Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation (19 page)

I was just about to turn to Helen again when
Felicity let out a sudden heavy sigh that bespoke relief. I watched
on as her body relaxed and her breathing slowly returned to the
earlier slow, even rhythm that had accompanied the onset of the
trance.

In a single, easy motion my wife stretched
her finger upward into the air.

“T
hank you, Felicity,”
Helen said. “Lower your finger now and relax.”

Felicity’s face remained slack, but her
finger levered back downward without so much as a tremble. Her
tension had more than just visibly ebbed; all evidence of it had
disappeared but for the tear trails that still dampened her cheeks.
For me, however, the expectant silence that fell into step behind
her muffled display of anguish was causing my hairs to bristle.

“You should relax too, Rowan,” Helen told
me.

“Easier said than done,” I replied.
“Something doesn’t feel right about this.”

“What’s up, white man,” Ben asked, still
sitting at the dining room table. “You goin’ all la-la?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Something just feels
strange.” I paused for a moment and then let out a forced sigh. “I
don’t know… It might just be me. It seems like nothing ever feels
right anymore.”

“Well,” Helen spoke up, “from a clinical
point of view, the session is going very well. In fact, what you
just saw should have been the worst of it.”

“Should have been?” I asked. “The
word
should
doesn’t exactly
evoke an air of extreme confidence for me, Helen.”

“Yes, I understand that,” she replied. “Let
me explain. What she has experienced will certainly still have
emotional consequences tied to it, but at this point it is merely
information. She is no longer watching the repressed memory play
out; therefore, the connection with it is somewhat dulled. It will
not be as intense as re-experiencing it.”

“Okay,” I replied, trepidation still evident
in my voice. “So what now? Do you wake her up?”

“No, not yet,” she shook her head as she
answered. “Hypnosis is no more perfect than the supernormal
incidents that you are prone to, Rowan. While I have given her a
post-hypnotic instruction to remember what she has now
re-witnessed, some detail may still be lost upon awakening. What we
do now is attempt to retrieve the information by having her recount
it to us while still in a trance state.”

She leaned to the side and reached for her
purse, which she had stowed beneath the edge of the coffee table.
After rummaging around for a moment, she withdrew her hand, and in
it was a micro cassette recorder. She quickly popped it open,
checked the tape, then closed the cover and tested the buttons.

“For an actual forensic hypnosis session, I
would have been better prepared,” she informed us. “We actually
should have been videotaping the entire process, from the initial
interview through termination of the session. However, for our
purposes, I believe a brief audio recording will suffice.”

“This ain’t goin’ into court if that’s what
you’re talkin’ about,” Ben offered from across the room.

“Precisely,” Helen returned, then momentarily
shifted her focus back to me. “Truly, Rowan, you can relax
now.”

“I’ll relax when this is over,” I told
her.

She gave only a knowing nod as a reply. She
was no stranger to the inner workings of my brand of emotionally
imbued logic, so she knew she wasn’t going to be able to talk me
down.

She activated the recorder and laid it on the
end table with the microphone directed toward Felicity.

“Now, Felicity,” she began. “I want you to
speak now, and tell us what you have just seen. Start at the
beginning and take your time.”

“Candee is arguing with RJ again. She just
isn’t working out.” Even though her face remained blank, Felicity
began speaking as if she had been carrying on a conversation with
us all along. I immediately noticed a thread of reluctance running
through her voice. “There’s simply too much friction between her
and the others. She doesn’t even seem to care how a Coven works. I
don’t want to talk to her about this, but I’m just going to have
to. I need to tell her she should seek another group. Row, I wish
you were here to do it. You’re so much better at letting people
down easy than I am.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but before I
could get a word out, I felt Helen’s hand on my arm. I looked over
my shoulder, and she was shaking her head.

I nodded and remained silent.

“Felicity,” Helen began. “I want you to move
forward in time. You were teaching your class, and by all accounts,
you had some type of seizure.”

