A pitch black, impenetrable to reason.
He contemplated his options, then shifted the car into drive.
“Then I think it’s time we pay Father Horatio Callahan a little visit, wouldn’t you agree?”
If nothing else, he would find out more about Kendra.
Father John didn’t answer.
Brett took this as a yes.
Chapter 49
FBI Agent Kendra Wilson could tell that she was walking—she felt the packed mud crunch beneath her shoes, the foul-smelling air that passed by her face, her leg muscles contract—but it didn’t much seem like she was actually making it happen.
It was like she was sliding along, her body somehow possessed by an unseen puppeteer.
Lacy’s small hand was cupped within hers, but now little Candice had come to her other side and she was holding her hand as well.
The rest of the girls had lined up beside her—even the older one, Charlotte, who Lacy had described as grumpy and had a familiar ring to her name—and together they approached the house hidden in the swamp, barely visible between the treeless trunks that shot out of the ground like spires.
Her mind could barely comprehend what was happening.
How can Lacy know about the dream?
The only thing that made sense was that somehow Martin had stolen her psychiatric file from the FBI—after all, no one knew about the dreams except the psychiatrist and probably Father Callahan, although she doubted that the man was still alive.
Somehow Martin must have hacked into the FBI computer, stolen her information, her personal files, learned about ‘Ken-Ken,’ about the dreams, and used it to confuse her.
Even if all of this craziness was true, which she highly doubted, one question continued to nag at her.
Why me? What’s so special about me?
She glanced at the girls beside and around her.
All age ranges from four to maybe twenty-two were represented, but there was no one her age.
Why me? Does it have something to do with the fact that I was abandoned at four years old?
Kendra tried to think, tried to set her mind whirring like it did when she was close to solving a case. But this was different. There was something strange with these girls, something that just didn’t make sense. And it acted as a roadblock to her thoughts.
How did Martin convince all of them to stay here and to be… to be happy? Is it some sort of brainwashing? Some sort of “Jonestown” coven?
Darkness surrounded them now, any final hint of sunlight all but gone. And with the night came swamp noises: bullfrogs, the snap of a snapping turtle’s jaws, and the ubiquitous hiss of insects performing whatever mating rituals kept them propagating.
How can these girls be so happy… particularly Lacy, who has been here for what… two days, if that?
Kendra closed her eyes for a moment, but kept her feet moving. They were within spitting distance of the porch now. And once inside, she knew that there was little chance that she would be coming back out again with her sanity intact.
Don’t Lacy and the others know that their parents miss them? That they are worried sick about them?
Lacy tugged her arm unexpectedly, drawing Kendra’s attention. She stared into the girl’s blue eyes, and as before, words seemed to materialize in her mind. They were in Kendra’s voice, so to speak, but she knew that they weren’t hers.
My parents are here, silly. My real parents.
Kendra simply thought her response.
Your parents aren’t Peter and Jenna?
She conjured an image of Peter’s face, his tear-streaked cheeks, as he had been on the couch when she had first entered his house.
Lacy shook her head, and as much as Kendra tried to prevent recalling her mother, strapped to the table, teeth gnashing, eyes wild, she couldn’t. The little girl’s eyebrows raised, and Kendra felt a pang of guilt.
Those aren’t my parents.
To clear the image of Jenna McGuire at Wikstrands, Kendra pictured Peter on the couch again.
Peter and Jenna were just borrowing me.
Now it was Kendra’s turn to recoil.
Borrowing?
Lacy nodded.
The image of Peter crying, desperate to find his child, stuck with Kendra. And as she replayed the memory, Father John asked if she wanted any tea from the kitchen, his old—
Lacy yanked Kendra’s arm, and she winced, feeling the shoulder shift forward further than what was natural.
“Don’t,” Lacy said, her eyes changing. They were still big and vibrant, but they were damp now, too.
Don’t what? Don’t think of your father, Lacy? Of Peter?
Lacy pursed her lips together.
“No—don’t think of him.”
Him… the priest?
Lacy nodded.
Mother doesn’t like him. Any of them. She will be angry.
A sound from the house drew Kendra’s gaze. All of the girls had come to a stop about a foot from the two wooden steps that led the porch.
There was a dim glow coming from the house, from deep within the otherwise dark interior, but the porch overhang cast a shadow over what she thought must have been a chain of some sort.
Kendra thought she had imagined the sound, but then it came again, and she detected movement.
A porch swing, there is a porch swing there, off to the left of the door, and someone is swinging on it.
She cleared her throat, and instinctively tightened her grip on both Lacy and Candice’s hands.
“Hello? Martin? Is that you?”
The creaking stopped and for a minute nothing happened. Kendra didn’t know if it was her imagination or if the blood rushing in her ears just blocked out any sound, but it seemed to her that the swamp had gone silent.
The bullfrogs had stopped burping, the insects had landed, even dripping water seemed to be temporarily silenced.
Her hands were clammy, and had she not been so impossibly tired, Kendra knew that her body would have been priming itself for a reaction: flight or fight or… freeze.
