Never Burn A Witch argi-2, page 32
part #2 of A Rowan Gant investigation Series
“Who’s runnin’ the scene?” Ben asked the officer while Felicity and I penned our names on the log.
“Detective McLaughlin,” he answered distantly.
I had grounded myself before leaving the van, and thankfully, for the moment at least, I didn’t seem to be having any trouble maintaining the connection. However, compared to my normal level of ethereal protections, the shield I had cast about myself was a fragile eggshell in danger of cracking at any moment. Unwanted visions were angrily demanding ingress through the porous envelope, and the fearful disgust felt by the young man was already seeping through to bathe me with frigid anxiety. What he had witnessed had brought him close to his own personal threshold, and I could feel his need to retreat.
The emotion injected itself into me, gelling in my heart and oozing outward through arteries and veins to poison my body on the whole. I had to beat back an overwhelming desire to turn and flee. My forearm tensed as blackjacks of pain threatened to crush it.
“She with the body?” Ben prodded information from the traumatized officer.
The uniformed man simply nodded as if his voice had left him and continued mechanically about the task of cordoning off the area.
Our end-on angle of approach to the south leg of the metal half-parabola had obscured our view when we arrived. Now, as we ventured past the young officer and toward the active portion of the scene, the sickening charred odor grew thicker with each step. The lighter tang of kerosene slipped through the heaviness to layer itself with the fetid stench and lift it higher on the moist night air, making it inescapable.
“Look, I know you’ve been havin’ some kind of problem with the hocus-pocus stuff, Row,” Ben stated as we walked, “so if ya’ don’t think ya’ can handle this…”
“I have to handle it,” I answered matter-of-factly as his voice trailed off even though I desperately wanted to grab his offer of escape and run as far away as it would let me.
That very thought brought another blinding stab of pain to bear on my forearm. I could feel the warmth of the blood soaking through the bandages and trickling along my skin.
“No ya’ don’t.” He stopped in his tracks and turned to me. “You’ve been way too weirded out on this whole thing, Row. I don’t know what’s goin’ on, but ya’ ain’t right, white man. Especially here lately.”
“Aye, Ben is right, Rowan,” Felicity added with more than a hint of personal fear in her voice. “You aren’t balanced, and you know it. Maybe we should wait at the van.”
“You can wait there if you want,” I offered. “But I don’t have any choice in this.”
“The hell you don’t!” my friend admonished. “I just gave ya’ a choice, and I’m damn near ready to make it an order. I should cuff your ass and park ya’ in a squad!”
“Do it now then because that’s the only way you’re going to stop me.”
“What the fuck? Stop you?” he appealed angrily. “Just what the hell has gotten into you, Rowan?”
“I was summoned here, Ben,” I told him with absolute conviction. “Just as I was summoned to all of the other scenes.”
“You were what?”
I thrust my arm out for them both to see. Though the fabric of my shirt and jacket covered it, I knew all they would need to see was my bare hand. In the wildly choreographed splash of lights, the crimson rivulets of fresh blood streaking it were plain to see. I winced as yet another stab of pain twisted through the hot flesh.
Felicity closed her eyes and sighed.
Ben merely shook his head and muttered, “Jeezus, white man.”
“Do you think I WANT to be here?” I asked. “Do you think I actually WANT to see what this sick bastard is doing to innocent people? Trust me, I’ve let the thought of running from this investigation cross my mind more than a few times tonight. I didn’t invite these marks to appear on my arm. Someone on the other side who is trying to tell me something is putting them there, and if I can believe the last dream I had, that someone is Kendra Miller.”
“But what is she trying to tell you?” Felicity pleaded.
“I still don’t know. But I can tell you this-every single time I’ve thought about turning and running from this, the pain has intensified. Judging from the bleeding, my guess is that this wound has gotten worse, not better. The last time I didn’t pay attention to one of these marks, I ended up with pool water in my lungs.”
“And Christine Webster had been drowned…” my friend admitted quietly.
“This time he killed with fire again. I really don’t want getting my attention to progress to that step if you know what I mean.” I fell silent and allowed my arm to drop back to my side. Ben and Felicity simply stared at me. After a moment I let out a long sigh. “I’m here for a reason. I was summoned. I don’t have a choice until I figure out what that reason is.”
“You still aren’t grounding very well,” Felicity softly intoned with a razor sharp edge of seriousness in her voice.
“I know,” I answered simply.
“So what about all the Twilight Zone stuff?” Ben questioned. “You mentioned somethin’ about not bein’ grounded the other day when you had that backlash thing. Isn’t it dangerous?”
“It can be,” I assented.
“Aye, it can, so I suppose you leave me no choice either then.” Felicity shook her head. “Someone has to be there to keep you from going too far.”
*****
As we rounded the base of the Arch, the picture of the horror was revealed to us at first in small, disorganized sections. It took several moments of pondering the scene before the pieces began to interlock into a meaningful panorama.
