Fortunately, Ben knew Felicity well, and as a cop, had dealt with distraught individuals a number of times before. He allowed her to decompress and simply listened as she vented her feelings regarding the circumstances of my injury. Just as fortuitous was the fact that Felicity was not one to hold a grudge and worked through her anger very quickly. By the time we pulled into the driveway of my Briarwood home, they had both apologized to one another, and the entire incident had somehow become my fault for having my face in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Ben dropped me off and headed, I assumed, to his own home in order to spend what little time he could with his family. He planned to return for the meeting somewhat earlier than the rest and had told me he was still trying to figure out how to make it up to his wife and son. Something told me he would be taking time out to visit my father along the way. After a quick wave, I ambled up the stairs to my front porch and was greeted by Emily, our calico cat, who leapt lithely down from the window ledge and began weaving herself about my legs, purring madly.
“Yes, I missed you too,” I told her as I stooped to pick her up.
Emily continued her throaty trill as I allowed her to drape herself across my shoulder, then lifted the lid on the mailbox and retrieved the contents. There was the usual mix of bills and junk mail, as well as a yellow pickup slip for a package that had needed a signature-most likely one of my client’s software in need of modification or repair. Felicity had probably been in the darkroom ever since returning from her photo expedition and had missed the postal carrier. I resigned myself to picking it up at the branch office on Monday since it was already after noon. Besides, my evening was already booked, so working was out of the question anyway.
I twisted my key in the deadbolt lock of the heavy, oak front door and pushed it open, following it inside then closing it behind me. I lifted the rumbling ball of fur from my shoulder and gently placed her on the arm of the couch then tossed the mail in the small wicker basket Felicity kept by the door for just such a purpose. Fatigue washed over me, and the sofa was all but screaming my name. I sat down and within moments became horizontal on the soft cushions. Emily remained perched on the arm, near motionless, her ears at full attention, as if she were a small furry gargoyle watching over me. Scarcely had I reclined that I heard my wife’s footsteps as she came up from the basement and into the living room.
“I thought I heard you up here,” she said softly, seating herself on the edge of the sofa next to me.
I looked up to see her lightly freckled face, framed by her auburn hair wrapped loosely in a Gibson Girl about her head. It never ceased to amaze me how this woman I had married could easily slide from hippie activist to china doll in the blink of an eye. Her bright green eyes stared back with concern as she reached out and lightly touched my forehead near the stitches.
“How are you feeling?”
“Physically or spiritually?” I asked, weakly smiling back at her.
“Both.”
“Physically,” I told her, “like I’ve been hit by a truck. Spiritually…drained, but still grounded.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do these things to yourself,” she gently admonished, lightly placing her hand over the wound on my head. “A person can only take so much.”
“I’ve got to be honest with you.” I relaxed, feeling the healing energy she was directing through her hand. “I lost control today. When I channeled those last few moments of Ariel’s life, I couldn’t keep myself separated. She kept breaking through and taking over. I know it scared the hell out of Ben.”
“Oh, Rowan,” she whispered. “It scares the hell out of me too.”
Felicity was filled with an inherent desire to make everything well and at the moment, she wore a deeply empathic grimace. I watched her close her eyes and felt her ground and center, directing a cool wash of energy over me that appeared in my mind as a soothing green light. Soon, my dull headache subsided, and the last knots of tension uncoiled from my neck and shoulders.
“Have you eaten?” she asked me.
“No,” I answered. “Not yet.”
“I’ll go make you something.” She leaned forward and lightly kissed me on the forehead. “You just relax.”
I vaguely remember the smell of corned beef hash and eggs wafting into the room as I drifted into tortured sleep.
Screaming.
Screaming forever with no pause. Distorted noises. Sounds of ripping and tearing. The forever tortured banshee wail. I am in Ariel Tanner’s apartment. The kitchen. I am standing in the kitchen. The room is bathed in a surreal wash of white. I shade my eyes against the stark brightness.
Silence.
Clear, unbroken silence.
My heart pounding. Thump thump, Thump thump, Thump thump. Louder. Fighting to escape from my chest. Blood rushing in my ears, pushing back the silence.
Fear.
Pure, unadulterated terror.
“ Please come in,” a voice.
I turn to face the direction of the voice. Ariel Tanner is standing before me, radiant and lovely in a white lace gown. She smiles at me.
“ Rowan, how nice to see you.” Her voice floats mellifluously, displacing the rushing in my ears. “It’s been so long.”
“ Ariel?” I question.
She jerks spasmodically, and the smile flees her lips. Her eyes grow wide and she looks down. A spot of crimson appears on the high neck of the lace gown and begins growing. Spreading. Her mouth falls open in shock, and she looks back at me with questioning eyes. The vermilion stain waxes unceasingly, covering her chest.
“ Why, Rowan?” she mouths. “Why?”
Darkness.
Falling. Wind rushing past. Faster, faster, faster…
An unearthly sound. A demonic chord growing stronger.
Impact.
