Ultimate Sacrifice

by S. E. Green

  But I don’t say anything. I keep that enormous secret to myself.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I dive in and start researching Edwin. I’ve only actually met him a few times, but each one I never really cared for him. One time he came over to a Fourth of July picnic my PaPaw and parents hosted on our farm, and I remember he teased Honey relentlessly about her hair. She’d gone super short and Edwin kept calling her “Butch” and “Dyke” and then laughing at his own stupid non-humor. She was only thirteen and I remember her hiding out in my bedroom just so she wouldn’t have to deal with him. But that was Edwin, and maybe he’d grown out of all of that, but that one memory seems to always come back to me when I think of him.

  He didn’t go to college. He went to a technical school for welding and travels full time with an industrial company that specializes in metal work for large buildings. Other than the fact he went to high school with Uncle Jerry and Bee-Bee and Mark, I really don’t anything else about him.

  Well, and also that my PaPaw was sort of a father figure to him.

  I have no clue what exactly I’m looking for when I type his name into a search engine. The first thing that pops up is his Facebook page, and it’s set to public, so I scroll through. With his curly blonde hair and blue eyes, he looks a lot like Honey. He’s got numerous pictures of him working in a harness, welding high up on a skyscraper. There are others of him doing adrenaline sports like bungee and sky diving. Then others of partying with friends. But then there’s some older ones, going back to high school.

  There’s one of him standing with his baseball team. I look at each of their faces and see Uncle Jerry in the back row. That’s right, I’d forgotten he’d played baseball in high school, just like Kevin does. There’s another picture of senior prom with Edwin and Bee-Bee. I look closer at that one. Bee-Bee was gorgeous. She still is. No wonder she’s got so many men she’s juggling.

  Then there’s one of Edwin in the woods meditating in a circle with other guys and girls that seems so out of place next to the other photos. I zoom in on and study the faces of the others in the circle. They all look about his age, high school or so. The picture is a bit dark and a little grainy, but my eyes go from face to face. I don’t think I know any of these people.

  Wait, I do. There’s Uncle Jerry, Bee-Bee, and Mark.

  I press print, snag the black-and-white photo off the tray, and head straight over to PaPaw’s where Uncle Jerry is temporarily staying. On my dirt bike, I race the trail through the woods and minutes later come out on PaPaw’s property to find my uncle out feeding the goats. It seems like forever since we talked when in reality it’s only been a few days. I don’t know how he’s going to receive me after everything that went down between him and my dad, but here goes nothing.

  “Hi, Uncle Jerry.”

  He looks up from where he’s mixing vitamins into the goat feed, and he smiles. “Hey, little one.”

  Little one. He used to call me that when I indeed was just a little one. I love that he still does. I love even more that he smiled at me.

  “What’s up?” he prompts.

  I came here planning on launching right into things, but now as I stand here in the warm summer sun watching him feed goats, I want to know if he’s okay. “How are you doing?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “I’m all right, I guess.”

  “I’m sorry about Bee-Bee and Dad.”

  Uncle Jerry doesn’t immediately respond and I start to think I probably made a mistake saying that. But then he shrugs. “Why? Not your fault.”

  True, but someone needs to say it to him, and I don’t know if my dad did. “Are you and Bee-Bee talking?”

  “She’s called me a few times. I’ll call her back when I’m ready.”

  “You and Dad going to make up?”

  Uncle Jerry lets out a humorless chuckle. “Eventually, I suppose.”

  We lapse into silence and I take a seat on an upside down bucket, idly watching him move from one bin to the next as he measures out vitamins and feed. I wish Uncle Jerry could find someone great to love him. Not someone who has a weird ex-husband and who will sleep with a married man. Uncle Jerry deserves so much better.

  He mixes the last batch and then grabs his open beer and takes a long gulp. “So why you here? I know it’s not to just talk about your dad.”

  I smile a little. Uncle Jerry could always read me. “What can you tell me about Edwin?”

  He pauses in taking another sip. “What do you mean?”

