Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation (22 page)

Slowly, I pushed my hand along the side of
her cheek, lifting her auburn locks, and inspecting her milky skin.
I could see no wound on her face, only the smear of crimson.

I continued whispering to her as I took her
left hand in mine and turned the palm to face me. Deep gashes were
cut into the tips of her index and middle fingers, and they were
still oozing thick blood.

“What happened here?” I asked her softly but
got no answer.

The dogs were trying to nose their way in for
their own first hand inspection, and I could still feel Ben
standing behind me.

I began to notice that the room seemed colder
than usual, especially since at this hour of the morning the
electronic thermostat would still have the air conditioner switched
off in energy-saving mode.

I watched Felicity’s expression slowly
change, recognition dawning in her eyes as she awakened from the
dream state. She swallowed hard, and tears began to silently stream
across her cheeks. I slipped my arms around my wife and pulled her
close as she began to sob, rocking in harmony as I rubbed her
back.

I heard Ben shuffle and then step past me
into the bathroom. I didn’t pay much attention to what he was doing
until I heard him slowly mutter, “Jeezus H. Christ.”

I continued slowly rocking Felicity but
turned my head in his direction and looked up. He was staring at
us, and we locked gazes for a moment before he turned away. When I
followed his line of sight, I saw the object of his
exclamation.

On the large mirror hanging above the double
vanity smeared blood reflected in upon itself. Opaque red lines
arced in deliberate, if smudged, patterns literally forming what
appeared to be a map.

Below it, in unfamiliar, back-slanted writing
were the words, FIND ME.

* * * * *

“You never should have done that binding…” I
said, a note of sadness filling my voice.

I had just finished rinsing my wife’s wounded
hand with peroxide for a second time and had now patted it dry. She
was still wearing the oversized t-shirt she had been sleeping in,
and it was covered with smears and spatters of blood down the left
side. I had helped her pull on a pair of jeans and slip her feet
into tennis shoes with the intention of taking her to the emergency
room, but she would have none of that. She hated hospitals almost
as much as Ben and adamantly refused to go even though I was sure
she needed stitches. So, it was left up to me to play doctor.

The gashes were fairly deep and somewhat
ragged, as she had made them with the sharp edge of a broken
drinking glass. Even though I still felt that she should see a
doctor, I had to admit that the cuts didn’t look nearly as bad as
they had before they were cleaned up.

We were in the kitchen where we could both
have a seat, and more importantly, I could spread out the first aid
kit on the table. At the moment, I was snipping off strips of white
tape from a metal spindle.

Ben was behind me, seated in the dining room
and comparing a sketch of Felicity’s bloody rendering to a road
atlas. Unfortunately, the image on the mirror, while obvious in its
intent, was a smeary conglomeration of thick lines and devoid of
any text labels, save for the ‘FIND ME’. Because of that, it was
somewhat of a puzzle in and of itself.

Before getting started, he had called Agent
Mandalay, catching her just as she was pulling into her driveway.
She never even shut off her engine and now, was on her way back
here.

“Aye,” Felicity returned, her voice
surprisingly calm. “Maybe so, but I broke it.”

I nodded. “True. But it obviously wasn’t a
clean break.”

I cut a final strip of the surgical tape and
stuck it to the edge of the table then snapped the spindle back
into its cover. I tossed it back into the box with a slight
clatter. Then I reached deeper into the first aid kit and pulled
out a small, brown jar then twisted off the lid. I dipped a cotton
swab into the homemade comfrey and menthol salve and twirled it for
a moment.

Felicity let out a short laugh that came as
an abbreviated ‘hmph’, and then she said, “I wasn’t really sure
that the spell would work at all if you want to know the
truth.”

“It didn’t, really,” I offered. “All it did
was suck you into all of this mess.”

“Aye, but you were free of the visions for a
short time.”

“I’m surprised it did that much.” I shook my
head. “Nothing should have happened at all.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because, I’d already tried it.”