“Yes,” Felicity replied, calmly
switching the subject. “The class was about Dark Moon magick, and I
was going over one of my favorite
Dorothy
Morrison
spells with the group. I had just recited the
last line where you call to the Crone of Darkness and ask her to
allow you to feel the unseen an…”

Her words ended without warning. No stutter,
no sound, no nothing. They simply halted mid-breath, leaving an
expectant silence in their wake.

“Go on, Felicity,” Helen prompted. “It is
okay. Just tell us what you remember.”

My wife’s head tilted forward, slowly at
first and then simply fell as if she’d lost consciousness. As her
chin touched her chest, her head lolled to the side, and she
creased her brow in a display of pain. She rolled her head back
upward and allowed it to tilt back, bringing her face up toward the
ceiling, then let out a heavy breath.

“Jesus I hurt.” The words came out of
Felicity’s mouth, but the voice was completely unfamiliar.

I turned a hard stare back to Helen and she
held up her hand, motioning for me to wait.

“Felicity?” she asked.

I turned back to my wife and watched as she
blinked her eyes several times.

The voice came again, louder and defiant.
“What, you can’t turn on the goddamned lights around here?”

She grimaced visibly and then ran the tip of
her tongue across her teeth.

“Fuck,” she said. “My tooth’s broke.”

I felt a sudden closeness and looked up to
find that Ben and Constance had moved into the room with us and
were watching intently.

“Larson got hit in the mouth,” Ben whispered,
then canted his head toward Felicity. “Is she doin’ what I think
she is?”

“If you mean is she channeling Brittany
Larson,” I returned, “yeah, I think she is.”

I shot another glance toward Helen and then
turned back to Felicity. I knew something hadn’t felt right about
all of this, and now that feeling was starting to get worse. Much
worse.

My wife’s hands were resting on the arms of
the chair, and she began to physically jerk and tug as if trying to
lift them, but they barely moved. She rotated her wrists as she
struggled— stretching her fingers outward and then doubling them
back into fists. She pushed herself slightly forward and twisted
her shoulders while wriggling in her seat, groaning as she pulled
against the unseen bonds. No matter how hard she tried, her
forearms remained planted on the rests as if they were actually
tied there. She finally let herself fall back into the seat and let
out a frustrated shriek.

“Fucking asshole!” the voice burst from her
lips as a defiant shout. “Do you have any idea who I am?!”

“Jeezus,” Ben muttered. “She’s got a
pair.”

Felicity suddenly jerked her head to the
side, pulling it away from something unseen as she sent her eyes
searching.

“Don’t you touch me,” the voice growled. “My
father is goddamned Mayor you idiot. Every fucking cop in the state
is probably looking for me right now.”

Her head jerked backward, and her jaw
clenched as her neck began to stretch. A nasal whine came from her
nose amid the sound of her choking.

“Bring her back,” I demanded, whipping around
to face Helen. “Now.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I think so. Felicity,
return.”

My wife’s head instantly fell forward then
began to slowly tilt back upward. Her chest rose with a deep breath
and then settled into her earlier relaxed rhythm. Once again her
face was slack.

“No,” she said after a moment, her own voice
issuing from her lips.

“One… Two…” Helen began counting.

“No,” Felicity spoke again, sharpness in her
tone. “Not yet. I can’t remember it all.”

“…
Five… Six…”

“NO,” my wife insisted, still staring off
into space. “We have to know where she is.”

“…
Nine…” Helen continued.

“NO!” Felicity barked. “I have to go back. I
have to…”

She finished the sentence with an agonized
cry, which caught in her throat only to be cut off mid scream. Her
face suddenly contorted into a pained grimace as her body
stiffened, and her hands began posturing inward.

The room filled with the sound of arcing
electricity as it started to buzz and snap, and at the exact
instant of the first pop, I felt the ethereal defenses I had
erected begin falling away. Upon the second, they collapsed inward
upon themselves as if caught in a gale force wind.

