I could feel something in my right hand, and I slowly brought it up to my face. A large wad of dirty white hair was protruding from between my fingers as they remained in a death grip. Slowly, and deliberately, I forced my hand open and allowed the mass to fall. I watched it as it floated lightly away and melted into the thick mist.
In retrospect, I should have been paying attention to the activity immediately above and to my rear.
A cold palm came quickly against the back of my neck, and bony fingers slipped about my throat from the left. I gasped and kicked as the killer began squeezing as tightly as he could.
Evenly, and with great purpose, bass notes echoed with haunting measure into the night against the crying of the violin.
The smooth tempo of the movement began its migration toward a spastic rhythm.
I sputtered and bucked as I clawed at the massive hand that was threatening to crush my windpipe. I struggled to slip my fingers in behind his and pry them away, but his grip was too tight.
“As you, Rowan Linden Gant, are damned in body and soul,” his angry voice announced as if the words were necessary to validate his actions. “Your sentence on this day is death. The sentence, to be executed immediately and without appeal.”
The back of my head rang hard against the metal beam as I kicked the air and fought to breathe. I could hear my own gurgling as consciousness announced it would be leaving soon. I grasped weakly at his fingers before my arm fell away to my side and bounced against an annoying lump on my belt.
Frantic notes plucked sharply on the strings of a harp insinuated themselves into the ebb and flow of the music from above…
The melody continued from above as I tried to reason out what the annoyance could be. I told myself in no uncertain terms that this was neither the time nor the place to worry about such things. My arm spasmed and caught once again against the weighty protrusion at my side, urging me to think harder on its meaning. In a black and white silhouette against the inside of my eyelids, the nature of the object flashed to the front of my fading thoughts. My hand shook uncontrollably as I hooked my fingers beneath the retaining strap on the holster and pulled. They shuddered and numbly slid away with no effect.
A brace of violins engaged in an angry exchange bringing ever more urgency to the pace of the melody…
The killer was hanging precariously from the support beam, leaning out and downward to reach me. As he shifted for a better position, his hand loosened in a quick spasm. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. I gasped in a small slice of a breath and felt a brief moment of clarity surge through my body.
I pushed my still shaking hand back up to my side then thrust my thumb beneath the nylon strap and pushed outward. With a dull pop it released, and I immediately wrapped my hand around the grip of the pistol.
The miniscule piece of breath I’d been able to grasp was failing quickly, and my vision was darkening as my eyes started rolling back in my head. The abbreviated lesson in the use of the pistol flashed through my mind as just so much jumbled nonsense. I could find no way to apply the instructions to my present situation.
Being unable to aim, I centered on what was left of my strength and pressed the gun upward at an angle across my chest until it met resistance.
The panicked voices of various stringed instruments blended to a thick, disharmonious crescendo in my ears…
For a brief instant I considered the fact that my left arm was now completely numb, and I silently begged for the resistance I found to be his arm and not my own. Then, tensing my body, I pulled the trigger.
The muzzle flashed.
The explosion reported deafeningly in my ear.
The spent shell ejected directly toward me and transferred its searing heat to my cheek.
Thick blood spattered like heavy rain across the side of my face.
The cold fingers snapped open.
Something thudded heavily against me and fell away.
A tortured scream faded into the distance below.
A single violin cried into the night, fading with sorrowful purpose toward silence…
Everything went completely black.
* * * * *
The tinkling sound that met my ears made no sense at first. I couldn’t really place it as anything I was familiar with other than the fact that it sounded like metal against metal. Even at that it was competing with a thickness that filled my head and made everything muddy and dull.
Numbness still permeated my left arm as well as a good portion of my shoulder and upper chest. I could feel the dampness of the fog against my face but didn’t really care. Warmth was creeping into my body now to replace the chill, or so I believed. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep, but the annoying brightness of the noise was growing louder.
From somewhere in the back of my head, random voices began backfilling the silent spaces to push urgently in and out of my semi-conscious world. On the periphery of my senses, I could feel something immediately in front of me, and the sharp tinkle was emanating from it.
My slow twist halted, and I felt something warm pressing against the side of my neck. For a brief instant I considered the pistol still gripped tightly in my right hand and thought perhaps I should shoot the intruder. Fortunately for us both, the message traveled a maze of nerve endings and never found its way to the proper set of neurons in order to create the motion.
I slowly opened one eye as I continued to feel the gentle pressure against my neck. Finally, partial focus sluggishly set in through the misty darkness, and I was greeted by the concerned face of a paramedic in full climbing gear suspended before me in the fog.
“He’s still alive!” I heard him say as he removed his fingers from my pulse point and began to carefully attach a safety harness about my waist. “Can you hear me, Mister Gant?”
