I expected Ben to have someone watching Roger’s house, and I had no idea whatsoever how I was going to handle the situation; therefore, I was somewhat surprised when the neighborhood seemed devoid of surveillance. Of course, that was just how it appeared on the surface.
The digital clock on the in-dash stereo had just flicked over to seven P.M. when I pulled down the Overmoor side street. Felicity had called me earlier to say the photo shoot was running late and that she probably wouldn’t be home until after nine. I didn’t tell her as much, but I was actually glad she’d be out late. I was certain that had she been present, she would have done everything in her power to talk me out of what I was about to do.
She can be very persuasive.
After a couple of slow passes through the subdivision, I rolled my truck to a stop behind the evergreen hedgerow we had used for cover the night before and switched off the engine. I waited in silence, my view of the house slightly obscured, and fought to gather the courage I desperately needed.
I had come here for a purpose. Roger had invaded both my vision and my nightmare. In the vision, he had demonstrated his overconfidence by taunting me and issuing a challenge. In my nightmare, he hedged his bet, playing on my fears in order to frighten me away. It might have worked had it not been for three haunting words-“Why, Rowan, why?” In every nightmare, Ariel Tanner appeared before me and asked that question. I had come to fear that most of all each time I drifted off to sleep, simply because I didn’t have the answer. I couldn’t tell her, “Why.” I couldn’t even tell myself because I wasn’t even sure what she was asking. As nonsensical as it seemed, something deep inside kept telling me that if this little girl died, it would be my fault. My fault because I hadn’t tried hard enough to find the answer to “Why?”
I was so deeply lost in my thoughts that my heart skipped a full beat when I heard the sudden tapping on my window. I snapped back from my distant stare with a startled jump and quickly turned. Carl Deckert was standing outside my window, hand raised as he prepared to rap his knuckles on the glass once again.
“Hey. How’s it going?” I asked with a smile as I rolled the window downward.
“Okay, if you like sitting around watching an empty house while a lonely old lady talks your ear off,” he replied. “If you don’t mind my asking, what’re you doin’ here?”
His answer told me why I hadn’t spotted the surveillance. They must have set up shop in the house across the street. The one whose occupant Roger had thought of as the “nosy old bitch.”
“Ben asked me to come out here and have another look at the place,” I spoke quickly, hoping he wouldn’t see through to the truth. “He wanted me to see if I could pick up anything else that might help.”
“Why didn’t he come with you?” he asked suspiciously.
I said the first thing that popped into my mind, and it actually sounded pretty good. “He said something about keeping that FBI agent busy, so she wouldn’t get in the way.”
“Yeah, those two are a piece of work,” he grunted. “She was there waiting for him this morning. They still hadn’t stopped chewing on each other when I left. I guess he probably just forgot to tell me you were coming.”
“Could be,” I said aloud, while inside my head I was saying, “Don’t call him. Don’t call him.”
He grinned and nodded, “Yeah, that’s probably it. Hell, this guy’s not gonna show up here anyway. You want me to go in with you?”
I breathed an inner sigh of relief. “No. That’s okay. I’ll be all right by myself.”
Detective Deckert gave me a slight shrug as I climbed out of the truck’s cab and shut the door. “Suit yourself. I’ll be right here across the street if you need me.”
I nodded my head as I reassured him, “I’ll be fine.”
The interior of the house was much as it had been the night before with the exception of the dark grey fingerprinting dust coating various surfaces. The lights were off, and the few shafts of the setting sun that managed to filter in between gaps in the heavy drapes harshly illuminated small slices of the room, casting the rest in hard-edged oblique shadows. I pushed the door shut behind me, cutting off even more of the external light and symbolically sealing myself into the eerie dwelling.
The expected pain augered itself up my spine and into my skull the moment I set foot in the house. I stumbled for a moment and then steeled myself against further onset of the agonizing sensations as I moved farther into the room. I wouldn’t be able to stop the pains from coming, but at least I could be ready for them.
