M Sellars - Harm none

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.