She was too tired to do anything but freeze.
Flick.
There was a flash of light.
Flick.
And another.
Flick.
A small flame illuminated a yellow circle on the porch. As Kendra watched, a pale face suddenly appeared, a white cigarette moving toward the lighter. Only the lower half of the face was visible, but this was enough for Kendra to confirm that it was a woman.
Thick red lips, a small, pointed chin. Smooth skin.
There was a puckering sound as the woman pulled on her cigarette and then the lighter flicked out, leaving only the small glowing cherry.
The woman exhaled a thin stream of smoke.
“Ken-Ken,” she said after another prolonged silence. “Welcome. We have been waiting a long, long time for you to come.”
Chapter 50
The church was dark when Brett pulled up to it, but Father John ensured him that Father Callahan was inside, that he lived there.
“Look at this place,” the priest whispered, inspiring Brett to do just that. The church, a nondescript one-story structure with plain wood walls and a rusted metal steeple at its apex, sat on its own on a patch of dirt. It was the only structure on an otherwise abandoned street that connected, from what Brett could gather, two sections of a deserted industrial complex.
As the dust swirled around the large wooden doors, Brett was beginning to doubt the priest beside him.
“You sure he’s still here? How long has it been?”
“I’m not sure. Fifteen, maybe twenty years.”
Brett let the air out of his lungs with a whoosh. What had seemed like such a great idea, a certainty, now filled him with apprehension. He squinted at the dark church. There was one circular window at the front that might have once held stained glass, but now was just a dark gray pane. New construction, maybe.
Somebody was here, or in the very least looki
ng after the place.
“Is he even alive?”
Father John didn’t answer.
“Fuck—well, we’re here. Let’s go have a look. All of the demons I know are human, but if he can help us find Kendra and the missing girls, I’m all ears.”
Part of him, the part that always needed to be in the know, also wanted to hear more about the exorcism.
The failed exorcism.
Brett opened the door and stepped into the warm night. The wind that blew dirt and sand across the empty lot was hot and fetid, like air trapped inside an abandoned house. Pulling his wallet out from his back pocket, he hurried across the street and up to the large double doors. He turned to Father John, expecting to see him pulling up the rear, but the man was still struggling to get out of the car. As he watched, the priest started to walk slowly toward the church, a grimace forming on his face with every step.
“Shit,” Brett grumbled. “You all right?”
Father John made some facsimile of a nod, but it was far from a reassuring gesture.
Brett waited for the priest to make it to his side, and when the man arrived, still gray and breathing heavily, he knocked twice—two heavy raps—on the massive wooden door.
The sound echoed inside like machine gun fire.
And then they waited.
After the sound of the knocking faded, there was only silence.
“You absolutely sure—” But a noise from inside the church, the sound of shuffling feet, answered Brett’s question even before he asked it.
The shuffling eventually stopped, and they were greeted by the sound of a heavy latch being moved. A second later, the wooden door creaked and opened. The door was so large that it created a slight vacuum, drawing the stale air that surrounded Brett and Father John into the church.
“Hello?”
Brett had to look down to find the source of the croak. The man was older than the comical image he had conjured in his mind earlier. He had weathered skin, like an elephant flank, and wisps of white hair swirled about his head. He was also staring at Brett’s navel, which was more than a little disconcerting.
Flipping his FBI badge forward, Brett cleared his throat.
“We are—”
“Huh? What’s this all about?”
“I’m from the FBI.”
The old man chuckled, a dry, raspy sound, and a crooked, arthritic claw extended out from the crack in the door and gently pushed Brett’s wallet away.
“Oh, son, I’m blind as a bat. Can’t be reading no FBI badge or any such nonsense. It’s late, I’m tired; why don’t you just tell me what you want?”
“Well—”
“Father Callahan, it’s me, Father John Simone,” the priest interjected. “I was—”
The hand extended again and waved, silencing them both.
“I’m blind, but not dumb. I remember who you are.” The man stepped away from the doorway. “Come inside,” he said, his voice receding with his shuffling footsteps. “I’m too old to open the door.”
Brett turned to Father John, who offered a shrug in response.
What the fuck am I doing here? I should be in Batesburg looking for Kendra.
But Brett didn’t leave. Instead, he leaned forward and placed a hand on the wooden door and shoved.
And then he and Father John were inside the musty church.
Chapter 51
“Tea?”
Kendra grunted as she lowered herself onto the worn blue couch. It was the second time that day that she had been offered tea, and her answer this time was the same as before.
“You have something stronger?”
The woman before her was pretty, with blond hair that spilled to her shoulders and a calming smile that lit up her heart-shaped face.
“Like what?”
“Whiskey?” There was a lilt of optimism in her voice that quickly faded when the woman smirked.
“Oh, sweetie, we don’t have any of that here. It just wouldn’t do. But I’ll tell one of your sisters to fetch you some tea.” She snapped her fingers and a girl appeared from an opening behind the woman who insisted that she be called Mother. “Maddy, why don’t you fetch some tea for our new sister?”
