Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation (12 page)

Oily kerosene drips from my soaked hair and
into my eyes, burning them.

Blurring my sight.

“I hold before you evidence. Evidence
recently obtained from your apartment which validates your
confession of these crimes.”

Through my clouded sight I can scarcely make
out the silver shape of a pentacle dangling from a chain.

A necklace.

My necklace.

His proof.

The hand releases its grip, and my head is
dragged rapidly downward by gravity.

I can hear shuffling footsteps amidst the
bitter, sighing wind. The footsteps come to a halt behind me.

An involuntary shiver trickles through my
freezing body.

“We, by the mercy of God,” the dark voice
begins in an imperious tone, “seeing that you, Kendra Darlene
Miller, have been accused before us by public report of heresy, and
that you have for many years persisted in those heresies to the
great hurt of your immortal soul; and We, whose duty is to
exterminate the plague of heresy and WitchCraft, wishing to be more
certain of whether you walked the path of darkness or light, have
diligently examined you, and find you are indeed infected with the
said heresy.”

“No. This isn’t happening,” is the only thing
that passes through my mind.

“In as much as you have duly and properly
admitted your crimes, and having before us the Holy Gospels that
our judgment may proceed as from the countenance of God, by this
sentence we cast you away as an impenitent heretic, Witch, and
Concubine of Satan, and do hereby deliver you unto the power of our
most Holy God. As you are damned in body and soul, your sentence on
this day is death. The sentence is to be executed immediately,
without appeal, in the manner of expurgation by fire.”

“No! No! This can’t be!”

“May The Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon
your soul.”

I cannot move.

I can hear the scraping of a match against
stone.

I cannot scream.

I can hear the explosive spark as the match
ignites.

Somebody please help me!

I can see the faint shadows cast as the flame
on the match head flares and settles to an even burn.

NO! THIS ISN’T HAPPENING!

I am crying.

Thunder crashes in my ears as the kerosene
ignites.

Hot yellow agony licks across my body.

“He’s posturing.” The distantly familiar
female voice pierces my nightmare. “Look at his hands.”

“GODDAMIT, ROWAN, NO!” I can hear the deep
voice now. The one called Ben. “You’re NOT gonna make me tell
Felicity you’re dead!”

Fire clings to me in a vicious shroud. I’m
holding my breath as the flame washes over my face furiously
catching my hair and blossoming upward with yet another loud
crash.

I want to scream as the angry blaze literally
cooks my flesh.

A sudden roar mixes with the rush of the fire
and marries with a high-pitched grind before fading away on the
night.

Flames consume all that is.

A sharp sting ripped through my left
cheek.

Of all the hurt I was experiencing, this was
the least. At the same time, it was the worst.

There was something different about it.

Sizzling noises.

Crackling noises.

I know that they are coming from me.

The gag is burning.

A pair of pantyhose melting into my skin.

I can’t hold my breath any longer.

Maybe I can scream.

I gasp.

Liquid fire rushes down my throat.

Expanding through my lungs.

I choke.

No sound comes past my seared lips.

The bizarre, piercing discomfort attacked me
again. This time, my right cheek reported the sensation. Off in the
control center of my brain, a series of comparisons took place. A
vague recollection of something called the plane of physical
reality was suddenly rushed to the forefront.

I snapped my eyes open.

I awoke to find myself sprawled on a metal
table in what I knew to be an autopsy suite at the city morgue. Ben
was towering over me, one meaty paw entwined in the front of my
shirt, the other reared back in preparation to impart a
serious-looking backhand to my face. Just as I started to cringe, I
caught a swift motion from the corner of my eye and saw Doctor
Sanders reach out to grab his wrist.

“Hold it, Storm!” she barked as she leaned in
and brought her concerned gaze to meet mine. “Mister Gant, can you
hear me? Are you all right?”

I felt Ben’s hand relax and release my shirt
immediately following my gravelly-voiced answer, which simply came
out as “I could really use a drink.”

