Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation

by M. R. Sellars

  After some discussion as to how a session of hypnosis was to be conducted, as well as detailing our ultimate goal, even Helen agreed that if it worked, there would still be some amount of danger involved. Given Felicity’s and my preternatural connection with the other side of the veil, we could very easily springboard from the hypnotic trance state directly into a full-blown ethereal excursion. Helen still felt confident that she could control the situation if it did in fact occur; however, as with anything in life, it was something she could not guarantee with absolute certainty. The fact that there was even a remote chance of slipping past the gates and into the world of the dead was a point of hot contention for my wife and I.

  We both agreed that this was something that had to be done. Backing out of it was not even an issue. Given the circumstances, however, neither of us was willing to let the other be a guinea pig. The banter between us didn’t last long before Felicity simply insisted that she be the one to go under; or at the very least, that she go first. In her mind, I was only to become involved as a last resort if she was unsuccessful. And, she had every intention of seeing to it that she didn’t fail.

  I, of course, was dead set against her facing any of this at all. I abandoned my earlier argument, not that it had been getting me anywhere to begin with, and without embellishment told her no, absolutely not; the subject of this experiment would be me, and only me, end of story.

  She wasn’t ready for story time to be over yet.

  As was her stubborn nature, she had just looked back at me in silence like I was speaking an unfamiliar foreign language. After a moment, she said something on the order of, “Damn your eyes, Rowan Linden Gant, if you sit in that chair, you’ll never make it under because I’ll be slapping you silly.” There may well have been a few Gaelic expletives interspersed, but that was the general gist of it, and she said it in dead earnest.

  The important thing here is that this was the second time this evening Felicity had threatened to get physical. You always knew just exactly how serious she was whenever she intimated violence. While I figured it was unlikely that she would actually follow through, I had no desire to put it to the test. Manifest proof, yet again, that one should never argue with a redheaded, Irish Taurus when she has already made up her mind. With this one, at least, you simply could not win.

  I suppose that one of these days I would wise up and take my own advice in that regard. Maybe.

  So, having begrudgingly conceded, I now found myself sitting in our semi-darkened living room, quietly watching my wife begin her journey.

  “Don’t speak, Felicity. Simply listen to my voice and relax.” Helen Storm’s soothing tone sounded nearby. “Breathe in deeply and let the air flow slowly from your lungs. Allow it to take with it the stress of the day… Relax… Breathe…”

  This was what Helen referred to as the ‘Induction,’ the process by which the hypnotist starts the subject along his or her way. To me, and I am sure Felicity as well, it was a lesson right out of ‘Wicca 101’. Everything she was doing was a basic grounding technique a Witch would use to become centered and connect with the earth before performing magick or ritual. If I didn’t know what was actually going on here, I would assume that she was preparing to cast a circle.

  “Keep your eyes focused on the flame…” she continued, her voice an even, melodic tenor. “Watch it… Study it… Allow it to become the only thing that you see.”

  Ben and Constance were in the dining room, still within earshot but physically out of the way so as not to prove a distraction to the process. I, however, was positioned immediately beside Felicity as she reclined in a chair. Proximity was the one concession I had demanded.

  I was to be her failsafe. While Helen concentrated on extracting the hidden information, if any, I would watch for signs that my wife was slipping too far across the threshold. It all came down to the fact that whether Felicity liked it or not, I had absolute control over ending the session if I felt it was getting out of hand.

  Of course, if it became necessary for me to take a turn concentrating on the flame, she would have the exact same power. Even so, she made me promise not to stop the session needlessly just to get her out of harm’s way. I cannot say that I hadn’t considered doing just that, but I made the promise, and I would abide by it. My hold card was the fact that we hadn’t discussed exactly how far was too far, and it was too late for her to argue that point now.

  “Keep watching the flame, Felicity,” Helen spoke again. “You are comfortable… You are relaxed… You are at peace with yourself and everything around you… Allow that comfort to fill you from head to toe… Embrace it, and allow it to embrace you…”

  I watched the rise and fall of Felicity’s chest as it slowed, becoming a barely perceptible movement of her near frozen form. Her face was slack, lips parted slightly and eyes fixed in a glazed stare firmly attached to the glowing tip of the candle. I could physically sense how grounded she was. She had become so disconnected from the conscious mind that even her psychic defenses were quickly falling away. That worried me but not enough to stop the session. I had actually predicted that it would happen before we even started, so even though I was concerned, I wasn’t surprised.

  I immediately extended my own ethereal shields to surround her as well as myself, effectively negating her sudden vulnerability to the non-physical energies around us. This was a task at which she was far more practiced than I considering that she had done it for me on numerous occasions when I was suffering a psychic episode. Still, it was an ability I possessed even though these days it took a bit more concentration on my part.

  “Now, I want you to close your eyes, Felicity,” Helen instructed in a quiet voice. “Maintain the image of the flame… See it in your mind’s eye… Watch it flicker as if your eyes were still firmly focused upon it… Allow it to illuminate your world as you begin to see a staircase before you, leading downward…”

  As expected, my wife was slipping into the trance in record time, undoubtedly due to years of meditation and psychic exercises. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Helen was good at what she did. While she had outlined the various stages of the induction for us, it wasn’t readily obvious when she moved from one to the next as she did so with such fluid confidence.

