Blood Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation

by M. R. Sellars

  Just as she was taking a newly opened carton from Ben, one of the cops on the perimeter called out, “You want some pepper to go with that?”

  Even with the road noise, there was no missing the burst of chuckles that skipped through the group. Felicity paused for a second, shook her head slightly as she muttered something unintelligible, and then continued on with her task.

  “I’ll be right back,” Ben grunted.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “They just don’t understand.”

  “I ain’t worried,” he replied. “And, I’m gonna make ‘em understand.” With that he turned and strode away in the direction of the cop who’d made the comment.

  “Just ignore them, Ben,” my wife instructed, but she was too late. With his long stride he was already a quarter of the way to the boundary tape and didn’t hear her. Of course, even if he had he wouldn’t have listened. I could tell he was on a mission; I’d seen the look before.

  I watched on as he gestured in our direction and engaged the officer in what appeared to be a deeply earnest conversation. At one point he held his right hand over his heart for a second then held it up palm outward as if taking an oath. A minute or two later he was purposefully striding back toward us. Looking past him I could see that the cop he had just spoken to was staring at my wife with a quizzical and maybe even slightly fearful expression in his eyes.

  “Sorry ‘bout that,” Ben said as he reached down into one of the bags then withdrew a container of salt and broke the seal. “You ready for another one yet?”

  “What did you just say to him?” Felicity looked up and asked.

  “I just gave ‘im some friendly advice.”

  “Did you threaten him?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What then?” she pressed.

  “Don’t worry, nothin’ bad… Well, not too bad I don’t guess… I just told ‘im that one time I saw you do some kinda evil eye thing on a copper I worked with who was givin’ ya’ shit. Then the next day all his hair fell out real sudden like,” he replied in a low voice. “And, I made sure he understood I meant all of it fell out.”

  “You didn’t…” she replied.

  He gave her a half shrug. “Yeah, well, actually I did. I mean, I didn’t figure he’d believe the turnin’ ‘im into a cockroach bullshit ya’ threatened me with, so I hadda tell him something.”

  My wife shook her head as she gave him an empty carton then took the new one out of his hand. “You’re incorrigible.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he grunted. “But I’m bettin’ that copper would piss himself if you leaned over and gave ‘im the look.”

  “The look?”

  “Ya’know… The one ya’ always use when you’re pissed at me.”

  “Oh. That look,” she said in a flat tone. “Maybe some other time. I’m almost finished and we have more important things to do. How much salt do we have left?”

  “Another whole bag,” he replied. “Looks like ten… maybe twelve containers.”

  “Good, that’s more than enough,” she announced as she bent back down and continued scribing the salt circle on the parking lot. “This should be the last one I need for the moment.”

  “Then what?” Ben asked.

  “Then you get your wish,” she told him.

  “What wish?”

  “As you put it, I say a poem.”

  “Yeah,” he replied, starting to nod. “See, I knew I was…”

  Felicity cut him off quickly, “Don’t push me, Ben. I’ll still hurt you.”

  “Yeah, I keep forgettin’ that’s your thing.”

  She stood up and handed him the empty salt container. “Yes, but since we’ve seen that you don’t take pain all that well, it probably wouldn’t be much fun for me.”

  He snorted out a light chuckle. “So that’d mean I’m safe.”

  “Oh no,” she told him. “I’ll do it just for spite.”

  “Jeez… You’re a friggin’ piece of work.” He shook his head then diverted the topic by glancing around at the circle. “Wait a sec, I think ya’ missed a spot. Don’tcha need to fill this in over here?” he asked as he pointed toward a void in the salt that measured almost three feet in width on the side nearest the car.

  “No,” Felicity replied as she turned slowly in place while surveying the circle herself. “That would be the door.”

  “The door?”

  “Aye.”

  “Okay… Whatever you say,” he muttered.

  “Stand over here,” my wife told him as she took his arm and led him into the center with me.