I’m standing in Ariel Tanner’s bedroom. Everything is cast in an eerie blue light. Her body is spread across the bed, her dead eyes staring at me. I walk toward her, and they follow me. The bloodstains appear black in the supernatural light. A sound at my back, slow and rhythmic, but unintelligible. I turn. A figure in a robe is there lighting candles.
“ Who are you?” I ask, but my voice is drowned out by the muffled chant.
I take a step forward and the figure disappears. There is a sound like a crashing wave, recorded on tape and played in reverse. The murmur is behind me now. I turn again, and the robed figure is on the opposite side of the bed. The figure is pointing at me. The chant becomes louder, and though disjointed in its cadence, clear.
“ All…Is…Forgiven. All…Is…Forgiven…”
“ Why?” a voice drifts over the chant.
I look down to see Ariel’s mutilated corpse. Her lifeless eyes glare back at me and her mouth slowly animates.
“ Why, Rowan, why?”
An endless scream.
I awoke with a start, my hair and clothes drenched in a cold sweat. Felicity was once again sitting next to me on the edge of the sofa, deep concern creasing her brow and sad tears clouding her eyes.
“Are you okay?” I asked her, immediately worried by the expression on her face.
“Yes,” she sniffed. “I’m all right. The question is are you going to be okay?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I think so.”
“You kept saying ‘Why, Rowan, why’, over and over,” she told me as she intertwined her fingers with mine, then wiped away a tear with her free hand. “All I could feel from you was fear, and I couldn’t wake you.”
“How long was I out of it?” I asked with a sigh.
“About half an hour,” she returned. “What’s going on? You’ve never done anything like this before.”
“I don’t know. Probably just a bad dream.” I reached up and brushed a loose strand of hair from her face. “The things I’ve seen in the past twenty-four hours would give anyone nightmares.”
“It’s more than that,” she told me. “You and I both know it.”
I lightly caressed her cheek. “Never can fool you, can I?”
“This isn’t going to stop until you find the killer, is it?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.
By some miracle, I actually slept. No dreams, no visions, no nightmares. It was only an hour, but at least it was peaceful. Upon waking, I re-heated and practically inhaled the meal Felicity had made for me earlier. I never realized corned beef hash and eggs could taste so good. After eating, I parked myself in my upstairs office with a solid stack of reference books. The Expiation spell had been readily recognizable to me, even considering the killer’s sickening variations, but the rest of it was only vaguely familiar. I knew from past reading that flaying and vivisection of a live sacrificial victim were components of the invocation rites performed by ritual magicians of days long past. What I wasn’t clear on was what he might be trying to invoke or why. I felt that if I could pin these facts down, I might have a clue about what he would do next. Whether or not this would be important to the police, I also didn’t know, but it was important to me.
It became quickly obvious after only a few moments study that the healthy pile of books held none of the answers I sought. Reference material about The Craft didn’t deal with the horrors I had only recently witnessed, and any other historical texts in my possession touched on it only briefly. Feeling this avenue now closed, I pushed the books off to the side of my desk and switched on my personal computer. A few keystrokes and mouse clicks later, I was logging in to my local Internet service provider and merging with the electronic fast lane of the information superhighway. I navigated through the various starting pages and came to rest at my objective, a database search screen. I began my quest for information by typing in the keywords HUMAN SACRIFICE and clicking on the SUBMIT icon. If my service provider happened to be randomly monitoring this line, I mused silently, they were probably thinking I was some kind of psychopath. The status lights on the modem flickered quickly, and the screen re-painted itself, displaying the online addresses of the various matching World Wide Web sites.
The majority of the web pages listed dealt with historical text and benign non-literal references such as those sacrifices one person makes for another. I was simultaneously pleased and demoralized by the listing of sites that purported to be reservoirs of information regarding active religions that encouraged the actual sacrificing of a human victim. Upon closer inspection, they were obviously no more than idle electronic chatter, but they contained information I felt might be useful. Still, I was violently disgusted by the fact that anyone would claim to subscribe to such beliefs. The world really didn’t need any more sickos than it already had.
When all was said and done, I had conducted several searches of the “Web” using keywords ranging from BLOOD SACRIFICE to FLAYING. With each of these searches turning up a listing of site addresses, I easily investigated over one hundred web pages within a few hours. The information I gathered held references to historical events and dead religions, as well as fictional books and horror movies. All of it told me that I was on the right track in my belief that the killer was practicing for an invocation ritual, but it still didn’t tell me who or what he was trying to invoke.
The digital clock resting in the corner of my monitor screen attested to the fact that the afternoon had slipped by virtually unnoticed. It was rapidly approaching time for our meeting with Ariel’s coven, and I knew Ben would be arriving early. I logged off the network and shut down my computer after the printer spit out the last of the information I had sent to it. Much to my chagrin, I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror as I made my way downstairs. My clothing was disheveled, my hair matted and stringy, and my face pallid and drawn. Overall, I looked like death warmed over. A glance at my watch told me I still had some time, so I decided to become acquainted with hot water and a bar of soap.
