“But Brett is still active. He isn’t in Batesburg, but in a nearby town. Signal is difficult to triangulate, but looks like… Greenlawn or Dunvall, or maybe somewhere between the two towns.”
“Anything about them related to the missing girls?”
“Nothing that pinged the server, other than being nearby, of course. Just two Podunk towns.”
“You have anything else for me, Peter?”
There was a lengthy pause, but the director didn’t push him. Eventually, the man replied.
“I’m hesitant to tell you this, because I wanted the lab to double check first.”
Ames stopped in front of the door to the holding cell that Peter McGuire was being detained in.
“What is it?”
“I, uh—”
“Spit it out, Paul.”
“The lab ran DNA on Steph Black’s blood and samples from Meghan and Taylor.”
“And?”
“Well, Director, they’re, uh, they’re sisters.”
Director Ames nearly dropped his phone.
“What?”
“It could be—is probably just a case of the samples were contaminated, but the lab report shows that they are biological sisters. Father and mother are the same for all three girls.”
“Fuck,” the director muttered, unable to keep his surprise to himself.
A mistake. It has to be a mistake.
“What about Lacy McGuire?”
“Dunno. Brett—uh, Agent Cherry was supposed to collect a sample from the girl’s father and send it over. Checked an hour ago; the lab hasn’t received anything.”
Director Ames pushed his finger and thumb into his eyes, trying to stay the headache that slowly began to build behind them.
“Here’s what I want you to do, Agent Grover. You know those old missing persons cases? See if you can find some DNA from those girls and run them against the Black girl’s sample. Let me know what you find.”
“On it. Director?”
“Yeah?”
“One more thing.”
“What is it?”
“Take this with a grain of salt too, because it too is likely a contamination issue.”
“Tell me.”
Agent Grover sighed, as if the words were causing him physical discomfort.
“We ran the milk, too; the glass from the Black house? Found some epithelials on the rim of the glass. Got a match.”
The director felt his face go slack. Even before Agent Grover spoke again, he knew what the man was going to say.
And he simply couldn’t believe it.
“Not to anyone in the system, but to the girls. Whoever drank from that glass? Well, it was a first-degree relative—a man.”
“Father,” the director said softly.
“Yeah—most likely the biological father. Could be uncle, though.”
The director remembered the way Martin had stared at Kendra, the way he had called her Ken-Ken.
“Paul?”
He gripped the door handle and prepared to open it, thinking hard about how he was going to address the despondent man inside.
How he was going to tell him that his entire life to this point was a lie.
“Yeah?”
“Run Kendra’s DNA, would you?”
“What? You mean against the missing girls? Or the milk? Or—”
Director Ames pulled the door wide.
“Both,” he said. “Test her DNA against both.”
CHAPTER 58
A shadow—a woman’s shadow, much older than the others—slunk along the damp wall. At first Kendra thought it was Mother, but the way the woman moved, staying in the shadows, reminded her of the way the girls had moved in and out of the trees when she had first met Lacy McGuire.
It was one of the girls, that much she knew—but she wasn’t a girl, not anymore.
She was a woman.
“Who are you?” Kendra asked. She moved toward the front of the cage and tried to get a better look. The woman stepped forward, revealing her thin body, while her face remained basked in darkness.
Tell me about her.
Kendra squinted, trying to figure out who this woman was talking about. She didn’t have to think too hard.
Tell me about Christine.
All of a sudden the air was dry—so dry that Kendra found it difficult to swallow.
Christine?
Yeah, Christine. You showed Lacy her father, now show me Christine.
The memories were dark for Kendra, things that she had locked away. Until crawling into Steph Black’s room, she’d thought that they had been locked away forever, in a cell like this, impossible to escape from.
Mater est, matrem omnium.
The woman suddenly stepped forward, her features finally becoming visible in the dim lighting.
It was Charlotte, Kendra knew this instantly. She didn’t have the same high, gaunt cheekbones, the pointed chin, and large ears that Christine had had, but she had the same dark eyes, the intense stare.
She was telling the truth, Kendra thought. The weight of this fact pushed down on her, as if it had altered gravity. Christine had a daughter, and she was here all along.
Kendra expected a response to that in her head, but none came.
For nearly a minute, a weighted silence fell over them. Kendra tried to put together what this all meant, but it was too much for her to fully comprehend.
“You are my sister,” Charlotte finally said.
Kendra narrowed her eyes.
“Why do you guys keep saying that? Is that your approach to getting these girls to stay? Just beat them down, repeat that same shit over and over again until they are driven mad enough to believe it?”
Because it’s true, Kendra.
Kendra grunted in frustration.
You want to know about Christine? Then I’ll show you Christine.
Kendra closed her eyes, and returned to the small closet at the back of the altar, to the place that had so altered her life’s course for the second time.
“The Lord demands that you flee this vessel, demon. Do not fight.”
