Perfect Trust: A Rowan Gant Investigation Read Online Free PDF Page A

even had an incident where it occurred twice in one
night. The lack of a decent night’s rest was taking a measurable
toll, and I was definitely feeling the effects.
    More often than not I spent my waking hours
on autopilot, fueled by bitter coffee and an almost constant,
insatiable desire for a cigarette. Considering that I’d quit
smoking—well, except for an occasional cigar—somewhat over a year
ago, I found the craving more than a bit unusual. Thus far, I’d
managed to keep it in check with nicotine gum, but I wasn’t sure
how long that would last. The need was beginning to achieve
absolutely ridiculous proportions.
    Of course, one could easily imagine that
after surviving a run-in with a crazed serial killer, nightmares
would be expected. The problem was that I’m not exactly sure you
could call these events nightmares; this is not to mention the fact
that they hadn’t even begun until several months after the fact. On
top of that, the episodes weren’t about my brush with death at all.
At least I don’t think they were.
    To tell the truth, I couldn’t really be
certain what they were about.
    The bald facts were that I would wake up in a
cold sweat with my heart pounding in a furious attempt to escape
the confines of my chest. My mind would be a jumble of nothingness,
and I would be incapable of pinning down a single thought. That, in
and of itself, brought on sudden panic. I had always been very
cognizant of my dreams and night terrors, remembering them in vivid
detail. It went way beyond troubling for me to suddenly be devoid
of that clarity.
    And then there was this inexplicable feeling
of violation.
    All of it together was bad enough, but there
was something even worse happening—I wasn’t always waking up in my
bed. Sometimes I would find myself sprawled on the living room
floor. Other times, it might be the kitchen. One time, I had even
awakened lying next to my truck on the cold concrete of my garage.
I can personally guarantee you that is definitely not a place you
want to find yourself half-naked in the middle of winter.
    I think perhaps that was the incident that
frightened me most. Upon gathering my wits, I had even felt the
hood of the truck to see if it was warm. It wasn’t, but it hadn’t
really meant much since I had no clue how long I’d been lying
there. For all I knew, the truck could have had plenty of time to
cool down. Of course, as cold as it was, I wasn’t suffering from
hypothermia, so my only assumption could be that it really hadn’t
been for very long. The only thing that finally quelled my panic to
any extent, however, was the fact that the fuel gauge hadn’t
appeared to have budged. So most likely I hadn’t been driving in my
sleep, but if I had, then at least I hadn’t gone far. Still, the
not knowing was a threatening cloud that had been hanging over me
ever since.
    Other than the sensation of debasement, there
was one constant in all this I was able to grasp, that being no
matter where I awoke it was always with a very particular sort of
pain. It was always localized, though not always in the same place.
Sometimes it would be in my side, sometimes my back. Another time
it had been on my shoulder. Wherever it occurred on my body though,
it was always the same savage burning sensation. Fortunately, or
perhaps unfortunately, depending on your point of view, it would
always fade away within a handful of minutes and there would be no
visible evidence with which to identify its cause.
    The fear and panic brought on by all these
constants was a different story. They took quite a bit longer to
subside.
    So far, I’d managed to keep these
incidents to myself while I tried to figure out just what they were
all about. However, the increased frequency was making them much
harder to keep a secret. Unfortunately, my wife was bound to find
out soon, and she wouldn’t be happy about it. She knew as well as I
that when these kinds of things started happening to a
Witch— especially