  “Don’t you want me ta’ go over there or somethin’ while ya’ do the hocus-pocus?” he asked, pointing toward the tape line.

  “No,” she replied with a shake of her head. “I want you to stand right here so you can help.”

  “Whaddaya mean help? I ain’t a Twilight Zone freakazoid like you two. What am I gonna be able ta’ do?”

  “If I’m following her logic, I think you just became an honorary signpost,” I groaned out between waves of pain.

  “Pretty much,” she acknowledged.

  “What’s that s’posed ta’ mean?”

  “It means that you’re now Rowan’s anchor,” she replied. “Obviously you have more physical strength than I do, so if this starts to go bad, I’ll tell you to pull him into the circle. Once you do that I’ll handle closing the door.”

  He made a sweeping motion toward the salt with one of his hands. “So I just grab ‘im and pull ‘im in here?”

  “More or less.”

  “Uh-huh, so what’s the more part, or do I not wanna know?”

  “Well, if you have to pull him in, he’s likely to start grounding through you as soon as you touch him. Initially, anyway, until I can take over.”

  “Yeah, okay, but now you’re talkin’ la-la land stuff and I don’t know what that means.”

  “It’s kind of like having electricity pass through you,” she explained. “But different.”

  “Yeah, wunnerful, now I understand perfectly,” he said with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “So how’s the Twilight Zone shit gonna affect me since I ain’t like you?”

  “It probably won’t.”

  “Whaddaya mean prob’ly?”

  She shrugged. “I can’t be sure. I’ve never actually done it this way before.”

  “But you’ve done it this way with other Witches before, and it worked okay, right?”

  “Actually, no,” she said. “If you must know, I’m making this up as I go along.”

  “Fuck me…” he grumbled as he shook his head.

  “Don’t worry, then,” she told him. “I know what I’m doing. It shouldn’t hurt too much. Besides, he’d do the same for you.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he replied. “That’s the only reason why I’m still standin’ here.”

  “It’s okay, Ben,” I grunted through a hard grimace. “It’s a basic principle. Just trust her and let’s get on with this.”

  “Yeah, well if my hair falls out or somethin’, I ain’t gonna be real friggin’ happy, ya’know,” he replied sternly.

  “Don’t worry,” Felicity quipped. “I’ll make sure only part of it falls out.”

  “Who’s bein’ a fuckin’ comedian now?” he grumbled.

  “Aye, Row, are you ready?” my wife asked, ignoring his complaint.

  “Yeah…” I told her. “I’ve been ready.”

  “Just another minute or so,” she said. “This is down and dirty. Nothing fancy.”

  “Felicity…” I started.

  “What is it?”

  I pulled her close and whispered in hopes that Ben wouldn’t overhear. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? You’ve had your own grounding troubles since… Well, you know…”

  “Miranda?” she replied, speaking the name I’d chosen not to utter. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

  She gave my arm a squeeze for reassurance then moved around behind us. I didn’t turn to watch her, but I knew
she was most likely standing at the edge of the circle, facing toward the east. After a short pause I heard her make a shuffling turn and take a step as she began walking slowly along the inner arc. In that same moment her singsong voice floated on the air as she began to rhyme aloud.

  “In this space I do create, a haven safe where we await. A gate I leave now open wide, but through it comes who I decide.”

  Her voice rose and fell in volume as she carefully skirted counterclockwise along the inside edge of the salt, passing by first on my right, then in front of me, and finally to my left. The last word of the verse was fading on the night air as she reached her original starting point once again.

  “Judith is who we now seek, she must soon be allowed to speak. As Rowan travels through the veil, in search of her he will prevail.”

  For a second time, my wife stepped lightly around the full circumference of the somewhat unfinished circle, chanting out another verse of her off-the-cuff spell and uttering the ending syllable at the east, just as before.

  “Harm to him it will not come, nor to fear will he succumb. He will return through the gate, to a haven safe where we await.”

