Perfect Trust: A Rowan Gant Investigation (16 page)

“Not terribly. I just need to cast a
spell.”

“Cast a spell? I thought you guys didn’t do
shit like that.”

“No,” Felicity explained, “we
do
cast spells, just not the way
most people think we do.”

“So you’re not gonna whip out some bat wings
and crap like that, right?”

“Just some salt, Ben.”

She used the back of her hand to brush a
tousle of her feathery coif back from the side of her face, and I
was entranced as she let it linger there.

“Salt?” he queried with a shake of his
head.

“Salt.”

“Where are you gonna get salt?”

Felicity rummaged about in one of the many
pockets of her photo vest, and when she withdrew her hand she was
holding some individual condiment packets of the substance. “Not
exactly sea salt, but it’ll do.”

I felt a rush of excitement course through my
body, and my skin literally prickled with the energy of
overwhelming desire. I wanted to simply reach out and touch
her.

“You always carry that stuff around with
you?”

“Pretty much.”

“What, so ya’ can do shit like this?”

“No, not really. I just happen to like salt
and you don’t always get any when you order at a busy
drive-thru.”

I was beginning to have trouble containing
the intense burst of longing for the woman in front of me. I
couldn’t turn my gaze away, and if I continued to stare I was
certain to embarrass myself.

“Yo, Rowan!” My friend’s urgent and
concern-tinged voice slapped me hard in the face, breaking the
trance. I felt his hand on my shoulder as he started to shake me
lightly. “You all right? You aren’t goin’ all
Twilight Zone
, are ya’?”

“Wh-wh-what? No… No, I’m okay,” I managed to
stammer as I blinked.

I had no idea what had just happened. I did
know that I wasn’t about to tell the two of them that I had been
standing there having some sort of disconnected, uncontrolled
psychosexual fantasy about my wife’s hair. That was odd enough in
and of itself, but considering where we were and what we were
supposed to be doing, I was certain they would have me committed
immediately. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t blame them if they
did.

I was, to say the least, more than a little
disturbed by the incident, but I tried not to let it show. I made a
mental note to mention it to Helen Storm during my next session
with her. I was really beginning to wonder if my sanity had finally
fled in a futile attempt to save itself.

“Aye, help me out here,” Felicity demanded as
she struggled to move the wheeled table out from the wall.

Ben stepped over to help her, and after a
brief moment of mimicking her struggle, he located the parking
brake and released it. The two of them moved the gurney out and, at
my wife’s direction, centered it in the room before locking it down
once again.

“What else ya need me ta’ do?” Ben asked.

“I’m a bit disoriented,” she returned as she
looked around, trying to gain her bearings. “Which direction is
east?”

“Shit, ummmmm,” he muttered as he spun around
as well, slowly motioning his arms in various directions while
mumbling aloud to himself. “Clark runs east and west, building
faces Clark. Highway would be there… Headquarters…” he stopped and
pointed at a wall, “this way.”

“Okay.” Felicity nodded as she directed her
attention toward me and motioned for me to come over. “Rowan, you
come stand here, then.”

I did as I was instructed, still feeling
somewhat wistful at the sight of her and that auburn mane.

“Ben, you stand on the other side here,” she
instructed.

“Okay.” He moved into position. “What
now?”

“Just be quiet and don’t open that bag until
I tell you to.”

“This isn’t gonna get all hinky, is it?”

Felicity had already stepped behind him,
facing toward the east and was tearing open the salt packets. “Just
be quiet and do what I tell you to do.”

“Yeah. Great,” he answered in a flat tone
then mumbled, “Jeezus, I can’t believe I’m doin’ this.”

Felicity carefully began sprinkling the salt
along an arc as she walked slowly clockwise around us. She would
stop only briefly at each of the quarters—south, west, and
north—and give a slight nod of her head, silently acknowledging the
elements. By the time she made her way back around to the east, she
had emptied a half dozen of the small paper packets onto the floor
in a rough circle, leaving only a small opening unsalted. Though it
was not visibly perceptible, the energy of the purified barrier was
something I could easily feel.

