Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation

by M. R. Sellars

  Out in the darkness, wet clumps of snowflakes streamed heavily downward from the low blanket of clouds that covered the city.

  CHAPTER 1

  I rolled over in the darkness and tugged the blanket up over my shoulders, but only after a brief, lethargic struggle with Salinger, our overstuffed, under-exercised Himalayan. His mild protestation came as a short pause in his otherwise incessant purring, coupled with a wimpish “mew” one would expect from a kitten, not from a full-grown cat. My ears further discerned that the wind was sighing forlornly through the leafless branches of our tree-lined yard, audibly bringing the outside chill into the bedroom.

  I shivered slightly at the thought and assumed that Tracy Watson, the Eyewitness News meteorologist, had probably nailed her forecast squarely on the head yet again. If I were brave enough to crawl from the warmth of the bed and look out the window, I presumed I would be witness to the snowfall she predicted as well. Her uncanny accuracy would most likely be capturing her another American Meteorological Society Award in the near future. Not that this fact was all that important to me, but half-sleep has a tendency to make one concentrate on things that would normally flit past unheeded.

  With a contented sigh, I let the thoughts of snow, and sub-freezing temperatures, and other people’s achievement awards drain from my mind, dwelling instead on the comfortable warmth of the heated waterbed.

  Lazily slithering my arm beneath the sheets, I hooked it around Felicity, my wife of just over nine years. She let out a sleepy murmur and snuggled herself closer against me. Her long, auburn curls were pinned neatly atop her head, looking for all the world like they had been arranged there just moments ago. I was still amazed at her ability to crawl out of bed looking just as she did when she crawled in. Astonished as I was, I had long since given up trying to figure out how she managed to do it.

  I allowed my one open—but barely focused—eye to roam in the direction of her alarm clock. The radiant, electric blue digits shone back at me, attesting to a time of 4:47 a.m. In my mind, I was fully aware that Felicity kept her clock set fifteen minutes fast. A psychological trick used by millions in order to be on time. Of course, for the majority of those millions, since they knew the clock was fast to begin with, the trick failed to work. In the case of my lovely wife, not only did the ruse falter miserably, it simply caused her to be even later. I stubbornly attempted the mental calculation to subtract the phantom fifteen minutes from the displayed time of 4:47. Unfortunately, in my half-conscious state, I succeeded only in giving myself a headache and producing a string of meaningless numbers. Though for some reason, the ratio twenty-two to eighteen kept returning to the forefront.

  Finally, I dismissed the entire process, along with its product, in favor of the infinitely more pleasant nether world between sleep and wakefulness. Judging by the nightmare that followed, I wish I had concentrated on the equation a little harder.

  Fear.

  Anger.

  Fear.

  Anger.

  Surprise.

  “I didn’t expect you to come back.” A man is speaking to me.

  We are surrounded by darkness, yet we are awash in an eerie light. A little girl clad in white lace levitates near him. Floating weightless in the air. There is no visible means of support for her tiny body.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” I return, this time my words echo through the air instead of disappearing into nothingness as they had done before.

  He is standing no more than twenty feet away from me, dressed in a dark ceremonial robe. The hood is pushed back to reveal his face, and it lay limply across his shoulders.

  “I’m not disappointed,” he says. “Just surprised. I don’t know what you think you’re going to do.”

  The little girl’s body is drifting about on a gentle breeze, bobbing up and down slightly but never straying far from him.

  “Stop you,” I tell him evenly.

  “You can’t stop me,” he says. “I told you, she’s The One.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask.

  His only response is a sour, demonic laugh.

  I’m falling.

  I’m screaming.

  Silence.

  “Rowan, so nice to see you.” Ariel Tanner is standing before me. Beside her is the same little strawberry-blonde girl holding tightly to her hand.

  “Mister, why don’t you stop the bad man?” The little girl looks up at me with wide, sad eyes then turns her gaze to the right.

