Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation (25 page)

The thing that kept gnawing at me, however,
was what she could manage to bring upon herself in those thirty
minutes. I quickly found myself dwelling on the possibilities and
had to force them out of my head at regular intervals, lest I
become literally paralyzed by a fear of what might be. The thoughts
were already playing hell with my confidence. The last thing I
needed was to have an emotional meltdown before we even found
her.

I didn’t have a solid idea of where to go
from here. For all I knew, she could have simply plunged directly
into the woods; or she could have followed the fence line and
entered them elsewhere. However, it seemed logical that if she had
taken the time to scale the fence at this specific point, walking
the fence was probably the least likely of the options. So, I
decided to take the straight-line approach and set out into the
tree line.

I had been to the park enough times to know
that it was segmented along one small portion by a railroad that
was still in use. And, as I recalled, the railway ran through the
edge of the park we had just entered. Something told me the tracks
were where Felicity was heading. I don’t know why the rail line
popped into my head, or even why it would have been the destination
of the killer. But at this point, intuition was all I had going for
me, and I wasn’t going to doubt it. Not yet, anyway.

The first fifty yards of our trek had been
uphill, and with me in a frantic lead, we had topped the ridge
quickly. Still, even with fear and adrenalin driving me, I was
winded, and so was Ben.

The night had only allowed the air
temperature to dip into the mid-eighties, and with our proximity to
the river, the humidity was making it feel more like the high
nineties. I was already drenched in sweat, and I suspected Ben was
as well. Even though he was certainly in better shape than me, the
closeness of the air combined with the upward sprint was enough to
open anyone’s pores wide.

“Jeezus, white man,” my friend huffed as we
came to a halt atop the rise. “Can’t you two do anything the easy
way?”

I ignored the question. I was pretty sure he
didn’t really want an answer, and besides, I was far too busy to
talk. I was standing as still as I could manage, reaching out for
my wife with every earthly sense I had available. My eyes were
searching for shadows in the harsh beam of the flashlight as I
played it across the landscape before me. All the while, I was
listening for telltale sounds of movement; or even, goddess forbid,
a distant scream. Every now and then, I would take a moment to
concentrate on breathing in hopes of catching a whiff of her
perfume. Unfortunately, I was yielding no results.

Of course, I wasn’t stopping at the physical.
On a preternatural level, I was sending feelers out far ahead; but,
thus far, I was having no more luck in that arena than the other.
I’m sure my now rampant fear for Felicity’s safety was clouding my
ability to sense anything outside the scope of the mundane, but
still, I truly believed that I should have felt something. The fact
that I couldn’t only served to frighten me more.

Sunrise was now less than forty minutes away.
A quick glance upward through the small gaps in the trees showed
that the sky was beginning to pale with the first inkling of the
approaching dawn. Still, the canopy of foliage overhead was
containing the darkness as if it were a black fog— hugging it close
to the ground and obscuring the landscape.

“This way,” I said after a moment, aiming the
flashlight down a gradual slope.

“You sure?” Ben asked.

“As sure as I can be at the moment,” I
returned, my voice edgy.

We started downward, stumbling as we worked
our way through the murky forest, thick undergrowth hindering our
every step.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Ben told me.
“Felicity’s not stupid, Row. She’s not gonna do anything that’d get
her hurt.”

“It’s not her doing the something stupid I’m
worried about,” I explained. “It’s whatever she’s tapped into. The
spirits of the dead don’t always have the living’s best interest at
heart.”

We continued in silence for a moment. I could
tell he was chewing on what I had just said.

“Are you sayin’ Larson’s ghost would try to
hurt her?” he finally asked.

“Probably not on purpose, butssppptt…” I
replied, sputtering suddenly as a low hanging branch caught me
across the face, then barked an exclamation. “Dammit!” I stopped,
reached up and pushed the near invisible trap out of my way, then
continued my answer as I forged the path. “Like I was saying, not
on purpose. But, tortured souls are in search of one thing, and
that’s closure. Since conduits into this world are few and far
between, they tend to clamp on and not let go… The results aren’t
always pretty.”