“Mater est, matrem omnium,” Christine said with a laugh. “Mater est, matrem omnium, Father.”
The young priest moved Christine’s now slack body and laid it across the table that Father Callahan had set up. Kendra recognized it as the one that they put the coffee on after Sunday Mass. Now, however, instead of being covered with the stainless steel decanter, milk, sugar, and Styrofoam cups, it was covered in a red cloth.
And Christine.
The woman didn’t struggle. Instead, she allowed herself to be laid on the table. It was as if she had suddenly lost the ability to control her own muscles.
“The Lord compels you, demon, to release this disciple of God,” Father Callahan whispered. He brought the cross he was holding directly over Christine’s forehead.
A croaking sound exited Christine’s mouth, something of the like Kendra had never heard before. She pushed the door open a smidgen more to get a better look.
Her hands were sweaty, and her heart was racing.
“Get the holy water,” Father Callahan instructed. He indicated a large vat, three, maybe four liters, in a plain plastic vessel in the corner of the room.
“How much?” the younger priest asked.
Christine moaned again, and this time her eyes rolled upward, showing only whites.
“In the name of our Father, I demand you to release this woman from your hold!” he hissed.
Christine’s eyes flipped forward, and they blazed into Father Callahan.
“Father?” she said in a mocking tone. “Father?! Mater est, Horatio. Matrem omnium.”
Father Callahan kept his eyes trained directly on Christine.
“Get the holy water,” he repeated.
The younger priest made his way over to the jug.
“How much?”
The answer was immediate.
“All of it.”
The younger priest cou
ld barely lift the entire jug, but he somehow managed to wrangle it over to the table.
“Good,” Father Callahan said. He pulled a purple sash from his pocket and handed it to the younger man. “Now put this on her face.”
Fear and dread simultaneously passed over his features.
“What?”
Father Callahan nodded.
“If you want to save this girl, you will do exactly as I say.”
Nothing happened. Even Christine, who had been wheezing ever since she had entered the room, seemed to become silent.
“Father John?” Callahan asked, finally tearing his eyes away from Christine. “I’ll say it again: if you want to save this girl, you’ll put the cloth on her face.”
Father John reluctantly took the cloth. His face had taken on a shade of gray, Kendra noticed. And like her, his hands appeared to be sweating as well, darkening the purple sash where his fingers touched the fabric.
He moved to the head of the table, his feet appearing to shuffle across the floor. A split second before lowering the fabric onto Christine’s face, he turned.
Kendra’s breath caught in her throat. It was as if the man could see her, that he was looking directly into her eyes, but that was impossible. From his vantage point, he could only see the partially opened door, not what was inside.
The young priest opened his mouth, and said—
—”Anyone want a drink? I’m making tea.”
Kendra’s jaw dropped.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
Father John, Peter McGuire’s priest… he had been there.
“What’s happening?”
Kendra stumbled backward, aware but not caring that Charlotte was staring at her, an expression of pure sadness on her face. Her legs suddenly felt like bricks, and her knees locked up, sending her falling onto her ass.
How can this be?
Her tailbone bounced off the cement ground, sending a spire of pain up her right side all the way to her shoulder.
How?
Because of Mother—because of mater est, matrem omnium.
Kendra swallowed hard.
But—
What happened to her next?
With her hands, Kendra pushed herself away from the cage as Charlotte took a step forward.
Tell me.
The thought was so powerful that Kendra felt the rest of the story conjuring in her mind, and was helpless to prevent it.
…water, pouring over Christine’s covered face… Father Callahan hovering over her, face red, screaming at the demon to release her… sputtering… gagging… shouting ‘Enter me,’ ‘Enter me!’ ‘ENTER ME!’…
The memory faded, but it left Kendra in a state.
She was trembling, her face buried in her hands, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “Please, I’m so sorry.”
Did she drown?
“No.”
Then what happened?
She died… overdosed.
The silence that ensued went on for so long that Kendra figured that Charlotte must have left again. Eventually, she mustered the courage to pull her head out of her hands and lift her red eyes.
Charlotte was still there, but any sadness that might have been in her face was gone.
“Charlotte? Can you get me out of here?” Kendra was aware that she sounded like a child, like when she used to ask Daddy to lie with her so that the nightmares didn’t come back.
But she didn’t care.
The woman stared, and then her head slowly started to move side to side.
This is where you belong. You are my sister, my family, and if you join us, we will be unstoppable.
Then she took a step backward and vanished into the shadows.
CHAPTER 59
Brett stepped from the musty interior of the church and into the warm night. It wasn’t just the air inside the church that was suffocating, it was the feel of the place as well.
And the story he had just heard had done nothing to ease his discomfort.
Holding the heavy wooden door open, he waited for Father John to slink by. The man seemed to have shrunk a couple of inches from the time they had entered, and his posture had suffered as well. His face was still gray and covered in sweat, but his eyes seemed more vacant than before.
