The Hollywood slow motion continued with a decelerated soundtrack meeting my ears. The frenzied crash of the shattering doorframe was drawn out into a banshee wail resembling fingernails on a chalkboard mixed with marble-sized hail hitting a tin roof. Bill’s voice joined the raucous clamor with a commanding, stretched out “Pollleeeeeccccce!”
Detective Deckert and Special Agent Mandalay had turned their heads to shield themselves from the storm of fracturing splinters and were now slowly turning back as they stepped out from the brick wall. Fluidly, they aimed their bodies at the newly created opening, pistols held at the ready, and rushed forward, echoing Bill’s cry.
A deep, rushing chord filled my ears, and at its finish, I plunged into chaotic real time. By now, several other cops had rushed up the stairs and were filing quickly in through the now fully open door, their flashlights sketching comet trails in the darkness. Ben was screaming “go, Go, GO!” as he waved them onward, still holding the traitorous screen door wide open.
“You stay here!” he shouted at me as the last of them passed us, and he whipped around the aluminum frame, rushing headlong into the pandemonium.
A few short moments later, the clamor began to subside, and I started hearing muffled shouts of “Clear!” from several different voices. The interior lights snapped to life one by one, casting a dim incandescent glow. Soon afterwards, Ben returned to the front porch wearing a crestfallen face. He looked at me sadly and motioned with his head for me to come inside as he holstered his sidearm and snapped the quick-release shut.
“The son-of-a-bitch isn’t here,” he pronounced dully. “He’s gone.”
“What about the little girl?” I pressed.
“He must have her with him.”
“But the porch light,” I protested. “It came on when the door creaked.”
“Coincidence. It was on a timer.” He reached up and angrily wiped the sweat from his forehead. “They were all on a fucking timer.”
CHAPTER 23
A queer, pulsing static encompassed me as I stepped across the threshold of the front door. I could feel the individual hairs on my body as they hastily rose to attention, generating a painful prickling sensation throughout. For the third time in the last half hour, the insistent itching returned, appearing and disappearing in mobile patches across my chest. Since the immediate physical danger was well out of the way, I reached around and ripped apart the Velcro tabs on the flak vest with an audible swoosh. I didn’t remove it but loosening allowed breathing room for my sweat-drenched skin and more importantly, enough space to slip my hand in for a quick, blissful scratch.
“Don’t touch anything yet,” Ben told me as we advanced farther into the sparsely decorated living room. “Evidence Unit’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“Yeah. No problem.” I nodded assent and continued to glance about the room.
My hair follicles were still stinging with strained discomfort, making my skin seem to crawl, while an arc of intense energy played up and down my spine. It felt pretty much as though I was holding on to a frayed extension cord while standing in a puddle of water. Slowly, my scalp began to tighten and my temples to throb. I had one hell of a headache coming on.
None of these sensations were new to me. I had felt them a handful of times in the past, though not often, thankfully. They were warnings—the physical manifestations of a “supernatural burglar alarm.” Roger, like any Witch, or practitioner of ritual magick, had shielded his boundaries. He had cast protective energy about his home as a way of marking territory to let others who were aware know that they shouldn’t intrude. In the physical world, I had simply stepped across the threshold. However, being an uninvited guest, in the realm of the ethereal, I had done the equivalent of breaking a trip wire on a hypersensitive home security system.
Two things immediately occurred. First, the walls of protective energy enveloped me with urgent warnings in an attempt to make me leave. Second, wherever Roger Henderson was hiding, he was made aware of my intrusion. Of course, as I said, these warnings were for others who are aware, so being the only Witch in the room, I was forced to endure the increasingly painful attempts at expulsion in tortured solitude.
The one feeling that wasn’t a direct descendant of the ethereal burglar alarm was the searing arc of energy playing xylophone on my vertebrae. Red hot, intense, and angry, it was the blatant otherworldly signature of the home’s occupant. The unmasked, undisguised essence of Roger Henderson’s immortal soul. Vile, putrid, and swelling with evil. I had to engage my own defenses in order to keep from becoming violently ill. It was obvious, at least to me, that though he wasn’t here now, he had been here very recently. We couldn’t have missed him by more than a few hours.
I was only superficially aware of muttered apologies and “excuse me’s” as officers pushed past me to go in and out the door. Several moments passed before I realized I was standing frozen, one step over the threshold, partially blocking the entrance of the house. Slowly, I shuffled around the room and as Ben had ordered, was careful not to touch anything—physically, anyway. As I moved farther inward, a new feeling joined the jamboree of sensations that were clawing at me for equal time. The feeling was fear. It was small and feminine but very intense. It was the fear projected by a little girl named Ariel. I pushed the feeling back and placed it on mental “hold” as I realized my breathing had quickened. I fought to maintain a grip in the physical realm, and closing my eyes, I willed myself to relax. When my respirations came back under control, I allowed my eyelids to flutter open and focused on the scene before me.