Disheveled detectives in various modes of dress, most looking as though they were just dragged kicking and screaming from the warmth of their beds, were milling about in a loose group. One of the throng was interviewing a pair of uniformed officers, and another was talking to a park ranger who looked to be just this side of hysterics.
CSU technicians focused their attentions on a lamppost at the landing of the stairs that led down from the park grounds above. Flash units added their intense brilliance to the dancing lightshow as techs took pictures of the metal pole as well as the marred concrete surrounding it. White residue caked itself to sections of the post and spread out across the walkway to partially obscure a spray painted rendering of the ever familiar Monogram of Christ. A few feet away, a tented marker inscribed with the number two rested on the ground next to a carelessly abandoned and recently used fire extinguisher.
Other members of the CSU were closely scanning the stairs with powerful lights, searching for anything out of place. Every now and then one of them would pause, stare intently, and then with an almost dejected fall of the shoulders, continue on.
Near this tightly contained work envelope, a white sheet covered something roughly the size and shape of an average human being. Plastic IV tubes snaked beneath the fabric, and the detritus of various emergency medical supplies littered the ground. Two chalky looking paramedics were carefully and systematically returning the tools of their trade back to their respective cases.
My temples were already beginning to throb.
A trim figure clad in blue jeans and a leather bomber’s jacket stood apart from the center of the activity. I instantly recognized her as a city homicide detective who had pulled several shifts watching over Felicity and me.
Detective Charlene “Charlee” McLaughlin stood almost motionless, her right arm across her chest, palm cupping her left elbow as the appendage angled upward to rest her loose fist against her chin. She stared quietly at the shrouded body, her eyes wide and glazed. She hazarded only a brief, lethargic glance at us as we drew closer.
We stood wordlessly for a long measure before Ben finally broke the silence in a solemn voice, “Fill me in, Charlee.”
“Caucasian, female. Tied to the lamppost and torched,” she said in a thick monotone. “She was still alive when I got here, Ben.”
My friend allowed the comment to rest for a beat before continuing, “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Charlee nodded her head under a thick shag of ash blonde hair. “Yeah, I’ll be all right.”
“They work on ‘er long?”
“Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. She arrested pretty soon after they got here,” she detailed with a deep sigh. “Probably for the best. From what the paramedics said, she most likely wouldn’t have lived through the night anyway. Just would have been that much more suffering for her.”
“Yeah, well she shouldn’t’ve had ta’ suffer at all,” my friend expressed dully. “Any witnesses?”
“Not that we’ve found yet, but I’ve got some uniforms out looking. I’m not expecting much, I mean, look where we are.” She tossed her hands out palms upward and glanced around. “Not much activity around here in the middle of the night.”
“Yeah, but we can always hope. What about the ranger?”
“He’s giving a statement to Ackman right now. He told me she was already on fire when he pulled up. Says he didn’t even realize she was a person until he started on her with the extinguisher. Called nine-one-one as soon as the fire was out. The uniforms with Osthoff were first on the scene.”
No one had noticed that I was drifting closer to the sheet-covered corpse. Even Felicity was so involved in listening to the conversation that she had missed my slow but steady movement as well. I wasn’t even consciously aware of it until I found myself kneeling next to the body.
“Don’t suppose there was an ID?”
“No, she was nude, just like the others, and the fire didn’t help of course… but from what we can tell she does fit the description of Amanda Stark. We’ll have to wait on the coroner for a positive.
“We did find a Bible.” She pointed at the stairs where another tented marker, this time adorned with the number one, stood next to a book.
“What’d the asshole have to say this time?”
“Pretty straightforward,” Detective McLaughlin replied. “Exodus 22:18. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
“At least he’s consistent,” Ben spat. “I hate ta’ ask, but did the victim say anything before she died?”
“Actually yeah. Didn’t make much sense, and to be honest I’m not sure I heard her right considering what the fire did to her throat and all, but I’d almost swear she said ‘truck.’”
I barely heard her utter the word before my own scream of agony exploded into the foggy night.
CHAPTER 24
“Amanda Marie Stark, in accordance with the thirty-third question, in as much as you stand accused of the heresy of WitchCraft by another of your kind, and as you have admitted these crimes and remain still impenitent…”
Terror, cold and absolute punctures my bowels.
I don’t know how long he has had me captive, but it seems as though it has been forever.
I don’t know how I have endured all that has been done to me.
My mind races…
I remember the taste of a lime green snow cone on a sweltering summer day when I was seven.
I remember getting caught cheating on an algebra exam.
I remember that I have dry cleaning to pick up.
I don’t know why I remember the things I do.
I just do.
I still feel the fear.
Why did I answer the door that night?
I wasn’t expecting anything.
Delivery trucks don’t run that late anyway.
What was I thinking?
“In as much as you have been found guilty, and that you are damned in body and soul, your sentence on this day is death. The sentence is to be executed immediately, without appeal, in the manner of expurgation by fire.”
A single spark in the night.
A faint flickering glow.
A bright explosion fills the darkness.
Fire billows upward across my nude body.
The heat is beyond imagination.
I remember burning my hand as a small child.
I remember the fear.
I feel it anew.