  “I found an old picture of you, Edwin, and the Doughtery’s sitting in a circle in the woods.” Reaching inside my front pocket, I slide the photo out and hand it to him and watch as everything about him tenses. “You guys were all friends in high school, but what else can you tell me about him?”

  “Where did you find that picture?” he asks.

  “On Edwin’s Facebook.”

  Uncle Jerry looks up to PaPaw’s house. “Listen, I’ve got to go. Can we do this later?”

  I don’t respond, and he doesn’t give me a chance to either, he simply hurries past the barn, through the fence, and up and around the side of PaPaw’s house. Then he climbs in his car and is gone.

  WITHIN AN HOUR the picture is taken down from Facebook and Edwin’s profile is made private. I’d have to be an idiot not to know that Uncle Jerry contacted him and told him what I said, which means Edwin now knows I was “stalking” his page.

  I don’t know what that picture means, and from my uncle’s response to it, I doubt he’s going to tell me. Bee-Bee might, though, but with everything that’s been happening I think it would be awkward and inappropriate for me to go over there and launch right into the Facebook picture thing.

  So I grab a basket and pick some vegetables from our garden, leave a note on the kitchen counter for my family, and take off down our driveway. As I walk diagonal across County Line Road and over onto the Doughtery’s property, I glance down a ways to where Wade’s house sits. His car is out front, but neither of his parents’ are.

  Maybe after I talk to Bee-Bee I’ll go over and say hi and thank him again for his help with Kevin. And maybe, just maybe, I can talk some of this stuff out with him and see what his take is on it all. Because it would be nice to unload everything, have someone help me pick it apart, and then put it back together in some sort of logical sense. Someone that won’t pacify me or look at me like I’m being paranoid. Someone who I trust and is not directly connected to all of this.

  I walk the last few steps up the porch to Bee-Bee’s door and give it a knock. I hear shuffling inside, the curtain over the front window moves, and I see her peeking out. I give her a small smile and wave and watch as she glances beyond me, I’m sure looking to see if there are any reporters trailing me. But when she sees the coast is clear, she opens her door and looks at me through blood-shot, dark-circled, blue eyes. I never really took time to notice before, but Michelle had those exact eyes. The light blue rimmed by a darker shade. Pretty eyes.

  I hold up the basket of vegetables. “I just wanted to see how you were doing,” I hesitantly tell her.

  She nods and waves me in, and I timidly walk through the same doorway I have a hundred times before, except this time it’s different. No Michelle racing across the carpeted floor and flinging herself into my arms. No scent of something cooking in the crock pot. No music. No clean breeze from the open windows. No sun shining in. Everything is dark and stale and stagnant, even Bee-Bee. From her oily face and stringy hair, it looks like she hasn’t bathed since the funeral.

  She leads the way into the living room, and I carefully follow as my eyes touch on the mess: dishes, used tissues, a wad of blankets, a laundry basket full of Michelle’s clothes, food wrappers.

  I’m reminded again that she has no one to grieve with. She’s all alone. If I lost a family member, I’d have everyone else to hold me, to cry with me, to sit with me. She doesn’t even have Uncle Jerry anymore.

  Well, she has me, and that thought fills me this odd determination to make
things better for her. So I straighten my shoulders and say, “You go get in the shower and put on some fresh clothes. I’m going to clean your house.” Then without giving her a chance to respond, I start doing exactly that.

  I’m five minutes into cleaning the kitchen when I hear the shower go on, and I smile. Good. I open up the windows, turn on some music, and keep going. When I’m done I don’t know what we’ll talk about, or if we’ll talk at all. I want to see what she has to say about the affair she had with my father. I think I should probably be upset about that, but somehow I’m not. I’m just sad. Michelle was my little sister.

  I want to talk about Edwin and that picture of them in the woods. I want to tell her about the photos I found on that phone in Edwin’s bag. There’s so much I could talk to her about, but bottom line—anything I bring up will just make her sad again. I don’t want that. I’ll let her lead the conversation if she wants to have one. Otherwise, I’ll clean, make her some real food, give her a hug, and leave.

