She was convinced that Mother and Martin—she refused to call him Father—were exerting some sort of hypnotism on the girls, and maybe even on her.
That was the only way to explain what had happened.
When Kendra opened her eyes again, she was shocked to see a young girl with blonde, almost white hair standing directly outside her cell.
“Jesus!”
Kendra leaped backward in surprise, which only caused more pain to erupt inside her head and from her right shoulder down to her fingertips. She groaned, trying not to let the agony show on her face.
Breathing deeply, she tried her best to push all of the day’s events out of her mind and focus on what mattered now: getting out of the cell. After that, she would worry about saving the girls and putting Mother and Martin behind bars.
Preferably bars like this one—with a shared shit bucket.
“Hi, little one,” she said, trying her best to sound genuine, friendly. “Do you know where Martin is?”
The girl simply stared, her blue eyes wide, her mouth forming a neutral expression.
Kendra grew uncomfortable.
Is she deaf? Dumb?
“Little girl? Do you know—?”
I don’t have the key, Ken-Ken.
Kendra tried not to overreact to the words that formed inside her mind, but she did a poor job of controlling herself; she nearly tripped over her own shoes as she stumbled backward.
“How?”
Lacy told you already. We are sisters—we can all do this.
Kendra’s rational mind told her that this was impossible, a stage trick, some sort of charlatan’s ruse, but she also knew that there was no point arguing with a six-year-old. So, as before, she went with it.
“Can Mother or Martin do this?”
The girl’s brow furrowed.
Martin?
Kendra resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
“Father?”
The girl seemed to contemplate this for a moment or two.
No. I don’t think so. I have never heard either of them inside—she tapped her forehead with a tiny finger—my head.
Kendra nodded and lowered her voice.
“What’s your name?”
Jasmine.
“And how old are you, Jasmine?”
Seven.
“And your mommy and daddy, what are their names?”
Again, a confused expression crossed her face.
What do you mean?
“Your mommy and daddy, what are their names? What do they look like? Do you remember what they look like?”
Mother and Father are upstairs. You know what they look like.
“No, no, Jasmine. Your real mommy and daddy.”
Jasmine moved away from the cage, but Kendra took an even larger step toward the bars.
You shouldn’t talk like that. They are your Mother and Father too—we are sisters. We are family and we have family values. No matter what, we will stick together.
Kendra strode directly to the cage and grabbed the bars in both hands. Pain shot through her right side, but she ignored it.
“We aren’t sisters, Jasmine,” she said, trying to keep her voice even, in control.
The girl nodded.
“Mother said you would say that. She said that no matter what, we need to stick together, that we can’t allow anyone to split us up. Even if something happens to her, she says we need to carry on as before.”
Jasmine took another step backward, and Kendra, having moved forward as much as possible, squeezed her face between the bars, the metal cold and wet against her cheeks.
“Fuck Mother,” she said, unable to control herself any longer.
Jasmine’s face turned serious.
“You shouldn’t say that.”
A smile unexpectedly crept onto Kendra’s face.
“Fuck Mother,” she repeated through gritted teeth.
Jasmine took another step back, then jostled herself as she bumped into the wall behind her.
No, please don’t.
This time, Kendra shouted.
“Fuck Mother!”
When Jasmine turned and ran, Kendra growled—a sound that she had never heard herself make before.
“Let me out of here!”
Her fingers tightened around the bars and then she reared back and tried to yank them out of the ground.
“Let me out of here! Let me out of here!”
CHAPTER 55
The candle had been reduced to a waxy sculpture, congealed beige fingers that crawled their way from the center of the table toward Brett.
And only Brett.
After Father Callahan finished his story, it seemed that everything was directed at Brett: the wax, Father John, even Father Callahan’s white eyes seemed to be focused on him.
Throughout the man’s tale, parts of which almost sounded believable, Brett had wanted to interject, to interrupt, to seek clarification. But he had bitten his tongue, and now that it was over, his commentary seemed mundane. He was not here to convince anyone of anything, least of all two devout priests.
Sure, there were specifics that gave him pause, such as the Latin terms—what was it? Mater est, matrem omnium?—that Christine had uttered, which were the same words scrawled in Steph Black’s secret room—but so what? What was it proof of? Certainly not proof of some sort of demonic possession… a demented mother stealing little girls from their homes. Father Callahan had said that Christine had overdosed, but what if she hadn’t? What if she was demented or deranged by what she had witnessed at the church and was now seeking out other girls, like Kendra, to corrupt?
It sounded farfetched even in his head, but Brett thought it was at least as equally probable as demonic possession tracing back to the sixteen hundreds.
Eyes were still on him, and he felt pressed to say something. But when he finally opened his mouth to speak, the elderly priest cut him off with such precision it was as if he had only been playing blind this whole time.
“It doesn’t matter if you believe,” Father Callahan said, waving his crooked hand dismissively. “If you want to find Kendra, you need to head into the swamp, and you need to find Mother.”
