It doesn’t matter. He’s inside now. He’s certain no one saw him carry the bundle in. They are all at work. All of them. Even the prying old bitch across the street is gone. He made sure of that before getting the bundle from his trunk.
Maybe he should have killed her, he thought. The old nosy bitch.
No.
No. She was too close to home. The police would have been crawling all over the place, and that might have disrupted the Ritual. His chance to sacrifice The One. Besides, she was too old. Her age-spotted skin hung loosely from her skinny frame. He could see it in his mind.
Whenever she waved at him from her yard, it would flop and flap like a banner waving in the breeze. No. Her skin was definitely too loose. He couldn’t practice on someone with loose skin. That would never properly prepare him for The One.
The One would be young. Her skin elastic and unblemished. Not wrinkled and flaccid.
The One.
She was resting in his arms right now. This very moment. He was so very pleased to have found The One.
Bright, glaring lights flared suddenly, burning like flash powder ignited in direct contact with my eyes.
Mommy!
Where is my mommy?!
I’m so scared.
It’s very dark. My eyes still sting from the flare of light. There seems to be a dim glow coming from just behind my head, but I’m not sure. It may only be a phantom image.
I can feel the little girl’s presence in the room. Her fear. Her mental cries for her mother. Still, I can’t see her.
My eyes are beginning to slowly adjust to the murky light. I’m in the basement. I can barely make out a shape across from me. It appears to be moving.
My eyes adjust some more.
I can tell that the shape is the stocky man I had seen upstairs. He is huddled over something on a long plywood and two-by-four workbench. The dirt floor is uneven and littered with trash. My legs feel like heavy, metal fence posts set securely in cement.
I try to move.
The man stops suddenly as if he hears something. He cocks his head to the side and turns it slightly. I stop my struggle to move.
He waits, listening intently.
I hold my breath.
Finally, slowly he turns back to his task. Once again, I try to move forward.
Mommy!
Daddy!
I’m so scared.
I’m standing directly behind him now. I can clearly see what he is huddled over. The nude, bound body of the little girl.
He pulls a tourniquet tight on her upper arm and then uses two fingers to slap the tender inner flesh in search of a vein. In his other hand, he expertly holds a full syringe. The needle glistens in the dim light.
Carefully he slips the needle into the vein. I can feel the stinging pinprick in my own arm.
Mommy!
Daddy!
A tiny plume of blood spurts into the syringe, mixing in a milky cloud with the other fluid. He drives the plunger forward. Slowly. Evenly.
“ You can’t stop me, you know,” he says without turning.
I know that he is talking to me.
He moves quietly to the end of the bench and tosses the used syringe into a bucket already overflowing with trash.
“ She’s The One,” he tells me. “This is her destiny.”
The little girl’s nude body is stretched out, loosely bound on the table, her denim dress wadded next to her. He reaches out and grasps it, crushing it into an even tighter ball. With an angry toss, he flings the faded blue fabric projectile across the room. It smacks against the wall with a muffled thump then slides raspily downward, slipping behind a pile of paint cans, and disappears.
“ You’re too late, Rowan Gant,” he says, turning to me. “You weren’t there to save Ariel Tanner, and you won’t be there to save The One.”
The last things I saw were his cold grey eyes.
“He said he had a headache a few minutes ago,” Detective Deckert’s voice began distantly and grew quickly closer.
“Rowan? Hey, Rowan? You all right?” Ben was looking at me questioningly.
I felt myself grab firmly back onto the physical plane and cling for dear life. My head was still throbbing, and the angry burn of Roger’s ethereal signature was maintaining its hold on my spine.
“Some expert,” Special Agent Mandalay’s voice reached my ears. “You ask him a question, and he passes out on you.”
“Shut up,” Ben barked at her without turning. “Rowan. You okay, man?”
“Yeah,” I returned weakly. “Sorry about that.”
“You went all Twilight Zone, didn’t you?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “What did you see?”
“Downstairs. In the basement,” I recited. “There’s a workbench. That’s where he kept her when he was here this afternoon. He’s keeping her drugged. You’ll find her dress behind some paint cans. Her blue denim dress.”
“Give me a break,” our resident FBI skeptic declared in exasperation. “He sounds like a tabloid psychic.”
Ben ignored her spiteful comment and instead, turned to one of the other officers. “Ackman. Check it out.”
We stood waiting quietly as the man carried out the order, disappearing down the hallway, then the basement stairs. After a few protracted moments, we heard him coming back up the wooden stairway.
“Hey, Storm,” he called as he poked his head through the doorway. “Better come have a look down here. There’s a wad of blue denim behind some paint cans, just like Gant said. Could be the kid’s dress.”
Ben turned to Agent Mandalay, and a smug grin spread across his face. “Show me one of your PhD’s that can do that.”
“So, don’t take this the wrong way or anything,” Ben began. “But there’s somethin’ I’m havin’ trouble understandin’…”
I was relaxing in my seat, eyes closed. Without opening them, I prodded him forward, “And that is?”
We were belted into his van and in motion toward my house, having only just left the scene. The evidence technicians had arrived soon after the discovery of the little girl’s discarded dress. They were still photographing, dusting, and bagging everything in sight when we finally chose to abandon hope of any immediate clues to her current whereabouts. A palpable sense of urgency surrounded them, and it was spreading like a rampant contagion through every member of the Major Case Squad. Even Agent Mandalay fell victim to its almost ubiquitous virulence. She had elected to remain behind at the scene with Detective Deckert while Ben provided my transportation home. Considering the volatility of one part Mandalay mixed with one part Storm, it was probably a good idea for them to be separated for a while.
After a full two hours inside Roger’s house, I had begun to feel as if there were nothing left of me to give. A verse from an old Blue Oyster Cult song kept running through my head in an endless loop- You see me now a veteran of a thousand psychic wars. My energy is spent at last, and my armor is destroyed… Funny how things like that seem to drift in from nowhere.
Even at that, none of them was in any bigger hurry to stop Roger and save this little girl than I was. I would have gladly stayed longer, no matter how I felt, but the final decision hadn’t been left to me. Ben ordered me to go home, and since I had come with him, he was seeing to it personally that I was returned safely. Deckert had seconded the motion, and Agent Mandalay took no convincing whatsoever. She was happy to see me go, though after the incident with the child’s dress, I had caught her looking curiously at me across the room from time to time. But, of course, only when she thought I couldn’t see her.