Harm None: A Rowan Gant Investigation (41 page)

I nodded my head as I reassured him, “I’ll be
fine.”

* * * * *

The interior of the house was much as it had
been the night before with the exception of the dark grey
fingerprinting dust coating various surfaces. The lights were off,
and the few shafts of the setting sun that managed to filter in
between gaps in the heavy drapes harshly illuminated small slices
of the room, casting the rest in hard-edged oblique shadows. I
pushed the door shut behind me, cutting off even more of the
external light and symbolically sealing myself into the eerie
dwelling.

The expected pain augered itself up my spine
and into my skull the moment I set foot in the house. I stumbled
for a moment and then steeled myself against further onset of the
agonizing sensations as I moved farther into the room. I wouldn’t
be able to stop the pains from coming, but at least I could be
ready for them.

A burning fire like molten lead filled my
body, and my skin felt stretched and tortured by countless
pinpricks as my hair seemed to come to life, stiffening to create
endless waves of gooseflesh. My eyes were watering, and thin
streams of tears began flowing down my face. I staggered against
the blinding pain, peering through clouded eyes, and forcing myself
to move farther down the hallway.

Unearthly screaming filled my ears as I
pressed forward.

The amplified sound of jagged metal against a
rapidly spinning grinder.

The mournful whistle of a teakettle.

The wail of a chainsaw.

Everything and nothing.

The piercing noise penetrated my bones,
making me vibrate like a human tuning fork, and grew impossibly
louder when I reached out for the basement door.

I grasped the tarnished handle tightly,
refusing to let go even though it seemed to glow red hot,
threatening to sear the flesh from my hand. Quickly, I jerked my
wrist and flung the door wide, only to be engulfed in writhing
ethereal flames.

Summoning my wits, I beat back the flames,
denying their existence both with my mind and my voice. The
imaginary fire vanished with a choked sputter, and I stepped
forward through the open doorway, clinging desperately to the
wooden railing until my feet finally met the dirt floor at the
bottom of the stairs.

I stood staring into the darkness,
concentrating on pushing away the violent spasms of pain while I
waited for my eyes to adjust. There was a salty taste in my mouth,
and my nose was starting to burn. I brought my hand up, and the
lower half of my face felt wet and sticky. Slowly, I stretched my
hand out into a thin shaft of light that angled purposefully down
the stairwell, forming a focused stripe across the darkened floor.
I could see that my fingers were covered in blood. My nose was
bleeding.

A cleaver of pain buried itself between my
eyes, insisting that it be allowed to split my skull and let my
brains spill out. I was beginning to regret that I had come here
without someone to back me up. My grasp on the physical world was
weakening. The last thing I recall was that I’d told Carl Deckert I
would be fine.

Fear.

Anger.

Fear.

Anger.

Surprise.

“
I didn’t expect you to come back.” Roger
is speaking to me.

We are surrounded by darkness, yet we are
awash in an eerie light. The little girl, clad in white lace,
levitates near him. Floating weightless in the air. There is no
visible means of support.

“
Sorry to disappoint you,” I return, and
this time my words echo through the air instead of disappearing
into nothingness.

He is standing no more than twenty feet away
from me, dressed in a dark ceremonial robe. The hood is pushed back
to reveal his face, and it lay limply across his shoulders.

“
I’m not disappointed,” he says. “Just
surprised. I don’t know what you think you’re going to do.”

The little girl’s body is drifting about on
a gentle breeze, bobbing up and down slightly, but never straying
far from him.

“
Stop you,” I tell him evenly.

“
You can’t stop me,” he
says. “I told you, she’s
The
One
.”

“
Why are you doing this?” I ask.

His only response is a sour, demonic
laugh.

Falling.

Screaming.

Silence.

“
Rowan, so nice to see you.” Ariel is
standing before me. Beside her is the little strawberry-blonde
girl, holding tightly to her hand.

“
Mister, why don’t you stop the bad man?”
The little girl looks up at me with wide, sad eyes and then turns
her gaze to the right.