Brett was at a loss for words. He shook his head and closed his eyes, trying to see the world the way that Father Callahan might, trying to do the whole internal re-enactment that Kendra was so good at.
But he wasn’t Kendra—he was Brett Cherry.
And he didn’t know what to do next. Thankfully, Father John broke the uncomfortable silence.
“What do we do?” the priest asked, his voice wavering. “Father Callahan? Will you come with us? Flush out mater est?”
The man’s lips moved, but no words came out.
“Father?” Brett asked quietly.
Father Callahan coughed again.
“I can’t do it. I am too old, too tired. John, you know what you have to do. We did it once. The demon must be exorcised. There is no matrem omnium—there is only the Father, the holy one.”
Father John recoiled as if he had been struck. Fresh sweat broke out on his face.
“Me? No, no, no…” His eyes got a far-off look, as if he were recalling something. When he continued, Brett had to lean forward to catch the whispered words. “It was bad, Father. I don’t know if I can do it again. I wouldn’t even know what to do… or if I can actually do it. Do you remember Christine? Do you remember the way—?”
Father Callahan raised a crooked hand, stopping the other priest.
“No, no. That’s not your problem.”
The gaps in the old man’s sentences were starting to get on Brett’s nerves and were trying his patience.
“Then what is his problem, Father?”
“His problem is that he doesn’t believe, son. He needs to believe to exorcise the demon. He needs to believe, and he needs a vessel to contain the demon. Otherwise, none of the holy water, crosses, or Bible verses will do any good.”
Brett couldn’t contain his incredulity
any longer.
“Come on, this is ridiculous. I can’t—I won’t be part of this. We came here to see if you could help us find Kendra, and—I’ll be honest here—I’m pretty amazed that you actually knew her, that she grew up here. One—excuse my language—one hell of a coincidence, I’ll give you that. But this—” He gestured to the dim interior of the church, momentarily forgetting that Father Callahan was blind. “—all of this exorcism talk? I just… I just… it’s not going to help us find her or the missing girls. I’m sorry. I appreciate you trying, but it just won’t help.”
Brett breathed deeply. He hadn’t meant for his words to come out as harshly as they had, but he was scared and tired, and the self-control that he so prided himself on was lost. He felt like a poker player playing with his cards face up.
For a second, nothing happened. He didn’t know what to expect, but an outcry, or in the very least some sort of ‘you must believe’ or other religious dogma wouldn’t have been out of the question. But Father Callahan didn’t look disappointed; instead, he looked annoyed. It was as if Brett, the FBI agent who had lost his partner, his lover, didn’t matter.
Like he was an afterthought.
The old man turned his white eyes to Father John.
“You remember, don’t you? You remember what we did?”
Father John lowered his head.
“We failed, Father. Christine died…”
Horatio Callahan coughed into his hand again, but this time it wasn’t just a hack or two, but a long, drawn-out sound that left him wheezing and gasping for air.
Brett stood and went to the man, leaning over his hunched form. He placed a hand on the man’s back. Father Callahan was all bones beneath his black gown.
Unsure of what else to do, Brett patted him, and the man eventually hacked a glob of phlegm onto the table. Then the priest withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket, and Brett stepped backward as he first wiped his mouth and then the spit from the table.
“I’m tired,” Father Callahan said simply. “Very tired.”
Father John suddenly animated.
“No,” he said quietly. “I can’t do this. Last time…”
“Forget last time! Last time we failed because the demon was not real. This time… this time mater est, matrem omnium is alive.”
Brett stepped back from the table, the words in Steph Black’s secret room coming alive inside his mind. Whatever this was all about, he had no doubt that demons did exist. Maybe not the kind that Father Callahan was describing, but demons nonetheless.
Demons that would slit their own child’s throat on the eve of her fourth birthday.
You can’t have her.
Mater est, matrem omnium.
Father John’s hands were shaking so badly that he was once again barely able to pull the pill container from his pocket. Seeing that the man would never be able to open it in his state, Brett stepped forward and did the honors. Then he handed the priest two pills before slipping the container back into the man’s pocket.
“If you want to get Kendra back, if you want to save those girls, you are going to have to perform another exorcism, John. But this time, if you fail, they will all die—all the girls will die. Including Kendra.”
CHAPTER 56
Kendra shouted until she was hoarse.
No one answered.
No one came.
She was alone, trapped in a cell in the basement of a demented and deluded couple who kidnapped children. A couple that had given her some sort of hallucinogen that made her hear… made her think thoughts that weren’t her own.
Kendra lifted up her blouse and scratched furiously at the scars on her abdomen. The damp air in the cellar irritated her flesh, made it feel like there was a flurry of worms hidden beneath.
I need to find a way out.
She moved away from the bars and walked to the cot. It was a simple construction, with a horribly stained mattress on top. The bucket was of no help, either. When her searching eyes fell on a form in the adjacent cell, her spirits lifted, if only for a second.