A burning fire like molten lead filled my body, and my skin felt stretched and tortured by countless pinpricks as my hair seemed to come to life, stiffening to create endless waves of gooseflesh. My eyes were watering, and thin streams of tears began flowing down my face. I staggered against the blinding pain, peering through clouded eyes, and forcing myself to move farther down the hallway.
Unearthly screaming filled my ears as I pressed forward.
The amplified sound of jagged metal against a rapidly spinning grinder.
The mournful whistle of a teakettle.
The wail of a chainsaw.
Everything and nothing.
The piercing noise penetrated my bones, making me vibrate like a human tuning fork, and grew impossibly louder when I reached out for the basement door.
I grasped the tarnished handle tightly, refusing to let go even though it seemed to glow red hot, threatening to sear the flesh from my hand. Quickly, I jerked my wrist and flung the door wide, only to be engulfed in writhing ethereal flames.
Summoning my wits, I beat back the flames, denying their existence both with my mind and my voice. The imaginary fire vanished with a choked sputter, and I stepped forward through the open doorway, clinging desperately to the wooden railing until my feet finally met the dirt floor at the bottom of the stairs.
I stood staring into the darkness, concentrating on pushing away the violent spasms of pain while I waited for my eyes to adjust. There was a salty taste in my mouth, and my nose was starting to burn. I brought my hand up, and the lower half of my face felt wet and sticky. Slowly, I stretched my hand out into a thin shaft of light that angled purposefully down the stairwell, forming a focused stripe across the darkened floor. I could see that my fingers were covered in blood. My nose was bleeding.
A cleaver of pain buried itself between my eyes, insisting that it be allowed to split my skull and let my brains spill out. I was beginning to regret that I had come here without someone to back me up. My grasp on the physical world was weakening. The last thing I recall was that I’d told Carl Deckert I would be fine.
Fear.
Anger.
Fear.
Anger.
Surprise.
“ I didn’t expect you to come back.” Roger is speaking to me.
We are surrounded by darkness, yet we are awash in an eerie light. The little girl, clad in white lace, levitates near him. Floating weightless in the air. There is no visible means of support.
“ Sorry to disappoint you,” I return, and this time my words echo through the air instead of disappearing into nothingness.
He is standing no more than twenty feet away from me, dressed in a dark ceremonial robe. The hood is pushed back to reveal his face, and it lay limply across his shoulders.
“ I’m not disappointed,” he says. “Just surprised. I don’t know what you think you’re going to do.”
The little girl’s body is drifting about on a gentle breeze, bobbing up and down slightly, but never straying far from him.
“ Stop you,” I tell him evenly.
“ You can’t stop me,” he says. “I told you, she’s The One.”
“ Why are you doing this?” I ask.
His only response is a sour, demonic laugh.
Falling.
Screaming.
Silence.
“ Rowan, so nice to see you.” Ariel is standing before me. Beside her is the little strawberry-blonde girl, holding tightly to her hand.
“ Mister, why don’t you stop the bad man?” The little girl looks up at me with wide, sad eyes and then turns her gaze to the right.
I follow her eyes, looking far off into the distance. There is a grove of trees surrounding a small clearing. Centered in the clearing is a hooded, robed figure standing with hands raised high. Moonlight glints from an object held in those hands. Moonlight glints from an athame.
A small figure lies prone before the cloaked one. A small figure clad in white lace. Preened and arranged. Unblemished and virginal.
The scene begins to grow increasingly distant as trees erupt from the landscape, obscuring the view as they continued to appear, closer and closer.
Immediately before us, the earth trembles and begins to sink. Almost as quickly as the depression is formed, it is filled with water. The glossy surface ripples in the slight breeze, moonlight reflecting from it in a shimmering stripe. The ground continues to shake, and another stand of trees erupt skyward. The tall pines form a line before us, now completely obscuring the clearing and all but the smallest glimpses of the shallow lake.
