Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation

by M. R. Sellars

  Clawed at me…

  Pleaded with me…

  Spoken to me as their conduit to this physical plane…

  They had sought me out as the one who understood their continued existence and as the one who could pierce that unyielding veil between life and death.

  And, they had spoken to me then just as they were speaking to me now.

  This unearthly connection to the other side was my own personal bane as a Witch. Something I had never wanted but could never deny.

  My eyes were beginning to burn, and I suddenly realized that I was staring. A fixed, unfocused gaze upon her uncovered face and torso. A face that had once belonged to a vivacious and beautiful young woman. I blinked and removed my glasses before rubbing my eyes and taking a moment to will away the voices of the dead. All of them but one, I hoped.

  In life, I am sure that Brianna Walker had been the proverbial knockout blonde. Even in death, she was beyond striking. Measuring five-feet nine-inches, she would have been described as statuesque. From what was visible, her shape fit the criteria for the much sought after hourglass figure, and the Mother Goddess had been more than kind to her in the area of endowment. Still visible along her shoulders and upper arms were the subdued lines of trim musculature. Her stomach was tight and flat. All of this gave silent testimony to her superlative physical condition. Soft but powerful, which is exactly what clients seeking her particularly specialized services would have been after. It was also a fact that told me she wouldn’t have gone down easily. This woman would have fought for her life if given half a chance.

  Her natural blonde hair was cropped neatly, shoulder length; and what had been a stylish coif was matted with a dried crust of her own blood. The back of her head had impacted violently with the stone inlaid courtyard in front of the hotel but not before the rest of her body had won that final race. According to the medical examiner, the x-rays showed countless fractures along her spine and each of her limbs. Like Ben had wryly commented—it wasn’t the fall that killed her, it was the sudden stop at the end. Cliché, but then everyone had their own way of dealing with the horrors that they saw. Defense mechanisms are what the psychologists like to call them. Clichés and dry humor just happened to be Ben’s. Brianna Walker’s fine Grecian features and clear complexion bespoke of an austere beauty combined with a cold arrogance that exuded supreme confidence. She knew she was beautiful, and she had not hesitated to use that fact to her advantage.

  Now, however, her lifeless blue-grey pallor contrasted hideously with the painted face of fantasy she had worn that night. Once full, pouting lips sagged flatly, still lacquered a garish red. Dusky steel-greys coated her now sinking eyelids in sharp contoured lines. Thick blue-black mascara still clung in places to spidery lashes, but only where both it and eyeliner hadn’t run in dirty streams down her rouged cheeks. She had cried beyond the threshold of waterproof makeup.

  She had sobbed in pain.

  She had whimpered for mercy.

  She had died in unfathomable fear.

  No longer the cold seductress, she now wore the mask of a weeping clown, and her pain reached past her cloak of darkness to tear at my very soul.

  I felt Ben’s large hand rest lightly on my shoulder. “Hey, Kemosabe. You okay?”

  “Yeah, Ben.” I whispered past the frog that had made a home in my throat. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  “You aren’t gonna try anything, are ya’? Ya’know, like...” He allowed his voice to melt into silence.

  I had previously worked side by side with Ben on a gruesome serial killer case almost every step of the way. It was then that he had seen me exhibit abilities that until that time he had discounted as pure invention. Among those talents had been the capacity to channel and witness the death of a victim first hand. However, he had also learned that in doing so, I could run the risk of joining the victim on the other side permanently. It was to this that I knew he was now wordlessly referring.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “I’ll try not to without warning you first.”

  “Good enough.” After a brief, brotherly squeeze, he released my shoulder and stepped back. I could hear him flip open his notepad, and the rustling sound was punctuated by the metallic click of a ballpoint pen. “Go ahead, Doc.”

  Ben spoke to the medical examiner who stepped around my motionless form and pulled back the pristine white sheet to reveal the rest of the nightmare.

