M Sellars - Never Burn A Witch

I crumpled the empty paper cup and stuffed it into my coat pocket then turned my back to the frigid wind, seeking what shelter I could alongside the glassed-in foyer that jutted from the front of the building. With cold-numbed hands, I slipped the cellophane from a Cruz Real #2 and neatly guillotined the end. A thick swoosh sounded behind me as the sluggish metal-framed door was forced open, and I heard heavy footsteps squeakily crunching in the snow.

“Still hooked on those Mexicans, eh?” Ben’s voice met my ears, the words making a weary jab at my choice of cigar brands.

The match I held cupped in my hands flared to life, and I touched its fire to the cigar clenched between my teeth. Staring into it, I felt myself becoming mesmerized by the tiny flame. A hot knife dragged down my spine, and I closed my eyes tightly, forcibly willing away the vibrant Technicolor flashes of my recent vision.

“I guess you could say that,” I answered as I turned and shook out the nearly spent wooden match.

He had just finished paring the end from his own smoke and now tucked it into the corner of his mouth before burying his hands into his pockets. “One good thing ‘bout this freakin’ blizzard,” he mumbled, “the bastard’s prob’ly snowed in just like the rest of us.”

“Probably, but I wouldn’t count on that stopping him for long.”

“Yeah. Great. Bust my bubble why don’tcha.”

We stood in silence, listening to the relentless pattering of the falling snow. Ben shielded the end of his cigar with large hands and lit it purposefully, taking time to remove it from between his lips and inspect the glowing tip once he had extinguished the lighter. Satisfied, he placed it back in his mouth and gazed out across the white-blanketed parking area. Of the three vehicles on the lot, his van was the least buried. The other two seemed to be no more than huge shimmering dunes cast in soft blue shadows.

Directly across the street, the backside of the building that housed City Hall was a dim, hulking shadow in the night. Catty-cornered from where we stood, a small coffee shop was all but obscured by the downward streaming curtain of ice crystals. A short distance behind it, the lights of the indoor ice arena that was home to the Saint Louis Blues hockey team cast an upward glowing halo. No sound was issuing from the nearby highway, and it seemed that even the police headquarters, which dominated most of the block, had fallen silent and still.

“So, Red Squaw was pretty upset, huh?” he finally asked.

“Yeah, she was. Scared mostly, but she’s okay now,” I replied. “What about you?”

“Whaddaya mean? I’m fine.”

“Yeah. Right,” I returned, sarcasm flowing through my words. “You put up a good front, Ben, but you aren’t fooling me. I know for a fact that what happened in there scared you. I could feel it then and I can feel it right now.”

A nervous laugh emitted from between my friend’s clenched teeth. “Yeah, well, you’re wrong. I wasn’t scared. I was more like fuckin’ terrified if you wanna know the truth. When ya’ went all Twilight Zone in there, I just kept thinkin’ about that whole deal last time… Last summer… Ya’know what I’m sayin’?”

I allowed my mind to wander for a moment, recalling the incident to which he referred. In an almost reckless attempt to identify a sadistic killer, I had channeled the last living moments of his second victim, a young woman named Karen Barnes. I could still feel the same tortuous pain she had felt when the killer physically ripped her beating heart from her chest. My own heart had gone still that day, and had it not been for the actions of Felicity, it would have remained that way.

I shuddered inwardly and pushed back the horrific remembrance. “Yeah, Ben, I know what you’re saying. I was a little on the ‘fucking terrified’ side myself.”

“I didn’t hit ya’ too hard, did I? I mean… Well I wasn’t quite sure about what ta’ do.”

“No. No, you didn’t,” I replied and then added, “But remind me never to make you angry.”

We both let out a light chuckle, and the sea of tension ebbed, if only for a brief moment.

“You can still feel ‘er or whatever, can’t you?” He asked, glancing sideways in my direction and squinting against the wind.

“Yes,” I admitted. “That’s why I came out here.”

“And it ain’t just her, is it? You pick up all kinds of shit the rest of us can’t see, don’tcha’?”

I nodded. “It happens.”

“All the time?”

“No, not all the time, fortunately.” I puffed on my cigar as I paused. “But enough.”

“Jeezus, white man…” He shook his head. “How do ya’ stand it? It’s gotta drive ya’ nuts.”

“How do you stand the things you see every day as a cop, Ben?” I asked rhetorically. “Just like you, I’ve learned to tune it out. But sometimes…”

An awkward pause rushed in behind my words to fill the void once more. Held fast by the chilled darkness surrounding us, it was cemented securely in place by our own fears of what we were facing. A thin streak of light danced hesitantly through the distant sky, spreading spidery tendrils and bringing an orange glow to the flat underbelly of the low-hanging clouds. Languid seconds flowed by, and finally a throaty rumble of thunder echoed in from the west, announcing the storm’s relentless advance.

When the wind blows from the West, departed souls will have no rest. The line of poetry drifted through my mind yet again.

“So what did Doctor Sanders find out?” I asked, forcing a minor redirection of the subject.

“She found soot and blistering in her trachea,” Ben answered. “That pretty much confirms she was alive when she was torched. Her shoulders were dislocated like you described. She had several torn ligaments and stress fractures. It was all just like ya’ said… Only other obvious thing was a few deep puncture wounds on ‘er back. She was only able ta’ find those because a portion of ‘er back was shielded from the fire by what she was chained to… Other than that, we’ll hafta wait on the lab stuff.”

“They called that pricking,” I sighed. “Witches aren’t supposed to bleed or feel pain, so it was believed that by stabbing them, the accusation could be proven.”

“That must not’ve been too effective,” he ventured. “Ya’ stick somebody, they’re gonna bleed.”

“They often used stilettos with retractable blades. Like a magician’s trick knife. That way there was no wound and therefore no blood and no pain.”

“They’d rig the test?”

“Of course. It wouldn’t do for them to be proven wrong after making a public accusation of heresy.”

“Yeah, but he didn’t rig this,” he protested. “She actually had wounds. Deep ones. Doc says she prob’ly woulda’ died from the internal injuries if he hadn’t torched ‘er first. She definitely bled an’ I’ll guarantee ya’ she had ta’ have screamed. I sure as hell would’ve.”

“He probably just assumed the blood wasn’t real and that it was an illusion. A spell cast by a consort of the devil. Any cries of pain were more than likely attributed to an attempt to trick him as well.”

“So even when this asswipe disproves his accusations with his own tests, he just changes the rules?”

“Correct,” I answered. “Once he accuses someone of heresy and WitchCraft, there is no reprieve. We’ll end up with a body.”

“Shit,” he muttered.

“You know, Ben,” I volunteered, “I hate to bring it up, but there is a relatively large and outspoken Pagan community in Saint Louis. Especially Witches and Wiccans. He isn’t going to have to look very hard for victims.”

He puffed quietly on his cigar then let out a long, frosty sigh before replying, “Yeah. Don’t remind me.”