M Sellars - Never Burn A Witch

Pain.

Why are you doing this to me?

I can’t stop crying.

The pain again.

Please!

Please stop stabbing me! Just take what you want and leave! Please!

I cannot scream.

There is tape across my mouth.

I cannot see.

Something dark covers my head.

The pain again.

“Sir?” the voice of the coroner’s assistant echoes in my skull. “Sir, what are you doing?”

I am so cold.

What is that hissing noise?

Paint?

I smell paint.

“Sheryl Renae Keeven, in accordance with the thirty-third question, in as much as you stand accused of the heresy of WitchCraft by another of your kind, and as you have admitted these crimes and remain still impenitent, and that on this day evidence of your heresies has been found in this very dwelling…”

That voice.

I am so cold.

I still can’t see.

Where am I?

Something is wrapped around my neck. It is uncomfortable. I can feel wind.

I cannot scream.

I want to scream.

“…In as much as you have been found guilty, and that you are damned in body and soul, you are hereby sentenced on this day to death. The sentence to be executed immediately and without appeal in the manner of hanging. May the Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on your soul.”

Guilty?

Sentenced to death?

Help me, someone! Please help me!

I don’t understand.

What is happening?

Why are you doing this to me?

I feel something brush my face, and suddenly my tear-blurred eyes can see.

Outside?

We are outside?

Black.

Black fabric.

Dear Mother Goddess, he’s a giant.

Someone please help me.

Wait…

He is picking me up. What is he doing?

Oh no!

The balcony?

He’s going to throw me off my balcony?

He’s going to hang me?

NO!

Someone please help me!

Black and white.

Collar.

Black and white.

Collar.

Black and white.

Black.

“Mister Gant?”

I looked up to see Doctor Sanders kneeling on the opposite side of the gurney and peering at me curiously across the open body bag. Her fingers gently encircled my wrist and held my hand out away from the corpse.

“You doin’ some of that hocus-pocus stuff, white man?” Ben asked from his position next to her.

I looked up at him and blinked. He and Agent Mandalay were staring back with mildly concerned expressions creasing their faces. My eyes were dry and itching, which told me I had been staring. My throat was parched and seemed almost obstructed by a hard lump. The welts on my forearm were on fire.

“Yeah…” I answered in a faint voice. “Yeah, something like that.”

“What did you see?” Constance asked.

The vision replayed in a sandpapery loop, abrasively dragging itself over and over through my mind.

Black and white.

Collar.

Black and white.

Collar.

“A priest,” I finally whispered. “The killer is a priest.”

“A priest?” Ben echoed. “You mean like a ‘bless me father for I have sinned,’ communion givin’ and all that jazz kinda priest?”

“I think so,” I croaked.

The pain from the ethereal markings on my arm had intensified twofold, and it was beginning to radiate up through my shoulder and spread dully through my torso. I knew without even looking that the welts were now full blown wounds.

“What do you mean you think so, Rowan?” Constance pressed. “What exactly did you see?”

Noting that I didn’t outwardly appear to be repeating the performance she had witnessed at the morgue, Doctor Sanders released my hand and proceeded to re-zip the body bag. I stood and backed out of her way, taking a moment to try and clear my head. The vision was there, but it was starting to blur, and I didn’t know why.

What I did know was that something definitely wasn’t right, and I was the only one who seemed to notice.

A sudden, heavy aching filled my chest and was paired with an acrid chemical taste forming on the back of my tongue. The bitter taste welled up through my sinuses, reminding me of the smell of bleach. I drew in a shallow breath and felt it gurgle in my lungs as if I had just blown through a straw into a glass of water. I reached up and loosened my tie even farther then fumbled with the shirt button at my throat.

I propped myself against the edge of a couch and watched on as the coroner and her assistant wheeled Sheryl Keeven’s body from the room. I tried to tell myself that maybe my connection with her was too intense. Maybe I was just experiencing a latent effect of the vision. After all, she had choked to death, and I had just channeled the experience. There were bound to be some phantom pains. Yes, that had to be it, I recited inside my head. If some distance were put between us, then the pain would surely stop.

“A collar,” I wheezed.

I sucked hard again, fighting to breathe, and the wet gurgle rattled deeper in my chest. This time not only did I feel it but faintly heard it as well. It felt like a car was parked on top of me, and I was beginning to gasp. The terrifying thought of a heart attack scrolled through my mind, and I quickly fought to dismiss it. No, I kept telling myself, this is just an aftereffect.

“Go on,” Constance urged. “You saw a collar… Like a clergyman’s collar?”

Ben had pulled out his worn notepad and was waiting patiently for me to give him something to scribble in it.

“Yes,” I sputtered and wheezed. “Black and white… like a priest…”

My voice was gurgling with an odd viscosity, and what was happening was no longer my own private secret. Abject horror was unceremoniously paroled from its prison cell in my subconscious as I suddenly realized what was happening. My one greatest personal fear was coming to pass. I was suffocating. In the middle of a bone-dry, Saint Louis apartment, nowhere near water, I was drowning.

“Hey, Kemosabe…” Ben looked up from his notes with a cocked eyebrow. “You okay? You sound like you’re havin’ trouble breathin’ or somethin’.”

“I… I…” I panted damply.

I wrestled to beat back the terror that had just ignited within my body but met with only limited success. I could feel myself beginning to tremble as I tried to tell my friend what was happening. The words only caught in my tightening throat and bubbled back down into my lungs. Each breath was becoming more labored and shallow than the last. I sucked hard and was rewarded with nothing but pain. My chest was heavy, and what little air I inhaled felt horribly thick.

Humid.

Wet.

I was growing dizzy, and the room was starting to reel and spin slowly. My ears were ringing, and everything was taking on an unnatural contrast. Lights were blooming and shadows darkening viciously. Something more than my ethereal connection with this latest victim was definitely at work. I brought my hand up and clawed at my chest. I was toeing the harshly scribed line of panic, and I was teetering precariously close to the edge.

“Good God, Rowan!” Agent Mandalay’s voice distorted in my ears. “You’re bleeding!”

I cast my blurred eyes downward to see my gloved hand covered in bright crimson rivulets. I held it out from my body and inspected it groggily as blood dripped from the latex sheath. Heavy cramps racked through my upper torso, but I didn’t need them to tell me that the open wounds on my arm were the least of my worries at this moment. I let my hand drop to my side and stared back at Constance. I couldn’t breathe.

I needed to breathe.

“Hey!” Ben screamed as he ran to the door. “Get the Doc back in here right now!”

I was having trouble remaining upright. As my knees began to buckle, I slid from the arm of the sofa and barely caught myself before I reached the floor. My legs were weak, and a bizarre tickle was working its way along the back of my throat. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bring air into my lungs.