THE WITCH'S LADDER (Detective Marcella Witch's Series)

by Dana Donovan

  “Why are you doing this,” I said. I allowed the blinds to snap shut before turning back to face the group. “Why are you conducting your own investigation into these murders?”

  “We want to find out what happened to Travis and Barbara.” Lilith answered. “We feel we have resources at our disposal, which you do not have at yours. And we think these resources may help us gain information not available to you through conventional means.”

  “Resources, Ms. Adams? So now you’re all psychic sleuths. Is that it?”

  Akasha stepped forward, and in an unusual show of solidarity for Lilith, declared, “We are trying to get to the bottom of it. If this guy is out to get another one of us, then we want to know. That is all.”

  I turned to Akasha. She stood before me, rigid and determined, her hands on her hips in an image of defiance—an image I would have expected more from Lilith. “This guy?” I said. “How do you know it’s a guy and not several guys, or a woman or even several women for that matter?”

  Akasha retreated some. Her eyes blinked doubtfully “I…I guess I assumed––”

  “You assumed. Doesn’t your assumption cut down your field of suspects by an unqualified 50 percent or more?”

  She didn’t answer. I turned to the others. “What now, folks? What other form of psychodrama can you perform? Got any more tricks up your sleeves?”

  Lilith raised one hand over her head and then the other. She arched her back delicately, reaching, stretching on tiptoes like a cat waking from an afternoon slumber. Her arms folded downward. Her palms gently brushed along the sides of her face. Her fingertips caressed her cheeks, slid along her jawbone and traced a path behind her neck. She pushed her hands outward, lifting her hair and letting it fall onto her shoulders. “You know what I think, Detective?” she said. “I think you’re afraid we might actually come up with something on these murders, something you have been unable to find yourself.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes. You’re two months into your investigation and what do you have? Nothing. You have a baseball bat with no fingerprints, a stitch of fiber with no clue as to where it came from and four bodies with missing livers. If I were you, I would welcome outside help no matter how unlikely the source. Who knows, maybe you can solve this case before someone else loses a liver.”

  “And who knows, Ms. Adams, maybe you might stick your nose someplace where it doesn’t belong and end up just like the others.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “No. That’s common sense advice. If you think you have reliable information that can help me solve this case, then I would appreciate your input. Otherwise, it’s my duty to demand that you refrain from interfering with the case in any way.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” Lilith reached behind her neck again, this time gathering her hair up into a ponytail. She tied it off with a hair tie resembling a miniature witch’s ladder. “All right, I need everyone’s attention,” she said, and received it undivided. “I’m going to attempt to conjure up a thought-form. I’ll need everyone’s help, even yours, Marcella.”

  “Mine?” I pointed at myself. “Really?”

  “Yes. If you’re present, you must partake. A thought-form requires everyone in the room to concentrate on the subject matter. But I need you to believe in this, Detective. You must concentrate very hard and visualize with the rest of us, or it won’t work.”

  I wanted to laugh, and almost did, but quickly realized Lilith was serious. I wiped the smile from my face, took a seat and sat up straight. “Okay. Tell me what I’m supposed to concentrate on. I mean, what’s a thought-form look like?”

  “A thought-form is a nonphysical entity created from thought,” she explained. “This energy gives off vibrations, and with our collective minds focusing our energies at the same time, we may give these vibrations definition and character. We can create a sort of artificial element. Once this element has taken form, it can take on energy of its own and even assume intelligence. All I want you to do is concentrate on Travis Webber. Do not let your mind become distracted no matter what you see, hear or feel. Once the thought-form appears, you must allow it to take its course. It won’t hurt you. It won’t cause any trouble, and it probably won’t break anything.”

  “Probably?” I said, though my comment went without reply.

  Lilith shut the lights out again, opened the blinds to the night sky and then took a seat at the head of the table.

  “Let’s get started. I want everyone to assume a comfortable position. I recommend sitting up straight with hands folded in front of you and heads forward.”

  She paused to allow a few to squirm in their seats before settling comfortably into position.

  “Okay, everyone take a couple of deep breaths and relax. You must expel the tension from your bodies before this can work. Your minds must remain focused. If you have an itch scratch it; otherwise close your eyes and think only of Travis Webber. I must have your full and complete concentration. I want you to visualize his face and his body. Think about his smile and even the spelling of his name. Whatever vision of Travis stands out the strongest for you, then that is the thought I want you to stay with. Collectively, we can bring him back in thought-form, but you all must concentrate.”

  Lilith surveyed the room to make sure everyone complied with her instructions. To solidify the group’s mindset, she closed her eyes and concentrated on Travis as well. She told us that she could feel the residual energy of Travis’s aura still in the room, even though two months had passed since he took his last breath there.

  “His presence is strong and undeniable,” she said, and the others concurred in murmurs.

  Within minutes, the room grew noticeably colder, and not just because one of the windows had blown out. The chill first settled along the floor at ankle height. From there it migrated upward. At mid-waist, it raised goose bumps on exposed skin, and above that it blew out in vaporous trails on exhale.

