“Sonofabitch! Goddammit!” Ben exclaimed at the top of his lungs. “That’s gotta be Street!”
Special Agent Mandalay and I could barely hear him over the cacophonous racket of the news helicopter hovering a frighteningly short distance from the balcony. We were all half-blinded by both the screaming wind and blazing spotlight, and I knew he could no more see into the aircraft than I could. However, if the Eyewitness News logo emblazoned across the side of the Bell JetRanger was any indication of the machine’s occupants, his intuitive guess was most likely correct.
I scooped up my coat from where he had allowed it to drop and quickly pulled it on as I made my way to the door. Ben had already barreled through the opening with Constance close on his heels and was now fighting to hold down the sheet that had earlier been placed over the still hanging corpse. By the time I pushed myself out onto the balcony to help him, Agent Mandalay was stiffly holding her ID forward in plain view and making angry motions with her free arm-vigorously indicating without any ambiguity whatsoever that the aircraft was to leave immediately if not sooner. The hostile bite of the manmade gale tore through my unzipped coat and buffeted the three of us wildly as it continued kicking up a cloud of snow from the overhanging watershed dormers. The intense spotlight burned across the balcony in a harsh antiseptic beam, starkly illuminating everything in sight, even the shadows. I was forced to squint and turn my head away from the glare while fighting to keep my side of the sheet pulled taut through the wrought iron railing.
By now, the raucous event had attracted one of the uniformed officers that had been guarding the door to the apartment, and he burst out onto the balcony.
“Get on the goddamned radio and call it in!” Ben screamed back at him over the maelstrom. “I want everyone on that chopper in handcuffs the minute it touches down!”
The officer gave him an animated nod to the affirmative and shot back through the door. A frigid zephyr suddenly tore upward and billowed out the sheet, threatening to rend it from my grasp. I hunched down and entwined my fist in the fabric, holding on so tight I could feel my fingernails biting into my palm.
“GET OUT OF HERE NOW!” Agent Mandalay’s shrill demand sliced through the cacophonous thudding to reach my ears as she continued to wave her free arm furiously.
Obviously, there was no way the pilot could have heard her command, but it was at this moment, he apparently elected to obey her pointed gesticulations. Either that, or someone elsewhere had told him it was time to go.
The brilliant spotlight suddenly switched off, and the pitch of the hovering craft’s engine rose with a rapidly increasing whine. Still seeing multi-colored spots before my eyes, I watched as the helicopter smoothly nosed forward then canted to the side and sped off and upward across the thickly clouded night sky.
I slowly began relaxing my grip on the sheet as I watched the winking, red and blue anti-collision lights of the craft shrink in the distance. My friend was staring after it as well, his face grim and temper seething. His heated glare was a textbook example of looks that could kill, and I was more than relieved that it wasn’t aimed in my direction.
“DAMMIT!” Ben exclaimed and hammered the heel of his fist against the top of the iron railing in a frustrated release of anger. “I just don’t believe that bitch!”
Constance was standing next to me on the other side, and I noticed that she had traded her badge for her cell phone. She held the device pressed tightly against her ear as she pushed her ruined hairdo from her eyes with her free hand.
“Yes, FAA?” she began speaking, “This is Special Agent Constance Mandalay with the FBI, Saint Louis field office. My badge number is nine-five-seven-four-dash-three-six-six. I need to speak with someone regarding an airspace violation…”
“I shouldn’t even hazard a guess at a time of death before I get an internal temperature,” Doctor Sanders informed Ben and Constance. “Not with her being exposed to the elements unprotected like that.”
“I can understand that, Doc,” Ben returned, “but if you can ballpark it, I’d really appreciate it.”
“Well,” she replied, “I can tell you this much. The wounds on her back and abdomen appear recent, and the bruising would indicate that she was alive when they were made. She’s definitely not completely frozen yet…”
I was standing across the room next to the gurney containing the woman’s body. I followed along distractedly with the banter between the coroner and the two law enforcement officers. Hearing, but not really listening to what was being said.