“Like what happens to you,” he grunted.

“Yeah,” I returned with a sigh. “Like what
happens to me.”

The foliage seemed to be thinning, and the
slowly increasing greyness could almost be visibly detected
filtering into the darkness before us. As I forced my way through
the thicket, I tilted the flashlight up then panned it around and
saw its focused beam disappear into nothingness. Pressing forward,
I crunched through the carpet of fallen leaves and aimed myself in
what I imagined to be a straight line.

After several steps, the landscape began to
lighten more noticeably even if it was still a muddy twilight.
Pushing through the brush, I continued down the incline and soon
found myself unceremoniously sliding the last few feet down a
vastly sharper drop. Fortunately, I didn’t fall far, landing in
what at first appeared to be a shallow clearing.

I heard Ben skidding down the slope behind me
and twisted out of the way just in time to avoid being run over by
him as he stumbled out into the open space. I quickly panned the
light around, trying to get my bearings and realized that we were
standing on a service road.

It was somewhat overgrown and didn’t appear
recently traveled, by vehicle at least. I tilted the flashlight
down and scanned the ground, looking for any sign that Felicity
might have come through. I harbored no belief that I would find
anything so obvious as footprints, but at this point, I was willing
to accept anything The Ancients would see fit to bestow upon
me.

Their gift came in the form of an audible
clue, although it was connected not with her directly but with my
own pet theory about where she would be heading. I listened closely
as in the distance a low rumble was beginning to build in both
volume and tempo. Unfortunately, the sound was echoing through the
woods in a haphazard pattern.

“Whaddaya think?” Ben asked.

“Sounds like a train,” I replied.

“Yeah, but I mean, which way?”

I sighed and shook my head. Then I pointed
the flashlight to my right and began to speak, my tone unsure,
“Well, it looks like the road curves up ahead there. Assuming we
followed a relatively straight path coming over the ridge and
didn’t get turned around, that should take us deeper into the park
and toward the train tracks. I’m guessing that’s where she’d be
heading.”

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Just a feeling.”

“Okay. I’m good with that.”

“Of course, as I recall, the tracks curve,” I
added, second-guessing myself. “So she might have gone back the
other way. That is if she came through here at all.”

“So whaddaya wanna do?”

“I’m pretty sure we kept on a straight
course,” I finally said, a tremor of uncertainty still underscoring
my words. “If nothing else, going right should take us farther into
the park. I think.”

“Then let’s go,” he urged.

We started walking, and I twisted my wrist up
then pressed the backlight button on my watch. The blue glow lit
the dial, and I peered quickly at the numbers. “Five-thirty,” I
said over my shoulder. “If she was being guided by some ethereal
force, then she knows exactly where she’s going and has probably
had plenty of time to get there by now.”

I was amazed at how calm my voice suddenly
sounded because internally I was a wreck. My stomach was twisted
into a double knot, and nausea had become a constant companion. A
sickly sense of dread was raping my spine and wrapping its cold
fingers around the back of my brain.

The only thing that kept me from completely
losing my sanity at this very moment was the fact that I had not
felt anything happen on an ethereal level. Felicity and I had a
very tight connection with one another and would often share
experiences as if we were one person. At the very least, I was sure
I’d be able to feel it if she was already in immediate danger.

At least, that is what I kept telling
myself.

The buzzing annoyance of myriad insects was
beginning to fill the air, and we both found ourselves randomly
slapping at mosquitoes. Birds had begun to chirp their staccato
songs to greet the onset of morning, and I could hear squirrels
chittering in the branches above.

The distant rumble of the train was coming
closer, but I still couldn’t pinpoint a direction due to the echo,
and that made me even more unsure of my choice. We continued along
the unused service road for several yards before I began to slow my
pace, eventually coming to a complete stop.

“What’s wrong?” Ben asked. “You goin’
la-la?”

“I don’t know, Ben,” I replied, my agitation
growing rapidly. “I don’t know if… I’m not… I’m just not sure we’re
going in the right direction.”