  The serenity was momentarily broken by the sound of a dull clunk. In reality, it wasn’t very loud at all, but in the stillness of the house it echoed heavily. I jerked slightly and looked up across the room to see Ben staring back at me with his own startled expression. His hand was held out toward his coffee cup where it rested on the dining room table as if motioning for it to stop making noise. He tensed and frowned then mouthed the word ‘sorry’.

  I slowly turned back to my wife and saw that fortunately the sound hadn’t affected her in the least.

  Helen continued. “When you see the staircase, Felicity, you will raise your right index finger.”

  Almost as soon as she had finished speaking, my wife’s finger arched upward of its own accord and came to rest as if pointing at something in the distance. Consciously, Felicity most likely wasn’t even aware that her finger was raised. It was doing so based on something Helen had called an ideomotor response. It was a physical manifestation of the power of suggestion driven by the engine of the subconscious mind.

  “Good,” Helen announced with a faint note of satisfaction in her voice. “Now, lower your finger. Before we proceed, we will establish this simple boundary. If at any time you hear me say the word ‘return’, you will immediately come back to this place of absolute comfort and safety. I will then begin counting from one to ten. When I reach ten, you will awaken. You will be calm, relaxed, and you will remember everything. If you understand this, raise your finger again.”

  Felicity’s pale index finger rose on cue.

  “Very good. Now I want you to step forward and begin walking down the stairs. As you do so, feel yourself sinking deeper into the sensation of comfort… You will feel as though you are swaddled in a deep, restfu
l sleep, yet you will remain alert… Focused… Aware of your surroundings and of my voice… When you reach the bottom of the stairs, there will be a comfortable chair awaiting you. Take a seat in it, and when you have, lower your finger.”

  Again, almost before Helen’s voice had a chance to fade, Felicity’s finger was on the move.

  “That was a short staircase,” I whispered.

  “Sshhhh,” Helen shushed me softly, then whispered in return, “There are only as many stairs as the individual requires. No less and no more.”

  I still thought it was a short staircase even if it was only a visualization. Either that or Felicity had mentally taken them two at a time and at a dead run. But, I kept my mouth shut; Helen was the expert on this, not me.

  She paused for a moment after Felicity’s finger had fully lowered. I’m not sure whose benefit the brief respite was for, but I desperately needed it myself. As relaxed as my wife appeared to be, in contrast, I was just as tense, if not doubly so. I took the opportunity to draw in a deep breath or two while seeing to it that my own ground was intact and solid.

  Finally, Helen began to speak again. “I still do not want you to speak, Felicity, but I want you to open your eyes.”

  Slowly, her eyelids fluttered upward, but the hypnotically imposed distance was evident in her glassy stare.

  “You now see a movie screen in front of you,” Helen told her. “Playing on the screen there is a documentary. I want you to watch it closely. I want you to notice every detail… Every nuance… No matter how unimportant it may seem. While you will remember that this documentary is something that was once seen through your own eyes, you are now separate from it. At this moment, you are simply an observer.

  “The subject of this documentary is an experience you had earlier this evening when you were teaching a class to your Coven mates. Something happened that only you were able to see but you have now repressed. You will see it once again as you watch this documentary before you. Remember that you are only an observer. Watch… Listen… Remember… Do not speak… When it is over, you will raise your index finger again to let me know.”

  I watched Felicity’s expressionless face as she stared, unblinking into the dim room, looking not at, past, nor even through Helen. For all intents and purposes, we did not exist for her at this moment in time. The mental picture playing out before her was all that occupied her world.

  After a long moment, there was a thin, nasal whimper. At first I glanced around, looking to see if one of the dogs had migrated from the bedroom and wanted to be let out. But, when it sounded again, slightly stronger this time, I easily pinpointed it as coming from my wife.

  I focused my attention solely on Felicity as I watched her respirations steadily increase. They were coming as a series of rapid, shallow breaths that soon became the palpitating rhythm of loosely harnessed panic. I shot a concerned glance at Helen, and she gently shook her head.

  “It is all right, Rowan,” she whispered. “This is to be expected. She is fine.”

  Without a word, I returned my gaze to my wife and watched her shallowly puffing out the breaths as she continued to whimper. Still, she stared straight ahead, attention fixed upon a horror only she could see.

  Her eyes were glistening with dampness, and a single tear broke loose from where it had welled and began trickling down her right cheek. It was rapidly followed by another, and then a second stream began flowing from the left. Her body tensed, and the whimpering grew into what sounded like a stifled scream that was repeated not once, but twice.

  I was just about to turn to Helen again when Felicity let out a sudden heavy sigh that bespoke relief. I watched on as her body relaxed and her breathing slowly returned to the earlier slow, even rhythm that had accompanied the onset of the trance.

  In a single, easy motion my wife stretched her finger upward into the air.

  CHAPTER 18:

  “Thank you, Felicity,” Helen said. “Lower your finger now and relax.”

