Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation (2 page)

Fire.

The old man could smell it, even over his own
unwashed stench. The scent of fuel being relentlessly consumed by
the ravages of flame. And where there was fire, there would be
warmth. Each end of the pavilion housed a large fire pit, vented by
a brick chimney. The Parks and Recreation Department had built it
that way, so families could seek shelter against a sudden rain and
still enjoy their Sunday cookout. The old man knew this because he
had been chased away from this shelter only months before by
shouting picnickers. Picnickers who selfishly assumed they owned
the park on weekends. Angry people. Frightened people. People who
didn’t care about him the way his beautiful Tracy did. But it was
wintertime now, and there shouldn’t be any picnickers in the park.
It was the middle of the night, too. No, there definitely shouldn’t
be any angry people here now.

The old man hugged his ratty topcoat tightly
about his body once again and started across the frozen landscape,
slitting his eyes against the biting wind and crystalline lumps of
blowing snow. He shuffled as quickly as he could on
cold-anesthetized feet, occasionally tripping over them for their
lack of feeling.

One-half measure of the distance across the
frigid ground, a sharp sound reached his ears, and the old man came
to a stumbling halt. A slamming sound. The sound of a large metal
door being quickly shut. He stood in the open, confused, not
knowing whether to retreat or press forward. No one should be here
in the middle of a frostbitten February night. It just didn’t make
sense. The slamming noise was soon followed by the sound of an
engine starting and was in turn chased by the disharmonious
wrenching of improperly meshed gears. On the opposite side of the
pavilion, a large, boxy shape moved in the parking lot. A black
panel van—greyed with a patina of salt and winter road grime—shone
briefly in the flickering firelight. The old man watched as the van
disappeared behind the rows of trees and finally re-appeared at the
distant park entrance. Only then did the driver switch on the
headlights before turning onto the street and accelerating slowly
away.

The old man watched until the dusky red
tail-lights were no longer visible and audibly reminded himself to
tell Tracy about the incident when he saw her on the television
again. He was sure she would think it just as strange as he did,
but she was smart. She would understand and explain it to him as
she always did.

The yellow-orange radiance was flickering
madly now, and it belonged only to him. He gleefully giggled and
followed with a raspy coughing fit as he pressed forward to the
shelter.

Warmth and light filled the pavilion,
emanating from the fire pit at the near end. The old man shuffled
gratefully into its embrace, standing with his back to the rising
column of flame. The fire crackled and sputtered; the fuel whistled
a dying wail as it fed the blaze. It was obvious that the fire had
been recently set, as the pungent odor of kerosene insinuated
itself into his nostrils. That was good. He would get to enjoy the
whole fire instead of just the dying embers.

Intermingled with the sharp scent of the
blaze, the old man imagined he could smell meat cooking on a grill,
and that made him feel hungry. That was far too much to hope for,
however, and that aroma, he was certain, had to be a delusion.

Yellow-white light painted itself playfully
around the interior of the brick shelter, casting oblique shadows
and illuminating the sturdy, wooden picnic tables. On the surface
of the table directly in front of the ever-increasing blaze, a
thick, rectangular shape was carefully positioned. For a brief
moment, lucid curiosity flitted through the old man’s rapidly
misfiring neurons, and he shuffled forward to inspect the
eccentricity. A book. Black and leather-bound with gold embossing
on the cover. He picked up the book and brought it closer to his
face then squinted carefully to read the words impressed on the
cover. Slowly, he mouthed the letters, remembering somewhere in the
back of his booze-pickled grey matter that he knew how to read.

“H-O-L-Y-B-I-B-L-E.”

Holy Bible
. He
knew this book. He remembered his mother making him read from it
when he was just a child. He remembered also that none of its
promises had ever come true, for him at least.

A thin strip of white ribbon, attached to the
binding, protruded from the book. It appeared to have been placed
there with great purpose. A bookmark. The old man fumbled with
deadened fingers to open the leather-bound scripture and pulled the
place marker aside. By the firelight he could see that a passage
had been deliberately highlighted. He rubbed the back of his
chapped hand across his tired, clouded eyes and concentrated on the
words. He sounded them out under his breath, which wasn’t easy
since his mouth was still watering from the imagined smell of
grilling meat. “EX-O-DUS. TWEN-TEE-TWO EIGHT-TEEN. THOU - SHALT -
NOT - SUFF-FER - A - WITCH - TO - LIVE.”

