M Sellars - Never Burn A Witch

“There has to be a better reason than that, sweetheart. Your brother wouldn’t just hit someone for laughing.”

“Aye, buddee wood.” She thrust her chin upward and blindly poked me in the chest with her limp index finger. “If the laughin’ they’re doin’ is at his fammy an’ thiz bashtard was doin’ ‘is laughin’ atchyu, ‘e wuz. Callin’ you the good witsh of the easht an’ such.”

“Felicity,” I sighed. “Why didn’t you just ignore it? You know people are like that sometimes.”

“Oh I did… I did, I did, I did… But Aussin dinnit. No, he dinnit.” She closed her eyes and shook her head animatedly then fluttered them back open wide. “Oooohh, don’ do that. It maygz the schair move, thin.”

She was almost gone. Any moment she was going to pass out right where she sat.

“Okay, okay. Is Austin all right?” I pressed her.

“Wy wunnit ‘e be?”

“The fight, Felicity.”

“Aye, ef coarshee iz. Auzzin won.”

“No, Felicity. Is he in jail right now? Do I need to go bail him out or something?”

“Oh I alrenny…no…allll-reddddy did’dat,” she told me then pitched forward and grasped my collar in her hand. “Aye, Caorthann…” she said, her voice becoming momentarily clear as she used the Gaelic version of my name. “Aussin…Heesh very prowd of you, ya’know…he iz.. Bud I’m shtill man at’chu.”

“Okay, honey, I give up. Why are you mad at me?”

She let go of my collar and fell back in the chair then looked back at me very seriously, widening her eyes in an unsuccessful attempt to remain awake. Her eyelids were already closing, and her body was quickly sinking deeper into the chair. She barely managed to mutter the soft, slurred answer before slipping into the arms of sleep, “Beecawwsh… you were downing an’ you woonen’t lemme help.”

So intent had I been on the events unfolding around me throughout the evening that it hadn’t even dawned on me that Felicity might remotely feel the same pains I was experiencing first hand; or even that she may have been reaching out to me across the ethereal plane. She had done it before, and I should have realized that it was likely to happen again. Especially when considering both the intensity of the experiences on an emotional level and our deep connection to one another.

I carefully slipped my arms around my unconscious wife then gently lifted her from the chair and carried her into the bedroom. She was still dressed in her traditional Celtic garb from the party, and it took me nearly fifteen minutes to undo the various laces and wrestle her limp body out of the clothing. I wasn’t overly worried about waking her, for I expected that at this stage of the game that task would be nearly impossible.

After finally getting her tucked into the bed, I debated making a few calls to check on Austin and then decided against it. If I understood her correctly, she had already bailed him out of jail, and even if she hadn’t, I was certain his parents would be seeing to it. If not, it could wait a few hours. I wasn’t going to be much good at doing anything about it as I was barely able to keep my own eyes open. I needed to be at the Major Case Squad command post by ten in the morning, and it was already coming up on three-thirty. After subtracting time for a shower and travel, that left me with only about four hours to get some sleep.

The question settled, I stripped wearily and shut off the lights. Then with a satisfied sigh, I crawled into the bed next to my temporarily comatose wife. As I relaxed, a sleep deprived wrinkle in my brain told me to make a note to ask Ben if there was some statistical reason known only to law enforcement as to why dead bodies seemed to always turn up in the middle of the night.

When I finally began to drift off, I felt for all the world like I was falling to my death. I knew then that it wasn’t going to be the restful sleep I had hoped for.

A baleful cry in the fold of darkness.

A crystalline blanket hued blue by shadows cast in the dim moonglow…

Fear.

Hatred.

Horror.

Silence.

My heart is racing in my chest. It is one of only two sounds that break the stillness. The other is the report of my naked feet crunching frenzied through the sharp crust of ice to the mantle of snow beneath. I am running from something.

I am running from someone…

I do not know where I am…

I know only that I run in fear.

Frigid air sears my lungs and chills me throughout. A hardened ache tears at my throat, dry and cold. I gasp for breath as I slow my pace and finally halt, struggling to deny the pain. A grove of twisted trees surrounds me.

Envelopes me.

The moon’s filtered shine dances eerily between the gnarled branches and plays across my nude body. Streaks of sticky wetness stream across my skin. In the muted light they appear oily and black. I run my hands across my body and wince at the soreness of the festering wounds.

The streaks are my own blood.

My staggering footprints stain the snow.

My feet are also raw and bleeding.

My wheezing breath punctuates the night.

A deep, familiar voice rumbles from the darkness. “Wherefore, since you, Rowan Linden Gant, are fallen into the damned heresies of Witches, practicing them publicly, and have been by legitimate witnesses convicted of the sin of heresy…”

I start in fear at the words.

I bolt forward blindly.

A baleful cry in the fold of darkness.

“Yo, mission control ta’ Rowan.” Ben’s voice snapped me back to the reality at hand. “You want any of this coffee, Kemosabe?”

He was waving his hand before my face and looking at me quizzically. From his expression I assumed I had once again slipped into the glassy-eyed, slack-jawed trance that had been plaguing me all morning. Snippets of a vivid horror kept ricocheting about the inside of my skull, disjointed and making no sense whatsoever. Thus far, I had been unable to piece together anything from the randomized remembrance of the nightmare and was beginning to doubt I ever would. Fact of the matter was, it might simply have been just that, a nightmare. No more than a product of my overtaxed senses and the frightening spectacles to which I had been witness in the past hours and days. It may mean nothing at all. But it was painfully reminiscent of the small vignette that had appended itself to my recurring nightmare about Ariel Tanner, and that was what concerned me.

“Yeah, sure,” I nodded as I spoke, shaking off the fog.

“I’ll warn ya’ up front, this stuff is strong enough ya’ damn near hafta slice it. There’re some donuts over here too.” He indicated a large white box as he rummaged about for a clean coffee cup. “Great little place over on Chippewa. All they had fresh was glazed, though.”

I shook my head, declining the offer. I wasn’t sure how something like that would sit with my stomach at the moment. It already felt like my hastily gulped morning meal was lodged in it sideways. Considering that the meal had consisted of cold leftovers from a traditional Irish dinner, it probably was.

“So, what’s up with you this mornin’?” Ben continued pressing me as he filled a chipped ceramic mug from a brown streaked globe of Pyrex then slid it across the table in my direction before returning the pot to its equally discolored warming base. “You’ve been glazin’ over left and right ever since ya’ got here. Somethin’ I should know?”

“I’m not sure,” I returned, accepting the mug and taking a sip of the brew. It was acrid and bitter. Ben’s wisecrack about ‘strong enough to slice’ had been right on the mark. “Could just be lack of sleep, I don’t know. I keep having these weird flashes…like pieces of a nightmare or something.”