  Lilith began humming a low, almost inaudible tone, like a monk in meditation. It started at the top of a deep breath and continued as she let her breath out slowly and with barely an effort of vocal cord movement. Before long, the entire group followed her example and soon the room filled with an almost electrifying low-level chant.

  “Ohmmm—Ohmmm.”

  The harmonics blended like a symphony, creating a collective wall of sound that vibrated and reverberated around the room in waves. In time, it actually seemed as if the chorus, once uttered, continued to carry along on its own, even as we all vocalized another verse. Soon the choir of just ten people grew to that of many, as layers upon layers of sound resonated repeatedly in predictable patterns. Eventually, we all stopped humming, but the wall of sound continued unhindered. It swirled like a whirlpool clockwise around the room. No longer merely an echo or reverberation, but it had become pure energy in sound form, growing and feeding off itself.

  I opened my eyes and panned the room in disbelief. I felt afraid but intrigued, remembering Lilith’s words that the thought-form would not hurt us. I blinked when a sudden blast of wind whistled past my side of the table. The other participants opened their eyes as if on cue, no longer bound by concentration to the task.

  “The thought-form is here,” Lilith told us, her voice rising above the noise that filled the room in harmonic waves. She turned toward a window; we followed her lead. I noticed immediately the intense vibration in the glass. It rattled fiercely within its pane, yet the other windows remained unaffected by the phenomenon.

  By then, the wall of sound seemed to shift entirely to the other side of the room. I could not be sure, but at that moment, I believed the noise had originated from the window. I sat twitching with unease, anxious beyond words, watching, amazed at the spectacle before me. I looked at Lilith, but she and the others sat quietly with hands folded, as if waiting for something else to happen—waiting for it to happen.

  Some moments later, I came to realize that the sound was not coming from the window at all, but ra
ther rushing to it on a current of high-energy plasma, of sorts. The window absorbed the sound like a sonic sponge, sucking and feeding desperately its ever-hungry need for energy. Moreover, as the wall of sound grew weaker, the window shook with greater and greater intensity. It journeyed beyond my comprehension why the window did not break with such apparent force working against it. Then, what I had witnessed so far remained equally beyond anything I had imagined before. Yet all that was about to become incidental still, as if not already a believer, I was about to become one.

  Without warning, the noise abruptly ceased, and just as suddenly the window quit rattling. Then a fog or a thin mist appeared on the glass like steam on a bathroom mirror. I concluded it could be neither steam nor fog, however, as the other windows remained transparent. I watched as the mist took shape on the glass, or more accurately, took on form.

  At first it appeared undistinguishable, a curious but random sculpting of evaporating moisture changing from one clouded abstract shape to another. Eventually, a recognizable form did appear, and soon it became obvious; the thought-form that materialized was indeed Travis Webber. The stunning revelation quickened my heart and shortened my breath. It provided a splendid, yet frightening glimpse of unnatural wonder—a perfectly unbelievable event unfolding before our very eyes.

  For some, like Jean and me, the sight may have seemed nothing short of a miracle. We had never heard of something called a thought-form before, let alone seen one. We watched in awe, as the form appeared to move across the window like an actor in a silent movie walking across the screen. No sound accompanied the vision, but the color and texture produced a life-like 3-D image so real that one could almost reach out and touch Travis and he would know it—he would feel it.

  All doubts I harbored about the paranormal quickly faded. I could not explain the phenomenon before me—least not with an understanding that anyone would accept—but I could described it, as I later did to my colleagues back at the precinct. “Very simply,” I told them “we watched a movie of real-live events that had already come to pass.”

  In the movie, we saw Travis on the night of his murder leaving the research center alone. We watched him step out the front door and put his hands in his pockets to keep them warm. His breath blew visible in the form of steam and dissipated in the chilly night air.

  For his fellow shop mates, it must have seemed an unusual perspective, glimpsing Travis through the eyes of another, presumably the killer’s, as he lurked in the shadows of the compound. An impish breeze frolicked in mischievous little circles about the room, frisking the hairs on my neck. In the backdrop of the movie, we saw the full moon shadowed by the real full moon outside the very window we watched. We saw how Travis stopped in his tracks on the way to his car. He turned and backtracked to the front door. From there, the killer came up on him, standing behind him, watching as he pounded in vain on the locked door. We watched Travis cup his hands to the glass to shield the glare and peer inside.

  Until then, we could only imagine what happened next, knowing the extent of Travis’ wound. Still, imagination could hardly prepare anyone for the horror unfolding so vividly. For some, the visualization of the murder proved more than they could bear. Several shielded their eyes and panted with anticipation of the inevitable. Those who didn’t saw Travis turn, his face assaulted by leather-clad hands. The force drove his head back against the door. The plate-glass shattered on impact. He drew his arms up to his face, leaving his midriff vulnerable. His attacker looked down at the knife pressed against Travis’ stomach and pushed it in.

  More gasps of indignation bled from the group, as they watch Travis fall to his knees. They stared in dismay as he clutched his gaping wound, looked up at his killer and mouthed the word, “You!”