  She finishes with her shower and without a word to me, she goes out back and sits in one of the swings on Michelle’s play set. I keep cleaning, and the next time I check on her, she’s out of the swing and staring down at her flower bed. I keep cleaning, and the next time I check on her she’s pulling weeds. It keeps going like that for the next hour, me cleaning, checking on her, and she doing something else out back.

  When I’m finally done, I walk out the rear door to see her now with rubber gloves on as she scrapes burnt meat from the charcoal grill. “I’m all done,” I tell her.

  She looks up at me and nods. I hang back, waiting, letting her decide what happens next, but she just goes back to cleaning the grill and so I take that as my cue to leave.

  I open up the front door and look down to see a small white box sitting on her WELCOME matt. There’s a pink ribbon tied around it, but no tag. Automatically, I glance up and down the road, but it’s empty. Whoever left this here, did it in the time I’ve been here. But why didn’t they knock on the door? Unless I was running the vacuum and just didn’t hear.

  “What is it?” Bee-Bee asks, and I jump. I didn’t realize she came up behind me.

  I lean down and pick it up and hand it to her, and she frowns as she pulls at the pink ribbon. It slides away and she tucks it into her front pocket before prying the tiny lid off the white box.

  Inside and laying on top of pink tissue paper is a lock of Michelle’s braided blond hair held together with twine. One end of the lock looks normal, but the other end has been burnt to a frazzled black. I stare at that burnt portion, and my organs seem to float and then fall, and everything after that happens in a fog. The box tumbling from Bee-Bee’s fingers. Her scream. My frozen shock. Wade running across the road. Wade touching my shoulder. Bee-Bee falling to her knees. Me kneeling beside her. Her crying. Me reaching for her. Wade dialing his phone . . .

  “DID YOU SEE anyone?” detective Crandall asks Wade some thirty minutes later.

  “No, sir.”

  “What were you doing here?” the detective asks me.

  “Cleaning. Helping. Just checking in,” I answer, my eyes trailing over to the corner of the porch where Dad has his arm wrapped around Bee-Bee, consoling her. Mom’s beside me, her hand lovingly squeezing my neck, but her eyes haven’t left Dad and Bee-Bee. Why is he over there? Can’t someone else comfort her?

  “Seems as if your family is showing up everywhere I am,” the detective comments, and I don’t respond because what am I supposed to say to that? It is true.

  One of the investigators bags Michelle’s hair and I drag my gaze away. Whoever killed her kept a lock of her hair and burnt the end. Mark didn’t tell me about this part of the ritual. I wonder if he knew.

  “You didn’t hear a car?” Crandall asks me, and I shake my head. He looks at Wade next, and he does the same.

  “What about Edwin?” I boldly ask. “Don’t you think it’s odd I find pictures of someone braiding Michelle’s hair on his phone and then someone delivers a braided lock here?”

  Bee-Bee raises her tear streaked face, and a count of silence goes by. “What are you talking about?”

  Crandall closes his eyes. He wasn’t ready for her to know about those pics. Well, too bad.

  She rises to her feet. “What is she talking about?”

  The detective motions inside. “Why don’t we go inside and talk?”

  “No,” she shakes her head, “I don’t want to go inside. What is she talking about?”

  The detective doesn’t answer, and so I tell her exactly what I found in Honey’s car, and when I finish Bee-Bee’s face transforms from grief to full on anger.

  “You weren’t aware of those pictures?” Crandall calmly asks.

  “Of course I wasn’t aware!” she shouts.

  “How often did Edwin and Michelle come into contact?”

  “Nearly every time he comes into town, he’s over here visiting. We’ve known each other a long time. We’re friends.”

  “What kind of friends?” the detective asks.

  Slowly, Bee-Bee steps away from my dad and her eyes narrow in on the detective. “I want to see those pictures, and I want to see them now.”