I was just climbing out of the shower when Felicity poked her head in the door and told me Ben had arrived. By the time I finished drying off and throwing on some clothes, the two of them were parked at the dining room table. I joined them and helped myself to a mug of hot ginger-mint tea.
“I did some research on invocation rites.” I indicated the sheaf of papers I had brought down from my office. “Pretty general stuff. Not much help to be honest.”
“I’ll take your word on it,” Ben nodded as he spoke. “So, Red Squaw here was tellin’ me you had a hard time of it after I dropped ya’ off this afternoon.”
“Nightmare I guess,” I told him. “I’ll get over it.”
“Uh-huh,” he grunted, unconvinced. “By the way, I dropped in on your old man.”
“I thought you might,” I nodded. “How’d he handle it? Should I be expecting a call?”
“Prob’ly not. I didn’t wanna get him all worked up, so I told him I was in the area and just stopped in to say hi.”
“Were you able to find out what you needed?”
“Yeah. I managed ta’ fit it into the conversation.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Hey, no prob, white man.”
During our conversation, Felicity had remained steadfastly silent. It suddenly dawned on me that she hadn’t expressed any interest in the somewhat cryptic exchange, so I turned my attention to her side of the table. A familiar file folder lay open across an equally familiar envelope near the center. A thick stack of crime scene photographs were spread neatly before my wife. One of the glossy monstrosities was resting carefully between her fingers as she studied it intently. All the while, she absently chewed on her lower lip as she concentrated.
“What the hell are you doing?!” I sputtered, nearly choking on a mouthful of hot tea.
“Catching up,” Felicity spoke without looking up from the pictures.
“Dammit Ben!” I turned to him. “Are you out of your mind?!”
“Hey!” He held his hands up defensively. “She told me you wanted her ta’ look at ‘em.”
“It’s not his fault, then,” she stated, deftly laying the photo she was studying on to a stack then looking up at me. “That’s what I told him.”
“Well forget it,” I exclaimed and started reaching for the grisly prints. “I don’t want you looking at these things.”
“NO!” Felicity angrily snapped, grabbing my wrist and forcing my hand away. “I didn’t ask you what you wanted!”
“Wh-wh-what?” I stammered, surprised by her sudden outburst.
“I’m not letting you get away with it this time, Rowan,” she stated, an emerald fire of determination blazing in her eyes as she held my gaze. “You’re always trying to protect me. I know why you do it…” Her voice softened. “But I’m a grown woman, not a child. I saw what this experience did to you this afternoon, and I’m not going to sit on the sidelines and watch it tear you apart. I’m going to help.”
“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” I pleaded.
“And you do?” she shot back. “You yourself admitted that Ariel ripped through your defenses and almost took over. We both know that something like that could kill you.”
“Excuse me?” interjected Ben, who had remained quietly neutral until this point. “Whaddaya mean, kill ‘im?”
“If a spiritual entity,” Felicity explained, turning her attention to him, “manages to take control, especially in the case of something such as this, and plays out the last moments of its physical life, it will repeat the event with the channeling host.”
“Are you tryin’ to tell me that Ariel Tanner’s spirit or somethin’ would kill him?” Ben asked, still confused.
“Not on purpose,” she continued. “But if she was in control of his physical body and re-experienced her death, the shock could kill him, yes.” She returned her gaze to me. “You didn’t bother to tell him that did you?”
“I didn’t think I would need to worry about it,” I answered sheepishly.
“Jeezus H. Christ!” Ben exclaimed. “This is fuckin’ nuts! All I’m tryin’ to do is solve a murder here, and I got some kinda weird ass Twilight Zone episode going on around me.”
We both turned to look at him as he threw up his hands in exasperation and fell back in his chair. After a moment, he again leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table. He quietly looked from my face to Felicity’s then down at the table.
“Listen,” he said, “I’ve always figured you two for a coupl’a tree-huggin’ agnostics or somethin’, which I got no problem with. You know that. But, I don’t really know much about this whole Wicca-slash-WitchCraft thing, and ta’ be honest, I’m not sure if I wanna know any more.” He paused as if trying to pick his words carefully. “I can’t believe I’m sayin’ this, but this mornin’ I saw some stuff that I can’t explain. Right now I’m willin’ ta’ accept it. But, I also saw my best friend rollin’ around on a floor clawin’ at his chest like he was havin’ a coronary or some shit like that. Now,” he pointed a finger at me and brought his gaze up to meet mine, “YOU start bein’ straight up with me if there’s some kinda risk involved.” He then shifted his attention to Felicity. “And YOU. Watch his back or whatever you Witches do. Okay?”
“You can count on it,” she told him, her face spreading into a smile.
“Yeah,” I added, “you’re right.”
“Okay,” he said, relaxing and settling back in his seat. “So R.J. and company are s’posed to be here in about half an hour. You palefaces wouldn’t happen to have a slab of buffalo or somethin’ around here would ya’? I’m starved.”