared out of the window as his usual morning bus drove by the shopfronts. As long as he stared at the newsagents and antique dealers and as much as he wished he could lose himself in the fruits on sale outside the grocer’s market, Carter couldn’t forget the knife or the dream. That knife really was something else. He’d never had a dream like that before, never so vivid and never had it lingered for so long. Usually the dream lasted mere moments after he’d woken before it faded into a distant memory as something cloudy. Carter could still feel the sand under his sandals. He could feel the surface of the sandals, only slightly cracked under his foot. Very comfortable sandals they’d been, really. Carter contented himself with the cool morning breeze drifting through the windows. He’d much rather be lost in that dream still, bathing himself in the heat of an Egyptian sun. Shaking his head, Carter pulled out his phone and called his psychiatrist. There was no way he was going to be able to work with that dream repeating in his mind like a kind of rosary.
“Sickler?” he said, speaking as clearly as possible over the rattling of the bus. The phone merely continued to ring in response. Carter drummed his fingers against the window. Ringing stopped; phone connected. “Sickler, can I make an appointment?”
“Hall, talk to me about it first,” Sickler mumbled from the other end, probably rolling a pen around in his mouth. It was a filthy habit, really. “Why do you need to see me? You never see me in daylight hours, if ever.”
“I had this dream,” he said as he ran his hand through his hair, catching a small fleck of soap and wiping it on the chair, “that I can’t get out of my head.”
“You’re the second one with dreams this week Hall,” Sickler replied, his voice less of a mumble. Over the line Carter could hear the scratching of a pen on paper. “Had this other patient call up, Shiera Sanders, said she was dreaming about shit I should not have said that.”
“Was it Egypt?” Carter asked, thinking about who Sickler had said called him. Shiera, it didn’t sound too different to Chay-Ara. He looked out the window and saw the school go past. How the years had passed; he could still remember when the walls weren’t adorned with graffiti. It added a bit more life to the place, if he was honest. “Could you put me in touch with her, Chay-ara?”
“This is so unprofessional,” he said, in all likelihood shaking his head as he sighed. “Look Hall, it’s early. Forget I mentioned her and just have a coffee or something.”
There was a click and Carter knew that Sickler had hung up. Peering out the window, he could see the newspaper cart manned by an old man and his pet dog. Fox, that was his name, and with his protruding nose and faded red hair perhaps he did look something like one himself. He spoke with everyone as they paid him a dollar for their paper. Fox was the old man who Carter had passed by every day for the past ten years on his way to the museum. Sickler worked locally which meant that Shiera had to be a local, and signalling for the bus driver to stop Carter knew that Shiera was his only link to sands along the Nile shore.
To be continued.
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