The walls in the small square room were washed with a thin coat of light blue paint, applied lethargically with what had apparently been a worn roller. Several swaths were severely lacking in coverage, unabashedly exposing the original antique white that lay beneath. The floor, at one time smooth, finished hardwood, was scuffed and gouged, with wear patterns criss-crossing the surface in a well-beaten path. A lone, straight-backed chair sat against a sagging card table—the only two pieces of furniture in the room.
The stained tabletop was littered with cigarette butts from an overflowing ashtray and a paper plate containing a half-eaten sandwich. The curl of the drying bread, a browning crust of mustard, and the unidentifiability of the luncheon meat gave evidence that the sandwich was several days old.
“Can’t say a helluva lot for his taste in decorating.” Deckert was standing next to me. I hadn’t noticed him until he spoke.
“I know what you mean,” I answered with a small sigh and began massaging my temples. My head was killing me, and I knew it was only going to get worse before getting any better.
“You okay?” Concern crept into his voice as he rested a hand on my shoulder.
“Yeah, I’ll be okay. Just a headache.” I didn’t feel like trying to explain the concept of protection spells and ethereal burglar alarms at the moment. From what I had come to know about Carl Deckert over the past week, I was sure he wouldn’t cast a jaundiced eye upon me, but I wasn’t exactly certain he’d believe me either. It really didn’t matter anyway. I was the only one who had to deal with it.
“Probably all the excitement,” he volunteered in a fatherly tone. “I got some aspirin out in my car, if you want some.”
“Thanks,” I smiled weakly, “I might take you up on that later.” All I really needed to do was get out of this house, but I knew that wasn’t an option at the moment.
“Looks like you got a fan club,” Ben called to me from a few feet away.
When I looked over, he was motioning to a bizarre collage. The section of wall directly above the card table was haphazardly peppered with newspaper clippings regarding the murders. Upon closer inspection, several yellow marks could be seen streaking the newsprint, and each of them was highlighting my name.
“He knows I’m helping with the investigation,” I offered. “He’s just trying to...”
“Great intel, Storm,” Special Agent Mandalay’s sardonic tone pierced the even
murmur of the other voices in the room to cut me off. “Did your expert get it from his crystal ball or something?”
“We didn’t have just a hell of a lotta time, ya’know,” Ben spit back. “Surveillance showed lights goin’ off, so we had ta’ assume he was in here. We had no way of knowin’ they were on timers.”
“Well I’m not impressed,” she returned.
“And what would you have done? Tapped his phone and sat around with your thumb up your ass?” His voice increased in volume by a notch.
“I would have made sure he was here,” Agent Mandalay raised her voice as well. “This place looks like it’s been empty for days.”
“No it hasn’t,” I interrupted calmly. “He’s only been gone a few hours.”
She turned and looked at me as if I were a small child butting in to an adult conversation. “The expert speaks!” she exclaimed cynically. “Why don’t you let the rest of us in on it. How do you know he was here a few hours ago?”
“I can feel him,” I answered her barbed question simply. “He had the little girl with him.”
In an exaggerated motion, she tossed her head back, rolled her eyes, and then let out a loud, frustrated breath, “I suppose you can feel her too?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. I can feel her fear.”
“You ARE kidding. Right? This place is abandoned. Just look around you.”
Before I could answer, a surge of blinding pain bit viciously into my skull like a white-hot poker. As long as I was inside this house, my foothold in this plane of physical realities was shaky at best, and the sudden stabbing affectation was all it took to knock me over the precipice. I winced internally as the pain struck again, and I tumbled backward into the darkened abyss of the recent past.
Fear.
Confusion.
Pure, unbounded terror.
The terror of a small child.
A dark figure. Stocky and thick. Brimming with exaggerated excitement. I can smell a mixture of emotions in his profuse, oily sweat.
His excitement.
Her fear.
His anger.
Her terror.
He enters the room hurriedly. He’s holding a loosely wrapped bundle. A tattered blanket, stained and filthy with abuse and neglect. It encompasses a limp mass. Apparently, there is some weight to the bundle as he struggles to shift it while he wrestles with the door. Using his knee, he pushes the door shut then turns and backs against it, forcing the latch to pop into place. He jerks slightly, and a tiny hand falls into view from beneath the unclean shroud. The tiny hand of a frightened little girl.
It doesn’t matter. He’s inside now. He’s certain no one saw him carry the bundle in. They are all at work. All of them. Even the prying old bitch across the street is gone. He made sure of that before getting the bundle from his trunk.
Maybe he should have killed her, he thought. The old nosy bitch.
No.
No. She was too close to home. The police would have been crawling all over the place, and that might have disrupted the Ritual. His chance to sacrifice The One. Besides, she was too old. Her age-spotted skin hung loosely from her skinny frame. He could see it in his mind.
Whenever she waved at him from her yard, it would flop and flap like a banner waving in the breeze. No. Her skin was definitely too loose. He couldn’t practice on someone with loose skin. That would never properly prepare him for The One.
The One would be young. Her skin elastic and unblemished. Not wrinkled and flaccid.
The One.
She was resting in his arms right now. This very moment. He was so very pleased to have found The One.
Bright, glaring lights flared suddenly, burning like flash powder ignited in direct contact with my eyes.