M
y hands were still
shaking as I poured myself a second drink from the bottle of
Gentleman Jack. Under normal circumstances I would have preferred
Scotch to bourbon, but obviously, the word “normal” wasn’t
something that one would readily apply to what had just transpired.
At this particular point I wasn’t about to argue, and since
Tennessee whiskey was what Doctor Sanders had hidden away in her
desk drawer, it would have to do. At least it was
good
bourbon.

My shakes weren’t blatantly obvious, but they
were perceptible, and very little escaped Ben Storm’s scrutiny. A
veteran witness to my sometimes sudden, supernormal departures, he
stood mute on the other side of the office, holding up the wall
with his back and nursing a drink while patiently waiting for me to
continue. Doctor Sanders, on the other hand, while knowing of my
perceptions, was a novice in this arena. Seated opposite me at her
desk, she was still staring in wide-eyed amazement. Every now and
then she would shift her gaze from me to Ben then back. Having only
recently been baptized by fire, so to speak, she had done little
more than listen and tend to her own libation as I relayed the
experience to the best of my ability. No matter how hard I
searched, I was unable to find words that could truly describe what
I had just shared with the tortured soul of a dead woman.

Tossing my head back, I downed the second
three-finger measure of the brown liquor and set the highball glass
back onto the desk, taking care to place it on the notepad I was
using for a coaster.

“Like I said, I never saw his face... I...
She...never had the chance.” As if to punctuate my statement, the
handful of ice cubes in the tumbler clinked musically as they
settled. “I’m pretty sure I’d recognize his voice if I heard it
again, though.”

“And you’re pretty sure on the identity of
the corpse too, right?” Ben turned up the notebook he held at his
side and glanced quickly down at it. “Kendra Miller. Middle name,
Darlene.”

“That’s what he called her.” I nodded as I
wrapped my hand around the neck of the bottle of bourbon. “He
stated her full name when he passed judgment and informed her of
her sentence.”

“You think maybe she knew him?” he
asked. “Sure sounds like
he
knew
her
.”

“I didn’t get that impression,” I answered.
“She was very confused... And she was afraid of him, that’s for
sure. But I don’t think she knew who he was, or I would have picked
it up. His familiarity with her was probably from afar. He might
have stalked her…” I shrugged. “I don’t know. At any rate, the fact
that he knew her full name was a formality. It was kind of a ‘legal
necessity’ shall we say, for when he passed his sentence on her.
Just like it would have been during the time of the
Inquisition.”

“By all means, let’s make sure the legal
necessities are all friggin’ covered,” Ben muttered sarcastically.
“Any possibility this one might’ve been a hooker too?”

I touched the mouth of the bottle to the rim
of my glass and carefully splashed another double over the melting
ice. “I don’t know. I can guarantee you of one thing about her
though... She was guilty as charged. Kendra Miller was a practicing
Witch.”

“How can you be sure of that?” Doctor Sanders
hesitantly broke her self-imposed reticence. “I mean if I
understood you correctly, the killer’s proof was the necklace. It
might not have even belonged to her.”

“Oh, it belonged to her all right. No doubt
in my mind.” I twirled the alcohol in the tumbler while watching
the light glow through its amber translucence and then rested the
glass on my knee. I had hammered the first two drinks, and on an
empty stomach they had quickly served their purpose by chasing away
my trembles with their liquid courage. I was beginning to feel a
mildly warm tingle creeping along the back of my scalp and decided
I had better take it easy with this one. “I’m sure she was of The
Craft because of the strength of the vision and the force with
which I was drawn into it. I had a similar experience with Ariel
Tanner when she was murdered... Only the spirit of a Witch could
have pulled me in like that.”

“Amazing,” she muttered before taking a sip
of her own drink.

“You said this asshole told ‘er he got
the evidence—the necklace—from her apartment
recently
. Right?” Ben pressed.

“Yeah. That’s what he said.”

“But ya’ don’t know how long she was left
alone?”

“The whole thing was pretty disjointed,” I
confessed. “I really couldn’t determine any type of reference point
for time, so I guess the answer would be no. Why do you ask?”