I turn to the little girl. She is pointing at the sign. “What does it say, Mister.”
I look downward, following along her finger to the small white sign. Bold black capital letters spell out PLEASE DO NOT FEED GEESE.
“ Only you can save her now, Rowan,” Ariel’s lilting voice gently touches my ears.
I turn to her, and she holds forth her hand. In it, a tarot card. A tarot card known as The Moon.
She stiffens and the card flutters from her hand. Her eyes go wide and blood streaks down her dress.
“ Hey, mister, what time is it?” The little girl is talking to me. “What time is it? Hey, mister!”
I look up to the glowing, marbled disk of the full moon high above. Spinning around its face are the hands of a clock. I watch as the minute hand chases rapidly after the hour hand, overtakes it, then begins the race anew.
“ Hey, mister!” the tiny voice demands. “What time is it?”
Darkness.
A deafening, demonic chord.
The sound of water splashing violently.
I can’t breathe. My lungs are on fire, and the flames are licking up my throat. My chest feels heavy, and there is something tightening about my neck. The atmosphere feels thick and fluid around me. I want to gasp for air, but something is telling me I shouldn’t. My thoughts are beginning to cloud; my mind is turning murky and dark.
I open my eyes, flailing my arms in front of me. I so desperately need air. I need to breathe. The air is thick and murky. It stings. I catch a distorted glimpse, rippling and blurry, of the full moon above. It is all that I can see. All except for one thing-a pair of murderous grey eyes.
My world begins to fade.
Twilight.
An endless scream, “Why, Rowan, why?”
Darkness.
Falling.
Impact.
I refused to go to the hospital. My head was still throbbing, and I needed to clean myself up, but I was firmly convinced that there was nothing wrong with me that couldn’t be fixed by getting away from this house and drinking a cup of willow bark tea. I had to voice my protestations several times, each with increasing fervor, but eventually Deckert, the paramedics, and the uniformed officer resigned themselves to the fact that I had made up my mind.
From what Detective Deckert told me, he had started growing concerned after I had been inside the house for little more than an hour and had come over to have a look. He searched the rooms on the ground level and finding them empty, assumed I had gone into the basement. I’ll never forget the look on his face as he came to this point in the story and announced, “This is where it starts ta’ get kinda weird.”
Acting on his assumption, he headed for the basement stairs, only to find the door jammed tightly shut. The handle seemed almost frozen in place, and he couldn’t turn it no matter how hard he tried. He said he called out to me several times but never received an answer. Thankfully, growing even more concerned, he went to his car to obtain a tire tool with which to pry the stubborn door open.
“So this really cold wind came rushing up the freakin’ stairs the minute I got the door open,” he told me, eyes wide as he continued his story. “And I woulda’ swore I heard someone laughing. Y’know, evil, like from one of those horror flicks.”
He found me lying unconscious at the bottom of the steps, face down in the dirt and streaked with blood. He immediately called the paramedics, and I had regained consciousness around the time they arrived at the house.
It was already after eleven in the evening when we walked into the Major Case Squad command post. The last thing I remembered before having the latest vision was discovering that my nose was bleeding, followed by a pain resembling a Louisville Slugger being stopped by my face. The nightmare still resided somewhere in my grey matter but for some reason, had become only a ghost of itself, lacking in the crisp details of my other visions. I hoped that the dullness was only the result of the pounding headache that was still threatening to break free of my skull and that the specifics would come back into sharper focus once it subsided. One thing I knew for certain was that I had witnessed something very important on that ethereal journey. Now I just needed to remember what it was.
Ben gave me a few moments to wash my face and down a handful of aspirin, in lieu of willow bark tea, before he hustled me into one of the smaller conference rooms. The look on his face was more than enough to tell me that the meeting wasn’t going to be a good one.
“Goddammit, Rowan!” No longer able to contain his anger, Ben ruptured. “What the hell were you thinkin’?!”
