Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation

by M. R. Sellars

  Between throbs, I noticed that my forehead felt cold. Not just cool but actually flat-out, ice pack cold. It was the only portion of my head that wasn’t embroiled in pain at the moment, but judging from the sensation it was announcing to me, that might only have been because it was well on its way to numb. Of course, it hurt to think about that too.

  It occurred to me that there was something else just as disturbing as the pain. A pair of something’s actually: One, I had no idea what had happened to me in order to bring about this level of agony; and two, I didn’t know where I was. If I actually knew the answers to the two questions, I couldn’t remember them, and that wasn’t good either. I briefly considered the idea that I might be able to obtain one of the answers simply by opening my eyes. However, considering and doing are two different things entirely, and it seemed my eyelids weren’t listening to my brain right at this moment.

  My vision wasn’t the only sense that was nullified either. Up to this point, my auditory nerves had apparently been on vacation somewhere in the land of white noise, as all I seemed to be hearing was a nondescript roar in my ears. The good news was that they now returned from their sabbatical, in a manner much like a radio being switched on and the volume being turned slowly upward. A distant voice began echoing down the hollow tunnel that was my hearing, and even though the simple act of concentrating brought with it an overtone of pain, I strained to make out the words.

  The voice sounded male, young, somewhat tinny, and was coming across as no more than a garble of meaningless syllables. The distorted edge of the voice competed for my attention through the warbling hum that still invaded my ear. I swallowed hard and steeled myself for the added aches I feared that I was about to bring down upon myself, and then I concentrated harder.

  Another mish-mash of sound worked its way into my ear and with each beat morphed from the unintelligible into a Doppler distortion of noise that whistled past me, only to fade quickly away. I seemed to recognize some of the clamor as words. However, what registered was, “…to be a badly decomposed human arm.”

  I pondered the incomplete sentence and decided that I was hallucinating, because I just knew the voice couldn’t have actually said ‘decomposed human arm.’

  My addled brain locked in on a piece of the distant voice once again. “…have confirmed finding more remains in a shallow grave well off the path.

  “While there has been no confirmation as yet, there has been speculation that the body may be that of…”

  The sharp taste of metal suddenly filled my mouth, overpowering the salty blood that had dominated the sense moments before. Every muscle in my body tensed at exactly the same moment, pulling up like rubber bands stretched to their limits and then tugged just a little farther for good measure. I could feel my teeth gnashing against my already tortured tongue once again as my body shuddered uncontrollably through some manner of violent seizure. My face took on a fresh ache as I felt my eyes rolling back in my head.

  A vague memory wandered through the maelstrom of my thoughts, and I realized I had been here before. At a different time certainly, and even a different place, maybe. I wasn’t sure about the latter, but the fact remained that this was not something new.

  I could feel my consciousness starting to flee, and I wasn’t so sure that it was a bad thing. However, the split second before it managed to exit, the elastic strands that were my muscles and tendons released. Without warning, they snapped instantly back to relaxed positions— or, as relaxed as they could be under the circumstances. Thankfully, the abuse my tongue was taking from my teeth stopped as well.

  I felt limp, weak, and maybe even a bit more disoriented than I had been before if that was possible. I took in a deep breath and laid near motionless; panting as a distant ring echoed in my ears then faded into a low buzz that eventually became a voice.

  “… From the Major Case Squad have arrived on the scene and will be taking over the investigation from municipal authorities. Back to you Chloe and Russ.”

  There it was again, that distant, tinny voice.

  This time it had said, “Major Case Squad.” Then it said, “Chloe and Russ.” Now, these things actually made sense. A by-product of that sense was an answer to one of my earlier questions.

  Maybe.

  From the sound and content, I thought that what I was hearing might be the audio from a television newscast. A partially revealed memory lumbered through the inside of my skull, and I took hold of it.

  I was watching the morning news at home in my living room before heading upstairs to my office and getting to work. I got up from my chair during a commercial break and went into the kitchen. I poured myself a fresh cup of coffee, then turned and went back into the living room.

  After that, the remembrance grew a bit fuzzy around the edges. Well, actually it was completely obscured from my view because the real truth was that I had absolutely no idea what had occurred in whatever span of time had elapsed since I had poured that cup of coffee.

  Still, maybe I wasn’t hallucinating as I’d earlier thought. Of course, if I could get the rest of the memory to come into some kind of focus, I might get a better handle on my current situation.

  The thud in my skull was actually starting to subside, for which I was more than grateful. The bizarre in and out thrum, however, continued rumbling in my ear, competing with the sound of the television. I started taking stock of the other sensations and happened across the fact that while my forehead was freezing, my neck was actually warm— very warm. In fact, it was downright hot.

  I thought about that for a moment and then realized that there also seemed to be something soft but weighty involved. As I continued pondering this latest sensation, I started feeling pressure against my left cheek that seemed to be moving in time with the warbling hum.