I follow her eyes, looking far off into the
distance. There is a grove of trees surrounding a small clearing.
Centered in the clearing is a hooded, robed figure standing with
hands raised high. Moonlight glints from an object held in those
hands. Moonlight glints from an athamè.

A small figure lies prone before the cloaked
one. A small figure clad in white lace. Preened and arranged.
Unblemished and virginal.

The scene begins to grow increasingly
distant as trees erupt from the landscape, obscuring the view as
they continued to appear, closer and closer.

Immediately before us, the earth trembles
and begins to sink. Almost as quickly as the depression is formed,
it is filled with water. The glossy surface ripples in the slight
breeze, moonlight reflecting from it in a shimmering stripe. The
ground continues to shake, and another stand of trees erupt
skyward. The tall pines form a line before us, now completely
obscuring the clearing and all but the smallest glimpses of the
shallow lake.

I turn to the little girl. She is pointing
at the sign. “What does it say, Mister.”

I look downward, following along her finger
to the small white sign. Bold black capital letters spell out
PLEASE DO NOT FEED GEESE.

“
Only you can save her now, Rowan,”
Ariel’s lilting voice gently touches my ears.

I turn to her, and she holds forth her hand.
In it, a tarot card. A tarot card known as The Moon.

She stiffens and the card flutters from her
hand. Her eyes go wide and blood streaks down her dress.

“
Hey, mister, what time is it?” The little
girl is talking to me. “What time is it? Hey, mister!”

I look up to the glowing, marbled disk of
the full moon high above. Spinning around its face are the hands of
a clock. I watch as the minute hand chases rapidly after the hour
hand, overtakes it, then begins the race anew.

“
Hey, mister!” the tiny voice demands.
“What time is it?”

Darkness.

A deafening, demonic chord.

The sound of water splashing violently.

I can’t breathe. My lungs are on fire, and
the flames are licking up my throat. My chest feels heavy, and
there is something tightening about my neck. The atmosphere feels
thick and fluid around me. I want to gasp for air, but something is
telling me I shouldn’t. My thoughts are beginning to cloud; my mind
is turning murky and dark.

I open my eyes, flailing my arms in front of
me. I so desperately need air. I need to breathe. The air is thick
and murky. It stings. I catch a distorted glimpse, rippling and
blurry, of the full moon above. It is all that I can see. All
except for one thing—a pair of murderous grey eyes.

My world begins to fade.

Twilight.

An endless scream, “Why, Rowan, why?”

Darkness.

Falling.

Impact.

* * * * *

I refused to go to the hospital. My head was
still throbbing, and I needed to clean myself up, but I was firmly
convinced that there was nothing wrong with me that couldn’t be
fixed by getting away from this house and drinking a cup of willow
bark tea. I had to voice my protestations several times, each with
increasing fervor, but eventually Deckert, the paramedics, and the
uniformed officer resigned themselves to the fact that I had made
up my mind.

From what Detective Deckert told me, he had
started growing concerned after I had been inside the house for
little more than an hour and had come over to have a look. He
searched the rooms on the ground level and finding them empty,
assumed I had gone into the basement. I’ll never forget the look on
his face as he came to this point in the story and announced, “This
is where it starts ta’ get kinda weird.”

Acting on his assumption, he headed for the
basement stairs, only to find the door jammed tightly shut. The
handle seemed almost frozen in place, and he couldn’t turn it no
matter how hard he tried. He said he called out to me several times
but never received an answer. Thankfully, growing even more
concerned, he went to his car to obtain a tire tool with which to
pry the stubborn door open.

“So this really cold wind came rushing up the
freakin’ stairs the minute I got the door open,” he told me, eyes
wide as he continued his story. “And I woulda’ swore I heard
someone laughing. Y’know, evil, like from one of those horror
flicks.”

He found me lying unconscious at the bottom
of the steps, face down in the dirt and streaked with blood. He
immediately called the paramedics, and I had regained consciousness
around the time they arrived at the house.