  IF MARK WAS still in town, I’d go right back over to his trailer and dig for more information. That Satanic Bible I found in the pond. I should’ve kept it. Or at minimum looked through it. There’s only one book store in town, and I highly doubt they’d carry such a book. I’d purchase and download one but Crandall would probably find out, and that definitely wouldn’t look good. Which brings me to think about all the searches I’ve been doing online. He can track those, too.

  All of these thoughts is what ultimately lands me at the public library, sitting in front of a computer station. I choose one that sits with its screen pointed toward the wall so people can’t see what I’m searching.

  I type in, BURNT HAIR, SATAN, and select the first article that pops up. I take a second to browse and then go back and read more thoroughly. Burning hair keeps the soul from falling into the hands of the wrong sorcerer, I silently read and take a second to think about that. The wrong sorcerer . . . meaning all the different evil in hell, I suppose. Burning her hair assures it goes to the correct sorcerer—to Satan.

  So the pentagram at her grave channels her soul to hell and once it gets there the burnt hair assures it goes to Satan. I shake my head. How can this stuff even exist? This is just so unreal. And the thought of Michelle’s little soul in hell makes me sick to my stomach.

  I type in, REVERSING SATANIC RITUAL, and start browsing. Exorcism, prayer from priest, anointing with oil, and various other things. My eyes jump from word to phrase to passage and I re-read the one that seems to repeat itself in several of the articles. Light a candle and rebuke it in Jesus’s name. Say, “I demand this work be naught and that the peace of God reign down in Jesus’s name, and where two or more people agree, thou shalt be done.”

  Where two or more people agree. Travis will do this with me.

  I grab my phone: CAN YOU MEET ME AT MICHELLE’S GRAVE? I text and wait for a response. But when several minutes go by, I start thinking again about this Sunday and the Ultimate Sacrifice.

  I don’t care what Crandall says, and I don’t care how close they are to solving this, it’s time all those reporters know what’s going on. And while a week ago I wanted all those reporters gone, now I want them there and every religious group, too. We need people looking into this. We need coverage. Prayer. Most importantly, if our property is swarming with people, there’s no way more of this stuff can happen.

  I pull up a Word document and detail out everything I know from start to finish: Michelle’s murder, the burning cross, the pentagram, the braided hair, the upcoming sacrifice, all the things Mark said, the New Satanic Empire, the pictures on Edwin’s phone, the Facebook photo. Every single detail I can think of, I type into this document. The only thing I leave out is the bag of evidence I disposed of.

  After re-reading it several times, I pull
up several local news outlets and without a second of hesitation, I anonymously submit the document.

  Then I push back from the computer and just sit for a second as I absorb the enormity of what I just did. Come tomorrow morning, things are going to be crazy. But it had to be done, because I’m finished with feeling like I have no control over my own life.

  My phone buzzes. Travis has finally texted me back: SURE, 15 MIN?

  PERFECT!

  ON MY DIRT bike I arrive to Michelle’s grave with the candles I just bought from the grocery store. It’s going to be dark soon, so I go ahead and drive my bike up the ramp and into the bed of Travis’s truck. I grab the bag of candles and lighter and jump down.

  “You and I are going to say a prayer,” I tell him as I start heading across the cemetery to Michelle’s grave. “Devil worshipping, satanic rituals, we’re going to do whatever we can to cancel that out and make sure Michelle’s soul does not go to hell.” I kneel down at her headstone and light one of the candles, not even giving Travis a chance to discuss my decision or to tell me I’m paranoid or insane or whatever. “We’re going to do this where she was murdered, too.”

  I stand and grab his hand and look down at the candle, flickering with the slight breeze. I take a deep breath, ready to recite the prayer, when I notice his hand trembling slightly in mine. I look over at him. He doesn’t look good.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  He swallows. “I . . . I don’t feel so good.”

  He starts to let go of my hand, and I tighten my grip when I realize, I’m not feeling so good either. I swallow, too, forcing the bitterness of nausea back down my throat, and then I take another breath and start speaking, “I demand,” I swallow, “this work be naught and,” I swallow again, “that the peace of God reign down in Jesus’s name,” I gag, “and where two or more people agree,” I gag again, “thou shalt be done.”