Mommy!
Where is my mommy?!
I’m so scared.
It’s very dark. My eyes still sting from the flare of light. There seems to be a dim glow coming from just behind my head, but I’m not sure. It may only be a phantom image.
I can feel the little girl’s presence in the room. Her fear. Her mental cries for her mother. Still, I can’t see her.
My eyes are beginning to slowly adjust to the murky light. I’m in the basement. I can barely make out a shape across from me. It appears to be moving.
My eyes adjust some more.
I can tell that the shape is the stocky man I had seen upstairs. He is huddled over something on a long plywood and two-by-four workbench. The dirt floor is uneven and littered with trash. My legs feel like heavy, metal fence posts set securely in cement.
I try to move.
The man stops suddenly as if he hears something. He cocks his head to the side and turns it slightly. I stop my struggle to move.
He waits, listening intently.
I hold my breath.
Finally, slowly he turns back to his task. Once again, I try to move forward.
Mommy!
Daddy!
I’m so scared.
I’m standing directly behind him now. I can clearly see what he is huddled over. The nude, bound body of the little girl.
He pulls a tourniquet tight on her upper arm and then uses two fingers to slap the tender inner flesh in search of a vein. In his other hand, he expertly holds a full syringe. The needle glistens in the dim light.
Carefully he slips the needle into the vein. I can feel the stinging pinprick in my own arm.
Mommy!
Daddy!
A tiny plume of blood spurts into the syringe, mixing in a milky cloud with the other fluid. He drives the plunger forward. Slowly. Evenly.
“You can’t stop me, you know,” he says without turning.
I know that he is talking to me.
He moves quietly to the end of the bench and tosses the used syringe into a bucket already overflowing with trash.
“She’s The One,” he tells me. “This is her destiny.”
The little girl’s nude body is stretched out, loosely bound on the table, her denim dress wadded next to her. He reaches out and grasps it, crushing it into an even tighter ball. With an angry toss, he flings the faded blue fabric projectile across the room. It smacks against the wall with a muffled thump then slides raspily downward, slipping behind a pile of paint cans, and disappears.
“You’re too late, Rowan Gant,” he says, turning to me. “You weren’t there to save Ariel Tanner, and you won’t be there to save The One.”
The last things I saw were his cold grey eyes.
“He said he had a headache a few minutes ago,” Detective Deckert’s voice began distantly and grew quickly closer.
“Rowan? Hey, Rowan? You all right?” Ben was looking at me questioningly.
I felt myself grab firmly back onto the physical plane and cling for dear life. My head was still throbbing, and the angry burn of Roger’s ethereal signature was maintaining its hold on my spine.
“Some expert,” Special Agent Mandalay’s voice reached my ears. “You ask him a question, and he passes out on you.”
“Shut up,” Ben barked at her without turning. “Rowan. You okay, man?”
“Yeah,” I returned weakly. “Sorry about that.”
“You went all Twilight Zone, didn’t you?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “What did you see?”
“Downstairs. In the basement,” I recited. “There’s a workbench. That’s where he kept her when he was here this afternoon. He’s keeping her drugged. You’ll find her dress behind some paint cans. Her blue denim dress.”
“Give me a break,” our resident FBI skeptic declared in exasperation. “He sounds like a tabloid psychic.”
Ben ignored her spiteful comment and instead, turned to one of the other officers. “Ackman. Check it out.”
We stood waiting quietly as the man carried out the order, disappearing down the hallway, then the basement stairs. After a few protracted moments, we heard him coming back up the wooden stairway.
“Hey, Storm,” he called as he poked his head through the d
oorway. “Better come have a look down here. There’s a wad of blue denim behind some paint cans, just like Gant said. Could be the kid’s dress.”
Ben turned to Agent Mandalay, and a smug grin spread across his face. “Show me one of your PhD’s that can do that.”
* * * * *
“So, don’t take this the wrong way or anything,” Ben began. “But there’s somethin’ I’m havin’ trouble understandin’...”
I was relaxing in my seat, eyes closed. Without opening them, I prodded him forward, “And that is?”
We were belted into his van and in motion toward my house, having only just left the scene. The evidence technicians had arrived soon after the discovery of the little girl’s discarded dress. They were still photographing, dusting, and bagging everything in sight when we finally chose to abandon hope of any immediate clues to her current whereabouts. A palpable sense of urgency surrounded them, and it was spreading like a rampant contagion through every member of the Major Case Squad. Even Agent Mandalay fell victim to its almost ubiquitous virulence. She had elected to remain behind at the scene with Detective Deckert while Ben provided my transportation home. Considering the volatility of one part Mandalay mixed with one part Storm, it was probably a good idea for them to be separated for a while.
After a full two hours inside Roger’s house, I had begun to feel as if there were nothing left of me to give. A verse from an old Blue Oyster Cult song kept running through my head in an endless loop—You see me now a veteran of a thousand psychic wars. My energy is spent at last, and my armor is destroyed... Funny how things like that seem to drift in from nowhere.
Harm None: A Rowan Gant Investigation Page 29