The sliding doors leading out to the balcony were now shut, and the temperature in the room was returning to something more bearable. While Doctor Sanders and her assistant were moving the corpse, I had mechanically removed my coat and unrolled my sleeve then slipped back into my tweed jacket.
Ben had turned up the volume slightly on the television when the Saturday night movie had been interrupted for a breaking news update. Brandee Street, her cameraman, and the pilot had been arrested all right-but not before getting the morbid video into the station’s hands. Even through the overblown colors of the malfunctioning set, you could easily make out Ben, Constance and me on the balcony of the apartment. We had fought a desperate fight, but in the end the sheet had fluttered enough to give at least a partial view of the woman’s nude remains.
We all stared silently at the picture as the talking heads behind the anchor desk identified us each in succession. It was all we could do to stifle disgusted sighs as they proceeded to tag us with a sensationalized nickname. A moniker that would unfortunately not only stick for some time to come but was also picked up immediately by every other station and newspaper in the bi-state area. We had been christened “The Ghoul Squad.”
The welts on my arm had continued growing, and my flesh was dappled with the full spectrum of colors normally associated with bruises-and a few unrelated shades as well. The itching was growing fiercer by the moment, and each time I tried to tend it, I would wince at the soreness my fingers awakened. I knew it was only a matter of time before the welts would turn into bleeding lacerations. Whoever was trying to get my attention definitely had it. Apparently, I just didn’t comprehend the message.
I stood, looking down at the shrouded body. The earlier emotions that had welled up inside me fought to return and I let them. I had never known this woman, but the sense of loss overwhelmed me as I stared mutely at her covered remains. My nose tingled with an acidic burn for a brief moment, and a single watery tear crawled from the corner of my eye to begin rolling across my wind-ravaged cheek.
“…at my office.” Agent Mandalay was speaking now. “If there’s anything you need, I can get it rushed through the lab in Washington.”
“I appreciate the offer,” Doctor Sanders replied. “I’ll be certain to call you if…”
I ignored the snippet of the conversation that had intruded on my sorrowful introspection. While they continued to talk, I knelt next to the gurney and then carefully pulled back the sheet and tugged down the zipper on the body bag. Absently I reached over to claw at my savagely itching arm, and the stiletto of pain that shot up to my shoulder reminded me of why I hadn’t done it sooner. I flinched and pulled my hand away then continued to quietly stare at the young woman’s lifeless face.
Sheryl Keeven’s strawberry-blonde hair was tousled about her head in a tangled halo, whipped there by the wind and elements. The thin poly-cotton cord was still snugged about her neck, visible against the blotchy contusions that surrounded it. I visually counted the loops in the slipknot. Then I counted them again. Both times the total ended in thirteen.
A hangman’s noose.
Her features were a grotesque mask of fear and pain, sculpted in life and frozen in death. Her eyes were locked open in an endless stare, showing the glassy, bloodshot whites where they had rolled upward. Gummy tape residue still surrounded her mouth. The wide swatch of silver duct tape that had once been there had eventually come loose but was still precariously attached by one small corner. The same kind of tape had been used to make several revolutions around her wrists. Her now exposed lips were parted to reveal the bulbous purple mass of her swollen tongue as it forced its way between them.
She had asphyxiated.
She had strangled to death while suspended by the neck with her arms bound behind her back. Hanging was simply another of the favored methods of execution used during the Inquisition. Its effectiveness had not waned over the years.
I closed my eyes, and the scene flashed haphazardly through my mind. I could see her struggling.
Fighting.
Kicking.
Wrestling to free her hands so that she could claw at the constriction around her neck, until finally, the lack of oxygen to her brain won out, and she slipped into darkness.
“I realize it’s the weekend but the sooner you can get the labs started the better,” Ben was saying in the background. “We’re still followin’ up the lead on the Roofies.”