There was something in there, a pile of clothing or blankets. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she lay back down onto the floor and made her way toward that side, squeezing between the iron bars. Her outstretched hand brushed against a corner of the dark fabric, but she was unable to grab hold.
Straining now, she forced her arm even further.
Fuck, come on!
With a final reach she grabbed hold of the damp fabric. With the cloth clenched between two fingers, she slid it a few inches toward her, at which point she was able to grab it with her entire hand. It was heavier than she thought, and when she yanked, it clattered across the floor.
Pants; they are pants.
Another pull, and her suspicions were confirmed. As she continued to move the pants toward her cell, they began to separate from what she now saw was a shirt. She heard a noise like pebbles on a chalkboard and knew immediately that the sound was bones.
Bones, held together with the last vestiges of sinew or tendons like dried beef jerky. It wasn’t pants—or, more specifically, it wasn’t just a pair of pants. It was the bones of a man that had once sported the jeans and a cotton t-shirt.
Kendra paused for a moment to mull this over before she gave the pant leg a hard yank, pulling it up against the bars of her cell. Shifting to her knees, she reached into the front pockets, her eyes trained on the hip bones that jutted from the worn waistband. The bones weren’t like what she had seen in museums or in textbooks; they weren’t bone white.
Even the term ‘bone white’ was a misnomer, she realized.
Instead, the bones were a sickly yellow, like stained, rotted teeth.
I’m going to die down here.
Kendra quickly pushed the thought away, and switched her attention to the back pocket after finding the front pockets empty. Her fingers found a leather wallet and she pulled it. It got stuck partway, lifting the pants—the bones were light, so light—a couple of inches off the ground. When the wallet finally came free, the bones clattered back to the ground with a sound reminiscent of ice falling being dropped into a rock glass.
Kendra ignored these distractions as best she could and turned her attention to the wallet. When she’d first realized that the lump of fabric was a pair of pants, she had hoped that she might finally get lucky and find a key. But when it was clear that that wasn’t going to happen, she had hoped for a weapon of some sort, if for nothing else but to offer her some peace of mind.
Surely, she wouldn’t use it on any of the brainwashed girls.
But Mother and Father…
Mater est, matrem omnium.
She had no idea why Steph Black had scrawled those words on every square inch of wall, or how the girl even knew those words that had haunted her for so long.
As Kendra tore through the wallet’s contents, she instead put her mind to the words that had been repeated to her since she had arrived.
You are our sister.
It wasn’t possible, of course, given that Mother or whatever the fuck her name was at most a decade older than her. For years she had searched for her parents after they had abandoned her, and she had come up empty. Martin claimed to have found her father, her real father, but despite his use of her nickname—all of them were using it now—it was just too improbable to be true.
And then there was the issue of Steph Black, Lacy McGuire, and the other girls not being biologically related to their parents.
That was a coincidence, clearly.
It had to be.
But whatever—whoever—they were, they weren’t her sisters, unless her father was a serial impregnator that had continued to have children well into his seventies.
Sperm bank? Is that possible?
Kendra flipped part of the wallet back, revealing a police badge, and her breath caught in her throat.
It’s a man’s world—I’m just living in it, she thought as she stared at Officer Woodward’s ID.
; Her eyes darted from the ID to the bones still covered in his clothes.
Maybe if she had a weapon, she might use it.
She might use it on anyone who tried to keep her here.
Kendra closed her eyes and tried to focus on a single word, trying to imagine sending it out to the minds of her sisters, knowing that by giving in to this strange hallucination, she was affording it a power that was unwarranted. But it was worse to just sit here in the damp cell, waiting for Martin to come rape her or worse.
She scratched at the scars on her stomach, her fingernails digging deep into her flesh.
Help, she thought.
Please help me.
CHAPTER 57
Deputy Director Ames, head of the FBI Crimes Against Children Unit for the past eight years, had seen a lot of shit in his time.
A lot.
More than Agents Wilson and Cherry combined.
But this took the cake.
Duped by an elderly priest—robbed by an elderly priest—and Agent Cherry, who was under arrest for aiding and abetting Agent Wilson in the escape of the likely perpetrator of three missing four-year-old girls, and perhaps more. In a stolen car. In his stolen car.
Leaving only the director, as he was so aptly called by near every FBI agent under his jurisdiction and Peter McGuire, a man who appeared completely broken after losing both his wife and now his daughter, back at Wikstrands Psychiatric Facility.
Ames didn’t blame Peter. After all, he had a daughter of his own, and although she was two years younger than Lacy, he couldn’t imagine losing her.
The director took out his phone and quickly hit redial.
“Agent Grover, any update on Batesburg?”
“Credit or debit statements from the four families mostly in the north of Batesburg, but all over the place, really. Computer couldn’t put any pattern to it; none of the families were in the same place at exactly the same time.”
The director made a face. That was proving more difficult than he had hoped.
“And Kendra’s phone? Did it pop back online?”
“Nuh-uh. Probably ditched her phone.”
The director had expected as much; still, he had been hopeful.
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