by Ray Garton
Lily noticed that the bios in later editions of the Binghams’s books did not mention Dr. Roberts, but still claimed that Mavis’s psychic abilities had been tested and documented by Arizona State University. But because the Parapsychology Department had been shut down nearly four decades earlier, there was no record of those tests, and no such documentation existed. Even if it did, it would be suspect because of Dr. Roberts’s record of cooking his books.
By all accounts, the Binghams were very kind and grandparently, and expert storytellers. Lily had seen them on TV talk shows in the past and was familiar with their pleasant, folksy manner. But poring over their books reminded her of why she’d decided not to carry any of them in the store.
Early in their paranormal career, the Binghams had investigated haunted houses and claimed to send confused, earthbound spirits on their way. Then something changed in 1973. Suddenly, their investigations began to uncover demonic infestations. Instead of guiding the spirits of the dead to the next plane of existence, the Binghams, devout Catholics, started bringing in a priest to exorcise houses, and sometimes the residents. Instead of ghostly apparitions and eerie sounds, their books began to provide lurid descriptions of families being menaced by demons from Hell. In each case they investigated, people were being anally raped by Satan’s minions. It happened so regularly that Lily began to wonder if the Binghams were projecting some of their own hang-ups onto their work.
Lily found it more than coincidental that in 1973 the movie The Exorcist was burning up the box office and demon possession was all the rage. It was obvious to her that the Binghams realized no one was interested in things that go bump in the night anymore, so they changed their act to keep up with the times. In doing so, they had become religious crusaders, and with each new book, they became more intolerant of other beliefs, and even of those who simply disagreed with them. That was why Lily had stopped carrying their books—it was one thing to update the act and still expect to be taken seriously, but the Binghams had become ultrareligious and used their beliefs as an excuse to behave hatefully toward others, and Lily would not condone that with commerce.
In 1975, the Binghams had hit it big with The Loweryville Possession. Their book told the story of a house in Kentucky that had been built on the site where a Satanic cult used to perform ritual human sacrifices (although how they knew that Lily was unable to determine). The house allegedly became possessed by demons as a result. The family that lived there was reportedly tormented by evil forces—the mother and teenage son were repeatedly anally raped by what the Binghams called “invisible demons”—until Arthur and Mavis became involved and brought in their priest, Father Malcolm, who exorcised the house. The book was a bestseller and became a financially, if not critically, successful movie that spawned a couple of sequels. It put the Binghams on the map.
In 1981, the family, no longer living in the same house, or in the same state—they had moved to Florida the year the movie was released—publicly admitted that the whole thing had been a hoax. They had made it all up to see if they could make any money. Although they hadn’t gotten rich, they’d made a nice sum from the book and movie and had put their two children through college. When confronted with this, the Binghams had suggested that perhaps there was some mental illness in the family, because Arthur and Mavis had witnessed the exorcism and had felt the demonic power in the house themselves, so they knew it was real. The demonic activity had been so intense, they claimed, Arthur had suffered a heart attack. They still lectured about the Loweryville, Kentucky, investigation, and people still came to hear about it, twenty-two years after the family involved had publicly admitted it was a hoax.
None of the Binghams’s earlier books had sold as well as The Loweryville Possession—one, The Demon of Battle Creek, was adapted into an awful made-for-cable movie that no one watched—but they maintained a popularity that baffled Lily. You couldn’t throw a rock in the paranormal world without hitting the Binghams—they were everywhere, and their handprints were on everything. But they had plenty of detractors. The Binghams were not very popular in paranormal circles, because they continued to be intolerant of anyone who did not agree with them to the letter. Arthur and Mavis, backed by scripture and their Catholicism, were on the side of God, so disagreement with them meant disagreement with the Almighty, and they had no qualms about pointing that out.
The most critical article Claudia had found on the Binghams was not nearly as critical as it seemed to want to be. It was a piece called “Hunting Demons” on the Web site of the Southwestern Skeptical Society, written by Donald Penner. The article read as if it were unfinished, or severely truncated. It revealed little she didn’t already know, but it had a lot of attitude, as if it were an expose.
Lily browsed around the Web site and learned that Penner was also the site’s administrator, the editor of the newsletter The Southwest Skeptical, and the society’s president. The society was based in Tucson, where it had been arching a skeptical brow since 1976, but had members all over North America.
The contact information for the Southwestern Skeptical Society included a phone number. Lily could e-mail Donald Penner and wait for his response, but she preferred a conversation—she could get a lot from a person’s voice.
Lily expected a receptionist, but the phone was answered by Penner himself. He sounded as if he’d been sleeping. She told him she owned a bookstore and was considering arranging a signing with Arthur and Mavis Bingham, but she wanted to know more about them first, and had read the article about them on the Southwestern Skeptical Society Web site.
“Oh, that,” Penner said.
“It’s a fine article, but I got the feeling it was incomplete. No offense, but—”
“Don’t worry, none taken. In fact, that’s very observant of you.” He was soft-spoken and talked slowly. “That article caused a lot of trouble. Well, not the article you read, but the one I originally wrote. It was an expose. But the Binghams filed a civil suit for libel. There really wasn’t anything libelous in the article—I backed up every word I wrote with solid facts. But that wasn’t the point of the suit. They just wanted to tie us up in court. They knew we couldn’t afford it. We don’t have the kind of money they do.”