  Drained of color and numbed by cold, he closed his eyes, lurched forward and collapsed onto the steps face down. The thought-form faded and the fog on the window lifted, leaving only a full moon hanging in the branches of the gray oaks outside.

  When Doctor Lieberman turned on the lights, I saw Valerie Spencer sobbing openly and two others, Chris and Gordon, wiping away tears.

  Apart from them, no one else seemed too choked up about what they had seen. I considered that Jean had only just met Travis on the night of his murder. It made sense that she might remain composed. Still, her apparent lack of outrage for the brutality of the murder appeared questionable.

  As for Doctor Lieberman, I recognized his strong emotional character, and having served in the first gulf war, he had likely seen his share of horrific deaths. Therefore, I understood that if upset about what he had just seen, he might not display his emotions overtly.

  Considering the rest in the group, I imagined that Lilith could somehow be involved, but my gut feelings told me otherwise. Still her obvious lack of grief for Travis seemed suspicious at best.

  The only others left were Michael and the twins, Shekina and Akasha. Having done some homework in the past couple of months, I knew that the twins had come from a small town in South Africa, one of the oldest in the region. The town guarded their old customs long after Apartheid, clinging instead to ancient traditions and myths that guided their culture for centuries. Among the cultural traditions was their belief in voodoo and witchcraft. This realization surprised me initially; as my belief early on was that the twins regarded Lilith’s connection with witchcraft as somehow evil or immoral. Though they acted as if they knew little of divination and sacrificial rituals, I suspected the twins knew very well the concept of such things, and likely had participated in a number of pagan sacrifices themselves. At the very least, they would have been required to undergo a centuries-old pagan ceremony when they entered womanhood, which may have even involved female genital mutilation.

  When it came right down to it, the more I learned of the killings, the more I believed that ritual sacrifice outweighed the theory of divination, if only slightly. That reasoning put the twins into the category of best potential suspects. And because of her involvement in witchcraft, I could not rule Lilith out under the motive of divination.

  Michael presented still another perplexing study. By all accounts, he and Travis were good friends and shared much in common, including their psychokinetic abilities. Michael didn’t dabble in witchcraft or voodoo, and he had no motive at all for wanting either Travis or Barbara dead. Still, his lack of emotion after seeing the aberration on the window seemed strange.

  From what I gathered, I knew Michael came to the United States from Germany after an avalanche, which he reportedly caused, resulted in the deaths of eight people. In my mind, that made Michael a killer, just as the arsonist is who sets a building ablaze with eight people inside.

  Having assessed everyone in the room, I focused my attention on the one workshop member not in attendance: Leona Diaz. I still couldn’t get over Leona’s reaction the night before when questioned about Suffolk’s Walk. It seemed obvious she knew something about the two homeless men murdered there, but whether or not she put on an act to avoid questioning, remained suspect.

  Doctor Lieberman took a seat after turning the lights back on. Gordon stood and pointed at the window. “Did anyone see that?” His finger shook visibly. “It looked like Travis mouthed the word, ‘You’!”

  “I saw that,” Chris admitted, raising his hand.

  “Me too,” said Michael, his hand also in the air to be counted.

  Slowly, everyone raised a hand, affirming the obvious, but fearing the implications. Lilith said, “Looks like he knew the killer.”

  Akasha stood. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I think you know why, Lilith. We see through your magic tricks. Do you think we don’t know what just happened here?”

  Lilith rocked her head back, leveled her eyes at Akasha and snarled. “All right, sweet cheeks, suppose you tell us what you think just happened here.”

  Her sister Shekina sprang to her feet. “We think you’re good with your smoke and mirror, dog
-and-horse show, but you don’t fool us.”

  “That would be dog-and-pony, you halfwit twit”

  “Whatever, but you do not fool us, Lilith Adams. If that is your real name.”

  “My real name?”

  “Come now,” said Akasha. “We know Lilith Adams is not your real name. Your birth name is Sonya Stewart. You changed it to Lilith before coming to the institute. I think everyone here might find it interesting to know why you changed your name to Lilith Adams.”

  Lilith stood silent—uncharacteristically so. The room simmered in murmurs and whispers before quelling in a rolling hush. “For those of you who do not know,” Akasha continued, “Lilith takes her name from ancient Hebraic tradition. As legend has it, Lilith—not Eve—was created with Adam to subordinate herself to his wants and needs. But she would not meet the demands of Adam’s male dominance, and so she cursed him in the eyes of God before running off to lay with Satan and other demon lovers.”

  Her shocking statement caught me completely off guard. Until then, I thought I had heard everything. I regarded the room suspiciously, fearing the group had targeted me for a practical joke. But the look on the faces staring back dispelled that notion entirely.

  “Lilith is known as the female demon of the night,” Akasha told the group. “She kills babies and copulates with men while they sleep to propagate demon babies of her own. She also drinks the blood of the dead, as she did with Abel after Cain slew him. If she is to live forever she must make sacrificial offerings to Satan and drink the blood of the sacrificed to replenish her strength.”