M Sellars - Perfect Trust

At the end of her impromptu analysis, she gave me a disarming smile.

“Don’t you need to show me some ink blots or play some word association games with me before you can draw that conclusion?” I asked.

“I tend to trust my instincts,” she chuckled. “It would appear that you have as many misconceptions about psychiatrists as the general public have about Witches.”

“So Ben told you about that.” I offered the words more as an observation than a question.

“Of course, not that he needed to do so,” she explained. “You have made no secret of the fact and therefore have attracted more than your share of media coverage from your involvement with the Major Case Squad.”

She was correct. I had been the hot topic earlier this year in both print and broadcast media. Among the headlines were such things as “SELF PROCLAIMED WITCH AIDS POLICE IN MANHUNT” and “POLICE SEEK HELP FROM PAGAN PRACTITIONER.” There was usually a picture of me to accompany the story, so my faith and way of life weren’t exactly secret. The worst, however, had to have been the moniker coined by a local TV station news team. Ben, FBI Special Agent Constance Mandalay, and I had been dubbed the “Ghoul Squad.” That one, along with a video clip of the three of us at a particularly gruesome crime scene, had even made it into the national media pipeline.

“So the Witch thing doesn’t bother you?” I asked.

“Should it?” She raised an eyebrow and questioned me as much with her gaze as her words.

“No.” I shook my head. “But it did take some time to convince Ben, so I assumed maybe you might be…” I let my voice trail off as I searched for the least offensive phrase.

“…Just as closed minded?” She offered the words to me. “My brother is peculiar that way.”

“I thought so,” I agreed. “Especially for a Native American.”

“Benjamin never truly embraced his heritage,” she told me. “Only on the surface, culturally perhaps, though not completely in that respect either. And especially not deep down. Certainly not at a spiritual level. I cannot fault him for it; he has his reasons. But I can easily see where it would seem odd to you.”

It was obvious by the way she spoke that she was intimately familiar with the history to which Ben would occasionally allude, but never reveal. Still, she didn’t offer any further details, so I didn’t ask.

I said, “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“You didn’t.” She shook her head and gave a slight shrug as she crushed out the remains of her cigarette. “With that said, however, what do you say we go inside and see if we can figure out just exactly what has been keeping you off balance as of late.”

The remainder of my time spent with Helen Storm was relaxing if nothing else. She was so easy to talk to that I actually felt calm and even partially grounded while we chatted in the comfort of her office. My earlier apprehension had melted quickly away, only to return for wholly separate reasons when the session came to an end.

While we hadn’t stumbled across any great revelations or uncovered any “ooga-boogas,” as she called them, lurking in my psyche, Helen felt that we had actually made some amount of progress. I just didn’t know exactly how much or of what type that progress was, and she didn’t elect to tell me.

Still, though it was hard for me to believe that simply talking with her for an hour could have such an effect, I wasn’t about to knock it. Without a doubt, I was actually looking forward to my next appointment with her.

“Jeezus fuck! I can’t believe this is happening!” an extremely agitated Ben Storm exclaimed as he came through my front door.

I’d barely managed to pull the barrier open in response to the repeated jangle of the doorbell that was coupled with an impatient knock. His six-foot-six frame was already in forward motion the moment I turned the knob.

“Well, hello to you too,” I said as I quickly sidestepped out of his way.

I was gnawing my way through yet another piece of nicotine gum and, for the moment, wasn’t feeling nearly as jittery as I had fifteen minutes before. I’d been home for several uneventful hours now and was actually in the process of throwing together dinner when Ben first assaulted the front doorbell. Felicity and I had intended to spend the evening going over our plans for the upcoming Yule ritual. Unfortunately, the frenzied tone of my friend told me that was about to change.

He completely ignored my jibe and using one of the handful of nicknames he’d assigned to my wife asked, “Is Firehair home?”

“Not yet, why?”

“Shit. She got ‘er cell phone with her?”

“Probably. What’s going on, Ben?”

“Well, we can’t wait, so ya’ better call ‘er and tell ‘er ta’ meet us. Make sure ya’ tell ‘er ta’ not even come home first.” He shot his hand up to rub his neck as he began to pace. “Jeezus she’s gonna freakin’ kill me for this.”

“Why not? Meet us where? What are you talking about?”

He didn’t seem to hear me and instead of answering simply muttered, “Dammit, white man, you are just too fuckin’ spooky.”

“BEN!” I exclaimed, raising my voice to capture his attention. “Would you mind telling me what the hell you’re going on about?”

He stopped and looked at me with a deadly serious gaze then shook his head. “Ya’know your little foray inta’ the world of sick poetry?”

“What about it?”

“Well the handwritin’ might not have belonged ta’ Paige Lawson, but it sure as shit belonged ta’ Debbie Schaeffer.”

“Debbie Schaeffer? Why does that name sound so familiar?”

“Because she’s been all over the friggin’ news. She’s the college cheerleader that went missin’ about two months ago.”

D-E-A-D-I-A-M!

D-E-A-D-I-A-M!

What’s that spell?

Dead I am!

Louder!

Dead I am!

One more time!

DEAD I AM!

The words rang inside my skull with painful clarity, and the exuberance of the morbid cheer was now sharply obvious. Ben didn’t need to say anything more for me to know that Debbie Schaeffer was no longer a missing persons case. Her legacy now belonged to homicide and the Greater Saint Louis Major Case Squad.

“Where should I tell her to meet us?” I asked quietly as I turned toward the phone.

I had no doubt it was going to be a very long night, in more ways than one.

My wife’s cell phone was either off or out of range, and based on the way her schedule often ran, I wasn’t exactly certain when she would be home. Ben seemed almost in a panic, edged with a sense of urgency that he’d thus far left a mystery. He made it clear that he wasn’t at all interested in waiting for her to call back, and he insisted upon us leaving immediately. Knowing him like I did, I elected not to press for any further explanation until his adrenalin level started to drop off. As much as I hated to, I had done the only thing I could and left a quick message on Felicity’s voice mail telling her to meet us at his house.

My keyed up friend was already navigating his van out of the subdivision before I could get fully into my seatbelt. The sun had fallen past the horizon almost an hour before, and the light of the waxing crescent moon was diffused into a weak halo by thin, wispy clouds that fell across it like a shroud of frost.

For some unknown reason, Ben cranked the van into a quick right turn onto the side street that was positioned diagonally across from our driveway. Considering where we were headed, I thought it odd since it wasn’t exactly the shortest route to the highway. Out beyond the windshield, darkness overwhelmed a no-man’s land of unlit asphalt that stretched at regular intervals between the streetlamps. I caught only a brief glimpse of motion as a vehicle came barreling toward us from one of the puddles of blackness.