“RETURN,” Helen announced once again, this
time with far more urgency.

Blind agony hammered me between the eyes, and
I blinked back tears as it screwed inward toward the center of my
brain. I felt my own motor control begin to slip as I flopped
sideways, almost falling from the armless chair in which I was
seated. Something grappled my shoulder in a tight hold, and I
looked up to see Ben steadying me.

“Twilight
Zone
?” His words rushed past me in a distorted stream
and then began repeating in a hollow echo.

A heavy bass thrum droned inside my head as I
reached up with trembling hands in an attempt to contain my
exploding skull. I shut my eyes tight and tried to will it away.
The one clear thought that kept running through my mind was just
let me die.

“ROWAN!” Ben’s voice struck my ears again,
forcing their way through the heavy metal crescendo that was
building in my brain.

“FELICITY! RETURN!” I heard Helen’s voice
again, and it was edging toward frantic. “RETURN!”

Helen Storm was the calmest, most
even-tempered person I had ever met. She didn’t get frantic.

Now I was frightened.

“Oh my god!” Agent Mandalay’s voice joined
the jumble of noises. “Felicity!”

I pitched forward and forced myself to open
my eyes. My wife was in the full throes of a seizure; her face was
a horrid mask of pain as she shook uncontrollably, gnashing her
teeth into her tongue. Pinkish froth was running from the corner of
her mouth, and she bucked hard against unearthly restraints.
However, that was but one of the torturous images to greet me.

Small, circular wounds had appeared randomly
along her bare forearms. They were red and blistered. Oozing and
charred. I’d seen pictures of wounds just like them in a brochure
from a local women’s shelter. The information was about spousal
abuse, and the photos were of cigarette burns.

A linear splash of blood suddenly appeared on
Felicity’s t-shirt just across her left breast, spreading outward
as it soaked into the cloth. I watched in horror as yet another
burn mark sizzled into view on the back of her hand, appearing
right before my eyes.

“JEEZUS FUCKIN’ CHRIST!” Ben was yelling.
“Helen! Do something!”

“She isn’t responding!” Helen returned. “She
is pushing herself into it on purpose!”

I was struggling to maintain my own
connection with this world, and the visual horror of the torture my
wife was now going through only steeled my resolve. I forced a
tenuous ground to form once again between the earth and me in an
attempt to rebuild my shattered defenses. But, even as I connected,
I could feel it making and breaking in a vicious cycle.

Fear was boring upward from the pit of my
stomach as I fought simply to keep from slipping any further across
the veil myself. I didn’t want to think about how far this could
go, but my brain rifled through the scenarios anyway. I was
intimately familiar with the dangers that came along with
channeling those on the other side. At this very moment, each and
every one of them was present and accounted for. And, leading the
pack, as always, was Cerridwen. The Dark Mother, Goddess of death
and rebirth. A deity to whom I had called out on many a Samhain
night when celebrating the lives of loved ones long past.

But, in recent years, I had come to despise
her and that for which she stood. I knew that I should not, but
emotions run deeper than logic, and I could not change the way I
felt.

As much as I had denied it earlier, I knew
full well that my heart had stopped. Death was something I cheated
every time this happened, and I would continue to duck her gelid
embrace for as long as I could. But right now, as in times before,
the cold bitch was waiting at the other end of this path with open
arms, and Felicity was running full speed toward her.

What the darkness offered so freely was meant
for me, not my wife, and I simply couldn’t allow her to get there
first.

I
had a problem, and it
wasn’t a small one.

The problem being that there was absolutely
nothing to stop both of us from dying if this was allowed to
progress. Throwing myself into the arms of the Dark Mother, noble
as it may seem, did not guarantee Felicity’s safety on this plane
or any other. Given the situation, she could easily follow me right
into death without so much as a pause. There was far more at work
here, and while I didn’t know exactly what it was, I was determined
to win out over it.