  I took another shot at opening my eyes, and slowly my left eyelid responded to the instruction. I looked out of the corner of my eye and found that the majority of my limited field of vision was filled with black fur. The soft pads of a pair of feline paws continued pushing against the side of my face as Dickens, one of our trio of cats, kneaded in rhythm with his own purr.

  Some semblance of clarity was beginning to creep back into my head as the various pains began to subside. I rolled my eye forward and saw a close up view of polished hardwood strips stretching out before me, although the tableau was a bit on the fuzzy side. While this was a vastly different angle than to what I was accustomed, I recognized what I was seeing to be my living room floor.

  A few inches in front of my face, I could see shapes rising out of the horizontal plane. These were also tinged by blurriness but still identifiable as my eyeglasses and as the fragmented remains of a ceramic coffee mug. I guess that would explain why the side of my head was wet.

  Well, at least now I knew where I was, which was a plus. Unfortunately, I also had a nagging suspicion that I knew why I was in my current, uncomfortable position. I felt my stomach do a double flip at the very thought and decided not to go there. Not yet, anyway. Maybe I was wrong, and this had been nothing more than me being a klutz. At least, that’s what I tried to tell myself. In the back of my head, I knew better.

  I let out a groan and gently shoved the now drooling feline off my neck then pushed myself up to my hands and knees. I let my head hang for a moment and took a deep breath. A chilly draft tickled my bare arms, and the reason behind my semi-frozen forehead became immediately obvious— I had been lying directly in front of the air conditioning vent.

  The television was still chattering in the background when I dragged myself to my feet. The newscasters had moved on to another, far less horrific story, and the screen was filled with the image of a hyperactive blonde feature reporter whose actual name escaped me at the moment. Synapses were continuing to fire with fewer misses each time around, so I tried to grasp at the obscured bit of information for no other reason than to take my mind off the things I didn’t want to face. But, it didn’t help. I could still sense the forebod
ing tickle growing in the back of my brain, and in the end, all I seemed to remember was that she was named after a state.

  I stared at the screen for a moment longer and then gave up. I knew it wasn’t important and wasting my time on it would probably just make my headache worse. I reached up and rubbed my palm across the lower half of my face then gently touched my fingertips to my tongue. When I pulled my hand away and had a look, I found blood just as I knew I would.

  My tongue still felt like ground meat, and I hadn’t yet rid myself of the metallic tang that was invading my mouth. My head was continuing to throb with a dull ache, but other than that, the rest of my body’s agonies seemed to have fled as fast as they had arrived. That was both good and bad. Good, of course, because the pain was gone. Bad, because that meant they had been phantom pains. Oh, they had felt real enough at the time, but that was the extent of it. They only felt real. There were no wounds, abrasions, or bruises. There was no physical evidence to explain why they had been there to begin with. And, unfortunately, this lead me back to my earlier suspicion.

  My stomach twisted into a knot once again, and I felt a brief spate of nausea come over me. This was exactly the kind of thing that happened whenever I was experiencing someone else’s physical pain. And for them, it was real pain, not imagined.

  This had been a psychic episode, and it was all too familiar. Sometimes they were the same, and at other times they were vastly different. Usually they came in groups that were so similar as to not be able to tell them apart. But, no matter what, they maintained the common thread of blackouts and migraine-like headaches that seemed to linger forever. The types of phantom pains, odd tastes, auditory anomalies, or anything else always depended upon exactly what was being experienced by the other person.

  The last episode I’d had like this one had actually been a series of them, but that had been something like four or five months ago. As abruptly as they had started, they had ended. I’d tried to forget about them, but I couldn’t. I knew then that it was only a matter of time before they would return.

  The sickening part was that every time this sort of thing happened to me, somebody died. Worse yet, it was usually more than one somebody.

  I guess that’s what I get for being a Witch.

  CHAPTER 2:

  I was rinsing my mouth out with warm salt water when the phone rang. I gave a final swish and spit the pink tinged liquid into the basin, then grabbed a hand towel and blotted my bearded chin as I walked out of the bathroom. The electronic warble issued again, making the telephone sound just about as impatient as any inanimate device could be.

  “Chill out! I’m coming, I’m coming…” I said aloud, as if a verbal scolding would make it stop. It didn’t.

  I was still wiping my chin when I rounded the corner into the kitchen and glanced at the caller ID box on the wall. OUT OF AREA and a row of dashes was showing on the liquid crystal display, so I lifted the receiver then allowed it to drop right back into the cradle. I had no interest in dealing with a salesman who believed it was okay to ignore the no-call list, not to mention that I still had that headache.

  I continued walking over to the counter and retrieved a mug from the cabinet, then filled it with water from the filtered tap. I had just placed it on the turntable in the microwave when the phone began pealing for attention again. I slammed the door on the microwave shut, then quickly punched in three minutes and hit start before stepping back over to the phone.

  OUT OF AREA and a row of dashes displayed yet again, and once more I lifted the receiver then let it drop with a heavy clunk.

  The microwave was humming away behind me as I stepped over to the multi-tiered spice and herb rack mounted on the wall and began my search for dried willow bark. The search was going to be a huge pain in and of itself, and that just made my head ache more.

