Crone’s Moon argi-5

by M. R. Sellars

  “Right,” I agreed. “And you didn’t mention anything about her being headless.”

  She arched her eyebrows as she gave her head a slight shake. “So?”

  “So I must have seen more than you did.”

  “Oh come on,” she exclaimed. “You don’t buy into that any more than I do.”

  Ben voiced his own observation. “Jeezzz, Row, even I know that’s a lame argument.”

  “You aren’t helping,” I returned.

  “Look,” Constance spoke up. “I don’t know as much about this as you two do or even Storm for that matter…”

  “Hey, you see a broom between my legs?” Ben objected. “Leave me outta this.”

  “…What I’m trying to ask,” she continued, glossing over his interruption. “Is that if it’s dangerous for Rowan wouldn’t it be dangerous for you too, Felicity?”

  “Not as much,” she replied.

  All bids to get myself out of the corner were immediately null and void. I knew the next words out of my mouth would sabotage my own argument, but I was unable to keep myself from calling Felicity on her comment.

  “Okay, so who’s blowing smoke now?” I chided.

  “All I did was pass out, Rowan,” she asserted. “My heart didn’t come to a screeching halt like yours did.”

  “Will you get off that? The paramedics told you I was fine.”

  “Aye, they did,” she shot back. “But I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now.”

  I literally threw up my hands in exasperation. “Okay, so what do we do then? You don’t want me doing a regression, and I don’t want you doing one either. So where does that leave us?”

  “Okay, like I said, I don’t really know that much about all this,” Constance started in again. “Just what I’ve seen you do here and there, and, well… It’s usually pretty freaking bizarre to be honest… But, that’s beside the point. Anyway, here’s my idea. What if you still did it, but in a controlled manner?”

  “What do you mean by controlled?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Mandalay,” Ben voiced. “I think I know where you’re headin’ with this.”

  “I mean what if you, or Felicity, or even both of you underwent hypnosis by a third party. That way if it gets too weird then you could be snapped out of it right away.”

  “That’s a thought,” Felicity said.

  Constance shrugged. “We sometimes use various forms of forensic hypnosis with witnesses to help jog repressed or misplaced memories, so why not with you two?”

  “She’s right,” Ben added. “Charlee McLaughlin was tellin’ me she used it with a rape victim a few months back. What they got from her was inadmissible in court, but it gave ‘em enough to get a decent lead on the asshole. After that, all they had to do was gather evidence.”

  “The rules of evidence are pretty dicey when it comes to information retrieved via hypnosis,” Constance agreed. “But we aren’t after that in this case. We’re just looking for a location on Larson’s remains.”

  “I’m not sure it would work.” I shook my head. “Since the experiences were ethereal to begin with, for all intents and purposes, they took place on another plane of existence.”

  “But wouldn’t the memories still be there?” she asked. “Just inaccessible to the conscious self.”

  “That’s the unknown variable here,” I replied.

  “But, they could be there, right?” she reiterated.

  I pondered the question for a moment. I’d never really given the idea much thought, until now.

  “She might have a point, Row.” Felicity broke the short silence. “You’ve always retained memories from psychic episodes before.”

  “Yeah,” I replied slowly. “That’s true.”

  “Aye, so it’s worth a try at least,” Felicity said.

  Mandalay glanced at her watch and looked thoughtful for a second then said, “I can make a couple of calls. I’m not sure if we have anyone available on this short of notice though. It may have to wait until tomorrow or even Monday.”

  “But wouldn’t there be a better chance of any latent evidence still being intact if the scene is located sooner?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Ben answered for her. “Fresher the crime scene the better. That’s a given.”

  “Then we need to do this now,” I declared.

  “Like I said,” Constance offered. “I can make some calls.”

  “I’ll go you one better,” I said as a vague memory edged into focus. “Ben, your sister performs hypnosis in her psychiatric practice, doesn’t she?”

  “Yeah, I think she does,” he replied with a nod.

  “Do you think she’d be up for this tonight?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Hell, she never does anything other than work or sit at home reading, so I don’t see why not. One question though.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Actually it’s for Mandalay,” he replied as he looked over at her. “Say one of these two Twilight Zone’s us a crime scene. What’s the next step?”