I forced my other eye open and attempted to answer but was only able to emit a thin whisper that scarcely resembled a “yes.”
I barely remember anything that followed. Whether an hour passed or only five minutes, I couldn’t say. All that remains clear are the chaotic sounds of a crime scene investigation in full swing and Ben Storm’s concerned face, haloed in fog and flickering emergency lights, looking down at me as I laid on a gurney.
“Goddammit, white man. Ya’ just can’t stay outta the middle of shit, can ya’?” was all I heard him say before I slipped once again into nothingness
CHAPTER 28
“The plates were stolen,” Ben was telling me. “We tracked the VIN on the panel van but didn’t get much. The artist sketch from your description hasn’t matched up ta’ anything, and the prints he left on your truck were too smudged to be much good to us at all. The two partials the CSU pulled off the bruises on your neck still haven’t hit on AFIS yet, so that’s lookin’ like it’ll be a bust. Either way, we sent all of ‘em along with the blood samples to the crime lab in D.C.”
I was staring out the window of my hospital room, watching as winter tried to rally back with a sudden cold front. The grey sky spit wet flurries in a thwarted attempt at actual snow, and the look of it all gave me a slight chill. Gloomy was the only way to describe it, and it matched my mood well.
Five hours of surgery had gone into repairing my arm and shoulder, so I was told. All I knew of it consciously was the fact that my left arm was now completely immobilized, and the incisions were already starting to itch mercilessly as they began to heal. My voice was weak and hoarse from a bruised larynx, and the rainbow of colors ringing my neck formed a hand-shaped contusion that still throbbed with tender soreness. I didn’t even remember the CSU tech taking the close up photos of the two fingerprints that had been temporarily pressed into my flesh.
A burn scar in the perfect shape of a nine-millimeter shell casing graced my left cheek, and beneath the rope bruises on my forearm, a faint pink outline of Christ’s Monogram still remained. Other than that, physically I was on the mend. Emotionally, however, I still wasn’t entirely sure what kind of damage had been done. Daily vi
sits from a psychiatrist didn’t do much to determine that fact, either.
I had given them my description of the killer shortly after waking up from a twenty-four hour sleep. To the best of my ability, I had relayed the events to Ben, and he had filled in some of the blanks for me.
Detective McLaughlin’s daughter had arrived home completely unscathed shortly after I had set out in pursuit of the killer. The present theory was that it was he who had called Charlee’s husband with the ruse. This theory only served to create more questions about how he knew who to call and where he might have obtained his inside information. Rumor was already bandying about that an internal investigation would be forthcoming.
My only other question had been how they had found me. To that, the answer had been simple. When the killer had knocked the cell phone from my hand, it had remained on and broadcasting. With the help of Special Agent Mandalay and the cell company, they had managed to triangulate the general vicinity of the broadcast. Also, a motion sensor at the end of the bridge had alerted the authorities that someone had passed by the locked gate on the grand Old Lady. And finally, a phone call from the night watchman at the water treatment plant who had noticed dim lights from the vehicles headlamps served to pinpoint the frantic search.
The first officers had actually arrived on the scene in time to hear the report of the Glock when I had fired it.
“Still too much ice in the river ta’ drag, but we did a full search of the surroundin’ area,” my friend continued. “The bastard’s body’ll prob’ly end up on the rocks in a month or two. Or maybe downriver with the floodin’ from the thaw… Hey, Row… You listenin’ to me?”
Ben’s sudden silence wedged its way into my ears, and his words registered in the moment that followed. “What? Yeah…” I croaked in a pained whisper. “Yeah, I’m listening.”
“So anyway,” he proceeded, “looks like we might not be able to identify this asshole unless we can find the body and come up with a dental record match. That’s assumin’ he’s had dental work. Of course, eventually there’s gonna be a house turn up empty with all that shit in the basement you described. If we’re lucky, whoever finds it’ll think it’s weird and call us. Maybe that’ll give us a clue about who this prick was.”
“You won’t,” I forced my voice through the dull ache.
“Won’t what?”
“Find his body.” I slowly shook my head. “He’s still out there.”
“Yeah. Suckin’ mud from the bottom of the river.”
“No. He’s still alive.”
“Get real, white man,” my friend objected. “You shot the bastard point blank.”
“I shot him in the arm, Ben,” I returned in rebuttal.
“With a high frag round that contained Teflon gel,” he detailed. “At point blank you prob’ly blew the fucker’s arm clean off, and besides, that gel’s toxic. Not ta’ mention that from your description of the events that followed, he fell off the bridge and into the river. No way he coulda survived.”
“I know all that, Ben, but it’s a feeling. He’s still out there. Alive. And he’ll be back.”