  On her third and what turned out to be her final pass, she glanced up when she crossed in front of me. I caught her eye and would have smiled were it not for the preoccupying thump in the back of my head. When she finally came to rest behind us once again, she paused, and from the lack of sound I assumed she simply stood in place.

  Apparently, Ben’s story about the sudden hair shedding effects of the redhead with the evil eye had been passed around, as no jeering or offhanded remarks came from the watchers on. Except for the swish of the slight, but cold, breeze and the hum of the highway traffic, everything was quiet.

  After a handful of heartbeats had tapped out time in my chest, I heard Felicity shuffle and walk toward the center of the circle.

  “Ben,” she said. “If I say the word now, you grab Rowan and bring him right here to this spot, no matter what. Okay?”

  “Got it.”

  “No matter what,” she stressed again.

  “Yeah,” he repeated with a nod. “I got it.”

  I heard the rustle of a plastic bag then the unmistakable squeak of metal against pasteboard as my wife opened a fresh container of salt. A few seconds later, she was at my side.

  “Okay, Rowan…” she said softly. “We’re ready. Go ahead then.”

  I stepped forward through the opening in the salt circle then slowly and deliberately placed my hand on the Hyundai’s driver’s side door handle.

  CHAPTER 28:

  At first, when my fingers made contact with the door handle, nothing at all seemed to happen. Psychometry was fickle like that sometimes. Given that reading the psychic residue from inanimate objects through physical touch lent itself to all manner of interference, there were even a good number of occasions when it didn’t work at all.

  Latent impressions of past events weren’t always present. And if they were, for the most part they didn’t just automatically form an immediate picture in my mind. Instead they would come to me like water soaking into a too dry sponge. Seeping slowly in around the edges at first then suddenly becoming a thirsty swell to fill the void between then and now.

  I certainly hadn’t expected a shower of sparks or a choir of disembodied heads bellowing out an off key chorus. I knew better than that. However, I had hoped that maybe the ethereal voice in my brain would have become a bit clearer. Instead, all I heard was the murmuring gibberish that had been rolling around inside my head for the past two hours or so. If anything changed at all it was the series of stabbing pains at the base of my skull. Unfortunately, it was a change I could have done without since they seemed to become worse, not better.

  While I was fairly certain I wasn’t displaying it outwardly, I had a feeling that I was just as disappointed by the beginning of this process as were the spectators. I shifted my grip on the handle and held tight, trying to increase the area of object-to-skin contact for maximum effect.

  I remained unmoving for one of the longest minutes I could remember, hoping for at least a hint of something. A tingle…some sensation other than the ramping undulation of pain inside my skull. But there was still nothing. All I felt was cold metal leaching the warmth from the palm of my hand, and the sensation was definitely a product of elementary science on this side of the veil.

  “I’ve got nothing so far,” I said, forcing my voice to be loud enough for Ben and Felicity to hear me. “I’m going to open the door.”

  “Just open it, that’s all,” my wife ordered. “Don’t get in.”

  I was beginning to feel like I was on a bomb squad detail, slowly picking my way toward a ticking explosive with Felicity as my guide. I suppose in a way that was as good an analogy as any. The primary difference was that I wasn’t trying to avoid an explosion. I fully intended to set off this ethereal booby-trap so that I could see what it had to say.

  I had just popped the latch and was starting to pull the door toward me when Felicity called out again, “Aye, did you hear me, Rowan? Don’t get in the car. That might be too much for you to handle right now.”

  “I’m not,” I answered verbally, which I hadn’t bothered to do earlier, but it was apparently what she wanted. However, I didn’t voice the addendum to the reply that flitted through my head, which was “not yet.”

  The interior of the car smelled like a familiar perfume—cloyingly sweet but with a hint of earthiness and a peculiar sharp note hidden somewhere in the center. It was intermixed with the fresh odor of tobacco smoke. It took me a moment to identify the olfactory mélange as all coming from the same source, clove cigarettes. Whether or not any importance resided in the scent, I had no idea just yet, but it was prominent.