  I slipped my glasses back on to my face and adjusted them down the bridge of my nose with slow determination, and only then did I allow my eyes to roam across the rest of the young woman’s body.

  “As you can see,” the M.E. began as if he were giving a lecture while directing my gaze with his gloved hand, “there are several deep lacerations along her hips and thighs.”

  Razor precise incisions lined her shapely, once unblemished legs in diagonal, half-chevron stripes. Lifeless flesh, now growing mildly flaccid, shrank away in opposing directions, exposing the severity and depth of the cuts.

  “Whoever made the incisions managed to miss any major blood vessels.” The doctor continued his dispassionate dissertation of the facts. “And, as I told you, her spinal column was virtually shattered, most likely from the fall. However, there were several fractures in her limbs, and both shoulders were displaced. Bruising would indicate that both the dislocations and a number of the leg fractures occurred well before she died.”

  “How long?” I asked.

  “Six to twelve hours, approximately.”

  “I assume she rented the room and not her client?” I directed the question over my shoulder to Ben. “Or else I wouldn’t be here looking at this.”

  “Yeah,” he grunted. “Room was in her name. Rented that afternoon on her credit card. Not unusual for her accordin’ to her Vice rap sheet. Considerin’ what she charged per hour, I expect she just considered it the cost of doin’ business.”

  “What time did she take the fall?”

  I heard him flip back through his notes. “Call came in around one-forty a.m. She bounced off the hood of a BMW and set off the alarm. It was parked right in front of the lobby entrance, so she wasn’t layin’ there for long.”

  I mused aloud for my friend’s benefit as well as my own. “That means, theoretically, he could have been torturing her almost the entire day. But why didn’t anyone hear her? Surely she had to have screamed.”

  “We found fibers matching the hotel linens in her mouth and bite lacerations on her tongue,” the medical examiner offered. “As well as tape residue around her mouth.”

  “There were washcloths and a lot of duct tape in the room,” Ben added. “Lab’s checking for saliva and all that, but we’re pretty sure he used ‘em to gag her. Show him the other marks, Doc.”

  “Mister Gant, if you’ll step over here.”

  I moved down the length of the metal table toward the M.E., and Ben followed along behind. With heartless clinical detachment, the doctor carefully scissored Brianna Walker’s legs apart. In a sense, I had begun to feel sorry for him. Dealing with the cruelties of death on a daily basis had robbed him of his compassion. I loathed the thought of becoming as he was but at the same time wished for the ability to switch off the emotions I was now feeling.

  “Here on the inner thigh.” He indicated a patch of incised flesh as he held a large magnifying glass above it.

  The lens did its prescribed duty and visually enlarged the area, showing a circle carefully carved into the skin. Around the edges of the circle, small hash marks bisected the curved line. Centrally located in the ringlet, a large X intersected and formed union with a large P. I simply stared in utter disbelief.

  “There is an identical marking on the left inner thigh as well. There are several small but unremarkable puncture wounds on her back and buttocks. It also appears that several cigarettes were used to burn the soles of her feet.”

  The doctor continued his antiseptic diatribe, carefully outlining the facts of the examination for my benefit. He was still
holding the magnifying glass in place while I blindly gazed through it. Staring dumbfounded, only superficially aware that it was he who was speaking, yet still assimilating the information that was voiced.

  “Her pelvis is fractured in a manner inconsistent with injuries from the fall. Evidence of bleeding and preliminary examination would seem to indicate that some foreign object was inserted forcibly into her vagina.”

  “A Pear,” I whispered, ending my muteness.

  “What?” Ben asked. “You mean the shithead stuck fruit up ‘er?”

  “No. Not fruit, Ben.” I broke my gaze from the symbol inscribed in her flesh and turned to him. “It’s a spiked, medieval torture device used during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was inserted, sometimes into the mouth but more often, rectally or vaginally. I guess the best analogy is that it worked like a shoe stretcher. By turning a screw it would expand or contract. Its purpose, however, was to rend flesh and crush bones.”