He had barely closed the door behind Deckert and Special Agent Mandalay. I doubted that it mattered whether or not he waited, since his voice surely carried through most of the police station anyway.
“I was looking for answers,” I returned meekly.
“Answers to what?”
“Why. The answer to why. In every nightmare, Ariel asks me why.”
“You mean why is this asshole killin’ people?” His voice had lowered in volume, but my answer only served to raise it again. “Who knows? Maybe he walked in on his parents screwin’ when he was a kid. Maybe his high school prom date stood him up. They’ve got a million excuses these days. Why’s it fuckin’ matter now? We know who he is.”
“It might not matter at all.” I dabbed at my nostrils with a tissue. The bleeding had long since stopped, but the phantom tingling remained, making me feel as though it was starting all over again. “That might not even be the ‘why’ she is asking… I don’t know… It could just be her way of keeping me from giving up.”
“Let me get this straight.” Agent Mandalay was still leaning against the wall, arms folded across her chest. Her studious gaze hadn’t left me since we entered the room. “You jeopardized this investigation because you think a dead woman is talking to you in your dreams?”
“I didn’t jeopardize anything,” I told her matter-of-factly, avoiding a direct answer to her question. “Roger Henderson isn’t going to return to that house and we all know it.”
“You really do.” She stared back incredulously, reading between the lines of my non-answer. “You think you’re communicating with a ghost or something!” She turned to Ben and gesticulated at me as if I were on display. “That’s it! Now I’m officially convinced that he needs a psychiatrist. I want him off this investigation now.”
Ben started to protest angrily, “Hold on a minute, I…”
“NO! You hold on a minute, Storm,” she insisted vehemently, “I want him out of here.”
“This is still my investigation, and I say he stays.”
“Not anymore. Pursuant to the federal kidnapping statute of nineteen thirty-two, this case falls under the Bureau’s jurisdiction. It’s my investigation now.”
“C’mon,” Detective Deckert tried to interject, “Rowan’s right. This fruitcake wasn’t comin’ back to the house. It was a long shot and we knew it. I tell ya’, something real strange was happening in that place.”
She wheeled quickly around to face him. “Maybe you need an appointment with a shrink, too!”
“You weren’t there,” he shot back, “besides, whattabout last night? Rowan told us where ta’ find the little girl’s dress and all that.”
“Lucky guess,” she stated flatly and turned back to Ben. “I’m calling in to the field office to let them know I’m taking over this investigation. I want him out of here by the time I’m off the phone.”
None of us spoke for a long minute after Agent Mandalay stomped out of the room, slamming the door hard behind her. I winced slightly as the noise pierced my still aching head.
“Well,” Ben puffed out his cheeks as he sighed, “I guess that’s that.”
“I’m sorry, Ben,” I looked up from the floor. “For what it’s worth, I was just trying to help.”
“Hell, ya’ just gave her somethin’ else ta’ flex her muscles about,” he grunted. “She pretty much took over the investigation this afternoon anyway. Now she’s just makin’ it official.”
“I just wish I could remember the vision I had. I’m sure it means something.”
“Have you been able to remember any of it?” Deckert queried.
“Not really,” I answered. “Just something about not being able to breathe, but that could’ve been my own anxiety. I don’t know. If this headache would just go away…”
“Maybe if ya’ get some rest,” Ben volunteered. “You can always call me if you remember somethin’. You got my cell phone number.”
“Yeah, I can do that. I’m still sorry for causing all the trouble though.”
“Hey, no prob, white man,” he returned as he gazed through the thick window that was the top half of the door. “The dragon lady’s got nothin’ on what’s waitin’ out there for you.”
“Huh?” I gave him a confused grunt.
In answer, he simply pointed into the distance outside the window. I slipped my glasses back onto my face and stepped over next to him. Peering in the direction he indicated, I immediately saw what he was referring to.
Red hair tousled about, green eyes glowing harshly, and Irish temper fully aflame, Felicity was striding across the room.