Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation (42 page)

I pitched myself to the side then reached out
with my right hand to grasp the handle on the shed door. I tugged
and it moved a pair of inches then snapped back. I tugged again
with the same result. I looked down and saw a hasp held securely in
place by a padlock.

I yanked on the door, throwing my full weight
into the attempt and achieving nothing. I was angry now. I wanted
the incessant thrum to stop. I braced myself and kicked the door
hard, managing only to send a lance of pain through my foot and up
my leg.

I felt myself screaming, but the sound mixed
with the maddening drone to become a single, painful chord. I
stepped back from the shed, pitching to the right as I stumbled. I
stood there screaming at it to stop, but it wouldn’t listen to
me.

My heart was racing now, and the pain in my
head was becoming almost intolerable. As I stood there bellowing at
the small building, my eyes fell on a sheet metal vent screwed into
the side of the wall. The noise was pouring from it, and I stepped
forward, infuriation driving me into a frenzy. In my rattled brain,
the inanimate building was provoking me, and I’d had all that I was
going to take. I did exactly what my emotions wanted me to do. I
attacked it.

I swung my fist hard, slamming it directly
into the slotted porthole. The sharp ribs bit into my hand, slicing
nearly to bone, but I felt the vent move. I brought my hand back
and drove it into the galvanized metal sheet again. This time not
only did I feel it move, but I heard the sharp sound of cracking
wood against the backdrop of the drone. For a third time I drew my
arm back. In the dim light, I could see blood dripping from the
ragged cuts, but I ignored it. I launched my fist, twisting my
torso and throwing my weight behind the punch.

The sound of splintering wood snapped in the
air, and the clatter of the sheet metal vent falling inward added
itself to the cacophony. My body fell forward as my hand, and then
arm, followed the vent covering in through the rectangular hole. I
landed on my knees, and my hand automatically began groping the hot
interior of the shed.

I jerked my arm back as an intense burning
sensation started against the back of my hand, but I immediately
thrust it back in and began to feel around once again. I didn’t
know what I was looking for or even if I would recognize it by
feel, but I had to make the noise stop.

The hair on the back of my neck began to rise
once again, and I felt my body beginning to tingle. The muscles in
my chest were working into a spasm, and my breath caught suddenly
in my throat. My teeth started to grind, and I felt myself
shaking.

The burning sensation returned to my hand and
I flinched. Trying to ignore it, I forced my arm farther inward,
pushing my shoulder into the opening. I continued to grope, and my
hand brushed against something flexible. It was the first thing,
other than hot metal, I’d felt, so I wrapped my tortured fingers
around it and pulled as hard as I could.

There was a cough then a sputter, and the
noise stopped. My body instantly relaxed of its own accord, and the
hot air that had been trapped in my lungs expelled in a loud huff.
I sucked in a breath and fell back on the grass, panting as the
tension left my body.

Brand new pains began reporting in to my
central nervous system. However, these were all very real and
surprisingly, almost welcome. At first, I didn’t even want to move.
I just wanted to relax and take in the cool night air. But, my
brain was starting to clear, and I heard myself mutter the name,
Felicity.

All at once, I remembered where I was, who I
was, what I was doing, and even why. Also in that instant, the only
thing that mattered to me was getting to my wife. I scrambled up to
my feet and started back across the yard, heading toward the
lighted path.

Ahead of me was the back of the house. In the
shadows of the screened-in porch was a slanted bulkhead. I hadn’t
noticed it earlier, but from this angle it was an obvious
protrusion extending out from the foundation. I could see light
seeping out between the crack where the doors split, and I wondered
to myself if it was an entrance to the basement.

I didn’t have to wonder for very long.

I’d made it all of five steps across the lawn
when the left hand door of the bulkhead pushed upward then fell to
the side with a heavy thump. Light poured out of the opening, and a
second later, the right hand door flopped over. Finally, the
silhouette of a head popped up. It was slowly followed by a shadowy
pair of shoulders and then a torso, as what appeared to be a
potentially very large man came up from the depths of the
cellar.