Ben set his drink atop a nearby filing
cabinet, and his now free hand went up to smooth his hair then slid
easily down to begin massaging his neck. “Just curious. I thought
maybe once we found ‘er apartment, we could determine a radius or
somethin’. An area where this wingnut might be operatin’ out of.
But if ya’ don’t know how long he was gone...” He let his voice
fade.

“Sorry,” I offered.

“Not your fault,” he returned. “So what about
the basement, if that’s what it was. Do ya’ remember anything about
it? Anything unique?”

“Just what I already told you. Your standard
grey concrete walls and floor. They were a little on the pitted
side though, so I’d guess it was an older house... Kind of hefty
rafters... Wooden stairs... Had a fairly high ceiling,
considering... And then there was the oversized crucifix and the
candles. Get rid of those and it’s just a pretty basic
basement.”

“Crucifix and candles,” he echoed under his
breath then paused. “That would imply that the killer is Roman
Catholic.”

“Or Greek Orthodox, or Russian
Orthodox, or Lutheran for that matter...” I let my voice trail off.
“I’m inclined to agree that he practices some manner of Catholicism
based on his adherence to the
Malleus
Maleficarum
. Of course, Saint Louis is just like most
large cities. We have a rather substantial population of
traditional Catholics as well as the various offshoots. The
religion factor, in and of itself, really doesn’t narrow the field
much.”

“Don’t remind me,” he sighed.

The ensuing silence was interrupted by a
muffled electronic warble demanding immediate attention. Ben
stepped over to a chair and rummaged about in his coat then
produced a hand-held cell phone from a pocket. Flipping it open and
stabbing it on, he cut off the third ring mid-peal and placed it
against his ear. “Storm.”

Only he was privy to who was on the other end
of the line, but his broken attempts to reply made it apparent that
the person was a mere heartbeat away from hysterics. The caller’s
identity became immediately obvious when he was finally able to
forcibly wedge a sentence into the one-sided conversation. “Whoa,
whoa, calm down, okay? He’s right here and he’s fine. I’m standin’
here lookin’ at ‘im... No problem. Hold on.”

Ben had covered the short distance between us
as he talked and now offered me the device. “It’s your wife. If I
understood her right she seems ta’ think that you’re dead.”

Upon hearing my voice, Felicity abandoned her
frenzy of concern and burst into relieved sobs. Running the full
gamut of emotions at a breakneck pace, her solace was quickly
followed by happiness, embarrassment, and eventually anger. I
allowed her to vent, and after five minutes of bombarding me with
her particular brand of Irish fury at my having engaged in such a
dangerous endeavor, she completed the circle and returned once
again to relief. A few moments later I finally convinced her I was
fine and promised to stay that way.

Doctor Sanders had been sitting quietly and
now stared at me incredulously for a moment as I switched off the
phone and handed it back to Ben.

“Your wife could see what you were seeing?”
she asked.

“Not exactly,” I returned. “More along the
lines of a premonition or a nightmare. She saw me being burned and
felt some of the pain that I was feeling.”

She continued to stare across her desk at me
and slowly cocked one eyebrow. Momentarily, she drained her glass
of bourbon and planted it on the desktop then pushed her chair
back. “I’m not entirely sure what to make of anything I’ve heard so
far tonight, Mister Gant... But on that note, I believe I have an
autopsy to finish.”

* * * * *

My dinner consisted of a stale Zagnut coaxed
unceremoniously from a recalcitrant vending machine in the lobby of
the building. I had washed it down with coffee served in a
cheerfully decorated paper cup left over from a holiday office
party. It now felt as though it was lodged sideways in the pit of
my stomach, angrily fighting for space with the three tumblers of
bourbon. Not exactly fine dining at Kemoll’s, but I took what I
could get.

Quarter-sized clumps of snow were pelting me
mercilessly as I tipped my head back and swallowed the last dregs
from the red and green, holly-inscribed vessel. The remaining brew
had already begun to grow cold, and it slowly forced its way down
my throat in a bitter, watery lump.