It was already after eleven
in the evening when we walked into the Major Case Squad command
post. The last thing I remembered before having the latest vision
was discovering that my nose was bleeding, followed by a pain
resembling a
Louisville Slugger
being stopped by my face. The nightmare still
resided somewhere in my grey matter but for some reason, had become
only a ghost of itself, lacking in the crisp details of my other
visions. I hoped that the dullness was only the result of the
pounding headache that was still threatening to break free of my
skull and that the specifics would come back into sharper focus
once it subsided. One thing I knew for certain was that I had
witnessed something very important on that ethereal journey. Now I
just needed to remember what it was.

Ben gave me a few moments to wash my face and
down a handful of aspirin, in lieu of willow bark tea, before he
hustled me into one of the smaller conference rooms. The look on
his face was more than enough to tell me that the meeting wasn’t
going to be a good one.

“Goddammit, Rowan!” No longer able to contain
his anger, Ben ruptured. “What the hell were you thinkin’?!”

He had barely closed the door behind Deckert
and Special Agent Mandalay. I doubted that it mattered whether or
not he waited, since his voice surely carried through most of the
police station anyway.

“I was looking for answers,” I returned
meekly.

“Answers to what?”

“Why. The answer to why. In every nightmare,
Ariel asks me why.”

“You mean why is this asshole killin’
people?” His voice had lowered in volume, but my answer only served
to raise it again. “Who knows? Maybe he walked in on his parents
screwin’ when he was a kid. Maybe his high school prom date stood
him up. They’ve got a million excuses these days. Why’s it fuckin’
matter now? We know who he is.”

“It might not matter at all.” I dabbed at my
nostrils with a tissue. The bleeding had long since stopped, but
the phantom tingling remained, making me feel as though it was
starting all over again. “That might not even be the ‘why’ she is
asking… I don’t know… It could just be her way of keeping me from
giving up.”

“Let me get this straight.” Agent Mandalay
was still leaning against the wall, arms folded across her chest.
Her studious gaze hadn’t left me since we entered the room. “You
jeopardized this investigation because you think a dead woman is
talking to you in your dreams?”

“I didn’t jeopardize anything,” I told her
matter-of-factly, avoiding a direct answer to her question. “Roger
Henderson isn’t going to return to that house and we all know
it.”

“You really do.” She stared back
incredulously, reading between the lines of my non-answer. “You
think you’re communicating with a ghost or something!” She turned
to Ben and gesticulated at me as if I were on display. “That’s it!
Now I’m officially convinced that he needs a psychiatrist. I want
him off this investigation now.”

Ben started to protest angrily, “Hold on a
minute, I...”

“NO! You hold on a minute, Storm,” she
insisted vehemently, “I want him out of here.”

“This is still my investigation, and I say he
stays.”

“Not anymore. Pursuant to the federal
kidnapping statute of nineteen thirty-two, this case falls under
the Bureau’s jurisdiction. It’s my investigation now.”

“C’mon,” Detective Deckert tried to
interject, “Rowan’s right. This fruitcake wasn’t comin’ back to the
house. It was a long shot and we knew it. I tell ya’, something
real strange was happening in that place.”

She wheeled quickly around to face him.
“Maybe you need an appointment with a shrink, too!”

“You weren’t there,” he shot back, “besides,
whattabout last night? Rowan told us where ta’ find the little
girl’s dress and all that.”

“Lucky guess,” she stated flatly and turned
back to Ben. “I’m calling in to the field office to let them know
I’m taking over this investigation. I want him out of here by the
time I’m off the phone.”

None of us spoke for a long minute after
Agent Mandalay stomped out of the room, slamming the door hard
behind her. I winced slightly as the noise pierced my still aching
head.

“Well,” Ben puffed out his cheeks as he
sighed, “I guess that’s that.”

“I’m sorry, Ben,” I looked up from the floor.
“For what it’s worth, I was just trying to help.”

“Hell, ya’ just gave her somethin’ else ta’
flex her muscles about,” he grunted. “She pretty much took over the
investigation this afternoon anyway. Now she’s just makin’ it
official.”