“I can have samples ready to go to the lab first thing Monday morning,” the coroner replied. “But other than that I…”
Once again, I forced the distant conversation out of the forefront and focused entirely on the corpse in front of me. I knew how Sheryl Keeven died. I even knew the twisted reasoning behind why. What I now desperately wanted to know was who had killed her… And Kendra Miller… And Brianna Walker…
But what I wanted most desperately of all was for him to stop.
Without even thinking I reached out my latex gloved hand and laid my palm across her cold forehead. The connection that formed was as immediate and piercing as if I had just wrapped my hand about a frayed electrical cord. The jolt that followed exploded through my consciousness with blatant disregard for the here and now, ferociously replacing present with recent past.
Pain.
Why are you doing this to me?
I can’t stop crying.
The pain again.
Please!
Please stop stabbing me! Just take what you want and leave! Please!
I cannot scream.
There is tape across my mouth.
I cannot see.
Something dark covers my head.
The pain again.
“Sir?” the voice of the coroner’s assistant echoes in my skull. “Sir, what are you doing?”
I am so cold.
What is that hissing noise?
Paint?
I smell paint.
“Sheryl Renae Keeven, in accordance with the thirty-third question, in as much as you stand accused of the heresy of WitchCraft by another of your kind, and as you have admitted these crimes and remain still impenitent, and that on this day evidence of your heresies has been found in this very dwelling…”
That voice.
I am so cold.
I still can’t see.
Where am I?
Something is wrapped around my neck. It is uncomfortable. I can feel wind.
I cannot scream.
I want to scream.
“…In as much as you have been found guilty, and that you are damned in body and soul, you are hereby sentenced on this day to death. The sentence to be executed immediately and without appeal in the manner of hanging. May the Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on your soul.”
Guilty?
Sentenced to death?
Help me, someone! Please help me!
I don’t understand.
What is happening?
Why are you doing this to me?
I feel something brush my face, and suddenly my tear-blurred eyes can see.
Outside?
We are outside?
Black.
Black fabric.
Dear Mother Goddess, he’s a giant.
Someone please help me.
Wait…
He is picking me up. What is he doing?
Oh no!
The balcony?
He’s going to throw me off my balcony?
He’s going to hang me?
NO!
Someone please help me!
Black and white.
Collar.
Black and white.
Collar.
Black and white.
Black.
“Mister Gant?”
I looked up to see Doctor Sanders kneeling on the opposite side of the gurney and peering at me curiously across the open body bag. Her fingers gently encircled my wrist and held my hand out away from the corpse.
“You doin’ some of that hocus-pocus stuff, white man?” Ben asked from his position next to her.
I looked up at him and blinked. He and Agent Mandalay were staring back with mildly concerned expressions creasing their faces. My eyes were dry and itching, which told me I had been staring. My throat was parched and seemed almost obstructed by a hard lump. The welts on my forearm were on fire.
“Yeah…” I answered in a faint voice. “Yeah, something like that.”
“What did you see?” Constance asked.
The vision replayed in a sandpapery loop, abrasively dragging itself over and over through my mind.
Black and white.
Collar.
Black and white.
Collar.
“A priest,” I finally whispered. “The killer is a priest.”
“A priest?” Ben echoed. “You mean like a ‘bless me father for I have sinned,’ communion givin’ and all that jazz kinda priest?”
“I think so,” I croaked.
The pain from the ethereal markings on my arm had intensified twofold, and it was beginning to radiate up through my shoulder and spread dully through my torso. I knew without even looking that the welts were now full blown wounds.
“What do you mean you think so, Rowan?” Constance pressed. “What exactly did you see?”
Noting that I didn’t outwardly appear to be repeating the performance she had witnessed at the morgue, Doctor Sanders released my hand and proceeded to re-zip the body bag. I stood and backed out of her way, taking a moment to try and clear my head. The vision was there, but it was starting to blur, and I didn’t know why.