  Constance wrinkled her forehead and gave a knowing nod. “Guess we’ll have to go verify it.”

  “And after that?” Ben pressed. “Which one of us is gonna tell Albright how we found it?”

  “As much as I’d like to do it,” she told him. “I’d sure hate to steal your thunder, Storm.”

  “Yeah, funny. Like I haven’t heard that one before.”

  *****

  As it turned out, my friend had been incorrect this go around. His sister had in fact been out to dinner and not holed away in her house reading as he had said she would be. We were lucky, however, as her home number had been forwarded to her service and no sooner had Ben left a message than she called back. Fortunately, not only was she more than willing to come by the house, she was less than fifteen minutes away.

  When Helen arrived, Felicity was in the kitchen starting a fresh pot of coffee, and Constance was hiding away in our bedroom for a few minutes so she could return some calls. Ben was expectantly standing at the open door when she pulled into the driveway. He met her on the sidewalk and immediately renewed the brotherly interrogation he’d originally launched on the phone.

  Now that they were in the house, I was standing back and quietly watching the continuation of the small family skirmish that was taking place in my living room.

  “I am a grown woman, Benjamin.” Helen Storm looked up into her brother’s face. Her voice was calm, but the words were underscored with an unmistakable note of no-nonsense finality. “Not to mention that I am your older sister. I can certainly go out on a blind date without your approval.”

  There was no way one could miss the relationship between the two of them. The family resemblance was more than obvious even though Helen was of average height as opposed to her towering sibling. Both were possessed of the same dark eyes and typical angular profiles. Although in most ways they were the same, Helen’s features were far softer. Her pretty face was framed by a cascade of thick, black hair, streaked randomly with strands of grey. The touch of silver was the only visible indicator that she was actually older than her brother.

  Having been in some sense a patient of hers, in both official and unofficial capacities, I was used to seeing her in conservative business attire. This evening, however, she was projecting a vastly different outward image via a somewhat flirtatious cocktail dress.

  “That’s not what I’m sayin’, Helen,” my friend objected. “There’re a lotta nutjobs out… And that dress is…”

  “My dress is just fine, dear brother,” she replied in the wake of his stammering. “And, I met him at the restaurant so that I would have my own car. I am quite capable of making rational decisions.”

  “Yeah, but what’d you know about this guy?” he continued. “For all you know he’s a wingnut with a…”

  “End of discussion, Benjamin,” she replied, cutting him off mid-sentence.

  He stared back at her and shook his head but kept his mouth shu
t.

  “I’m sorry we interrupted your evening, Helen,” I offered, slipping the apology into the mildly uncomfortable void that fell behind her last declaration.

  “Don’t worry over it, Rowan,” she replied as she cast a pleasant smile toward me. “Benjamin sometimes forgets that I do in fact have a social life. The truth is, I was actually considering a trip to the ladies room just so I could page myself. I needed an escape, so as it turns out, your call was serendipitous.”

  “Escape?” Ben asked.

  “He was boring me to tears, Benjamin,” she said as she turned back to him. “That’s all, nothing more. Stop imagining the worst, please.” She cocked her head to the side and gave him a curious stare. “You have been drinking haven’t you?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “It would certainly explain your mood this evening,” she replied. “You are even more overprotective than usual.”

  “So sue me.”

  “And would I happen to know what prompted this little binge?” she pressed.

  He brushed off the question. “It’s not important.”

  “Yes, I thought as much,” she replied with an understanding nod, gleaning untold information from his evasive words. “We should discuss that later. At the moment, however, I seem to recall something being said about a murder investigation and the need for a hypnotist. Well, here I am.”

  CHAPTER 17:

  The flame on the candle reached upward, stretching into a thin tongue as it licked at the air. It undulated in an ever-increasing rhythm until it seemed to almost vibrate then it began to die back downward. I watched intently as the threadlike wisp collapsed into itself to finally become a flickering teardrop of yellow-orange that cast a soft glow into the dimness of the room.

  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 sh
e 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, restful 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.”