“Can’t go with ya’ on this one, Kemosabe. You’re just rattled. You must not be doin’ that groundin’ thing or somethin’. The asshole is toast, no two ways about it.”
I didn’t belabor the point. Maybe Ben was correct. I hadn’t exactly been walking a very balanced path over the past month, and what had occurred on that bridge a mere handful of nights prior was still pounding in the back of my skull. Guilt over not being able to stop this miniature Inquisition in time to save the lives of several innocent individuals, Pagan and non-Pagan, was an ever-present tingle along my spine as well. My intuition in this particular instant could very well be wrong.
At any rate, I could only hope that it was.
Three Months Later…
EPILOGUE
It was obvious even to the casual observer that the man was favoring his left arm. Whenever he would move it, he would do so stiffly and occasionally reach over with his right hand to give his shoulder a quick massage. Other than that minor point, he seemed non-descript enough. Long brown hair tied back in a ponytail, a neatly trimmed beard, and glasses. Less obvious and only upon closer inspection would you notice the odd pink scar on his forearm or the brooding gaze beneath his brow.
Sun shone brightly down upon the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, and a warm spring breeze playfully wove itself through the green painted trusses that made up the superstructure of the Old Lady. The man lingered for a long while at the join of two of the metal beams where they created an inverted triangle. His gaze held fast across the muddy brown waters of the Mississippi river to the rock levy that caused them to roil and whitecap in a shallow defined arc across the full width of the river.
Nearby, a strikingly beautiful woman clad in a photographers vest commanded a pair of leashed canines to sit and stay. Brushing back her unruly mane of long red hair, she then brought a camera to her eye. Carefully bringing it to bear on the nearest of the pair of gothic looking water intake towers that rose majestically from the river on the south side of the bridge, she depressed a button and the shutter clicked, followed by the whirring motor drive as it advanced the film within.
The man cast a glance in her direction and allowed himself a brief, thin smile as she gazed back at him. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew a stone and worked it in the palm of his right hand with his fingers. If one listened close, he could be heard whispering softly as he looked hard at the smooth rock.
“In you I place my fears, my regrets, and my guilt,” he almost chanted. “From you I retain my hopes, my dreams, and my strength. With you I cast away the negative and keep only the positive. I am one. I am whole. I am free.”
At the end of the third repetition, the man drew back his arm with a twist of his body then thrust it rapidly forward, casting the stone into the spring air. He watched on as the burdened rock fell in an arc until it disappeared from sight and made the tiniest of imperceptible ripples in the water below.
The woman had moved close and now slipped her arm in about the man’s waist and laid her head against his shoulder. The man allowed himself a short relieved sigh as he hooked his own arm around her and pulled her tight.
With a short whistle they called the dogs that had been waiting obediently and continued lazily across the span of the pedestrian bridge. Among the faded graffiti that marred the asphalt, a fresher, brighter grouping of spray painted lines, only months old, resided where the man had been standing.
A circle, decorated with hash marks along the side arcs, and encompassing a large letter X that was bisected by a large letter P.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
An active member of the HWA (Horror Writers Association), M. R. Sellars is a relatively unassuming homebody who considers himself just a “guy with a lot of nightmares and a word processing program.” His first full-length novel, Harm None, hit bookstore shelves in 2000 and he hasn’t stopped writing since. He says that the biggest adjustment he has had to make with his writing career is coping with the time spent away from his family while traveling on promotional tours. Still, he approaches it with the same humorously deadpan and occasionally acerbic wit that he applies to life in general.
All of the current novels in Sellars’ continuing Rowan Gant Investigations saga have spent several consecutive weeks on numerous bookstore bestseller lists as well as a consistent showing on the Amazon.com Horror/Occult top 100.
Sellars currently resides in the Midwest with his wife, daughter, and a host of what he describes as “rescued, geriatric, special-needs felines.” At home, when not writing or taking care of the household, he indulges his passions for cooking and hanging out with friends.
M. R. Sellars can be found on the web at:
www.mrsellars.com
Brainpan Leakage the M. R. Sellars Satire Blog
www.brainpanleakage.com
OTHER BOOKS BY M. R. SELLARS
The Rowan Gant Investigations
HARM NONE
NEVER BURN A WITCH
PERFECT TRUST
THE LAW OF THREE
CRONE’S MOON
LOVE IS THE BOND
ALL ACTS OF PLEASURE
THE END OF DESIRE
BLOOD MOON
MIRANDA
(Available in both print and e-book editions)
Other
YOU’RE GONNA THINK I’M NUTS…
(Novelette included in Courting Morpheus Horror Anthology)
MERRIE AXEMAS: A KILLER HOLIDAY TALE
(Novella)
Table of Contents
Chapter 22, Verse 18
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
EPILOGUE
Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation Page 36