In my single-minded quest to shut down the
generator, I hadn’t given any thought to what would happen once I
did, other than bringing an end to the torture. I didn’t even
consider that the monster that was doing this would come to
investigate. I suppose in the back of my mind I was counting on Ben
to have subdued him by now, but the truth was, I didn’t know how
much time had actually elapsed. Ben might not have made it into the
cellar yet, and in fact, there might not even be an interior
entrance at all.

My first thought was to run in the opposite
direction and hope that I could skirt around the large shed,
avoiding him altogether. Unfortunately, my body wasn’t taking
orders from my rational brain.

My gut, however, was a different story. It
was back in full control, and it issued its own set of commands.
Fear and anger joined forces, requesting an immediate adrenalin
dump from my nervous system. Free of ethereal influences for the
moment, it complied post-haste. As the hormone injected itself into
my bloodstream, I let out a bloodcurdling scream and rushed forward
as fast as I could.

The man looked up, obviously startled as he
saw me barreling toward him. He hadn’t quite reached the top of the
stairs when I took my final step, launching myself into the air for
the last few feet. He let out a surprised yelp followed by a heavy
groan as I slammed full force into him.

He stumbled backward down the stairs,
flailing his arms and grabbing at the stone wall. I glanced off of
him, ramming my shoulder into the opposite wall and then fell to
the second stair with a heavy thud. I was stunned, but then so was
he, or so I thought. As he continued stumbling backwards, I pulled
myself upward then pushed off against the wall, throwing myself
into him again.

This time, he was much more prepared and
threw a large arm up to block my attack. He managed to regain his
balance just as I struck and pressed his huge forearm out against
my chest. Upon impact, the air was forced from my lungs in a
violent huff. With an almost animal-like growl, he thrust his arm
to the side, flinging me down the stairs to the slab floor.

I hit hard, rolling across the rough concrete
and landing in a heap. I was fighting to catch my breath, and a few
more new pains were added to the smorgasbord of aches my body was
experiencing. I rolled to the side and looked up, seeing that the
man had fully regained his balance and was coming back down the
stairs. I’m not sure if it was the angle at which I was seeing him,
the damage he had just inflicted, the situation, or all of the
above, but he looked huge. He was certainly taller than Ben, and I
was sure half again as broad. Suddenly, my original thought about
running the opposite direction was looking far better than the
option I had chosen.

I pushed myself up to my hands and knees as
he lumbered down the last stair. As my head came up, I looked
across the dim cellar and saw a nude woman bound in a chair. Her
feet were positioned in buckets, and she was covered in bleeding
wounds. There was a set of what appeared to be jumper cables
clamped to her, one lead attached to her left hand, the other
biting into the flesh of her right, upper arm. Her head was lolled
to the side, but I couldn’t tell if she was dead or merely
unconscious.

The giant wasn’t interested in letting me
find out. Before I could pull myself to my feet, a massive hand
clamped around the back of my neck. I swear I could feel his thumb
and fingers almost meeting one another as they wrapped around to
press into my throat. I felt myself lifting upward, and before I
knew it, I was completely suspended several inches above the
floor.

I couldn’t see him, but I was kicking as I
hung there, swinging my legs in an attempt to inflict any kind of
damage I could, which considering the situation was probably none.
With a hard thrust, he tossed me forward, and I smashed against a
metal storage unit.

Rusted coffee cans, jars, and countless other
unidentifiable items scattered across the floor with a horrendous
crash as the unit toppled. I came down hard on top of it, taking a
sharp blow to the ribs as well as hammering my forehead against the
edge of one of the shelves.

I was disoriented from the blow to my head,
and I was tangled into the now twisted braces of the shelving unit.
I struggled to pull free, but I felt like I was going to pass out
at any moment. I suddenly had a very bad feeling that I was going
to die. There were no two ways about it. I didn’t stand a chance
against his hulking size.