“You wanna turn around?” he asked.

“Gods, I just don’t know,” I replied, fear
suddenly bubbling to the top in an attempt to overtake me.

“Just calm down, Row,” he told me, then
looked upward. “Sun’ll be up in less than twenty minutes. It’s
already gettin’ light, so why don’t we do this. You keep goin’ this
way, and I’ll backtrack and go the other way.”

I shook my head. “I still don’t even know if
she actually used this road, Ben.”

“Listen, Row, I know you’re upset, but you
gotta get a handle on it,” he said. “I’m tellin’ ya’, man, we’re
gonna find her and it’s gonna be okay.”

“How can you know that?” I snapped.

“Because I’m tellin’ ya that’s how it is,” he
responded in a stern voice. “It’s gonna be all good, Rowan. Now
go.”

He turned and started back down the service
road, heading quickly away from me through the overgrowth. I
watched after him for a moment then swallowed hard and mutely
kicked myself for the display of emotion. Where Felicity’s safety
was concerned, I had a hard time being rational, and he was
correct— I had to stop letting it get the best of me.

I turned in the opposite direction and
started up the road, pressing forward into the almost ninety-degree
curve, my head down to follow the spot of the flashlight along the
ground. I stepped carefully around a deep rut and continued walking
until I rounded the bend.

When I looked up, the road stretched out
before me in a straight line, and the overgrowth was knocked down
as if the pathway had been frequented far more recently. In fact,
it even looked somewhat maintained. In the distance, the lane
passed beneath a short train trestle and beyond that, disappeared
into the forest.

I was mentally debating whether or not I
should call Ben back this way when I focused on something slumped
against a tree along the roadside, just before the trestle.

My heart froze in my chest, and the sudden
onset of blind panic made my skin prickle hot then cold. The
flashlight struck the ground with a thud, its beam now directed
against a clump of tall grass off the side of the road. I felt a
heavy thump in my chest as my heart reacted to the dump of
adrenalin, and my legs began pumping hard against the ground.

I wasn’t sure if I heard myself screaming or
if it was simply the whistle of the oncoming train as I sprinted
madly toward Felicity’s motionless form.

W
hat I heard wasn’t just
me screaming, nor was it only the whistle of the train. It was
both. A pair of disharmonic tones blended into a single horrific
chord. I don’t know what it was that I was screaming, but my
guttural shriek had joined with the blast of the air horn to
shatter the pre-dawn calm.

It could have been the word ‘no’. It could
have been Felicity’s name. I might have been calling for Ben. A
flagrant curse aimed at the Dark Mother wasn’t out of the realm of
possibility either. Perhaps it was even all of them at once, I
really cannot say.

The simple fact was that the chilling wail
was just exactly that— an unintelligible cry of lament in a single
drawn out breath. I suppose the second round would have been just
as terrifying to hear as the first had it not been drowned out by
the now overwhelming roar of the approaching freight train.

My heart was pounding as I drove myself
forward— covering the distance between Felicity and me with a burst
of speed that could only have been the product of an adrenalin
surge. I started backpedaling as I drew near, trying to bring
myself to a stop. In the end, I literally fell in front of her,
hitting the ground hard and scrambling the last foot or so on my
hands and knees.

As I crawled, my ears were filled with the
thunder of the diesel engine. The cacophony was punctuated by the
rhythmic clack of the locomotive wheels against track as the
southbound freight train started across the trestle above.

Slipping my arms behind my wife’s back, I
pulled her up and hugged her close. Hot tears were already
streaming down my face as every ounce of the fear and dread I had
been holding at bay was now bleeding out of me in an emotional
hemorrhage.

Her body was warm to the touch and I buried
my face against her neck, stroking her hair as my own body
shuddered in an off-kilter cadence with my heavy sobs. My very soul
was rending itself into nothingness as I spiraled into darkened
despair. I couldn’t even find the energy to curse Cerridwen for
taking her from me, nor myself for allowing it to happen.