What I did know was that something definitely wasn’t right, and I was the only one who seemed to notice.
A sudden, heavy aching filled my chest and was paired with an acrid chemical taste forming on the back of my tongue. The bitter taste welled up through my sinuses, reminding me of the smell of bleach. I drew in a shallow breath and felt it gurgle in my lungs as if I had just blown through a straw into a glass of water. I reached up and loosened my tie even farther then fumbled with the shirt button at my throat.
I propped myself against the edge of a couch and watched on as the coroner and her assistant wheeled Sheryl Keeven’s body from the room. I tried to tell myself that maybe my connection with her was too intense. Maybe I was just experiencing a latent effect of the vision. After all, she had choked to death, and I had just channeled the experience. There were bound to be some phantom pains. Yes, that had to be it, I recited inside my head. If some distance were put between us, then the pain would surely stop.
“A collar,” I wheezed.
I sucked hard again, fighting to breathe, and the wet gurgle rattled deeper in my chest. This time not only did I feel it but faintly heard it as well. It felt like a car was parked on top of me, and I was beginning to gasp. The terrifying thought of a heart attack scrolled through my mind, and I quickly fought to dismiss it. No, I kept telling myself, this is just an aftereffect.
“Go on,” Constance urged. “You saw a collar… Like a clergyman’s collar?”
Ben had pulled out his worn notepad and was waiting patiently for me to give him something to scribble in it.
“Yes,” I sputtered and wheezed. “Black and white… like a priest…”
My voice was gurgling with an odd viscosity, and what was happening was no longer my own private secret. Abject horror was unceremoniously paroled from its prison cell in my subconscious as I suddenly realized what was happening. My one greatest personal fear was coming to pass. I was suffocating. In the middle of a bone-dry, Saint Louis apartment, nowhere near water, I was drowning.
“Hey, Kemosabe…” Ben looked up from his notes with a cocked eyebrow. “You okay? You sound like you’re havin’ trouble breathin’ or somethin’.”
“I… I…” I panted damply.
I wrestled to beat back the terror that had just ignited within my body but met with only limited success. I could feel myself beginning to tremble as I tried to tell my friend what was happening. The words only caught in my tightening throat and bubbled back down into my lungs. Each breath was becoming more labored and shallow than the last. I sucked hard and was rewarded with nothing but pain. My chest was heavy, and what little air I inhaled felt horribly thick.
Humid.
Wet.
I was growing dizzy, and the room was starting to reel and spin slowly. My ears were ringing, and everything was taking on an unnatural contrast. Lights were blooming and shadows darkening viciously. Something more than my ethereal connection with this latest victim was definitely at work. I brought my hand up and clawed at my chest. I was toeing the harshly scribed line of panic, and I was teetering precariously close to the edge.
“Good God, Rowan!” Agent Mandalay’s voice distorted in my ears. “You’re bleeding!”
I cast my blurred eyes downward to see my gloved hand covered in bright crimson rivulets. I held it out from my body and inspected it groggily as blood dripped from the latex sheath. Heavy cramps racked through my upper torso, but I didn’t need them to tell me that the open wounds on my arm were the least of my worries at this moment. I let my hand drop to my side and stared back at Constance. I couldn’t breathe.
I needed to breathe.
“Hey!” Ben screamed as he ran to the door. “Get the Doc back in here right now!”
I was having trouble remaining upright. As my knees began to buckle, I slid from the arm of the sofa and barely caught myself before I reached the floor. My legs were weak, and a bizarre tickle was working its way along the back of my throat. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bring air into my lungs.
“I dunno what it is!” Ben barked at Doctor Sanders as she met him at the door. “I think he’s havin’ a coronary or somethin’!”
A rushing noise nudged the ringing from my ears and then was followed closely by a loud thudding as my heart hammered furiously in my chest. I opened my mouth and fought to beg help, only to form wordless, wet noises.
