Rowan Gant - Perfect Trust Part 16

Ben's hand shot up to smooth back his hair and came to rest on his neck as his fingers began to work at a knot of tension. "It's not as bad as it looks, okay?" he appealed.

"Just tell me what's going on and I'll decide that for myself."

"Just let them have their little tiff," Debbie Schaeffer whispers into my ear again. "I've got something to show you."

I feel the touch of icy fingers against my palm, followed by them intertwining with my own. The frigid grasp of death encircles my hand and I feel its frost creep upward along my arm.

I looked down at my hand the moment the sensation took hold. There was nothing to see, but the chilled feeling was definitely there.

"Look, Doc, you've seen the stuff that Rowan does, right?" My friend was starting into his explanation.

"I've been witness to one or two of Mister Gant's episodes, yes," Doctor Sanders answered. "Is that what this is all about?"

"Come on, Rowan. You need to look at this." Debbie Schaeffer is pulling me by the hand.

"Yeah, pretty much," Ben affirmed.

"Is there a particular reason it needed to be done in the middle of the night?"

I glanced over to Felicity and saw that her attention was focused fully upon the exchange between Ben and Doctor Sanders. Consciously, I wanted to tell her what was happening. The recent revelation I'd reached regarding my own ability to ground and center once again brought forth the acid tang of fear on the back of my tongue. I knew that no matter how much I verbally denied it, my current state left me open and vulnerable. It wouldn't take very much at all to get me into deep trouble-potentially fatal deep trouble. My mouth opened as I started to voice the concern, but before any sound escaped I felt my hand squeezed and heard a rush echo inside my skull.

"Shhhhhh! Don't tell anyone. Just come with me and look. You need to see this."

I closed my mouth and looked over the tableau again. My friend had his back to us and his large frame was positioned such that he was almost completely blocking the slight Medical Examiner from my view. I could only a.s.sume that I was just as obscured from her sight.

I could feel something tugging at my hand and when I looked, my arm was actually moving. I tried to stop its progress, but the spirit of Debbie Schaeffer was fully in charge and her strength came from sources beyond this level of existence. I was no match for her. I closed my eyes and desperately fought to achieve a solid ground. It was the only way I could think of to regain control over my own body.

"Come on, Rowan. They aren't watching. You REALLY, REALLY need to see this. Trust me."

"It was a judgment call," Ben told the M.E. "Maybe it wasn't the best one I've made, but those are the breaks."

"You're pretty good for that aren't you?"

"Come on, Doc. There's no need to make this personal."

"Then what about the chanting Johnathan heard?" she fired off another question.

"What was that all about? I don't recall chanting being a part of Mister Gant's episodes."

"I think maybe he misinterpreted what he heard."

"What did he hear then?"

"Felicity here said a prayer, that's all."

"COME ON, ROWAN! Don't you trust me?"

I started to appeal to my wife for help, only to find the words caught painfully in my throat. Instinctively I reached for her with my free hand, but grasped nothing more than a handful of gelid air. I opened my eyes and became suddenly aware that I was no longer standing next to her. Without any realization whatsoever I had moved several steps away, and now found myself positioned in front of the wall bearing the cold storage drawers. Directly before me a rectangle of stainless steel was annotated with a case number and the name, Lawson, Paige.

"Go on, open it. You REALLY, REALLY, REALLY need to see this, Rowan!"

I stood dumbfounded for a moment. The pit of my stomach was churning in a way vastly different from what had been brought on by the stench of decay. The acrid boil that was happening down there now was one of pure, unadulterated fear. I had felt such things before, and with even greater intensity, but what was most disturbing about this instance was that this fear was my own-no one else's.

I watched on helplessly as my hand moved of another's volition, guided by an invisible, though firm, icy grip. As my fingers drew closer to the handle of the drawer I fought to cry out for help. Still, my voice caught raspily in my throat, and I managed nothing more than a weak gurgle that went unheard.

"I said SHHHHHHHH!" Debbie Schaeffer admonishes me. "Trust me."

"A prayer," Doctor Sanders stated flatly, her tone betraying her lack of belief in what she'd just been told.

"Open it, Rowan. Open it."

My hand moved in a jerking parody of a mechanical appendage as it was forced to grasp the handle, and then tug the latch open. The drawer slid smoothly outward on the heavy-duty rollers with a mild roar of friction.

I was face to face with the pallid remains of Paige Lawson and still my hand moved, guided by an invisible, but wholly distinguishable force. My arm literally vibrated as I struggled against Debbie Schaeffer's ethereal control. My palm hovered mere inches above the chilled corpse of the young woman.

"Touch her, Rowan. You REALLY, REALLY, REALLY need to see this!"

"Is there a particular..." Doctor Sanders started to continue her interrogation only to be interrupted by the sound of the opening drawer. "MISTER GANT! JUST WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?!".

