Earth Witches Aren't Easy

by Long, Heather

  They felt sorry for me. They felt bad because I was in this position and worried that, like a piece of fine china, I would break under the stress.

  I compressed my lips together and bit back the first snarky comment that came to mind. I was not a piece of glass. I’d already survived the horror of Randall Oakes, thank you very much. I would not be wrapped in cotton and buried under a mound of packing peanuts to keep me intact. I took a final drag on the cigarette and composed my thoughts before speaking.

  “I’d like to go along. See the scene, if you don’t mind.” A mixture of surprise and hesitation on Jack’s part, and a frown on Billy’s face, met my quiet statement.

  “Chance…” Jack began.

  “I really don’t think that’s a good idea.” Billy’s deep baritone overrode Jack’s voice without effort. “You’ve just gone through the shock of realizing Oakes is alive, and we’ve been making you relive the attack this morning. Seeing the crime scene wouldn’t serve any purpose.”

  I shrugged. “Except it breaks his M.O.” I gestured to the sky. “It’s broad daylight. Since when does Oakes strike during the day? He’s never done that before. Even the bodies that weren’t discovered until the next morning—all indicators pointed to a night attack.”

  I could tell from Billy’s expression this thought already occurred to him but his frown turned speculative, and he regarded me less as a victim and more as a person. Vindicated by his change of manner, I waited. I would not walk around with that label for another five minutes much less the rest of my life.

  Jack, on the other hand, continued to protest. “Chance, this is just a bad idea. You have no idea what kind of memories this could provoke, daytime or not.”

  “Isn’t that the point of the interview?” I countered. “To jog my memory and see if there are any details I’ve forgotten? Can you think of a better way to stimulate that than to see another victim? Don’t we owe that to her?” Didn’t I owe that to myself?

  “Chance, you’re a civilian.”

  “And a victim, Jack.” The word burned like bile in my throat. “I can't change what's already happened.” My neck and shoulders cramped from the tension. “But if I remember more, I can prevent it from happening again. Two bodies in two days. Two.” I jabbed two fingers in his direction. “His last spree left ten in ten days. Do you really want a repeat performance?”

  Jack radiated overprotective fury. Billy put a hand on his shoulder and quelled Jack’s next outburst. The dark-skinned agent’s eyes narrowed and his mouth compressed into a thin, hard line.

  “Chance, I’ll clear you through to the scene under a few specific rules. Our profiler should be on hand when we arrive. So will several other agents. You will stay with Jack. You won’t talk to the press. If you get any impressions, ideas, or memories, alert one of us immediately. You start to get overwhelmed, you speak up, and we’ll sweep you out of there.” He paused briefly, then gave my outfit a once over. “Also, stop in the office and grab a jacket and cap. We’ll try to keep you blended in so you don’t draw attention. The last thing we want is your face splashed all over tomorrow morning’s paper.”

  Victory tasted bitter, but I’d take what I could get. “Absolutely.”

  I avoided looking directly at Jack. He was white around the lips, a muscle ticked in his jaw and a vein throbbed in his forehead. He had a right to be upset. He tried to protect me. I appreciated the concern. Hell, I loved him for the concern. But I needed to go to the crime scene. I needed to be involved. I needed that control. I just wish I knew how to tell him that so he’d stop worrying.

  Of course, I can tell him all of that and he's still going to worry. That's how he's built.

  “All right. Be ready in ten minutes.” Billy abandoned us and I stole a glance at Jack and found his jaw remained locked, eyes shadowed, and his nostrils flared. I half-expected the whites of his eyes to roll as an animal’s does when it’s about to lash out.

  Guilt speared me for putting that look on his face, but I wasn’t going to break. He couldn’t protect me from the past. Of course, he would do anything he could. The physical dangers he could protect me from. When Nancy’s cancer-ravaged body faded under the disease's assault, his helplessness was palpable. He reacted similarly after my attack. He hated being helpless more than I did.

  “Jack,” I spoke quietly.