My legs gave way completely, and I went crashing to the floor. I could see Agent Mandalay’s lips form my name as she started toward me in slow motion. Ben and Doctor Sanders were angling at me with the same lethargic movements, rabid concern on their faces. The tickle in my throat began migrating upward.
My knees impacted, and I automatically thrust my hands out in front of me as I pitched forward. My eyes were beginning to roll backwards in their sockets, and I felt my back arch involuntarily. The tickle mutated abruptly into a spastic cough, and my body heaved violently.
Water.
Water exploded from my nose and mouth and spattered on the carpet in front of me. Reflexively, I gulped in air and felt it gurgle roughly through my body. A second brutal spasm rippled up my throat, and fluid once again erupted from my lungs.
Cool air rushed in to fill my chest as I coughed and sputtered. The tightness that had occupied that space only a moment ago had fled, and my breaths started coming easier with each passing second. I was still pitched forward on my hands and knees, and I merely allowed my head to hang and gratefully gulped in the desperately needed oxygen. My body still shuddered with the adrenalin tremors of nightmarish fear, and I felt like a small, frightened child.
Slowly, the pounding in my ears began to fade, and the room lights settled to an even incandescent burn, no longer wildly blooming and casting angry shadows. Finally, I heard my name being urgently spoken.
“Mister Gant?” Doctor Sanders questioned me. “Mister Gant? Can you tell me where you are having pains?”
I felt her hand on my back. I opened my eyes then lifted my head and glanced slowly around. Constance was kneeling to one side of me with Doctor Sanders on the other. Ben was standing a few steps from us looking deeply concerned and utterly helpless.
I was breathing raspily now, but the wet gurgle had disappeared. I could feel the fresh air washing through my lungs, and my heart was beginning to back down from its frantic pace. I started shaking my head as I bit off hungry breaths and struggled to stand up.
“Mister Gant,” Doctor Sanders spoke as she helped me to my feet. “Are you having chest pains? Any pains in your neck, jaw or left arm?”
I continued to shake my head and spoke between the welcome unrestricted respirations, “No. Not chest.”
“Jeezus, Rowan!” Ben exclaimed. “Did’ya just have ta’ puke or somethin’?”
“No. Water,” I sighed as I shakily seated myself on the arm of the sofa.
“You need a glass of water?” Constance asked.
“No.” I shook my head again and pointed at the soaked area of the carpet. My breathing hadn’t yet fully slowed, and I was only able to communicate in short, choppy sentences. “That’s water. Drowning.”
“Drowning?” she looked at me quizzically.
“Do any of you smell that?” Ben suddenly asked, wrinkling his nose.
“Now that you mention it, yes,” Doctor Sanders answered. “It smells like a swimming pool.”
I knew the chemical odor, to which they referred, to be coming from the fluid I had just expelled onto the floor. It was how I knew what had just happened. I had tasted it on the back of my tongue when this all began, and the smell was permeating my nose where the liquid had elected to make an exit. I was starting to settle now-somewhat-and I tried to explain further.
Sucking in a deep breath, I pointed again to the damp carpet. “That’s not vomit, it’s water. It came out of my lungs. I was drowning.”
“You were WHAT?” Ben exclaimed.
Doctor Sanders glanced back and forth between Agent Mandalay and Ben then knelt next to the wet patch. Cautiously, she touched it with gloved fingertips. After rubbing her fingers against her thumb to check the consistency of the substance, she apprehensively brought her hand up to her nose and sniffed.
“He’s right,” she said, looking up at the two of them. “This doesn’t appear to be stomach contents. It’s water. Heavily chlorinated water.”
“But how?” Constance asked. “You’ve been right here the whole time. How could you possibly get pool water in your lungs?”
I shook my head wearily and held up my blood-covered hand, “I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing from the same place I got these symbols.”
“Take off your jacket and let me have a look at that arm,” Doctor Sanders ordered.