  I follow her eyes, looking far off into the distance. There is a grove of trees surrounding a small clearing. Centered in the clearing is a hooded, robed figure standing with hands raised high. Moonlight glints from an object held in those hands. Moonlight glints from an athamè. A ceremonial knife.

  A small figure lies prone before the cloaked one. A small figure clad in white lace. Preened and arranged. Unblemished and virginal.

  The scene begins to grow increasingly distant as trees erupt from the landscape, obscuring the view as they continued to appear, closer and closer.

  Immediately before us, the earth trembles and begins to sink. Almost as quickly as the depression is formed, it is filled with water. The glossy surface ripples in the slight breeze, moonlight reflecting from it in a shimmering stripe.

  The ground continues to shake, and another stand of trees erupt skyward. The tall pines form a line before us, now completely obscuring the clearing and all but the smallest glimpses of the shallow lake.

  I turn to the little girl. She is pointing at the sign. “What does it say, Mister?”

  I look downward, following along her finger to the small white sign. Bold, black, capital letters spell out PLEASE DO NOT FEED GEESE.

  “Only you can save her now, Rowan,” Ariel’s lilting voice gently touches my ears.

  I turn to her, and she holds forth her hand. In it, a tarot card. A tarot card known as The Moon.

  She stiffens and the card flutters from her hand. Her eyes go wide, and blood streaks down the front of her dress.

  “Hey, Mister, what time is it?” the little girl is talking to me. “What time is it? Hey, Mister!”

  I look up to the glowing marbled disk of the full moon high above. Spinning around its face are the hands of a clock. I watch as the minute hand chases rapidly after the hour hand, overtakes it, then begins the race anew.

  “Hey, Mister!” the tiny voice demands. “What time is it?”

  Darkness.

  A deafening, demonic chord.

  The sound of water splashing violently.

  I can’t breathe. My lungs are on fire, and the flames are licking up my throat. My chest feels heavy, and there is something tightening about my neck. The atmosphere feels thick and fluid around me. I want to gasp for air, but something is telling me I shouldn’t. My thoughts are beginning to cloud; my mind is turning murky and dark.

  I open my eyes, flailing my arms in front of me. I so desperately need air. I need to breathe. The air is thick and murky. It stings. I catch a distorted glimpse, rippling and blurry, of the full moon above. It is all that I can see. All except for one thing—a pair of murderous gray eyes.

  My world begins to fade.

  Twilight.

  An endless scream, “Why, Rowan, why?”

  Darkness.

  Falling.

  Impact.

  I was vaguely aware of struggling toward consciousness as my nightmare world sought to meet reality. Something, or someone, wasn’t ready for that however.

  Running.

  I am running blindly through a forest.

  Chased.

  Hunted.

  The icy snow numbs my frozen feet. I am nude. Nude and streaked with blood. Wounds cover my tortured body.

  Fear tears mercilessly at my soul as my labored breaths take in the wintry air, bringing frozen pain to my already frostbitten lungs.

  I stop and search franticly for a place to hide. From what, I do not know.

  A tortured scream in the night.

  Fire.<
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  Fear absolute.

  The taste of death.

  I am running.

  I started to sudden wakefulness, eyes snapping open, and my body feeling as though it had just been soundly pummeled with a two-by-four. Foggy disorientation quickly lifted and was replaced with knotted fear in the pit of my stomach. Fortunately, after a few short moments of deep, labored breathing, I realized that it had only been a nightmare. It was simply yet another terror in the long series of phantasms that had once again begun to plague my sleep in these recent weeks. I thought I had seen the end of them, September last. Apparently, I was mistaken.

