M Sellars - Harm none

“Can’t say a helluva lot for his taste in decorating.” Deckert was standing next to me. I hadn’t noticed him until he spoke.

“I know what you mean,” I answered with a small sigh and began massaging my temples. My head was killing me, and I knew it was only going to get worse before getting any better.

“You okay?” Concern crept into his voice as he rested a hand on my shoulder.

“Yeah, I’ll be okay. Just a headache.” I didn’t feel like trying to explain the concept of protection spells and ethereal burglar alarms at the moment. From what I had come to know about Carl Deckert over the past week, I was sure he wouldn’t cast a jaundiced eye upon me, but I wasn’t exactly certain he’d believe me either. It really didn’t matter anyway. I was the only one who had to deal with it.

“Probably all the excitement,” he volunteered in a fatherly tone. “I got some aspirin out in my car, if you want some.”

“Thanks,” I smiled weakly, “I might take you up on that later.” All I really needed to do was get out of this house, but I knew that wasn’t an option at the moment.

“Looks like you got a fan club,” Ben called to me from a few feet away.

When I looked over, he was motioning to a bizarre collage. The section of wall directly above the card table was haphazardly peppered with newspaper clippings regarding the murders. Upon closer inspection, several yellow marks could be seen streaking the newsprint, and each of them was highlighting my name.

“He knows I’m helping with the investigation,” I offered. “He’s just trying to…”

“Great intel, Storm,” Special Agent Mandalay’s sardonic tone pierced the even murmur of the other voices in the room to cut me off. “Did your expert get it from his crystal ball or something?”

“We didn’t have just a hell of a lotta time, ya’know,” Ben spit back. “Surveillance showed lights goin’ off, so we had ta’ assume he was in here. We had no way of knowin’ they were on timers.”

“Well I’m not impressed,” she returned.

“And what would you have done? Tapped his phone and sat around with your thumb up your ass?” His voice increased in volume by a notch.

“I would have made sure he was here,” Agent Mandalay raised her voice as well. “This place looks like it’s been empty for days.”

“No it hasn’t,” I interrupted calmly. “He’s only been gone a few hours.”

She turned and looked at me as if I were a small child butting in to an adult conversation. “The expert speaks!” she exclaimed cynically. “Why don’t you let the rest of us in on it. How do you know he was here a few hours ago?”

“I can feel him,” I answered her barbed question simply. “He had the little girl with him.”

In an exaggerated motion, she tossed her head back, rolled her eyes, and then let out a loud, frustrated breath, “I suppose you can feel her too?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. I can feel her fear.”

“You ARE kidding. Right? This place is abandoned. Just look around you.”

Before I could answer, a surge of blinding pain bit viciously into my skull like a white-hot poker. As long as I was inside this house, my foothold in this plane of physical realities was shaky at best, and the sudden stabbing affectation was all it took to knock me over the precipice. I winced internally as the pain struck again, and I tumbled backward into the darkened abyss of the recent past.

Fear.

Confusion.

Pure, unbounded terror.

The terror of a small child.

A dark figure. Stocky and thick. Brimming with exaggerated excitement. I can smell a mixture of emotions in his profuse, oily sweat.

His excitement.

Her fear.

His anger.

Her terror.

He enters the room hurriedly. He’s holding a loosely wrapped bundle. A tattered blanket, stained and filthy with abuse and neglect. It encompasses a limp mass. Apparently, there is some weight to the bundle as he struggles to shift it while he wrestles with the door. Using his knee, he pushes the door shut then turns and backs against it, forcing the latch to pop into place. He jerks slightly, and a tiny hand falls into view from beneath the unclean shroud. The tiny hand of a frightened little girl.

It doesn’t matter. He’s inside now. He’s certain no one saw him carry the bundle in. They are all at work. All of them. Even the prying old bitch across the street is gone. He made sure of that before getting the bundle from his trunk.

Maybe he should have killed her, he thought. The old nosy bitch.

No.

No. She was too close to home. The police would have been crawling all over the place, and that might have disrupted the Ritual. His chance to sacrifice The One. Besides, she was too old. Her age-spotted skin hung loosely from her skinny frame. He could see it in his mind.

Whenever she waved at him from her yard, it would flop and flap like a banner waving in the breeze. No. Her skin was definitely too loose. He couldn’t practice on someone with loose skin. That would never properly prepare him for The One.

The One would be young. Her skin elastic and unblemished. Not wrinkled and flaccid.

The One.

She was resting in his arms right now. This very moment. He was so very pleased to have found The One.

Bright, glaring lights flared suddenly, burning like flash powder ignited in direct contact with my eyes.

Mommy!

Where is my mommy?!

I’m so scared.

It’s very dark. My eyes still sting from the flare of light. There seems to be a dim glow coming from just behind my head, but I’m not sure. It may only be a phantom image.

I can feel the little girl’s presence in the room. Her fear. Her mental cries for her mother. Still, I can’t see her.

My eyes are beginning to slowly adjust to the murky light. I’m in the basement. I can barely make out a shape across from me. It appears to be moving.

My eyes adjust some more.

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.