I can tell that the shape is the stocky man I had seen upstairs. He is huddled over something on a long plywood and two-by-four workbench. The dirt floor is uneven and littered with trash. My legs feel like heavy, metal fence posts set securely in cement.
I try to move.
The man stops suddenly as if he hears something. He cocks his head to the side and turns it slightly. I stop my struggle to move.
He waits, listening intently.
I hold my breath.
Finally, slowly he turns back to his task. Once again, I try to move forward.
Mommy!
Daddy!
I’m so scared.
I’m standing directly behind him now. I can clearly see what he is huddled over. The nude, bound body of the little girl.
He pulls a tourniquet tight on her upper arm and then uses two fingers to slap the tender inner flesh in search of a vein. In his other hand, he expertly holds a full syringe. The needle glistens in the dim light.
Carefully he slips the needle into the vein. I can feel the stinging pinprick in my own arm.
Mommy!
Daddy!
A tiny plume of blood spurts into the syringe, mixing in a milky cloud with the other fluid. He drives the plunger forward. Slowly. Evenly.
“ You can’t stop me, you know,” he says without turning.
I know that he is talking to me.
He moves quietly to the end of the bench and tosses the used syringe into a bucket already overflowing with trash.
“ She’s The One,” he tells me. “This is her destiny.”
The little girl’s nude body is stretched out, loosely bound on the table, her denim dress wadded next to her. He reaches out and grasps it, crushing it into an even tighter ball. With an angry toss, he flings the faded blue fabric projectile across the room. It smacks against the wall with a muffled thump then slides raspily downward, slipping behind a pile of paint cans, and disappears.
“ You’re too late, Rowan Gant,” he says, turning to me. “You weren’t there to save Ariel Tanner, and you won’t be there to save The One.”
The last things I saw were his cold grey eyes.
“He said he had a headache a few minutes ago,” Detective Deckert’s voice began distantly and grew quickly closer.
“Rowan? Hey, Rowan? You all right?” Ben was looking at me questioningly.
I felt myself grab firmly back onto the physical plane and cling for dear life. My head was still throbbing, and the angry burn of Roger’s ethereal signature was maintaining its hold on my spine.
“Some expert,” Special Agent Mandalay’s voice reached my ears. “You ask him a question, and he passes out on you.”
“Shut up,” Ben barked at her without turning. “Rowan. You okay, man?”
“Yeah,” I returned weakly. “Sorry about that.”
“You went all Twilight Zone, didn’t you?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “What did you see?”
“Downstairs. In the basement,” I recited. “There’s a workbench. That’s where he kept her when he was here this afternoon. He’s keeping her drugged. You’ll find her dress behind some paint cans. Her blue denim dress.”
“Give me a break,” our resident FBI skeptic declared in exasperation. “He sounds like a tabloid psychic.”
Ben ignored her spiteful comment and instead, turned to one of the other officers. “Ackman. Check it out.”
We stood waiting quietly as the man carried out the order, disappearing down the hallway, then the basement stairs. After a few protracted moments, we heard him coming back up the wooden stairway.
“Hey, Storm,” he called as he poked his head through the doorway. “Better come have a look down here. There’s a wad of blue denim behind some paint cans, just like Gant said. Could be the kid’s dress.”
Ben turned to Agent Mandalay, and a smug grin spread across his face. “Show me one of your PhD’s that can do that.”
“So, don’t take this the wrong way or anything,” Ben began. “But there’s somethin’ I’m havin’ trouble understandin’…”
I was relaxing in my seat, eyes closed. Without opening them, I prodded him forward, “And that is?”
We were belted into his van and in motion toward my house, having only just left the scene. The evidence technicians had arrived soon after the discovery of the little girl’s discarded dress. They were still photographing, dusting, and bagging everything in sight when we finally chose to abandon hope of any immediate clues to her current whereabouts. A palpable sense of urgency surrounded them, and it was spreading like a rampant contagion through every member of the Major Case Squad. Even Agent Mandalay fell victim to its almost ubiquitous virulence. She had elected to remain behind at the scene with Detective Deckert while Ben provided my transportation home. Considering the volatility of one part Mandalay mixed with one part Storm, it was probably a good idea for them to be separated for a while.
After a full two hours inside Roger’s house, I had begun to feel as if there were nothing left of me to give. A verse from an old Blue Oyster Cult song kept running through my head in an endless loop- You see me now a veteran of a thousand psychic wars. My energy is spent at last, and my armor is destroyed… Funny how things like that seem to drift in from nowhere.
Even at that, none of them was in any bigger hurry to stop Roger and save this little girl than I was. I would have gladly stayed longer, no matter how I felt, but the final decision hadn’t been left to me. Ben ordered me to go home, and since I had come with him, he was seeing to it personally that I was returned safely. Deckert had seconded the motion, and Agent Mandalay took no convincing whatsoever. She was happy to see me go, though after the incident with the child’s dress, I had caught her looking curiously at me across the room from time to time. But, of course, only when she thought I couldn’t see her.
“What I don’t get is this,” Ben continued. “If you could sense, or feel-or whatever the hell you do-all that bad ju-ju comin’ off just the house and stuff, then why couldn’t Ariel Tanner and the rest of her group pick it up from him? I mean he was right there in the flesh and all? Shouldn’t they have noticed somethin’?”
I wasn’t surprised by the question, and I was glad that he had waited until we were alone before he asked it. Knowing him as I did, that shouldn’t have surprised me either.
“Theoretically, yes.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, if I’m right, there are a couple of reasons why they might not have picked up anything from him,” I paused.
“Whaddaya want, a signed invitation? Spit it out.”
“Number one is the Expiation spell,” I continued, finally opening my eyes and sitting up a little straighter as he merged us onto the highway. “My guess is that he feels pretty good about himself once he’s absolved himself of the guilt. That would make him give off some positive vibes, so to speak. The positive energies would tend to cancel out the negative ones. You know, yin and yang, the great cosmic balance and all that.”
“Yeah, okay.” He nodded his head thoughtfully. “I can see that. Basically, it just tells me he’s a crazy fuck, and what he did to these women just doesn’t matter to ‘im.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“But why can you pick it up now?”
“He’s escalating,” I offered. “He’s cycling through the absolution and anger quicker as the time for the sacrifice draws nearer.”
“Have you figured out why he’s doin’ this yet?”
“No, unfortunately. I’m not sure that he even knows.”