In a fluid motion my wife moved smoothly
deosil—or clockwise—around us a second time. Holding her arms
outstretched, she moved silently until she was once again before
the small opening where she started. After a slight pause she
repeated the circuit twice more.

“What the hell’s she doin’?” Ben whispered
the question to me from across the wheeled table.

“Cleansing the work area,” I replied in my
own hushed tone.

As Felicity came to rest at the end of the
third revolution, she brought her arms down, around, and back up in
front of her as if gathering something unseen into a bundle. Then
she forcefully pushed her palms outward, casting the invisible
detritus she had gathered through the opening she had left just for
this purpose. Immediately upon completing this task, she sprinkled
the remains of a salt packet on the floor at her feet, effectively
closing the now purified circle.

“Is that it?” Ben voiced.

“Shhhh!” my wife warned as she remained at
rest—arms at her sides, facing east with her back to us, and her
head bowed.

He started to retort but halted before
uttering a sound as I slowly shook my head and mouthed the word,
“Don’t.” Instead he simply rolled his eyes and allowed his
shoulders to fall slightly.

I could sense that Felicity had fallen into
an easy rhythm with her breathing, taking deep lungfuls of air in
through her nose and exhaling softly out through her mouth. In an
almost symbiotic reaction, my own breathing slipped into time with
hers.

After a short meditation, she slowly raised
her arms from her sides, palms upward, then allowed her chin to
rise from her chest, bringing her face upturned toward the
ceiling.

“Lord and Lady spin about,” she began
in a quiet, singsong voice, “Watch over us this night throughout.
In the dark,
one
journeys
long, in search of answers hidden strong. Please guide him through
and guard his fate, for on this side, I shall wait.

“Please lead me through these passing
hours, and grant to
me
your
protective powers. For here and now are spirits still, kept at bay
by
my
own will. From head to
toe, above and below, watch over him as west winds blow. From earth
to air, sky to ground, keep Rowan safe and well and
sound.”

Chilled silence filled the room as her last
words faded. Ben stood staring at me, mute but questioning with his
eyes. I’m not entirely sure what he had been expecting to happen in
conjunction with this bit of SpellCraft, but he seemed almost
disappointed. His face visibly betrayed his reaction to what must
have been anticlimactic in a host of ways. The sort of letdown that
comes from seeing real WitchCraft firsthand, but only after first
being saturated with years of too many Hollywood special effects
and inaccurate portrayals by the entertainment industry.

I couldn’t place all of the blame in their
laps, however. Even though they were only partially connected with
my spiritual path, one could be certain that the bizarre psychic
phenomena that seemed to plague me on a regular basis had helped to
cloud his perceptions as well.

“Like I’ve told you before,” I whispered in
answer to his unasked question, “casting a spell for a Witch is
pretty much just like praying is for a Christian.”

Felicity had left her station at the eastern
point of the circle and had now sidled up next to me. I felt her
right palm press against my own and her fingers intertwine with
mine in a vise-like grip. Immediately I felt the chaotic energy
within my body connect with hers as she took firm hold of my
ethereal self. She simply ignored my own earthly bond, fleeting and
tenuous as it was, and forcibly grounded me through her own solid
coupling with this plane of existence.

She looked into my eyes, silently daring me
to even try letting go of her hand, and then glanced over to Ben
with a look of extreme concentration furrowing into her brow.

“Aye,” she said with a nod.
“
Now
you can open
it.”

If nothing else, I was most definitely no
longer fantasizing about my wife’s hair.

The malodorous stench of decay spewed outward
in a cloud of invisible but uniquely vile smelling gases. They
escaped the body bag in an instantly rising plume that marched
lockstep directly behind the zipper pull as Ben tugged it open.