  I pulled the door open wide then stepped forward, bending down so that I could inspect the interior more closely. Residue of fingerprint dusting powders coated the passenger side dash and steering wheel, just as they had the door handle. Other than that, however, the automobile appeared to have been all but cleaned out by the crime scene technicians who had bagged and tagged everything in sight.

  A sharp auger of pain drilled into my skull to join the continuous jackhammer-like ache that was trying to break through from the inside. I let out a heavy groan as I tensed and then dropped my face into my hands. Although I’d tried to stifle the noise, it was loud enough to be heard. Combined with the fact that since I felt myself double forward, I knew it had to be noticeable. I wasn’t surprised to hear my wife’s voice from only a few short feet behind me.

  “Rowan? Are you all right?” she asked, concern underlining each word with a bold stroke.

  I didn’t answer right away for the simple reason that I couldn’t get my mouth to form the words since my jaw was clenched in a tight grimace.

  She waited only a few seconds before calling to me again, the distress in her voice moving several notches up the scale within a pair of syllables, “Rowan?!”

  “Okay.” I managed to blurt out the muffled reply on the tail end of a heavy breath. Sighing for a second time as the latest addition to the orchestra of agonies began to subside, I lifted my face out of my palms but kept my eyes squeezed shut as I added, “I’m okay.”

  I knew full well that I didn’t sound okay. The truth is, I didn’t actually feel okay either. I just didn’t want Felicity slamming the door on this before it was even fully open. Of course, it was two against one at this point, in this plane of existence at any rate. Counting the other side of the veil and what it was doing to me, I was even more outnumbered than that. So if my wife decided to pull the plug on this endeavor, there was nothing I would be able to do. I was barely up to keeping myself upright, much less fending off a six and a half foot tall cop on a mission to rescue me from myself.

  I opened my eyes and focused on the interior of the car once more. The voice in my head was still unintelligible, but it was getting louder by the second. I was beginning to wonder if it was actually a lone v
oice or merely the background chatter of an entire chorus of tortured spirits clamoring for my attention. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that had happened. The only thing that kept me believing this was singular was the uncanny familiarity of its pitch and tone along with the lack of any other ethereal noise to dull it.

  Several seconds had ticked by, and my wife had yet to send in the cavalry. However, the recent and painfully overt stress in her voice told me she was only inches from doing so. All it would take is another stumble, and I had a feeling I was going to be flying backwards by my belt. If that happened, and Felicity closed the circle, there was a good chance I would lose connection with the other side. It certainly wasn’t a given, but it was a chance I didn’t want to take. Not yet.

  I looked at my palm and then back at the interior of the car. I knew it was possible I might glean something by reaching in and touching the steering wheel. Another option would be to touch the headrest on the seat. Both of them may well hold what I was seeking, but by the same token, one could be a crystal clear connection and the other like a frayed speaker wire cutting in and out.

  I continued to stare into the dark passenger cabin of the sedan. My eyes kept being drawn back to the fingerprint powder on the passenger side dash. I was certain that it was merely standard procedure to check for prints throughout the entire car, but there was something gnawing at my gut where that was concerned.

  After a lengthy pause, I straightened back up and made a quarter turn back toward the circle but remained standing next to the opening. I was about to make good on my earlier omission, but I had to make sure my timing was at least in the ballpark if this was going to work.

  “Rowan?” Felicity called my name, a quizzical note in her voice replacing at least part of the concern.

  “I’m fine,” I told her, looking over my shoulder and forcing the comment out in a tired drone.

  I cast my glance toward the crowd of cops, and my gaze fell on Captain Albright. She was still wearing a stoic frown, but her eyes broadcast a far different message. I didn’t have any way of knowing what her exact relationship was with her niece, but the anguish flowing from her was akin to what I would expect from a parent.