  “We should get downstairs and get you outfitted.” He spit the words out, cold and professional. Okay, so pissed and discussion closed. Got it. “We roll in ten minutes.” He smashed out his cigarette viciously and gestured toward the door. “After you.”

  Ouch.

  I started to say something else then decided not to. I led the way across the roof toward the door. A glance over my shoulder revealed the dark fire of anger and frustration heating Jack’s gaze before he shuttered his eyes and effectively shut me out.

  Oh, way to go Chance. Throw yourself to the wolves at the same time you alienate your best friend. .

  Seven

  Thirty minutes of stony silence and I fled the car as soon as he put it into park in the university lot. A scenic bridge crossed from the parking lot toward the campus buildings over a small creek feeding into a pond. Ducks and a few geese squawked at the onlookers held at bay by uniformed campus security and local LEOs. The crime scene tape warned of tragedy marring this idyllic setting.

  The flashing lights, medical personnel, and suits flowed around the sheet covered body on the far side of the lot. The medical examiner's investigator, identified by the stenciled letters on his jacket, conferred with a coroner who waited to take possession of the body.

  A breeze drifted through, pushing the muggy air from my face. I zipped up the blue jacket with its big, fat FBI letters emblazoned on the back. The matching blue cap shaded my face, and a pair of pilfered sunglasses hid my eyes. Jack stood near the front of his Beamer, gaze focused on the gathering crowd. He didn’t look at the crime scene, or at me…

  Trust a dead body to bring out the loonies, the press, and any other curious passersby to gawk. I glanced toward the throng. There wasn’t much sign of the press yet, just a cell phone camera here or there—college students trying to cop the story before the big city press. Rolling my head around to loosen the rigid knot of tension in my neck, I kept an eye on the professional crowd. They parted briefly, giving me a glimpse of the sheet-draped body on the ground.

  I looked away, afraid of what the sheet hid. For a long moment, I debated turning to Jack and asking him to take me home. It contradicted my earlier impulses. But do I want to see that body? Do I want to know if it is true? What do you do when you look into the closet at the boogey man and find him looking back at you?

  Squaring my shoulders, I marched across the parking lot toward the scene. Jack caught up to me within a couple of steps. I resolved to deal with his unhappiness about the situation later.

  An FBI crime scene unit dusted everything in sight, examining the area, while a pair of dogs worked the perimeter in sweep patterns. Something was amiss. I reached up to pull off my sunglasses and squinted in the glare.

  What is it? Something nagged at me. I circled closer, trying to avoid being in anyone’s way. Jack, my silent shadow, followed. About ten feet from the body, it hit me. I stopped and extrapolated a mental line from the body to the pond, and then from this remote area of the parking lot back toward the main buildings.

  “This is a recent addition to the campus, isn’t it?” I asked out loud. The black tarmac of the parking lot gleamed darkly and the white lines shined. I looked back toward Jack, who lifted his shoulders in a half shrug, then reached out to signal one of the nearby campus police.

  “Is this a new parking lot?” Jack repeated my question to the officer, who looked puzzled.

  “About a year, maybe less. They built it at the end of spring semester last year.”

  Jack nodded and thanked him, dismissing him without ever explaining the strangeness of the inquiry. Jack looked back at me, eyebrows raised, waiting.

/>   “Well?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but something’s wrong here.” I bit my lower lip, sucking on it thoughtfully and trying to ignore the desire for another smoke. I really didn’t need to slip into that bad habit again. Looking back at the body, I saw Billy making his way toward us.

  “It was definitely our guy. The wounds match, but…” He hesitated, shot a look over his shoulder before closing the gap with us, with voice lowered in a modicum of privacy.

  “But?” I prompted once we were out of earshot of anyone else. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

  “The M.E. thinks the wounds are post-mortem. He can confirm it at the autopsy, but it’s another break in the M.O.,” Billy explained quietly.

  The Earth was peaceful and replete here. A little buzzed by the recent activity of the new parking lot, but there were no other disturbances. That was what bugged me earlier.