“They’re wealthy, then?”
“They’re very popular on the lecture circuit, and that’s some fat money. Not to mention the royalties from their books and that awful movie.”
“Which one?”
“Well, both of them, I guess.”
“So you caved on the article?”
“Had to. I trimmed the article, they withdrew the suit. I’ve been railing on the Binghams for years, but nobody’s listening. People enjoy their ghost stories.”
“But they’re not ghost stories anymore. They’re all about sodomizing demons.”
“Ever since The Exorcist came out.”
Lily smiled. “You noticed that, too?”
“Yeah. All of a sudden, everybody’s got horny demons in their woodwork.”
“What was in your original article?”
Penner took a deep breath and let it out in a weary sigh. “Where do you want me to start?”
“Start at the beginning. How did they get into this stuff?”
“Arthur. He was booted out of the Army in 1953 on a Section 8—mental illness. Arthur’s had a problem with that all his life, and all his life, he’s had this obsession with ghosts. Ever since he was a little kid.”
“What kind of mental illness?” Lily asked.
“Judging by the hospitals he’s been in, I suspect some form of schizophrenia.”
“How did they meet?”
“During one of Arthur’s stays in a mental hospital,” Penner said. “Mavis was doing some volunteer work for the church. There’s some evidence that Mavis exhibited genuine psychic ability early in her life, but once she hooked up with Arthur, she became little more than a performer. Arthur looked her up after he got out of the hospital, and they hit it off. Apparently, Arthur witnessed
something that convinced him Mavis was psychic, and suddenly, they were inseparable. They were both devout Catholics, and they both had an interest in the supernatural. They were married only a few months later.”
“How romantic,” Lily said. “When did they start their shtick?”
“Almost immediately. Fortunately, Mavis came from money, because Arthur had a hard time holding down a job. They traveled around visiting houses that were reputedly haunted, and Mavis would read the house, then Arthur would draw it. Apparently, Arthur had taken up drawing during one of his hospital stays, and he started drawing these intricate pictures of houses that were said to be haunted.”
“What did Mavis’s reading prove?”
“She would declare the house haunted, then communicate with the spirits there. Pretty soon, they were popping up in all the paranormal circles and people were starting to notice them. Arthur’s drawings were actually pretty good, and a small press publisher compiled them in a book, which had some success.”
As she listened, Lily sipped her coffee and nibbled her Danish. She asked, “Were they so rigidly religious back then? Were they as harsh with people who disagreed with them as they are now?”
“They weren’t important enough to disagree with yet. In fact, they’ve never been what you could call important in the field. They’ve made such a nuisance of themselves over the years, people are forced to have an opinion. But back then, they were nobody. They finally found a friend of a friend who was complaining of odd things happening in his house, and that became their first real case. Arthur wrote everything down, but he was terrible at it, so they found a writer. Have you read their books?”
“Some of them.”
“Have you noticed anything about their writers?”
‘‘Only that their names appear on the cover in very tiny letters beneath Arthur’s and Mavis’s.”
“Yeah,” Penner said, “the less attention drawn to the writers, the better for them. The authors of all their books have been low-rent horror novelists. There’s one in particular—Joe Lockwood, who wrote A Demonic Darkness—who’s happy to tell his Arthur and Mavis story to anyone who’ll listen. The book was about a possessed teenager. Lockwood met with the family, but they couldn’t keep their stories straight. He went to Arthur with the problem, and Arthur said, ‘Oh, they’re crazy. All the people who come to us are crazy. Why do you think they come to us? You write scary stories—just make it up and make it scary.’ Lockwood has a piece about it on his Web site.”
“And they haven’t sued him?” Lily asked.
“I think they’re afraid to. The guy’s a hack, nobody knows him from Adam. If they sued him, suddenly he’d be getting a lot of attention that he isn’t getting now. Lockwood says the family the Binghams were dealing with needed help, but the kind Arthur and Mavis couldn’t provide. He saw evidence of alcoholism, drug use, possibly even abuse. But the Binghams weren’t concerned about that, even when he tried to point it out to them. All they cared about was the book. And, of course, a possible movie deal. I talked to a few of the other writers who’ve worked with the Binghams, and it seems at least a few of the families they’ve dealt with have had similar problems—alcohol and drug abuse, possible child and/or spousal abuse. Vulnerable people who need professional help, not a couple of frauds like Arthur and Mavis.”
Lily was not surprised to learn the cynical truth about the Binghams—she had always suspected it—but she was disturbed that they would prey on such troubled families. “What about that priest who hangs out with them?”
“Father Malcolm?” Penner laughed. “Malcolm DiGenova. He’s a piece of work. He was defrocked about twenty years ago. An embezzler and a convicted pedophile.”
“Wow. I’m afraid to ask which one got him defrocked.”