The old man stared at the passage and tried
to understand what its significance could possibly be. His eyes
hurt, and all this concentrating was giving him a headache. He
would much rather think about what Tracy wasn’t wearing under that
sweater she had on tonight. Concentrating on THAT didn’t hurt. It
felt good. REALLY good. Maybe thinking about Tracy would keep his
mind off his hunger too, for he would almost swear he could smell
burning meat. With a lecherous cackle, he closed the book and
stuffed it into his pocket.

“Tracy, Tracy. I love Tracy. Tracy with the
big, big tits!” he sang gleefully to himself, making cupping
gestures at his own chest as he wriggled in place while turning
slowly back to the warmth of the fire.

He pulled out the treasured pint bottle and
drained the remaining brown liquor down his throat, almost choking
because he forgot to quit singing his pornographic ditty before
swallowing. He wiped the spittle from his face with the back of his
thin sleeve and coughed raspily once again. When he lowered his
gaze to the fire, his mouth fell open and the contents of his
stomach, cheap whiskey and bile on the whole, were propelled to the
concrete with a liquid splatter. Putrid smells rose steamily from
the vomit to mix with the foul reek of sizzling flesh. The old man
fell heavily to his knees and pitched forward, heaving twice more.
When he finally looked back up, the body of the charred human being
was still there. Still there, teeth grinning at him morbidly where
the flesh was even now searing away.

Out in the darkness, wet clumps of snowflakes
streamed heavily downward from the low blanket of clouds that
covered the city.

I
rolled over in the
darkness and tugged the blanket up over my shoulders, but only
after a brief, lethargic struggle with Salinger, our overstuffed,
under-exercised Himalayan. His mild protestation came as a short
pause in his otherwise incessant purring, coupled with a wimpish
“mew” one would expect from a kitten, not from a full-grown cat. My
ears further discerned that the wind was sighing forlornly through
the leafless branches of our tree-lined yard, audibly bringing the
outside chill into the bedroom.

I shivered slightly at the thought and
assumed that Tracy Watson, the Eyewitness News meteorologist, had
probably nailed her forecast squarely on the head yet again. If I
were brave enough to crawl from the warmth of the bed and look out
the window, I presumed I would be witness to the snowfall she
predicted as well. Her uncanny accuracy would most likely be
capturing her another American Meteorological Society Award in the
near future. Not that this fact was all that important to me, but
half-sleep has a tendency to make one concentrate on things that
would normally flit past unheeded.

With a contented sigh, I let the thoughts of
snow, and sub-freezing temperatures, and other people’s achievement
awards drain from my mind, dwelling instead on the comfortable
warmth of the heated waterbed.

Lazily slithering my arm beneath the sheets,
I hooked it around Felicity, my wife of just over nine years. She
let out a sleepy murmur and snuggled herself closer against me. Her
long, auburn curls were pinned neatly atop her head, looking for
all the world like they had been arranged there just moments ago. I
was still amazed at her ability to crawl out of bed looking just as
she did when she crawled in. Astonished as I was, I had long since
given up trying to figure out how she managed to do it.

I allowed my one open—but barely focused—eye
to roam in the direction of her alarm clock. The radiant, electric
blue digits shone back at me, attesting to a time of 4:47 a.m. In
my mind, I was fully aware that Felicity kept her clock set fifteen
minutes fast. A psychological trick used by millions in order to be
on time. Of course, for the majority of those millions, since they
knew the clock was fast to begin with, the trick failed to work. In
the case of my lovely wife, not only did the ruse falter miserably,
it simply caused her to be even later. I stubbornly attempted the
mental calculation to subtract the phantom fifteen minutes from the
displayed time of 4:47. Unfortunately, in my half-conscious state,
I succeeded only in giving myself a headache and producing a string
of meaningless numbers. Though for some reason, the ratio
twenty-two to eighteen kept returning to the forefront.

Finally, I dismissed the entire process,
along with its product, in favor of the infinitely more pleasant
nether world between sleep and wakefulness. Judging by the
nightmare that followed, I wish I had concentrated on the equation
a little harder.

Fear.

Anger.

Fear.

Anger.

Surprise.

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

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

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I return, this
time my words echo through the air instead of disappearing into
nothingness as they had done before.

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.

I’m falling.

I’m screaming.

Silence.

“Rowan, so nice to see you.” Ariel Tanner is
standing before me. Beside her is the same 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 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 ceremonial knife.

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 the front of 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 gray eyes.