  “She wasn’t killed here,” I told them quietly. My inner focus spread out into the area. The Earth doesn’t remember the way humans do, and it also doesn’t measure time as we do. The arrival of humans in this part of the world isn’t that distant a memory for the Earth. It remembers everything.

  It remembered when the trees around the pond were planted, so slight and small and secured to the land by small pegs with strings. It remembered the pond drying up, only to be refilled with the waxing and waning of the rains. It remembered the humans who built the first building, then the second. Its senses became dulled with each new man-made occlusion that disfigured the landscape, but it remembered.

  The land did not remember a death here. It did not remember a scream of pain or a shout. It did not remember an explosion of violence or blood.

  “Chance?” Jack shook me a little. “Chance you okay?”

  I blinked once, twice, trying to reorient myself to my surroundings. The experience of slipping into the consciousness of the Earth could slow a person down so dramatically that returning to real time was something of a shock. I found myself sitting on the ground with Jack kneeling in front of me. Billy squatted down and cast glances between Jack and me.

  “Earth to Chance, come in Chance.” Jack’s voice rasped like sandpaper on wood. His hot hands gripped mine.

  “That’s almost funny,” I cracked with a half-smile. “I’m fine. Just need to catch my breath for a minute.”

  “You looked faint.” Billy checked his watch and nodded to where they loaded the body onto a gurney. “Crime scenes can do that to people. Maybe you ought to let Jack drive you home.”

  “Oh, it’s not that. I’ll be fine really. I just did a little investigating on my own.” I still felt sluggish, the way you did when you woke up from sleeping too long and you knew you needed to get up but just couldn’t bring yourself to move. They exchanged a look of consternation and concern. I put a hand out and touched Jack’s arm. “It’s the witch thing.”

  “The witch thing.” His forehead wrinkled into a frown.

  “The murder didn’t happen here. The Earth doesn’t remember the violence, and the Earth is still active enough here that this kind of violent attack would be remembered.” They remained skeptical, and I fought through the sluggishness, drawing strength from the sun high overhead. “I’m serious. Something was wrong with this scene when I got here, before Billy said anything.”

  “She did say something was…off,” Jack conceded. He kept a hand on my shoulder. Was all forgiven? It would be like us to let the disagreement pass. “But I don’t really buy into the rest of that…stuff.”

  “I know. I can’t explain it any better than the Earth doesn’t remember the violence. If it happened here, then the land would have remembered it.”

  “Chance, I’m having a hard time accepting that you’re giving me witness confirmation from…” Billy gestured to the area, “What amounts to a parking lot. I want to believe you, though, so can you help me out here?”

  I took a deep breath and looked Billy square in the eyes. I knew why he wanted to believe me. He explained that back at the office. I also knew what I revealed next would irritate Jack, because I’ve never mentioned it to anyone except Gran.

  “After my attack, I never returned to school and I didn’t complete the semester. In fact, I dropped out entirely.” Yeah, I didn't like outing my own cowardice. I hated to be weak about anything, and even when Gran assured me running away from this fear wasn’t truly running away, but preserving my own sanity, it didn’t help. I ran from the confrontation like the hounds of hell were after me. And for eight years, fate let me get away with it. She let me keep running.

  “It was an extremely traumatic event.” Sympathy softened Billy's entire demeanor. “It makes perfect sense you wouldn’t want to go back and stir up memories. And the case file indicated you needed several months to heal from the wounds and the surgery.”

  “But that wasn’t the only reason. I could have gone back the next semester, alternatively, the semester after that. Jack tried to hook me up with counseling, but I avoided it like the plague…”

  “You’re saying that’s not the only reason you didn’t go back?” Jack asked quietly.

  “I knew if I went back, I’d relive it.” Now that I said it, it all came out in a rush. “Think of the Earth as a living record. She exists all around us, and nowhere are you truly away from Her. She remembers everything that’s happened. Some of it is a little more distant than other events, but to the Earth, a hundred years is nothing. What happened yesterday happened in an eye blink.”