  It was coming up on six months since my friend and former student of the Wiccan religion, Ariel Tanner, had been hideously tortured and finally, murdered by a sadistic killer. It was also approaching six months since I had stopped that killer from doing the same thing to an innocent little girl for the purpose of a twisted ritual sacrifice. To this day, no one had been able to determine what he had hoped to accomplish; perhaps fortunately, four 9mm slugs had seen to it that we probably never would. What we knew for certain was simply that his deranged mind had pushed him to mutilate, torture, and murder five women. Then, in the name of some perverse evil, kidnap a small child with the intention of doing the same to her. In stopping him, I had almost been separated from my own life that night in Wild Woods Park beneath a full, silver-veined moon. Had it not been for the marksmanship of my friend Benjamin Storm, a Saint Louis city homicide detective, I’m firmly convinced he would have succeeded. Ironically, Ben was the very reason I had become involved in the investigation to start with.

  The vignette so forcefully appended to the end of the nightmare was another story entirely. I had no rhyme or reason for its cryptic display and wasn’t entirely sure I wanted any. Mutely, I wished for it to be an anomalous event that would never recur.

  Shaking off the vivid remembrances that, in my opinion, couldn’t fade quickly enough, I gently tossed back the covers. Being careful not to wake Felicity, I let my feet touch the hardwood floor and drew in a sharp breath. A quick glance at the clock showed it to be 5:24—minus the phantom fifteen minutes, of course—which readily accounted for the fact that the electronic thermostat had not yet signaled the furnace to increase the comfort level in the house.

  I quickly pulled on socks and sweats and then stuffed my feet into a pair of tennis shoes. Our English setter and Australian cattle dog both stirred as soon as they were convinced that I was up and moving about. With a choreographed pair of lazy stretches and slowly wagging tails, the two of them followed me through the house and into the kitchen where I let them out the back door. The motion sensor on the outdoor sentry instantly detected their movement and snapped the floodlights on full. The intense halogen beams pierced the darkness to illuminate our white-blanketed back yard and deck. Countless jewel-like pinpricks were reflected back from the crystalline snow, making the pristine landscape appear to be covered with a fine dusting of tiny diamonds.

  Clusters of the cottony ice were still falling steadily from a grey sky; the low strata of clouds reflected the omnipresent lights of the city, lending to an illusion of almost brightness. Emily, our calico cat, brushed against my leg and started out the doorway onto the snowy deck. The moment her paws contacted the frigid substance, she lurched back with a hiss, back arched and tri-toned fur afrizz. The weather having brought about an abrupt end to her planned morning hunt, she pranced back into the atrium, leaped lithely into a chair and settled herself in, electing to watch rather than participate. The dogs had seen to their business and were now reveling like small children in the wonders of the snow that hadn’t been there less than eight hours before. They would be at play for some time yet, so I shut the door and proceeded back into the kitchen. I knew they would let me know when they wanted in.

  After dumping a healthy portion of roasted Columbian Supremo beans into the grinder, I covered it with a dishtowel before depressing the button. I was still trying not to wake Felicity, and I wanted to muffle the noise. A choked rattle began immediately and was followed by an escalating whine as the blades increased in speed, first cracking and then crushing the contents. After a couple of sharp taps, I removed the shroud and emptied the near-powdered contents into the filter basket then filled the coffee maker with purified water. Rich inviting aromas were already screaming “CAFFEINE” at me when I let the dogs back in and made my way to the shower.

  * * * * *

  After my shower and a change from sweats to casual but more respectable attire, I had dialed the Saint Louis city police headquarters and asked for Ben Storm’s extension. He had picked up on the third ring with his usual gruff and succinct, “Homicide. Storm.”

  “So everything is still on for this morning?” I said into the telephone handset.

  “Hell yes,” my friend’s voice issued jovially from the earpiece. “Coppers don’t get to stay home when it snows. Shit, you think the bad guys take the day off?”

  Since my recent involvement in solving one of the most violent killing sprees in Saint Louis’ history, my friend had become readily accepting of the fact that I was a practicing Witch—and the uncanny abilities that I developed because of it. Taking it even a step further, he was now a staunch purveyor of educating his fellow officers about Wicca and The Craft. In a very short period of time, he had come to realize the importance of dispelling the myths about the religion of modern day Witches. His persistence, along with my success in aiding a serious investigation, had allowed him to convince the department to establish a program of lectures. The series of seminars was designed for the purpose of instructing everyone within the ranks—from chief to beat cop—about alternative religions and the fact that being a Witch did not mean that one was a “child-eating, broom-riding, sacrificial murderer.” Ben’s fierce determination about this had gotten me through the door. Now, it was my job to stand up in front of them and do the convincing. Today was to be the first formal lecture to a group.