  “Jeezus fuck...” he muttered.

  My mouth was beginning to water, and sharp convulsions of nausea were threatening to overtake my stomach and relieve me of its contents.

  “What did you say she called herself?” I asked as I closed my eyes and forced down the overwhelming need to vomit.

  “Mistress Bree?”

  “No. The other one.”

  He shuffled back through his notes once again. “Hmmmm, yeah, here it is. The Wicked Witch of the West End.”

  I turned back to the doctor and opened my eyes, careful to keep my gaze on his face and the young woman’s body well out of my field of view.

  “Doctor. Did she have any distinguishing birthmarks? Possibly a mole? Maybe even a distinctly shaped scar or a tattoo?” I raised my left arm and used my right hand to indicate the area. “Either under her arms, on her shoulder, or on her upper back. Either side, it doesn’t matter.”

  “She has a tattoo of one of those devil worship symbols just above her right scapula. A five-pointed star, whatever they’re called.”

  “A Pentacle,” I told him as I clutched my stomach and sent my eyes searching for the door. I didn’t bother to correct his evaluation of the symbol’s meaning. Fact was, in this case, his perception was closer to the reason this young woman had been murdered than was the truth.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Yeah, Row.” Ben chimed in. “What’s it got to do with anything? What’s that other symbol anyhow? Did’ya recognize it or not? Hey, where’re you goin’?”

  “I need some air.” I was halfway to the exit, and it was all I could manage to say.

  * * * * *

  When Ben finally caught up to me, I was in the corridor with my back pressed into the institutional grey wall. I had carelessly stuffed my glasses into a shirt pocket, and my face was now buried in my hands, shielding me from the horror in the autopsy suite, trapping, however, the vivid remembrance of it in my mind. My breath was labored, and I slid slowly down the wall until I was seated, hunched on the frigid tile floor.

  “Rowan! What the hell’s goin’ on, man? Are you all right?” Ben was kneeling in front of me, hands clasping my shoulders. “What’s happening? Answer me!”

  I had pitched my head forward the moment I noticed the darkness edging into my vision. I was still hyperventilating and now rode the fence between consciousness and unconsciousness. I struggled to control my breathing. Reaching deep inside, I forced myself to ground and center, a Witch’s equivalent of relaxing and focusing. My breaths began to come slower, deepening with each draw. I could feel electric tremors still dancing up my spine and knew I was shivering, but the cold was far from being the cause.

  “Dammit, white man, talk to me!” Ben demanded.

  “You think you’re safe,” I finally told him softly from behind the wall of my palms.

  His confusion was evident. “What? Safe? What’re ya’ talkin’ about?”

  Slowly I rubbed my eyes and let out a heavy breath. Pressing my palms together, I steepled my hands and rested the point of my index fingers on my bearded chin then looked him squarely in the eyes. His expression told me that he was not only confused but also frightened for me as well. The last time he had witnessed me behaving such as this, I had almost died, and there had been nothing he could do to stop it.

  The medical examiner had followed him and now stood across the corridor looking helpless. He displayed his own grimace of fear as he nervously milled about. I was certain, however, that his fear was not for me, but rather, of me. His profession dealt with the dead. Silent corpses devoid of feeling or emotion. To this he had grown accustomed over the years, and its comfortable emptiness had left him with little skill in the realm of the living.

  “You think you’re safe,” I repeated before continuing the explanation. “You believe it no matter what you see on the news at ten. ‘No, that could never happen to me. That only happens to other people.’ We all say it. We all believe it. Then it strikes a little closer to home. A friend. A relative. It hurts, but you still think you’re immune. Then it comes even closer...”

  “What the hell are you talkin’ about, Rowan?” Ben pressed, “Did you know her? Was she a friend? Like Ariel Tanner?”