“You did?” There was a note of surprise in
her voice. “When?”

“Awhile back.” I shrugged. “I even tried a
banishing.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

“But if you don’t believe in the magick,
Rowan, then it can’t work. You know that.”

“I know,” I told her. “But you just told me
that you had your own doubts.”

“Aye.” She nodded. “I did at that. But still…
You tried to do a banishing?”

“Don’t act so surprised. It’s not like I want
this to keep happening to me you know.”

“That’s not true.”

I stopped twirling the swab. “Excuse me?”

“You see it as a gift as well as a
curse.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do,” she replied. “I can feel it. You
certainly don’t revel in it, but you see it as your destiny. If it
were to stop, you would feel as though you had failed.”

She was touching on insights I had thought
were completely hidden from view. Of course, I shouldn’t have been
at all surprised by that. I really knew better than to think I
could keep anything from her.

“Pretty amazing,” I offered with a sigh,
returning to the original subject and hoping she would follow. “A
spell that shouldn’t have worked to begin with, doomed to certain
failure by your own disbelief, and yet you still managed to make
magick happen anyway. Lucky you.”

I took her hand and blotted the oozing gashes
once more.

“Why do you think that is, then?” she
asked.

“The Ancients like your accent maybe?” I
replied.

“What?” She shot me a puzzled look. “Oh, no,
seriously. Why do you think it worked at all?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe there’s
something bigger going on here. We both know I’m probably the last
guy to be able to answer that.” I pulled her hand closer and
retrieved the cotton swab from the ointment. “This is probably
going to sting.”

The word ‘probably’ morphed instantly into
‘absolutely’ as I touched the healing salve to the gashes. She
sucked in a startled breath as her face twisted into a grimace. At
the same moment, her hand jerked out of reflex, trying to pull away
from the sudden burn, but I held it fast.

“I really wish you’d reconsider the
stitches.”

“No,” she forced out between clenched
teeth.

I continued gently dabbing the wounds until
they were covered, then tossed the swab into the small trashcan
next to me.

“There, that should be the worst of it,” I
said as I started wrapping her fingers with sterile gauze.

I glanced up and saw that her grimace had
melted into a thoughtful stare. She was absently chewing at her
lower lip, something she tended to do when she was preoccupied. I
stopped wrapping for a moment and asked, “You okay? This too
tight?”

She snapped out of the shallow trance and
looked at me. “What? Oh, no, it’s fine. I… Ummm… I was just
thinking about earlier.”

I went back to wrapping the gauze then
glanced up as I said, “Earlier? You mean the hypnosis?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Before that.
Before I left this evening.”

“What about it?”

“What I said about you feeling sorry for
yourself,” she said hesitantly. “I’m sorry.”

I gave my head a slight shake. “Don’t be. You
were right. I have been feeling sorry for myself.”

“No, Rowan…”

“Yes,” I interrupted her objection. “I have.
Don’t get me wrong, honey, it hurt when you said it, but all you
did was point out the obvious. I should actually thank you.”

“Aye, but I shouldn’t have been so mean.”

“You weren’t really.” I grinned. “No meaner
than usual, anyway.”

She gave her head a dismissive shake, but the
corners of her mouth curled into a slight grin.

“Of course,” I added as I started applying
the tape, “I’m not suddenly all better now just because of what you
said. That only happens in the movies. But, I recognize that my own
self-pity is a part of the larger problem, so maybe I’m on the
right path to do something about it.”

“You know you have family who wants to help,
then.” Her words were a comment as much as a question.

“Yes, I do.”

“Hey you two,” Ben’s voice came from the
doorway. “Come look at this for a second. I think I got
somethin’”

Felicity was already coming up out of the
chair as he finished the sentence, and I had to rise in unison with
her as I hastily finished looping the white tape around the
gauze.

“Whoa, honey, slow down,” I told her as she
pulled away and stepped past me, but she wasn’t listening.