  “Well, you never know,” I answered with a laugh. “Seems like half the city shuts down if someone sees a flurry. You’d think they’d be used to it by now.”

  “Yeah, well, what’re ya gonna do?” he stated rhetorically. “Especially when you got a bunch of prima donnas runnin’ around worried about gettin’ sno-melt on their new Lex-eye.”

  “Lex-eye? Is that really a word?”

  “Lexus, Lexuses, Lex-eye, whatever...” he answered with a chuckle. “Anyway, yeah, everything’s still on. Even with the snow, they’d be nuts to cancel now, especially after that article in the paper.”

  “I suppose it would look a little strange to do that after that kind of coverage,” I said, knowing exactly what he was referring to. “You know, when I agreed to that interview, I really didn’t expect the article to be on the front page.”

  “That’s nothin’, rumor has it the national wire services are picking it up. Face it, Row, a self-proclaimed Witch giving instructional seminars to coppers? You’re news, Kemosabe. Either that, or,” he added wryly, “it was a really slow day.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I feigned hurt sarcasm. “That makes me feel real important.”

  He laughed heartily on the other end. “No problem, white man. Hey, by the way, happy Candlestick or Endblock or whatever you call it.”

  “Candlemas or Imbolc, either one is fine.” I corrected his crucified reference to the Pagan holiday that had been celebrated only the day before. “I’m impressed you remembered. Thanks.”

  “Hey, I’m tryin’. So what was this one all about anyway?”

  “It’s a celebration of the coming of the spring season,” I replied.

  “Yo, Kemosabe.” He took on a mock serious tone. “I don’t wanna bust your bubble and all, but you might wanna take a look at a calendar. I’m pretty sure spring is a ways off yet.”

  “Like I said, the coming of the season,” I told him, and then jibed, “You mundanes have your own bizarre and even less than scientific version of Imbolc, you know.”
>
  “What’s that?”

  “Well, you all gather around and wait for a rodent to come out of a hole to see if it casts a shadow. Then depending upon the result, you proclaim the length of the winter season. On the other hand, we Pagans all gather ‘round, hold a simple rite welcoming spring and the growing season that we know to be just around the corner, then we have a party. In the long run, which one do you think makes more sense?”

  “Okay, okay,” he laughed. “I give up… You win.” In the background, I could hear him shuffling papers about his desk. “So anyway, back to business. According to the departmental memo here, looks like the class is all set up for around ten. You need me to come get you?”

  “No. Not at all.” I declined his offer. “I’ve got about two hundred pounds of sand bags in the bed of the truck, and it’s four-wheel drive.” With a chuckle, I added, “Question is, should I have given YOU a ride?”

  “What, and leave the tank at home?” He asked facetiously, referring to the dilapidated looking, but well maintained, Chevy van he always drove. “Not a chance! Someone might think it’s abandoned and tow it! Besides...” He paused and I heard faint voices in the background. “Hey, Row...Could you hold on a sec?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  The sound from the handset cradled on my shoulder took on the familiar dull hollowness of being placed on hold. Absently, I filled my hand with an ink pen from the jar on the bookshelf and began doodling on the notepad next to it. Outside the window, a muted dawn was managing to filter weakly through the clouds that still lay like a comforter across the city. Wet clumps of snow continued chasing one another in a frantic, never-ending race downward to the already fleeced ground. My hand moved on its own, tracing non-sensical patterns on the notepaper. I ignored it and continued staring through the double pane of glass. Distorted noises of metal against asphalt distantly reached my ears, growing louder, then fading once again as a street department snow plow pushed past my house, spewing salt in its wake.