  “So, you’d have a real hard time with a battlefield?” Billy questioned, scratching his jaw and studying me with quiet eyes. I couldn’t tell whether he asked out of disbelief or to cover his investigative bases.

  “Trouble…trouble is a mild word. I’ve been to Bull Run. Once. My grandmother took me there when I was younger. She wanted me to understand the effect violent death could have on a place. It…it pulls you in, sucks you down, and because you’re human and you understand the pain and the suffering that goes with the natural cycle of birth and death, you…”

  “Chance, are you trying to tell me when you went to Bull Run, you knew what it was like to be one of those boys who died on that field?” Jack didn’t just sound skeptical. Hurt layered his voice. Did he hurt because I never shared these intimate details before, or for another reason? Should I comfort him? I tried to confide in him before, but he always laughed it off. Irritation warred with sympathy. So what if I told before, he listened now. Isn't that more important to me?

  “I experienced the bloodshed, the clash of bodies, the explosive force of their cannons and the sickening scent of the gunpowder—so many died—but if I’d stayed with it for too long, I’d probably have died myself.” No sense in sugarcoating it. They were both silent. Jack’s jaw worked, as though he chewed his words before speaking. Doubt reflected in his eyes. Jack still wasn’t with the program. Stubborn man.

  “So, if you went near the scene where you suffered a violent attack…” Billy’s gaze fixed on a point just behind my shoulder, his jaw flexed as though he chewed the inside of his cheek.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t want to find out. Which is why I never went back to school.” I swallowed, admitting the fear. “I had so much to cope with right after that it seemed easier to just put it out of my mind. As I got better, the realization came to me that if I wanted to go back to my classes I’d have to go back to the campus, and that would put me close enough to touch the experience again and…and I don’t know what would have happened.”

  Billy nodded slowly. “So you’re certain this victim didn’t die here.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Pretty certain, or certain certain?”

  “She didn't die here.” The sluggishness evaporated, leaving me pleasantly tired but not falling down exhausted. “Whoever she is, and however she died, she did not die here.”

  “Got some time this afternoon?” Billy stretched before standing and casting a long shadow as he did so. The stale coffee and dry turkey s
andwiches from earlier were a distant memory.

  “I suppose. Did you want to finish the questioning?”

  “Not today. I have an experiment in mind.” He glanced at Jack. “Want to tag along?”

  “Oh, wouldn’t miss it.” Jack’s dry, sardonic tone grated on me. Billy excused himself to sign us out of the crime scene. We’d have to follow him to wherever his experiment was to take place. I stole another look at Jack. His eyes softened on me and he shook his head. The corners of his eyes crinkled with the half smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He stood and offered his hand to me.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing, Miss Spooky, but I think you just impressed the hell out of a senior agent with your mumbo jumbo, and I don’t get it.” It didn't matter how much I cared about him, or the desire his presence reignited—as long as he lacked faith in me, we would never work out.

  Suck it up. I clasped his hand and let him pull me to my feet, and then I gripped his hand tighter as he started to pull away. “Jack, it’s not mumbo jumbo, and I’m sorry you’re mad at me for wanting to come here. But get over it. We're not kids anymore. Either one of us. This is my life and I will not run from this son of a bitch. If he's alive, then I want—

  What the hell do I want?

  “I’m not mad at you.” He looked me in the eyes finally, his expression softening further. “I’m worried as hell about you, and I don’t want you to get hurt. I’ve lost enough, so cut me some slack, okay?”

  I sighed, my self-righteous temper reduced to about two inches tall. Would I really be any different if I thought Jack was the one in danger? I offered him a sheepish smile. He squeezed my fingers in response and that just added to my guilt.

  “I’m sorry. I know you’re scared and I know you’re worried. You have a right to be both. But you can’t protect me from my own past, Jack. I need to do this. I don’t know why—I mean I do. I know if it can help save even one person, it's worth it. But there's more to it than that and I don’t think I can explain it to myself right now, much less to you. I promise, I will not take chances and I will make sure I stay with my protection, if that helps you out any.”