“Don’t. I never figured out exactly how the Binghams hooked up with this guy, but it was sometime in the mid-seventies. Every time they find a new infestation of demons, Father Malcolm puts on his priest clothes and does his little exorcism show. It gives their books an ending and makes for nice tabloid photo ops.”
“What does the Catholic church think of the Binghams and Father Malcolm?”
“They don’t even acknowledge the Binghams, let alone condone what they do.”
“Why hasn’t anyone pointed out the truth about Father Malcolm?”
“Some have. Arthur and Mavis appeared on Jenny Jones in the late nineties with James Randi, the famous debunker. Randi pointed it out then, and Arthur stood up and challenged him to a fistfight. Security had to come up on the stage and physically put Arthur back in his chair. They’ve been on other radio and television talk shows, and every once in a while, someone tells the truth about him. But it never sticks. Like I said, people want to believe this stuff. Ever hear of the Fox sisters?”
“The founders of modern American spiritualism, weren’t they?”
“The same. They lived in a farmhouse in Rochester, New York. Katherine was eleven and Margaret was thirteen in 1848 when they claimed to hear strange rapping sounds coming from a room in the house. They said it was the spirit of a murdered itinerant peddler who was rumored to have been buried in their basement. Pretty soon, people were coming from everywhere—I mean, from all over the world—to witness these rappings. The girls became famous and made a fortune traveling around America and England putting on their little rapping show.”
“That much I remember,” Lily said.
“Forty years later, they ‘fessed up and admitted the whole thing was a hoax. At first, they used an apple on a string to make the rapping sounds—they’d thump it against a wall by pulling on the string. Later, they realized they could produce the sounds by popping the joints of their big toes.” He chuckled. “Then they went on an ‘exposure tour’ to show everybody how they’d done it, and for the second time, people flocked to see them perform. Even after they admitted they were frauds, people still came to see the Fox sisters make their rapping sounds. People love this stuff. They don’t want to know the truth—they prefer the lie.”
“That’s pretty cynical, don’t you think?”
“Nope. You want to be the least popular person at the magic show? Tell everybody how the magician does his tricks. Trust me.”
“How did you manage to uncover all this stuff on the Binghams?” Lily asked.
“I studied journalism in college. That’s what I planned to do with my life. How I ended up here is anybody’s guess.”
“How did you end up there?”
“I sort of inherited it. My grandpa started it back in the seventies—inspired, in fact, by the Binghams. Then my uncle took it over in the eighties. Somehow, I got myself wrapped up in it. I enjoy it, to be honest. It’s pretty sleepy around here most of the time, but it’s okay.”
“If you don’t mind being the least popular person at the magic show.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, well, there’s that.”
A couple minutes later, Lily finished the Danish. She thought of the horribly burned face she’d seen in her vision and wondered what it meant. Something bad was going to happen soon, and it would involve the Binghams. But she still did not know what, when, or where it would take place.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tuesday, 3:09 P.M.
That afternoon, Jenna got a phone call from a young woman named Avril Lauter. She was a college student with a paper that needed to be typed and printed up, and she wanted to bring it to Jenna first thing tomorrow morning.
It had started slow back in Redding, Jenna remembered, but after half a dozen customers had been satisfied, word got around that she was reliable and reasonable, and business had picked up. Jenna was confident the same thing would happen here, and it would start with Avril Lauter.
She expected David to be in a good mood when he got home from work, but he was tired and preoccupied. He had not been home five minutes when he asked her to call the Sheriff’s Department and ask for Hooper or Caruso and find out if they ever found those kids.
“I’d
do it,” he said with an apologetic smile, “but you’re a lot better on the phone with people than I am.”
Jenna looked up the number and called. She managed to catch Deputy Hooper at the station, and learned that the children had not been found.
Deputy Hooper said, “I’m sure they’re fine. If something had happened to them, we would’ve heard about it by now. But if they come back, don’t hesitate to call us.”
Jenna found David sitting in his recliner in the living room, frowning at the television as he thumbed the remote. She told him what Deputy Hooper had said. “You’re still worried about those kids, aren’t you?” she said.
“They were here again last night. After you went to sleep.”
“They were? Why didn’t you wake me? Did you talk to them?”
“No, they took off.”
“The same kids?”
“Yeah, they were the same ones.” He sighed. “I walked all the way around the fence when I got home and didn’t find any openings. They have to be going through the gate. I’m going to put a padlock on it”
“I think there are a couple new ones in the toolbox, still in their blister packs.”
He put the remote on the arm of the chair and stood. “I’ll go look.”
Half an hour later, the gate in the Cyclone fence was firmly locked with a large Schlage padlock. David seemed distracted the rest of the evening. They ate dinner in the living room in front of the television, as usual. Jenna was able to get David to talk about his day at work a little while they ate, but he soon became preoccupied again. After dinner, he dozed in the recliner.
Jenna cleaned up in the kitchen, then went looking for Miles. He wasn’t in the living room with David and Martha, so she went upstairs and found him at the computer operating a joystick, playing a game on the Internet. She took a stack of shoe boxes off a chair, put it beside Miles, and seated herself.
“Is all your homework done?”
“Yep. I did it right after school.”
“Good for you. How’s school going?”