  Felicity’s face remained slack, but her finger levered back downward without so much as a tremble. Her tension had more than just visibly ebbed; all evidence of it had disappeared but for the tear trails that still dampened her cheeks. For me, however, the expectant silence that fell into step behind her muffled display of anguish was causing my hairs to bristle.

  “You should relax too, Rowan,” Helen told me.

  “Easier said than done,” I replied. “Something doesn’t feel right about this.”

  “What’s up, white man,” Ben asked, still sitting at the dining room table. “You goin’ all la-la?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Something just feels strange.” I paused for a moment and then let out a forced sigh. “I don’t know… It might just be me. It seems like nothing ever feels right anymore.”

  “Well,” Helen spoke up, “from a clinical point of view, the session is going very well. In fact, what you just saw should have been the worst of it.”

  “Should have been?” I asked. “The word should doesn’t exactly evoke an air of extreme confidence for me, Helen.”

  “Yes, I understand that,” she replied. “Let me explain. What she has experienced will certainly still have emotional consequences tied to it, but at this point it is merely information. She is no longer watching the repressed memory play out; therefore, the connection with it is somewhat dulled. It will not be as intense as re-experiencing it.”

  “Okay,” I replied, trepidation still evident in my voice. “So what now? Do you wake her up?”

  “No, not yet,” she shook her head as she answered. “Hypnosis is no more perfect than the supernormal incidents that you are prone to, Rowan. While I have given her a post-hypnotic instruction to remember what she has now re-witnessed, some detail may still be lost upon awakening. What we do now is attempt to retrieve the information by having her recount it to us while still in a trance state.”

  She leaned to the side and reached for her purse, which she had stowed beneath the edge of the coffee table. After rummaging around for a moment, she withdrew her hand, and in it was a micro cassette recorder. She quickly popped it open, checked the tape, then closed the cover and tested the buttons.

  “For an actual forensic hypnosis session, I would have been better prepared,” she informed us. “We actually should have been videotaping the entire process, from the initial interview through termination of the session. However, for our purposes, I believe a brief audio recording will suffice.”

  “This ain’t goin’ into court if that’s what you’re talkin’ about,” Ben offered from across the room.

  “Precisely,” Helen returned, then momentarily shifted her focus back to me. “Truly, Rowan, you can relax now.”

  “I’ll relax when this is over,” I told her.

  She gave only a knowing nod as a reply. She was no stranger to the inner workings of my brand of emotionally imbued logic, so she knew she wasn’t going to be able to talk me down.

  She activated the recorder and laid it on the end table with the microphone directed toward Felicity.

  “Now, Felicity,” she began. “I want you to speak now, and tell us what you have just seen. Start at the beginning and take your time.”

  “Candee is arguing with RJ again. She just isn’t working out.” Even though her face remained blank, Felicity began speaking as if she had been carrying on a conversation with us all along. I immediately noticed a thread of reluctance running through her voice. “There’s simply too much friction between her and the others. She doesn’t even seem to care how a Coven works. I don’t want to talk to her about this, but I’m just going to have to. I need to tell her she should seek another group. Row, I wish you were here to do it. You’re so much better at letting people down easy than I am.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could get a word out, I felt Helen’s hand on my arm. I looked over my shoulder, and she was shaking her head.

  I nodded and remained silent.

  “Felicity,” Helen b
egan. “I want you to move forward in time. You were teaching your class, and by all accounts, you had some type of seizure.”

  “Yes,” Felicity replied, calmly switching the subject. “The class was about Dark Moon magick, and I was going over one of my favorite Dorothy Morrison spells with the group. I had just recited the last line where you call to the Crone of Darkness and ask her to allow you to feel the unseen an…”

  Her words ended without warning. No stutter, no sound, no nothing. They simply halted mid-breath, leaving an expectant silence in their wake.

  “Go on, Felicity,” Helen prompted. “It is okay. Just tell us what you remember.”

  My wife’s head tilted forward, slowly at first and then simply fell as if she’d lost consciousness. As her chin touched her chest, her head lolled to the side, and she creased her brow in a display of pain. She rolled her head back upward and allowed it to tilt back, bringing her face up toward the ceiling, then let out a heavy breath.

  “Jesus I hurt.” The words came out of Felicity’s mouth, but the voice was completely unfamiliar.

  I turned a hard stare back to Helen and she held up her hand, motioning for me to wait.

  “Felicity?” she asked.

  I turned back to my wife and watched as she blinked her eyes several times.

  The voice came again, louder and defiant. “What, you can’t turn on the goddamned lights around here?”

  She grimaced visibly and then ran the tip of her tongue across her teeth.

  “Fuck,” she said. “My tooth’s broke.”

  I felt a sudden closeness and looked up to find that Ben and Constance had moved into the room with us and were watching intently.

  “Larson got hit in the mouth,” Ben whispered, then canted his head toward Felicity. “Is she doin’ what I think she is?”

  “If you mean is she channeling Brittany Larson,” I returned, “yeah, I think she is.”

  I shot another glance toward Helen and then turned back to Felicity. I knew something hadn’t felt right about all of this, and now that feeling was starting to get worse. Much worse.