  Had I been in charge of the rack, the task wouldn’t have been a big deal at all, as everything would be in alphabetical order. My wife, Felicity, however, was the keeper of the herbs, and she had her own way of categorizing the bottles. Little groups of related and semi-related spices, barks, herbs, and teas lined the rack. The organization of such simply defied any explanation I could muster.

  However, put Felicity in front of it, and she could easily snatch up a bottle of whatever you asked for without even looking. Unfortunately, she wasn’t here at the moment.

  The closest I had been able to come in the minute or so I had been looking was in fact bark, but it was cinnamon and not willow. Even though it would have tasted quite a bit better, I desperately needed the salicylic acid, not the flavor. I was dragging my finger slowly across the labeled tops of the myriad of bottles, wondering if I should just give up and take some aspirin, when the phone began ringing once again.

  I tried to ignore it, but it wasn’t helping me concentrate, so I threw my hands up in a dismissive gesture and let out a heavy sigh. I took the few steps over to the phone and saw the same message as before blinking on the display of the caller ID. Now I was annoyed.

  I snatched the phone up from the wall cradle and stuck it to my ear, then barked, “I don’t want any!”

  I was just getting ready to slam the phone back down when I heard my wife’s stern voice issue from the earpiece in a quick stream, “Rowan Linden Gant, don’t you hang up on me again!”

  I tucked the handset back up to my ear, “Felicity?”

  “You don’t want any of what?” she demanded.

  “Sorry, I thought you were a salesperson,” I apologized. “The caller ID is coming up with ‘out of area’ and no number.”

  “Ahh,” she replied. I could almost see her nodding at the other end. “I forgot to charge my cell battery, so I’m using someone else’s. It’s an out of state number.”

  “Oh, okay, makes sense,” I replied, then sighed and didn’t do a very good job of hiding it. “So what’s up?”

  “That’s why I’m calling YOU.”

  “Come again?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing that I’m aware of,” I told her.

  “Don’t lie to me, Rowan,” she pressed.

  I tried to circumvent answering the question by placing the burden back on her. “So what makes you think something is wrong?”

  “Give me a break, Rowan. You aren’t the only Witch living under that roof.”

  At times I forgot that my wife was prone to psuedo-empathic episodes where I was concerned. Much like I would experience someone else’s pain via an ethereal bond, she would see flashes of my torment within her mind’s eye. Due to the shifting and uncertain nature of the psychic realm, these images would at times be symbolic or incomplete. The first time it had happened to her, she thought that I was dead.

  Thankfully, they didn’t happen to her all of the time, and she didn’t have to endure the same physical torture as I. If she did, I don’t think I would have been able to handle it. The fact that she faced mental pain because of me was enough to make me nauseous just by itself.

  Realizing that she was going to get it out of me one way or another, I let out a resigned sigh.

  “Remember those seizures I had back in January?” I asked.

  There was a brief moment of silence at the other end, and then she spoke quietly, “Not again.”

  Her comment had been couched as a statement rather than a question, but I answered it anyway, “Afraid so.”

  “Why, Rowan?” There was almost a pleading tone in her voice. “Why you? Why does this keep happening to you?”

  “I wish I knew, honey,” I said, reaching up with my free hand to rub my temple. “Seems like we both ask that question a lot every time this kind of thing happens.”

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Headache,” I grunted, then added, “Did a number on my tongue again. Broke my favorite coffee mug. But other than that, okay I guess.”

  “I’m only half an hour away,” she informed me. “And we haven’t even set up yet. Let me see if we can re-schedule the shoot, a
nd I’ll be home within an hour.”

  “What for?” I returned. “I told you, I’m fine.”

  “But, Rowan…”

  “Really, Felicity, I’m fine,” I cut her off. “I’m a big boy, and I can take care of myself. I was just making some willow bark tea when you called.”

  “You’re sure, then?”

  “Absolutely. We can talk about it later,” I assured her. “Besides, they need you there to make pretty pictures for them.”

  “I don’t know about pretty,” she replied. “I’m shooting automotive parts today.”

  “What, no swimsuit models?” I asked her with a hint of good-natured sarcasm.

  “No, but I’m doing a lingerie shoot for the Kathy’s Closet chain next week,” she answered and then added her own query. “You want to help set up and tear down the backdrops and lights?”

  “Yeah, right,” I returned with a chuckle to what I thought was a facetious question.

  “Actually, I’m serious,” she returned. “It’s going to be an all day shoot, so I could use the help.”

  “Yeah, okay, if I don’t have a rush job or something for a client, sure,” I told her. Then I joked, “But are you sure you really want to get me around all those young models?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she replied. “I trust you. Besides, you’ll be working for me and you’ll have to do everything I say.”

  “Everything?” I asked.

  “Uh-huh,” she purred and then repeated the word with somewhat exaggerated pronunciation. “Ev-er-y-thing.”

  “Sounds interesting.”

  “And, of course, if you don’t, then I just might have to take some disciplinary action.”