M Sellars - Never Burn A Witch

“A few smudges on the sliding door. Nothing of any consequence. There’s a Bible out there, King James Version. Hardback, like you’d find in just about any bookstore. It’s bagged.”

“Was it marked in any way?” I questioned while pawing at the insistent itch on my forearm.

“Yeah,” the tech said with a nod as he referenced a sheaf of papers attached to a worn clipboard. “Plain Jane cardboard bookmark. Looks like a standard yellow hi-liter was used on a passage in the book of First Samuel. Chapter fifteen, verse twenty-three. For rebellion is…”

I interrupted and finished the passage for him. “…As the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king.”

“Yeah. That’s it,” he acknowledged, the paused and nodded toward my absently clawing hand. “Something wrong with your arm?”

“Trust me,” I answered. “You don’t really want to know.”

“Anything else?” Ben queried, cutting him off before he could comment.

“Well, the rope looks like regular utility clothesline you can get at any hardware store. We’re gonna check it out. The symbol on the door was spray-painted. We took samples. That’s about it.”

“Okay, thanks.” Ben gave the tech a quick pat on the shoulder. “Do me a favor, will ya? Check downstairs and see if the coroner is here yet. I wanna get this body moved as soon as possible. The uniforms can’t hold off those reporters down there for much longer, and we really don’t need ‘er showin’ up on the ten o’clock news.”

“Will do.”

“Thanks.”

The technicians were barely out the door when Ben turned to me with a concerned gaze. “What’s goin’ on with the arm? I thought it was all healed up.”

“It was,” I answered and began tugging off my coat. “But it started itching again earlier this evening.”

“Why do ya’ think that is?”

“Well, obviously I’m being told something. Maybe I was being warned about this murder.”

“Ahem.” Constance mimicked the earlier noise made by the tech to grab our attention. “You guys want to fill me in? What’s wrong with your arm, Rowan?”

“Show ‘er, white man,” Ben told me.

He held my coat and jacket for me after I wrestled out of them, and I proceeded to unbutton my cuff and roll back the shirtsleeve. There was no blood soaking through the fabric, so it apparently had not yet progressed as far as it had the last time.

Agent Mandalay stepped closer to have a look as I finished peeling back the material and turned my forearm upward to bring it into view. The faint pink scar of the original wound was barely visible as a pale outline against my brightly flushed skin. The flesh of my forearm was hot and already beginning to take on shades of purple and blue as the unseen force bruised me. On the surface of my arm was a raised circular welt encompassing a large X bisected by a large P.

“Christ, Rowan!” Constance exclaimed as she reached out and gingerly touched my arm. “How in the world did that happen?”

“You shoulda seen the first one,” Ben interjected.

“I think it’s a sign from the other side,” I told her as I reached up and started to dig my nails in for a blissful scratch.

“Don’t,” she admonished and grabbed my wrist. “You’ll just make it worse. What do you mean a sign from the other side? I thought you saw things in visions or something?”

“I do,” I explained. “But communication from an ethereal plane can take different forms. I think someone is trying to tell me something, and I just haven’t figured out what, so they are getting a little insistent.”

“Damn, Rowan,” she muttered. “You’re like something out of a horror movie.”

The door to the balcony was still hanging wide open, and the temperature inside the room was spiraling toward equilibrium with the frigid night. Outside, a thumping echo sounded rhythmically in the distance. I realized as we were standing there that I was beginning to shiver.

“Guys,” I said between teeth that were starting to chatter. “It’s getting a little on the chilly side. Mind if I put my coat back on?”

“Wait a minute,” Ben insisted. “Look at your arm again. Does it look a little strange to you?”

“I think that’s already been established, Storm,” Constance told him in a sardonic voice.

“No, I mean look at the symbol,” he huffed in exasperation and directed our gaze with his finger. “It’s like a twin image or somethin’.”

“Twin image?” I asked.

I was so intent on what Ben was trying to point out that I scarcely noticed that the reverberating clamor outside had grown louder.

“You ever seen a coin that’s been double-struck?” he asked. “Like that. One image overlappin’ the other.”

“He’s right,” Constance agreed. “Look.”

Upon closer inspection, I could see exactly what Ben was trying to say. The welts that formed the itching Monogram of Christ on my arm were offset slightly over another similar set. The blemish was carefully enjoined to scribe two circles encompassing a matched pair of X’s bisected by P’s.

“Whaddaya think that’s s’posed ta’ mean?” Ben queried.

I didn’t get a chance to answer him. Just as I opened my mouth to speak, a violent rush of wind and icy snow blasted through the open sliding door. Outside, amid a thunderous din, the light of a small sun was born into the chilled darkness.

“Sonofabitch! Goddammit!” Ben exclaimed at the top of his lungs. “That’s gotta be Street!”

Special Agent Mandalay and I could barely hear him over the cacophonous racket of the news helicopter hovering a frighteningly short distance from the balcony. We were all half-blinded by both the screaming wind and blazing spotlight, and I knew he could no more see into the aircraft than I could. However, if the Eyewitness News logo emblazoned across the side of the Bell JetRanger was any indication of the machine’s occupants, his intuitive guess was most likely correct.

I scooped up my coat from where he had allowed it to drop and quickly pulled it on as I made my way to the door. Ben had already barreled through the opening with Constance close on his heels and was now fighting to hold down the sheet that had earlier been placed over the still hanging corpse. By the time I pushed myself out onto the balcony to help him, Agent Mandalay was stiffly holding her ID forward in plain view and making angry motions with her free arm-vigorously indicating without any ambiguity whatsoever that the aircraft was to leave immediately if not sooner. The hostile bite of the manmade gale tore through my unzipped coat and buffeted the three of us wildly as it continued kicking up a cloud of snow from the overhanging watershed dormers. The intense spotlight burned across the balcony in a harsh antiseptic beam, starkly illuminating everything in sight, even the shadows. I was forced to squint and turn my head away from the glare while fighting to keep my side of the sheet pulled taut through the wrought iron railing.

By now, the raucous event had attracted one of the uniformed officers that had been guarding the door to the apartment, and he burst out onto the balcony.

“Get on the goddamned radio and call it in!” Ben screamed back at him over the maelstrom. “I want everyone on that chopper in handcuffs the minute it touches down!”

The officer gave him an animated nod to the affirmative and shot back through the door. A frigid zephyr suddenly tore upward and billowed out the sheet, threatening to rend it from my grasp. I hunched down and entwined my fist in the fabric, holding on so tight I could feel my fingernails biting into my palm.