Owen blinked and her eyes were a humanly, yet captivating tawny shade once more.

"I see it," she said, and he felt a stab of fear.

If she can see it, who else can? Have his secrets been so easy to read? 

"Come quickly," she surged and disappeared behind a thick curtain of earth-colored beads.

As Owen passed through the plastic covered strings, he felt an immediate shift in the atmosphere. Signals were firing to every corner of his brain, shouting, "Turn back!" but he didn't. He just couldn't take his eyes off of the beautiful enchantress. He didn't notice the dreadful room around him.

Feathers and severed chicken paws hung in a corner, suspended by fishing line. Human skulls were below them. Dried red liquid had once splattered the floor of the room, but he didn't care. He watched the smooth skin stretched over her shoulder blades as it shifted with her quick movements. 

"Your soul is screaming for release.

The room smelled of smoke and earth, as if they'd gone in a deep cave where a fire had just been snuffed. Owen's nose twitched, but he didn't scratch it. He was busy watching the woman's profile as she rummaged around some cluttered little table in the room, and thinking she looked like an Egyptian queen. The table held interesting things: skulls, black and red candles, chalices of blood--it was this that she retrieved, along with a skull. It was an odd skull. Not quite human, but not quite animal. Something between. It had fangs, but a curiously human shape. She handed it to Owen and positioned him.

He stood still, holding the skull away from him at waist level. The skull was warm in his hand, almost like it had recently been ripped from it's living owner and stripped of its flesh. She took the chalice of blood--

Not blood, Owen thought, it can't be.

She poured it over the skull, and as it dripped down and covered his hands he noticed how warm it was as well. The more blood dripped, the darker the room grew. Owen was mesmerized as light came from the eyes of the skull in his hands. Like a projector, it lit up on the wall. A picture emerged. A little boy, running beside a lake. 

Owen felt sick. He knew who that little boy was, he knew what lake that was, and what that little boy was going to find. 

"What's happening?" Owen asked, almost in a panic. "Make it stop!"

"What's he gon' see?" the woman said. 

"Stop it!" Owen protested. "No!"

"What does he see?" she asked louder.

"Little girl," Owen cried. "The little girl..."

Sure enough, the little boy stops dead I his tracks, staring deadpan at the water. Her hair is tangled. Some strands are blonde, some are still rusty with blood. Her face was white and her eyes were open, but there was nothing in them. She was halfway in the water and halfway on the bank, her hand laying in the soggy dirt as her feet floated behind. 

"Please, stop," Owen cried. 

"Ya found her," said the woman. "All alone, ya found her. What did ya do, boy?"

Owen screamed now, "Please!" But he didn't let go of the skull. It was as good as glued to his hands, and his feet might as well have been buried into the floor. 

"You found her, then ya-"

"No!"

They both watched as the boy bent down next to the girl. He poked her with his finger. She didn't move, but something came from her mouth. It was like black smoke, and it smacked little Owen straight in the face. His face changed from a flat expression to one of joy. He gave a look around, then pulled out his knife. 

"No!"

The projection went dark. 

"I see what ya been fighting all this time. Somethin' came to be when that little girl got murdered. It came and it went to ya," she said, sympathetically. She walked back over to her table to rummage some more, dropping things into the cup. 

Owen was crying. He knew that that was the moment everything changed. What was it? And why wouldn't it leave him?

"What do I do?" he asked.

She returned looking at him strangely, the red back in her eyes. She threw the contents of the cup in his face.  He crumbled.

"Be free," she said.