I heard a grunt and the sound of shuffling
feet behind me. Panic issued its own demand for adrenalin, and I
started frantically trying to extricate myself from the tangle of
bent metal. My left arm was free, and I sent my hand searching for
a weapon, anything at all that I could use to defend myself. It
brushed against something that felt like a handle, and I
automatically wrapped my fingers tight around it.

A moment later, I felt the large hand against
the back of my neck once again. Before he could clamp on, I
twisted, flailing my left arm out and swinging along with it
whatever it was I had managed to grasp. I had no way to aim, so I
simply stretched out as far as I could when I swung. As I rolled, I
saw the jagged end of a broken soda bottle raking across his
face.

He let out a pained roar and stumbled back a
half step. I let out my own yelp as I yanked my right arm free,
feeling flesh scrape against broken glass and jagged metal. I
continued to twist and tried to pull myself back to my feet. I only
managed to make it to a squatting position before he came at me
again.

I swung the bottle, but he made a lumbering
sidestep, and I barely grazed his arm. He grabbed my left wrist and
squeezed as he pulled me up by my arm. My hand opened, and the
bottle fell from it, clattering to the floor. His other hand
slammed hard into my chest, and I felt myself once again lifted off
the floor, literally swinging from my arm as he used it to pivot me
around. At the last moment, he let go, and I flew several feet.

Somehow, my feet touched first, and I tried
to backpedal but to no avail. I stumbled and continued with the
momentum, slamming my back into the door of an upright freezer. I
hit hard, rocking it back and falling to the floor in front of it.
The door swung open, and a good portion of the contents spilled out
on top of me. Abject horror welled up from the pit of my stomach,
as amid packages wrapped in butcher paper, was a woman’s severed
head, her clouded, dead eyes staring coldly back at me.

I broke my gaze away, looking up as the
shadow of the giant fell over me. His face was bleeding, and that
just made him look even more frightening.

I had nothing left. I couldn’t even bring
myself to move. I knew I was about to die, and it crossed my mind
that the Dark Mother hadn’t even bothered to show her face. If I
hadn’t been so paralyzed with fear, I might have laughed at the
irony. I’d been cheating Cerridwen for so long now that I’d grown
to expect her presence at every turn.

And now, at the moment I was about to finally
lose the war, she wasn’t even going to be here to usher me across
the bridge.

I closed my eyes and waited for the
inevitable. My heart was pounding in my ears, and I felt the hot
breath of the giant as he bent over me. After a moment, I heard him
shuffle away, and then I thought I heard whimpering.

I slowly opened one eye and saw him sitting
on the floor in front of me, a scant few feet away, a severed head
cradled in the crook of his arm. He was staring at it lovingly,
cooing and whimpering softly as he used his free hand to stroke the
hair.

I heard shuffling and slowly pushed myself up
and looked back to the stairs, my eyes drooping as I struggled to
remain conscious. Standing a few feet away was Ben, his pistol
stiffly aimed at the large man. My friend’s face was a mask of
sickened disbelief as he watched on.

I heard him slowly mutter, “Jeezus fuckin’
Christ…”

The sounds of footsteps thudded above us,
creaking on the floorboards in a strict, determined search pattern
as backup arrived and entered the house.

Monday,
October 7th

2:43 P.M.

St. Louis, Missouri

“I
still can’t believe
it,” Ben said, looking over at me. “She seemed like she was
okay.”

We were sitting on my deck, looking over the
back yard. Leaves were layered in a spotty carpet across the lawn,
piles built up here and there. A wheelbarrow and a pair of broom
rakes were still lying exactly where Felicity and I had left them
in a rush just a few days before. The cover on the compost pile was
thrown back, corner flapping in the gentle breeze. Again, just as
we had left it.

The sky was grey with a heavy stratum of
clouds. It had rained the night before, but it hadn’t been a major
storm front, just a quiet, gentle sprinkle.

A cold, endless, and depressing October
sprinkle.

The loamy smell of the damp leaves filled the
air, providing an earthy backdrop to the pungent aroma of our
cigars. I continued staring out across the lawn, absently thinking
about work I needed to be doing and finding a million excuses to
avoid it.