I knew the sense of urgency she was exuding
all too well. She was physically manifesting her desire to get this
over with, to make it into a distant memory. I didn’t have the
heart to tell her that it wouldn’t work. Nothing could make it play
out any faster than had already been pre-ordained and that speed
was something that we’d never be privy to before the fact.

But, what pained me even more was the fact
that while I knew the memories would fade somewhat, the distance
would never be great enough for her to ever stop running from
them.

I pushed back the wave of sorrow brought on
by the thought and followed her into the dining room.

“Look at this,” Ben was already saying,
running his finger along the contours of lines between the sketch
and a page in the road atlas. “Right here, this could be the
Mississippi River.” He drew his hand downward, first on one page
then the other. He shot a quick glance at us and then proceeded to
motion horizontally. “This here could be Two-Seventy, and this
could be Riverview.”

I stuck my hand in and traced the same lines.
“Sure, but couldn’t this also be the Missouri River, this be
Highway Seventy, and that be Fifth Street?”

“Yeah,” he replied, swishing his fingertip
around. “And it could also be the other end of Two-Seventy and this
could be Two-Thirty-One. Or it could be Sixty-Four and Fifty-Five
for all that matter. But bear with me. Just assume that this is the
Mississippi and look here and here.” He pointed first to an extra
line running perpendicular to the line he had identified as Highway
Two-Seventy. “This could be the Chain of Rocks Canal on the
Illinois side.” He moved his finger back and forth between the
sketch and the road map and then dropped his finger onto a small
spot on the drawing. “On the mirror, this is pretty much just a
bloody fingerprint, so I really didn’t pay much attention to it at
first, but look at this.” He pointed to an identical spot on the
roadmap, and at the tip of his finger was a small triangle
encompassed by a circle. “This is the tourist info center on the
Missouri side.”

I glanced back and forth between the two
renditions, considering what he had said. The sketch was rough and
in reality, just a simplified version of the smears that coated the
bathroom mirror. Unfortunately, what we were looking at could be
any one of a hundred intersections on the map, not to mention that
we were looking only at Missouri. Still, if you did as he said and
made certain assumptions, the details could be construed to support
his conclusion.

“Tamara Linwood was found in Rafferty Park,
right?” I asked. “Near the Missouri River.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “And that is southwest.
And, Sarah Hart was found in River’s Bend Park.”

“Northwest,” I murmured. “Again, near the
Missouri.”

“I know, I know,” he replied. “You’re
thinkin’ ‘So, why dump a body near the Mississippi now. It breaks
the pattern.’ Well, believe me I’m thinkin’ the same thing, but
it’s still near a river. And, just look at the map.”

“But, why so close to the state line?” I
mused aloud. “The plates on the car were Illinois, right? Wouldn’t
that be too close to home?”

“Yeah, the tags were Illinois, but the car
was from Wisconsin. Remember, they were both hot, Row.”

“I don’t know, Ben,” I replied. “I can see
half a dozen spots on the map that look just like the drawing. What
do you think, Felicity?”

My wife had been completely mute through the
entire explanation, and even now she didn’t reply. I looked over
and found her motionless, staring down at the map-covered surface
of the table. Her gaze was once again unfocused, and she looked
dangerously like she was inches from slipping across the veil yet
again.

I reached out and gently placed my hand on
her shoulder as I spoke, a thin note of concern underscoring my
tone. “Felicity?”

“That’s it,” she finally said in a soft
monotone, her fixed stare still aimed at the table. She reached out
and placed the tip of her finger against the map, southwest of the
location Ben and I had been discussing. The words next to her
lacquered nail read, Woodcrest State Park.

“That’s it,” she repeated. “That’s where I
am.”

“W
oodcrest is gated,”
Agent Mandalay said, looking at the map. Then she tried
unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn.

She had arrived almost immediately following
Felicity’s announcement pinpointing what she believed to be the
location of Brittany Larson’s remains. Ben had filled her in on the
necessary details, including his pet theory about the rest area on
Highway 270. Now, we were all huddled around the table staring at
the maps once again.