The noxious vapor forced the three of us to
cough and twist our heads away as it pushed its way into our
nostrils. I felt a column of bile searing upward in my throat, and
I swallowed hard to force it back into the depths from which it
came. My churning stomach did a somersault and twisted into a tight
knot as it threatened to evacuate what little contents it held.

I shifted my watery-eyed glance between Ben
and Felicity and saw that they were in no better shape than me. My
wife was seriously green, and Ben’s head was cocked away with his
eyes tightly shut. He had already seen this at least once, and he
didn’t appear to be particularly interested in a repeat
viewing.

“Awww, Jeeeezzz…” my friend’s voice trailed
off as he mumbled.

Two months, fluctuating temperatures, and
even some of nature’s children had been hard at work on the earthly
remains of Debbie Schaeffer. What was left of her body was still
clad in the tattered leavings of a pair of blue jeans and a
sweatshirt that bore the partial logo of Oakwood College.

The clothing had already begun along the same
journey of decomposition as the rest and was heavily stained with
the purge fluids that escape the confines of the flesh during
decay. The fibers had already begun to break down in places,
creating large holes in the garments. One side of the sweatshirt
was particularly desiccated, revealing a substantial portion of her
ribcage and even some remaining mold-covered flesh. One running
shoe still hugged the remnants of her right foot, but the other was
gone, leaving the left exposed and skeletonized within the
disintegrating weave of a white cotton sock.

I suddenly remembered having once seen a
cable television documentary about forensic pathology and a place
in Tennessee nicknamed “The Body Farm.” While a plot of land where
decomposing human cadavers are studied wasn’t exactly high on my
list of things to recall, the sight before me triggered the
forgotten memory and a handful of facts returned to the forefront
of their own accord.

What came to me immediately was the
recollection that there were basically five states the human body
would go through post mortem—fresh/autolysis;
bloating/putrefaction; wet decay/skin slippage and fluid purging;
dry decay/partial mummification; and finally, skeletonization.

This young woman’s remains represented at
least four of these five stages, and they were fully embroiled in
seeing the process through to its conclusion. At the moment the
gelid atmosphere of the cold room was holding them off only
slightly, which is what triggered the next arcane factoid to bubble
up from the depths of my memory—any and all of these stages could
be hindered or hastened by a wide variety of factors such as
temperature, humidity, and even body type.

Debbie Schaeffer had been dumped in the
woods, fully clothed, and wrapped in plastic sheeting. To the best
of the medical examiner’s determination, it had been sometime
around the end of October or beginning of November. The
temperatures had ranged from well below freezing, right up into the
sixties and even seventies over the past two months. Rain had
fallen. Sun had shone. Opportunistic predators from mammal to
insect had come and gone. Mother Nature had worked to reclaim what,
in the end, rightfully belonged to her.

This young woman had literally become a
self-contained forensic pathology specimen suitable for inclusion
in a textbook. I had to consciously remind myself that she had once
been whole and full of life, not the putrefied and skeletonized
mass I was seeing before me now. The visual evidence didn’t make it
easy.

“Jeeeezzz, white man,” Ben sputtered. “Ya’
wanna do your thing so we can close this up. I’m about ready ta’
spew.”

His words rattled in my ears and
registered as little more than background noise because I was
already
doing my
thing
.

A calm like I had not felt in more than a
year fell over me. I had all but forgotten what it felt like to be
fully and completely grounded. I squeezed Felicity’s hand tight and
basked in the vibrant flow of energy passing between us. Almost
instantly I found myself wishing I could remain this way
indefinitely.

I drew in a deep breath and sputtered as I
immediately regretted the action. After a quick shake of my head, I
pulled myself back together and focused on the task that brought me
here.

Slowly, I brought my free hand up and reached
outward. I could feel a growing static electricity-like attraction
flowing between Debbie Schaeffer’s remains and me. The ethereal
magnetism took hold, and like the opposite poles of magnets, it
sucked my palm downward until it brushed against a tangled mass of
blonde hair that had pulled away from the skull.