When the man shuffled clear of the door, Brett closed it behind him. There was no point in saying goodbye; Father Callahan had already retired to his quarters, wherever they were, exhausted and out of breath. Half dead. Mostly dead. As Brett watched Father John make his way slowly to the director’s car parked across the street, he couldn’t help but note the similarities between the two.
Both were men of the cloth, of course, but the similarities ran deeper than that, despite their difference in age. Both men cared, that was certain, and while Father Callahan was darker, colder, they shared the same ingrained desire to help others. And while Father John had already expressed his differences when it came to believing in true evil before entering the church, something had changed in him during the time that intervened. He was—
Father John stumbled halfway across the road and Brett ran to him.
“You okay?” he asked, placing a hand on his shoulder.
The man adjusted the bag that Father Callahan had handed him and tried, pathetically, to straighten his posture. He took an awkward step forward and then another.
“I’m fine,” the man said, although this was as blatant a lie as Brett had ever heard. Father John tried to shrug him off and continue walking by himself, but Brett held fast.
“Take it easy,” he said, to which the priest muttered something about finding the girls.
After helping the man into his seat, Brett went around to the driver side and then started the car. He let it run for a moment before finally turning to the priest again.
“Where to?”
Father John turned to look at him, a look of incredulity on his face.
“The swamp,” he said after a short pause. “We need to go the swamp.”
FBI Agent Brett Cherry nodded and then put the car into drive. As he drove back the way they had come on the dirt road, his mind fixated on Father Callahan’s words.
Remember, you need a living host for the demon.
Mater est, matrem omnium.
There was something else that Father Callahan and Father John had in common: they had both performed the botched exorcism on Christine Barker. And of all that Father Callahan had said, it was what he hadn’t said that was perhaps the most telling.
Something horrible had happened that night, not just to Christine, but to them. Something that had changed them. Something that they lived with to this day.
Brett shuddered and wondered, not for the first time, how things had gone so horribly wrong.
CHAPTER 60
It was madness.
Hearing others inside her mind, the connection between Christine and her daughter and this place, Father John, mater est, matrem omnium.
But at the heart of it all was the missing girls. The ones that were here with Mother and Father.
Sisters.
Kendra, curled up in a ball at the back of her cell, tucked up against the hard metal frame of the bed, knew then that this was why her father had dropped her off at the church. He had done it so that she wouldn’t end up here.
And yet she had.
More than three decades later she was here, for reasons she didn’t—couldn’t—understand.
Part of her wanted to just sit in the cell and wait until death eventually took her, however long it took to end up like Officer Woodward.
Which was why when she first heard the shuffling down the hallway, she didn’t look up.
Go away.
Ken-Ken?
The name still had enough pull to draw Kendra’s head out of her arms.
Lacy McGuire was standing outside her cell, her hair in blonde pigtails, her eyes blue and bright and shining.
“Hi,” the girl sa
id simply.
“Hi,” Kendra replied. She waited for another one of Mother’s tricks that would send her deeper down the winding spiral of insanity. What she got was something that couldn’t be faked; what she got was pure, unadulterated emotion.
I miss my dad—I miss Peter.
A single tear fell out of one of those bright eyes and traced a glistening line down her cheek.
I know he’s not my real daddy, but I love him.
Lacy’s pain pulled Kendra out of her fog.
With all of her waning mental strength, she tried to regain control of her faculties. Lacy was why she was here. Despite her own pain and suffering, this wasn’t about her anymore. It was about Lacy, because even though Peter wasn’t her real father, she didn’t belong here.
No one did—no one deserved to be with mater est, matrem omnium.
It took Kendra considerable effort to uncoil her stiff and sore body, and even more to push herself to her feet.
“You know what the FBI is, Lacy?” she asked.
The girl shook her head.
“It’s like the police—the special police. I’m one of them. I’ve helped many girls your age, many, many girls. But now I need your help—I need your help to get out of here. If you get me out of here, I’ll help you see Peter again.”
The girl shook her head slowly.
Mother says that the police are not our friends.
“That’s not—that’s not—”
—not true, Lacy. I’m here to help.
Mother says that if the police come again, they will take us away, won’t let us see each other again. I love my sisters.
Kendra shook her head.
I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen, Lacy. I’ll make sure that you can see you sisters again. I’ll make sure that you get to stick together.
It pained her to lie to someone so young, so innocent, but when she saw Lacy’s posture changed, from cautious to indecisive, she was encouraged.
Please, Lacy, you need to help me.
What about Mother and Father?
What about them?
Lacy dug her toe into the concrete.
Will we be able to see them again?
Yes, of course, Kendra lied. Regardless of what the DNA revealed, it wouldn’t matter. Lacy and her sisters would never see Mother or Father again.
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