Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation (38 page)

After a moment, the speeding vehicle seemed
to be right behind me, and then just as suddenly, its sound began
to fade in the opposite direction. A burst of cool wind whipped
around my ankles, reaching cold tendrils up my pants legs.

“Felicity?” the woman’s voice was calling
behind me. “Felicity, can you hear me?”

“C’mon, white man!” The male voice hit me
again and was immediately followed by a palm slapping hard against
the side of my face.

As soft as I’m sure it actually was, the blow
was magnified by my disconnected state. I jolted into a semi-awake
funk, snapping at least partially back into the land of the
conscious. When I opened my eyes, I saw Ben’s concerned face
staring back at me. He was hunched over in the darkness, arms
outstretched to steady me. I looked around and found that I was
sitting on the floorboards in the open door of the van with my legs
hanging out.

“Rowan, talk to me,” my friend said.

I was confused. I didn’t remember stopping
nor could I understand why I was sitting here in the door. And, if
Ben was standing in front of me, then who was driving? Things had
made more sense when my eyes were closed, so I decided that’s what
I should do.

“No way,” Ben said as he shook me. “Wake up,
Row. Talk to me.”

I opened my eyes again and blinked, then
tried to concentrate as my brain wandered through the murky fog
that was overwhelming it. I started catching bits and pieces of
mental impressions as they flashed to the forefront of my mind.
Before long, they became fleeting images and feelings— darkness,
fingernails biting into my hand, Constance trying to say something
to me that I could not hear, a burn appearing on my wife’s pristine
cheek…

“Felicity!” I immediately yelped, looking
frantically about.

Lucidity struck like a mallet to the back of
my head, and I tried to leap up from where I was sitting. My brain
was starting to work, but my motor reflexes were still a few steps
behind, so I stumbled as I tried to stand.

“Whoa, Kemosabe!” Ben steadied me before I
could fall onto the asphalt shoulder.

I twisted away from him, turning toward the
van. Seeing my wife still belted in her seat, I climbed in through
the door. Hunching down on my knees, I scrambled across the
floorboards, almost knocking Constance over in the process.

“She’s not coming to,” Mandalay said to me as
I pushed my way in next to her.

I reached out to Felicity and brushed a
tangle of auburn curls from the side of her face. My still somewhat
jangled brain was hoping that everything it was remembering had
been unreal. Nothing more than a frightening product of an
unchecked imagination left alone to play with the contents of a
tortured subconscious, namely mine.

Unfortunately, it knew full well that the
sadistic nightmare had been all too real. When my eyes fell on my
wife’s uncovered face, I saw that the circular burns were still
there, horrific blemishes standing out against her pale skin. I
noticed my own cheek tingling and began to remember even more. I
looked down to see a charred divot in the back of my hand and
suddenly felt very ill. If these stigmata were appearing on
Felicity and me, I didn’t even want to imagine what was actually
happening to Kimberly Forest.

My wife rolled her head to the side,
whimpering quietly as if struggling with yet another nightmare
inside. She murmured something unintelligible and then turned her
face away from me.

“Felicity?” I cooed softly, taking her hand
in mine as I felt my eyes beginning to water and burn.

There was a tiny spark of a connection,
something tenuous but definitely there. I held her hand and focused
on it, letting it reach for me as I reached for it.

After a few moments, she turned back to me,
still whimpering, and then slowly opened her eyes.

“Felicity? Honey. Are you okay?”

She stared back at me with pain and confusion
wrinkling her features. Her eyes searched my face, and I got the
definite feeling that she didn’t recognize me. As she looked at me,
tears began welling and overflowing onto her cheeks. She locked her
gaze with mine, and in a frightened, pleading voice said, “Come
back… Please. Help me… Come back…”

“N
orth or south?” Ben
queried.

“If you were going to torture someone, you’d
want some seclusion, right?” Constance asked in return.

She was hunched forward, using the dim light
from the glove box to illuminate an Illinois highway map.
Fortunately, this one was in somewhat better condition than its
Missouri counterpart, though not by much.

“Depends on who and why,” Ben returned
flatly.

