“Cleansing the work area,” I replied in my own hushed tone.
As Felicity came to rest at the end of the third revolution, she brought her arms down, around, and back up in front of her as if gathering something unseen into a bundle. Then she forcefully pushed her palms outward, casting the invisible detritus she had gathered through the opening she had left just for this purpose. Immediately upon completing this task, she sprinkled the remains of a salt packet on the floor at her feet, effectively closing the now purified circle.
“Is that it?” Ben voiced.
“Shhhh!” my wife warned as she remained at rest-arms at her sides, facing east with her back to us, and her head bowed.
He started to retort but halted before uttering a sound as I slowly shook my head and mouthed the word, “Don’t.” Instead he simply rolled his eyes and allowed his shoulders to fall slightly.
I could sense that Felicity had fallen into an easy rhythm with her breathing, taking deep lungfuls of air in through her nose and exhaling softly out through her mouth. In an almost symbiotic reaction, my own breathing slipped into time with hers.
After a short meditation, she slowly raised her arms from her sides, palms upward, then allowed her chin to rise from her chest, bringing her face upturned toward the ceiling.
“Lord and Lady spin about,” she began in a quiet, singsong voice, “Watch over us this night throughout. In the dark, one journeys long, in search of answers hidden strong. Please guide him through and guard his fate, for on this side, I shall wait.
“Please lead me through these passing hours, and grant to me your protective powers. For here and now are spirits still, kept at bay by my own will. From head to toe, above and below, watch over him as west winds blow. From earth to air, sky to ground, keep Rowan safe and well and sound.”
Chilled silence filled the room as her last words faded. Ben stood staring at me, mute but questioning with his eyes. I’m not entirely sure what he had been expecting to happen in conjunction with this bit of SpellCraft, but he seemed almost disappointed. His face visibly betrayed his reaction to what must have been anticlimactic in a host of ways. The sort of letdown that comes from seeing real WitchCraft firsthand, but only after first being saturated with years of too many Hollywood special effects and inaccurate portrayals by the entertainment industry.
I couldn’t place all of the blame in their laps, however. Even though they were only partially connected with my spiritual path, one could be certain that the bizarre psychic phenomena that seemed to plague me on a regular basis had helped to cloud his perceptions as well.
“Like I’ve told you before,” I whispered in answer to his unasked question, “casting a spell for a Witch is pretty much just like praying is for a Christian.”
Felicity had left her station at the eastern point of the circle and had now sidled up next to me. I felt her right palm press against my own and her fingers intertwine with mine in a vise-like grip. Immediately I felt the chaotic energy within my body connect with hers as she took firm hold of my ethereal self. She simply ignored my own earthly bond, fleeting and tenuous as it was, and forcibly grounded me through her own solid coupling with this plane of existence.
She looked into my eyes, silently daring me to even try letting go of her hand, and then glanced over to Ben with a look of extreme concentration furrowing into her brow.
“Aye,” she said with a nod. “ Now you can open it.”
CHAPTER 8
If nothing else, I was most definitely no longer fantasizing about my wife’s hair.
The malodorous stench of decay spewed outward in a cloud of invisible but uniquely vile smelling gases. They escaped the body bag in an instantly rising plume that marched lockstep directly behind the zipper pull as Ben tugged it open.
The noxious vapor forced the three of us to cough and twist our heads away as it pushed its way into our nostrils. I felt a column of bile searing upward in my throat, and I swallowed hard to force it back into the depths from which it came. My churning stomach did a somersault and twisted into a tight knot as it threatened to evacuate what little contents it held.
I shifted my watery-eyed glance between Ben and Felicity and saw that they were in no better shape than me. My wife was seriously green, and Ben’s head was cocked away with his eyes tightly shut. He had already seen this at least once, and he didn’t appear to be particularly interested in a repeat viewing.
“Awww, Jeeeezzz…” my friend’s voice trailed off as he mumbled.
Two months, fluctuating temperatures, and even some of nature’s children had been hard at work on the earthly remains of Debbie Schaeffer. What was left of her body was still clad in the tattered leavings of a pair of blue jeans and a sweatshirt that bore the partial logo of Oakwood College.
The clothing had already begun along the same journey of decomposition as the rest and was heavily stained with the purge fluids that escape the confines of the flesh during decay. The fibers had already begun to break down in places, creating large holes in the garments. One side of the sweatshirt was particularly desiccated, revealing a substantial portion of her ribcage and even some remaining mold-covered flesh. One running shoe still hugged the remnants of her right foot, but the other was gone, leaving the left exposed and skeletonized within the disintegrating weave of a white cotton sock.
I suddenly remembered having once seen a cable television documentary about forensic pathology and a place in Tennessee nicknamed “The Body Farm.” While a plot of land where decomposing human cadavers are studied wasn’t exactly high on my list of things to recall, the sight before me triggered the forgotten memory and a handful of facts returned to the forefront of their own accord.
What came to me immediately was the recollection that there were basically five states the human body would go through post mortem-fresh/autolysis; bloating/putrefaction; wet decay/skin slippage and fluid purging; dry decay/partial mummification; and finally, skeletonization.
This young woman’s remains represented at least four of these five stages, and they were fully embroiled in seeing the process through to its conclusion. At the moment the gelid atmosphere of the cold room was holding them off only slightly, which is what triggered the next arcane factoid to bubble up from the depths of my memory-any and all of these stages could be hindered or hastened by a wide variety of factors such as temperature, humidity, and even body type.
Debbie Schaeffer had been dumped in the woods, fully clothed, and wrapped in plastic sheeting. To the best of the medical examiner’s determination, it had been sometime around the end of October or beginning of November. The temperatures had ranged from well below freezing, right up into the sixties and even seventies over the past two months. Rain had fallen. Sun had shone. Opportunistic predators from mammal to insect had come and gone. Mother Nature had worked to reclaim what, in the end, rightfully belonged to her.
This young woman had literally become a self-contained forensic pathology specimen suitable for inclusion in a textbook. I had to consciously remind myself that she had once been whole and full of life, not the putrefied and skeletonized mass I was seeing before me now. The visual evidence didn’t make it easy.
“Jeeeezzz, white man,” Ben sputtered. “Ya’ wanna do your thing so we can close this up. I’m about ready ta’ spew.”
His words rattled in my ears and registered as little more than background noise because I was already doing my thing.
A calm like I had not felt in more than a year fell over me. I had all but forgotten what it felt like to be fully and completely grounded. I squeezed Felicity’s hand tight and basked in the vibrant flow of energy passing between us. Almost instantly I found myself wishing I could remain this way indefinitely.