“May the Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon your soul.” The angry voice reaches me through the rush of the fire.
I hold my breath.
I twist against my bonds.
I want to scream.
That damn truck.
A cold steel talon rips into my shoulder, and I feel myself wrenched violently backward. Cacophonous screaming pierces my eardrums as I hurtle upward.
Downward.
Forward.
Backward.
I no longer know.
I spiral through nothingness.
I am blind.
I am omniscient.
Colors bleed and disappear. Greyness blooms and contrasts itself against the backdrop of space.
A random chord plays out of sync with the universe.
My heart stops.
My heart races.
My lungs tighten and burn.
Hot yellow fire explodes past me.
Thick fog douses the flame.
Reality slams into me full force as dull color erupts into view.
“ROWAN!” Felicity screamed my name as she shook me hard.
I gasped in a deep breath as I snapped my eyes open and stared back at my wife. Ben and Charlee were kneeling on the ground with her, and everything was moving in a mad rush. I saw Charlee gesturing at the paramedics and Ben frantically saying something I couldn’t make out.
I could feel the warm barrier of Felicity’s own shields as she cast them around me to ward off the vision I had inflicted upon myself. My earlier ground had been severed the moment I allowed the veil between life and death to be pierced. I would never have been able to cling to this plane of existence had she not intervened.
Though the supernatural connection between Amanda Stark and myself was effectively cut, the stream of consciousness that had been set into motion was forging ahead unhindered. Memories I might otherwise have considered random flashed before me in an endless stream, repetitive and disorganized. Folding one into the next like an insane exercise in origami.
“… Tracy gived it to me. Did’ju see thuh truck too?”
Delivery trucks don’t run that late anyway.
“… I’m not sure I heard her right considering what the fire did to her throat and all, but I’d almost swear she said
‘truck.’”
I’m crossing the street. A large, black panel van rolls past. A patina of grey and white from salt and road grime dusts its dark exterior.
A sudden roar mixes with the rush of the fire and marries with a high-pitched grind before fading away on the night.
Flames consume all that is.
A multi-pitched, mechanical groan emits from beneath the van, audibly announcing the improperly meshed gears.
A cold tingle dances up my spine and my scalp tightens painfully.
My head is killing me. The thick rush of blood fills my ears in pulsing time with the hammering inside my skull. The sound of a metal sliding door, badly in need of adjustment and lubrication forces itself past the din…
A sudden roar mixes with the rush of the fire and marries with a high pitched grind before fading away on the night.
I look up the street to check for traffic and see only what appears to be a large delivery van parked parallel to the curb.
“… I toad her about thuh truck.”
“… Did’ju see thuh truck too?”
“… But I’d almost swear she said ‘truck.’”
A sharp icepick of agony bites deeply into the core of my being as a black panel van, greyed with a patina of salt and grime pulls away from the curb. The low mechanical roar is underscored by the high-pitched grind of recalcitrant gears as the vehicle accelerates and hooks almost angrily around the corner.
That damn truck.
Delivery trucks don’t run that late anyway.
“… But I’d almost swear she said ‘truck.’”
“… But I’d almost swear she said ‘truck.’”
“ROWAN!” My wife’s determined voice once again waded through the flotsam of remembrances.
The present collapsed inward to replace the rampant kaleidoscope of the past pin wheeling through my mind, and the stream of thoughts crashed forcefully into the wall of reality.
“She did say truck,” I whispered as the snippets of visions and conversations blended into a solid, tangible deduction.
“What?” Felicity asked as she searched my face. She had stopped the insistent shaking but her hands remained tightly entwined in my shirt.
“She did…” My voice came as a thin wisp once again, and I aborted the sentence to clear my throat before finally continuing in a stronger tone. “She did say truck. The killer is driving an old delivery truck.”
As I voiced the revelation, I could almost physically sense the dull pestilence of confusion as it drained from my being.
*****
The disconcerting light show had lessened considerably once the fire trucks and rescue vehicle had departed the scene. The coroner’s hearse would be arriving in due course, and Amanda Stark’s remains would be zipped into a body bag and driven the short distance to the morgue. Even now the CSU technicians were packing up, and the crime scene would soon be officially cleared.
“That’s right, a dark colored panel van. Probably black. Like a delivery truck,” Ben said into his cell phone and shot me a questioning glance at the end of the sentence.
I nodded assent and mouthed the color.
“Yeah, I can hold for a second.”
Once I had convinced Felicity and he that I was okay, we had moved away from the crime scene proper to put some distance between Amanda Stark’s corpse and me. My wife was diligently maintaining preternatural defenses around the both of us, but the physical distance was an added measure of safety. I was feeling particularly helpless at having to depend upon her for protection in an arena I was so familiar with, but I was also beginning to feel confident that my vulnerability was rapidly coming to its end. At almost the very instant the staccato barrage of memories had cemented themselves into a single lucid and meaningful thought I had automatically grounded. The connection had remained strong and unchallenged since, and the adjunct to my recent revelation that came as a deep feeling of calm was still with me. Things were starting to make sense.