“Seriously.”

“I was.”

My friend had already turned the van around
at the first emergency vehicle median crossing he had come upon. We
were now headed back the way we came and rapidly approaching the
Route 3 exit. Since Felicity, or Kimberly through her, had begged
us to ‘come back’, it stood to reason that we had missed the mark.
As there was nothing between there and crossing back into Missouri,
the state route seemed to all of us the most logical place to
go.

“Well, Route Three south takes you straight
into Granite City,” Mandalay continued, ignoring his snide reply.
“North takes you up to Wood River and Alton. However, there’s a
several mile stretch of farmland before you hit the first town,
which is Hartford.”

“Yeah,” Ben replied. “That would definitely
give the asshole some breathin’ room.”

“Do you really think a farmer would be doing
this?” I asked.

“Who says it’s a farmer?” he answered with
his own question. “Could be an asshole who wanted to get away from
the city. Besides, don’t you remember Ray and Faye Copeland?”

“Sounds vaguely familiar,” I replied. I
wasn’t in a mood to search my grey matter for obscure memories, and
to be honest, I really didn’t care. But, he was intent on
explaining anyway.

“They were an old couple in Chillicothe,
Missouri,” he replied. “Livestock farmers. Back in the early
nineties they were convicted of murderin’ five transients and
buryin’ ‘em on their property.”

“They were a bizarre serial case,” Constance
added, spouting off details that she had tucked away. “They kept a
log of the transient workers they hired, and next to each of the
murdered men’s names was an X. Also, Faye made a quilt out of the
victims clothing. While they were only convicted of the five
homicides, there’s a pervasive belief that they were responsible
for more.”

I simply replied, “Oh,” and left it at
that.

“How’d you remember all that?” Ben asked.
“You had to be in like what, junior high?”

“I was in my first year of college, Storm,”
she answered with an annoyed tone. “Besides, I studied the case
when I did a psych paper on Serials.”

“Jeez, what don’t you remember?”

“Usually, my car keys.”

“Oh, so you
are
human.”

“Uh-huh, but don’t tell my SAIC or you’ll
kill my rep.”

“So, white man, how’s Firehair doin’?” Ben
switched subjects.

“Okay, for the moment,” I answered. “Not
exactly good, but she seems to be holding her own.”

Felicity had continued drifting in and out of
lucidity, occasionally whimpering my name, then in the same instant
looking at me as though I were a complete stranger. All of this was
punctuated by fits of quiet sobbing and choking pleas for help. At
the moment, her head was tilted back and her eyes were closed. She
would moan quietly every now and then. From all outward
appearances, she looked to be working through a fevered dream.

The one fortunate circumstance was that the
excruciating attacks seemed to have stopped. When they would return
was anybody’s guess, but I was mutely begging for never.

“What about you?” he queried.

“I’m fine,” I told him, but my voice was
clearly betraying my distraught mood every time I opened my
mouth.

“Yeah,” he returned, unconvinced. “It’s gonna
be okay, Row.”

“Uh-huh,” I grunted.

He didn’t press the point. We simply traveled
in silence for a moment or two before Mandalay spoke up.

“Okay, Storm, do you have a plan?” she asked,
shifting the subject yet again.

“You mean other than shooting this
bastard?”

“Exactly.”

“Not yet,” he admitted. “You?”

“Well, we’re probably going to need backup at
some point, assuming we find what we’re looking for,” she
offered.

“Yeah,” he replied. “I know. I’m gonna hafta
call Albright too.”

“We have to find her,” I insisted, throwing
myself back into the conversation. “He’s going to kill her and
Felicity in the process!”

“I know, Rowan,” Mandalay told me. “And we
will find her. Right now we’re just speculating about
procedures.”

“Okay, here we go,” Ben announced.

I turned to look out the windshield and saw
that we were veering off Highway 270 onto the exit ramp for Route 3
north. I immediately turned back to check on Felicity but found no
change.

“What if, and this is a big ‘what if’,”
Constance began, “we aren’t able to locate Kimberly Forest? Is
there anything at all you can do to protect Felicity?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, twisting back
around to look at her. “I’ve never seen this happen before.”