The sharpness of the Medical Examiner's demand shattered the delicate pane of the trance like a baseball hitting a plate gla.s.s window. Unfortunately, it was too late.

Debbie Schaeffer's ghostly form drove my hand downward, bringing the clammy skin of my palm against Paige Lawson's cold flesh.

Colors flashed in a riot of sparks, blooming to absolute saturation then bleaching to dull shades of grey. Electricity coursed through my body on a never ending quest to jangle every nerve, seeking out and destroying anything in its path. Light flickered before my eyes, and then drained away in a chaotic whirlpool of luminescence, bleeding red then black.

A rapid burn ripped its way along the side of my neck.

Blinding pain erupted inward from the side of my skull and wrapped around to repeat the a.s.sault.

My chest tightened and spasmed as I felt the wind chased from my lungs.

My own words mixed with those of Doctor Sanders as the catch in my throat opened wide to release the escaping air in the form of a tortured scream, "HELP ME!".

CHAPTER 10.

I had never really paid that much attention to acoustic ceiling tiles. Actually, I had never really had a reason to do so. At this particular moment in my life, however, the random pattern of decorative holes punched into their dull surfaces was occupying my full and undivided attention. I quickly discovered that if you stare at them long enough, the randomness of the indentations would become less and less chaotic.

With little more than a spoonful of imagination mixed in, the dots became easy to connect and rallied themselves into complex pictures, complete with highlight and shadow.

In my mind's eye, I was just applying the final touches to a particularly intricate portrait when reality elected to position itself between my canvas and me. My carefully constructed image of a striking young woman with long, flowing hair exploded into a shower of bright red sparks that hesitated for a moment, then fell slowly earthward, systematically burning themselves out along the way like the dyingbursts of holiday fireworks.

It really didn't matter that the fantasy had been disturbed, because the image was replaced in kind with a face of equal-if not superior-beauty, wrinkled with a mixture of anger and concern though it was.

"How's your head, then?" Felicity asked as she peered down at me.

With the artistic trance broken, I set about focusing my attentions on the question I'd just been asked. I took a quick mental a.s.sessment and discovered that my head was still throbbing somewhat. However, there was another sensation that overshadowed the mild pain in a big way-I wanted a cigarette, and I wanted it yesterday.

"Hurts a bit," I croaked trying without success to ignore the craving.

"Aye, you kept mumbling something about that while you were out," she said.

"That, and cigarettes."

The proverbial cat was now on the loose. "How long?"

"Were you out? A few minutes," she replied. "Barely long enough for us to bring you up here, really."

From the looks of everything around me, "up here" was apparently one of the offices on the main floor of the City Morgue.

"Great," I mumbled. "Did I do anything besides complain about my head and cigarettes?"

"You mean other than go off chasing after answers on your own?" She submitted the query with measured terseness born of her underlying anger with me, and the words themselves explained why.

"Whoa, before you unleash that wrath on me, it wasn't exactly my choice," I protested. "Debbie Schaeffer was apparently on a mission."

"What do you mean?"

"She insisted on my touching Paige Lawson," I said. "She kept saying there was something she needed to show me that I really, really needed to see."

"And that was?"

I shrugged. "Beats me. I don't remember much of anything after pulling the drawer open, and I did that under duress."

"So why didn't you say something before going off on your own?"

"Believe me, I tried."

"Aye," she nodded as the pieces fell into place for her, "now do you understand why I've been so worried about you?"

"Yeah." I nodded. "The experience was definitely a wake up call."

"How ya feelin'?" Ben's voice overtook the momentary silence as he followed the opening door into the room. He seemed tense, almost reserved, and businesslike."Okay, I guess," I answered as Felicity moved back and allowed me to sit up.

"Rattled."

"So, who's the bad guy?"

"What?"

"All the hocus-pocus you did." He waved his hand around in the air. "Did you figure out who the bad guy is?"

"Well, no, not exactly."

"Wunnerful. Clues? Leads? Anything?"

"Maybe, I'm not exactly sure. I saw..." I realized suddenly that I didn't really remember what I had seen. "I think..."

He didn't allow me to flounder for long. "You good enough to travel?"

"I suppose, but shouldn't we..."

"No but's, no shouldn't we anything's, white man." He shook his head. "We need to leave. We can get some coffee down the road and talk about it there."

"But, I'm not sure I'm finished here." I wasn't lying. The memory of what I'd experienced downstairs was flitting around inside my head, just out of reach. "There might be something else."

"Look, you got no idea what it took for me to convince the Doc that there wasn't somethin' really hinky goin' on down there tonight. I wouldn't count on gettin'

anywhere near those remains in the near future if I was you."

"I can talk to her..."

He cut me off again. "Leave it alone, Row. If I was to visit a proctologist right now he'd have two a.s.sholes to choose from, if you get my meanin'. We gotta go.