  “No. No, I didn’t know her. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “You’re not makin’ sense, white man.”

  “It’s the Burning Times, Ben,” I told him carefully. “All over again. There’s a Witch hunter out there.”

  “A Witch hunter? What the...” He stood and proceeded to massage his neck. “Listen, Row, I think maybe you’d better start at the beginnin’...”

  * * * * *

  We were sitting in a small, comfortable office. Mauve walls were decorated with picturesque watercolor landscapes in unobtrusive chrome frames. Institutional grade but nicely piled carpet covered the floor. It was the office of Doctor Christine Sanders, chief medical examiner for the city of Saint Louis. She was also the M.E. who had handled the posts on the victims from the previous investigation.

  “Doctor Sanders said to take all the time you need,” Doctor Friedman, the other M.E., told us, “She’s going to be tied up for a while.”

  “That’s great, Doc, thanks.” Ben answered him and then added, “Could you let her know that I’d like to get her involved in this if at all possible?”

  Doctor Friedman’s mouth formed a series of puckered fish-like O’s as he began to object but suddenly thought better of it. He left us with a curt nod and carefully closed the door behind him.

  Ben had just finished stuffing the cellophane wrapper from a cigar into his pocket and now clenched the Cameroon leaf-encased stogie between his teeth.

  “Want one?” he offered.

  “Not right now, thanks,” I answered. “And I doubt if Doctor Sanders would appreciate you smoking that in here. Besides, this is a government building, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not smokin’ it, I’m just chewin’ on it.” He hooked the cigar in his finger then thumbed forward to a fresh page in his notebook. “So you wanna fill me in on what got under your skin back there? And start at the beginning.”

  “You want the beginning?” I asked rhetorically. “Here it is. At least the official one, anyway. Around the year 1484, two inquisitors named Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, masquerading as theologians, produced a document. It was known as the Malleus Maleficarum, and it was endorsed by the Catholic Church... It’s possible you may have at some time in your life heard of it by the name Hammer of the Witches. At that time in history, the church set the law of the land. Not just moral law but political and social as well. The Pope at that time, Innocent VIII, issued what is called a Papal Bull. An official decree of sorts. In it he stated, and I quote, ‘...by the tenor of these presents in virtue of Our Apostolic authority, We decree and enjoin that the aforesaid Inquisitors be empowered to proceed to the just correction, imprisonment, and punishment of any persons, without let or hindrance, in every way as if the provinces, townships, dioceses, districts, territories, yea, even t
he persons and their crimes in this kind were named and particularly designated in Our letters...’”

  I paused for a moment to let the quote sink in and drew a deep breath. I had amazed even myself that I could remember the diatribe in such vivid detail; it had been quite some time since I had last read it. Unfortunately, that which we fear and loathe the most is what seems to remain with us the longest, and with the greatest clarity.

  “Yeah, and that means?”

  “In effect,” I explained, “he legalized the Inquisition; essentially giving the church’s blessing to those who tortured and executed anyone accused of heresy and consorting with ‘Satan.’

  “The Malleus Maleficarum became the handbook of the inquisitors for nearly three centuries. It contained instructions regarding how to determine if someone was a Witch, wizard or sorceress, right down to the questions you should ask of them. It went even further in that it prescribed the use of torture in order to extract confessions and especially to force those already accused to implicate others. Finally, it blueprinted the methods by which they should then be tried, convicted, and executed.

  “Using this book, the various interpretations of the Holy Bible, and the permission of the church, literally thousands of innocent people were hunted down and imprisoned. Once in custody they were brutally tortured, maimed, and murdered by the delegated inquisitors for what were then called ‘heretical depravities.’”

  “So you’re tellin’ me you’re all weirded out because of some old book?” my friend posed incredulously.

  “Not just because of the book, Ben,” I appealed as I shook my head. “Because of what it stands for, and because I was just looking at the corpse of a young woman who has been subjected to those horrors it prescribes.