“What about you?” Ben asked. “You go
freakin’
Twilight Zone
all the
time.”

“Not like this,” I replied.

“So why do ya think she’s not… you know…”

“…
In pain right now?”

“Yeah.”

“My guess is that the asshole got off, and
he’s taking a break.”

A hush fell over us all on the heels of my
comment. What I had said wasn’t something new. Even the FBI agent
at Quantico who’d worked up the profile of this killer had
commented that the torture was probably the acting out of a
psychosexual fantasy. I guess hearing it said aloud, as opposed to
reading it in a report, simply made the sick concept a little too
personal.

“Let’s hope it’s a long one,” he said.

“Yeah,” I agreed, my voice cold and flat.

The sullen quiet crept in again. I looked out
into the darkness as we merged quickly onto Route 3 and started
north. The morbid atmosphere in the van continued to bloom,
eventually becoming more than my friend could bear.

“Friggin’ dark out tonight,” he finally said.
“Must be the clouds.”

“Wouldn’t matter if it was clear,” I offered.
“It’s a crone’s moon.”

“Do what?”

“Crone’s moon. The darkness prior to the new
moon,” I explained.

“That something special?” he asked.

“It’s a time of introspection,” I replied
with a humorless half-chuckle, given the circumstances. Then I
paused before adding, “It can also be a time of some very serious
dark magick.”

“I thought Witches didn’t do black
magick.”

“I didn’t say black. I said dark.”

“There’s a difference?”

“A big one.”

“They’re arguing…” a thin and very weak voice
came from behind me.

I turned slowly back to Felicity and saw that
she had lolled her head to the side and her eyes were open, staring
directly at me. Her cheeks were still damp with tears, and she
looked exhausted. Her features were drawn and severe, telling me
that she was still dealing with a healthy amount of pain.

“Felicity?” I asked.

She gave her head a barely perceptible shake.
“No… Felicity is coming for me.”

The voice was my wife’s, but the inflections
were someone else’s entirely. Gone was her Celtic lilt, something
that even at its faintest was still perceptible. The pattern of her
speech was now fully Midwestern American, and even more
specifically, south county Saint Louis.

“Kimberly?” I asked out of reflex.

“Yes…” she whimpered, the single word coming
out as a dying whine.

I pressed forth. “Who’s arguing,
Kimberly?”

“They are…”

“Who are they?”

“The ones who hurt me,” she whimpered.

I felt like I was talking to a small child
who couldn’t reason through a general question. With the sense of
urgency I was feeling, I was having trouble maintaining my patience
and in the end I couldn’t keep the insistent tone out of my voice.
I shook my head at her and snapped, “Who, Kimberly? Who is he
arguing with?”

Felicity’s face contorted with a look of
fear, and she simply whined. I immediately damned myself for losing
control.

“Ssshhh,” I shushed her softly as I reached
out and stroked her hand. “Ssshhh… Kimberly, I’m sorry. It’s just
that this is important.”

“Is Kimberly Forest actually talking to you?”
Constance asked, incredulity underscoring the whispered
question.

“I think so,” I quietly replied over my
shoulder. “Or her subconscious mind at least.”

“Jeezus…” Ben muttered, then asked in a
louder voice. “Is she sayin’ that there’s more than one of
‘em?”

“Who is that?” Kimberly asked, a new thread
of fear weaving through her words.

“It’s okay, Kimberly,” I replied. “He’s a
police officer. He’s coming with me to help you.”

“Help me!” she pleaded, calling out with a
fleeting burst of energy. “Please, help me!”

“She could hear me?” Ben asked.

“Apparently,” I told him.

“Pleeeeaaaasssseee…” she whimpered.

“That’s what we want to do,” I soothed as I
turned back to her.

“Can you ask her where she is?” Constance
pressed, still keeping her voice low as if she was afraid she would
interfere.

“Please help me…” Felicity’s voice whined
again before I could answer.

“We are,” I told her. “We’re coming with
Felicity to get you.”