“Jeez, Rowan, that’s way out there.” Ben shook his head as I complied with the doctor’s instruction. “I mean water just appearin’ in your lungs from nowhere?”
“I know,” I agreed with a nod. “Trust me, I’m as freaked out by this as you are.” Even now I was fighting an involuntary urge to tremble. Precognition, psychometry, channeling, even the stigmata were one thing, but this… This was beyond anything I had ever experienced, and I was at a loss to explain it. More than that, however, I was afraid of it and that made it even worse.
“You mean this isn’t something that happened because you’re a Witch?” Constance asked.
“Maybe,” I answered, using my explanation to direct my attention away from the rancid fear still slithering up and down my spine. “But WitchCraft is merely a practice and way of life coupled with a religion. Even though it’s not unusual to develop some level of psychic ability through meditation and all, conjuring matter into thin air is the stuff of myths and fairy tales.”
“What about your arm then?” she contended.
“As bizarre as it seems, stigmata aren’t unheard of. My body is simply reacting to an outside stimulus. Granted, in this case the stimulus is coming from the other side of the veil, but nothing was conjured or made to appear from nothingness.”
A muffled peal emitted from Ben’s coat. He thrust his hand into his pocket and withdrew his cell phone.
“Storm,” he answered tersely after flipping the device open. “…Deck? Where the hell are ya’? You were s’posed ta’ be here an hour ago… What? No. You ain’t serious?”
My respirations were now almost normal, and I sat quietly, allowing Doctor Sanders to treat my bruised and bleeding arm. Constance and I watched Ben, listening in on the one-sided conversation as the concerned M.E. tended to my wounds. She had been told about the original occurrence of the symbol, but this was the first time she had witnessed it for herself. However, after what she had seen that night at the morgue, she seemed to be taking this all in stride.
“…Damn!” Ben spat. The phone was now cradled between his ear and shoulder while he scratched in his notepad. “How long ago? Uh-huh… Yeah… Who called it in? Yeah… Okay, gimme that address again… Uh-huh… Yeah, Cherry Wood Trails. Got it. Uh-huh… Yeah, and Mandalay’s with us too… Yeah, we’ll be there as soon as we can. Bye.”
We stared at him expectantly as he ended the call and returned the phone to his pocket. He rested his gaze on me and sighed.
“What was that all about,” Constance asked.
“That was Deckert. I think I just found out why Rowan’s got two of those marks on his arm.” He lifted his free hand and smoothed his hair back.
“Well?” She raised her eyebrows and looked at him questioningly.
“Deck got a call while he was on ‘is way over here. Seems a security guard was makin’ ‘is rounds over at the Cherry Wood Trails condo complex, and he noticed the gate was open leadin’ in to the swimming pool. He went in and found one of those monograms spray painted on the side of the pool house and a Bible layin’ on the snowdrift in front of it.”
I spoke. “Victim number four.”
“They think so. There’s a hole in the ice.” He bobbed his head. “It hasn’t even started to freeze back over yet.”
“I was afraid that might be why there were two.” I nodded toward my arm as Doctor Sanders mechanically wrapped gauze around it and listened in. “But I ignored it again, and whoever is trying to talk to me resorted to the water…” I let my voice trail off as a spasm of the recent personal horror worked its way back into my thoughts.
“Is that what you meant earlier?” the M.E. questioned cynically. “You actually think the water was somehow mystically conjured into your lungs because of what the killer did to the latest victim?”
“No offense, Doctor,” I ventured, “but do you have a reasonable explanation for how it got there? Medical or otherwise?”
“Fluid can build up in lung tissue due to a variety of medical conditions,” she replied.
“Fluid heavily laden with chlorine?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. She just shook her head and continued taping the gauze in place.
“Jeezus, white man,” Ben mused with a loud sigh, “I thought I was gettin’ used to this Twilight Zone shit, but this…”
“Too weird,” Constance muttered.
“Yeah,” Ben echoed quietly. “What she said.”