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 me -something beyond terrible was about to make itself known in spades.