Kendra scoffed, but Mother misinterpreted the sound.
“Oh, it’ll make you feel better, I assure you. You must be parched.”
Kendra instinctively licked her lips, subconsciously confirming the woman’s words.
The girl, Madison, who was five or six, nodded, her cute little pigtails bobbing as she hurried back into what Kendra assumed was the kitchen. Then she waited for the woman with the cigarette hanging from her lower lip to continue speaking. While she waited, Kendra’s mind started churning again and she glanced around. She was in some sort of family room, but there was no TV to speak of—not that Kendra would have expected one, given the furniture that looked firmly rooted in the sixties.
And that said nothing of the layer of dust that seemed to cover pretty much everything.
Behind the woman—Mother—was the kitchen. To her right, on the other side of the entrance, was a closed door; clearly a bedroom.
Given the dimensions of the house from the exterior, Kendra couldn’t envision where all twenty of the girls might sleep.
Outside? Do they sleep outside in tents?
Madison suddenly reappeared with a cup of warm tea.
No… the basement.
It was Madison, Kendra knew it. It was odd, hearing someone else’s thoughts in her own head, odd and unbelievable on many levels. But she had no choice but to go along with it.
“Ah,” Mother said, “your tea is here. Give the tea to Ken-Ken, Maddy.”
Madison nodded and walked over to Kendra and handed her the tea.
Throat parched or not, Kendra placed the tea on the table as Madison quickly left the room the way she had come in.
“Look,” she began, eying the woman across from her, who was busy lighting another cigarette, “I don’t understand what’s going on here, what kind of trickery is happening, but you know that I’m from the FBI, right?”
Mother took another drag and nodded.
“So you know that it’s just a matter of time before the SWAT team comes in here and takes all these girls away, right? So why don’t you just tell me what the fuck is going on so we can just end this?”
Mother’s eyes narrowed and her lips pressed together, reminding Kendra of what one of the girls had told her on the way to the house.
Mother doesn’t like swearing.
Mother opened her mouth as if to say something, but then closed it again. She took another drag of her cigarette, the sound of the paper burning—a crackling noise that was more like blazing oak than paper—filling the otherwise silent room.
Kendra reached for the tea and brought it to her lips, but before drinking, she added, “Who are these children to you, anyway? And why are you kidnapping them?”
A smirk appeared on Mother’s face.
“Kidnapping? Oh, no, sweetie. I haven’t kidnapped anyone.”
Kendra took a sip of the tea. It was too sweet for her taste, and she put the cup back on the table.
“I beg to differ.”
Again, the woman’s eyes narrowed.
“You haven’t begged—not yet.”
Kendra prepared to stand.
“I don’t know what kind of sick game you’re playing, but you and Martin are going to spend a long, long time in prison.”
“Martin?” Mother chuckled. “You mean Father, sweetie.”
Kendra pulled herself to her feet, but for some reason she felt unbalanced, as if the fatigue from the day and her injuries from the car accident had suddenly descended on her all at once.
So tired… so fucking tired…
“Mother, father, you guys are freaks, you know that? Fucking—”
But her words were cut short when Martin suddenly appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“You!” Kendra hissed. Her hand lazily went to her pants, ge
ntly brushing against the syringe, making sure it was still there. She was trying to be discreet, but her body wasn’t behaving; everything was all ratchety like a movie with a low frame rate.
“Sit down!” Mother suddenly shouted. The sound was so loud, so unexpected that Kendra fell backward, collapsing into the chair as if she had been shoved backward.
Focusing was becoming difficult now, and when her eyes fell on Mother, she was no longer the pretty blonde with the heart-shaped face. Instead, her features had been replaced by something blackened, something burnt.
Something with red eyes that bored into her.
Kendra shook her head and the hallucination vanished.
What’s wrong with me?
It was Madison, reappearing beside Martin—Father, you should call him Father—that answered.
It will pass.
Kendra blinked, her eyelids taking an unusually long time to open. When she focused again, she was staring at the cup of tea, the swirling light brown-colored—
Milk.
And then it all made sense to Kendra, the milk at Black house, the milk at the missing girl’s house.
And the milk here, in her tea, which she had stupidly drunk.
“I caaaaan’t beee—”
All of it was part of a larger plan, a plan with only one goal: to get her here.
As Kendra’s vision began to fade, Martin made his way to Mother’s side.
“We haven’t kidnapped anyone,” Father said. “We have only brought our children home.”
Kendra blinked, but this time her eyes didn’t open.
“We brought you home, Kendra. After all these years you are finally back with your family—where you belong.”
A moment before she lost consciousness, words appeared in Kendra’s mind.
Welcome…
Hi, sis…
So glad to finally meet you…
We are going to have so much fun…
Thoughts from Kendra’s sisters flashed in her mind until it finally went completely dark.
Chapter 52
“Light the candles, if you wish. I don’t need them.”
Father Page 18
