Brett took a candle from the altar and lit it with a match. Then he set it on the table in front of him, and Father John did the same. Father Callahan, already seated, waited patiently for the two other men to settle.
“The FBI… it certainly took you long enough to find me here,” the old man said before coughing into his hand.
Brett stared at the man for a moment before turning his attention to the flame. An uncomfortable feeling overcame him—it was disconcerting staring into the man’s cataractous eyes. He felt like a voyeur.
“And you, Father John, I remember you. Don’t think because I’m old and blind that I don’t remember that you spent a weekend here long ago. And I remember what happened that weekend, too.”
The man shuddered, and Brett’s eyes flicked over to Father John, who quickly looked away. There was something to Father Callahan’s words, he realized; something had happened here long ago that had had a profound effect on the man.
“I’m here about—”
“Shh, boy. I speak, you listen.”
Brett slumped back in his chair.
“There are only two reasons why the FBI would be visiting me. One, is for the girls that I helped—the ones to whom I offered a place to stay when either no one wanted them, or everyone did and they just wanted to get away. I’m surprised you guys didn’t come a-knockin’ years ago—what with molestation and all that.”
The old man rolled his eyes, a gesture that made Brett even more uneasy.
“But that can’t be it… I haven’t housed anyone in over ten years, maybe more. So it must be the second reason. Is that it, has the time finally come?”
Brett wasn’t sure how to respond. He turned to Father John for support or inspiration, but the man’s face was blank.
Pale, gray, and empty.
He better not die on me. Not now. Not while Kendra is still out there.
“I bet you nodded. Anyways, the second reason is that the time has finally come that the FBI needs my help.”
The old man chuckled, the sound like sandpaper caressing a metal tube.
“I’m actually here about a girl, one that was here a long time ago, one that is now missing,” Brett said at last.
A shadow flashed over the man’s wrinkled face, an expression suggesting that the man thought it odd that he could be wrong. But then his thin lips parted in a toothless grin.
“Even better… your visit is for reasons one and two, isn’t it?” The grin faded. “For more than thirty years, I housed a person or two every few months—usually women, usually battered—but there was one in particular…”
Father Callahan licked his lips.
“Do you have the letter?”
Brett was floored. He couldn’t believe that the man remembered Kendra.
It just wasn’t possible.
Father John put the worn envelope in the man’s outstretched hand, who then curled his fingers around it.
“Ah, yes.”
But it was possible.
Today, most everything seemed possible.
“Kendra.”
The word came out more like a moan than a proclamation.
Brett swallowed hard.
“What about her? What do you remember.”
Father Callahan’s fingers kneaded the worn envelope.
“Everything,” he said in a whisper. “I remember everything.”
For a moment, a silence settled over the room. Even Father Callahan’s raspy breathing and Father John’s occasional audible wince were held at bay. It went on this way until Brett could wait no longer.
“Tell me,” he said simply, and then Father Callahan animated as if someone had pressed Resume on the remote control.
“Very well,” the elderly priest said, and then he started to weave his tale. “But I’m old and tired, and if you interrupt me, I won’t be able to get through it. Please, just listen…”
Part V – A Past to Remember
Chapter 53
“I was a much younger man when Kendra first came to me, immature and fairly new to the priesthood. I was like you, John, I suspect: naive, boisterous, thought that I could convert the whole world—thought that it was my job to do just that. At the time, I had already been housing several women, keeping them safe from their abusive husbands, or simply giving stowaways a place to stay while they tried to collect what remained of their shattered lives. But Kendra… she was different—I didn’t need her father’s letter to tell me that. And it wasn’t just the fact that she was by far the youngest of the girls that had been left in my company. Kendra was quiet, but very smart. You could just tell that she was an extremely thoughtful child. I suppose if I had met her today, I might have thought that she was autistic. But she wasn’t—she was just introspective and calculating.
“But she was troubled, too. It took her a long time to adjust to living in the church—as most people would—but it was her nightmares that made the transition exceptionally difficult. With most of the other girls or women, I pretty much stayed out of their way, only lending some words of encouragement or advice when prompted. For the most part, they didn’t want to be here—they were just using the space while they recovered from whatever had damaged their soul. But with Kendra being so young, and so conflicted, I had no choice but to step in as a father figure. Mind you, while I was naive as a priest, I was woefully unequipped to be a father. But what choice did I have? It was no coincidence that she was left in my care… God wanted me to look after her.
“It took me months to even figure out what her dreams were about, but when I did, I immediately knew that these weren’t normal nightmares. After all, what four-year-old dreams of people burning to death at the stake? Of a mother and child, their skin peeling and turning crisp, while others watched on, cheering? Now I’ve already admitted to being inexperienced, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew that there was something deeper here. As time went on, we developed a relationship, but it was clear that I would never be her father—not that I wanted to, of course. She held that position with high esteem, shoes that were so big that a giant couldn’t fill them.
“Kendra was different in other ways, too. For one, while most girls just passed through my church, staying a month here, a month there, a year tops, Kendra stayed for years. She never gave me the impression that she wanted to leave, and I didn’t encourage her either way. Like I said, she was smart, thoughtful, and mature—and God had left her in my care. Things got a little complicated when it came time for her to go to school, as aside from her first name, I knew nothing about her. No last name to speak of, no date of birth… I tried multiple times to find her family, but these attempts went nowhere. It took some effort on my part to make her real, at least in the eyes of the government, but I managed. So Kendra went to school and did well, although she was always a bit of a loner. The thing is, at the risk of sounding vain, Kendra’s real education came here, in this very church. She showed a keen intuition, and when other women passed through, she would spend a lot of time just sitting and talking to them, learning about them, their problems, but more importantly, figuring out what made them tick. She was a great listener, and if the women that came through my church had one thing in common, it was that they really wanted someone to listen to them. So while it was odd divulging their secrets to a six- or seven-year-old, it eventually became commonplace.
“The dreams faded over time, but I knew that deep down, she was still troubled by them. Then, when Kendra was twelve, something changed. It was my fault, I suppose—I should have been more diligent. I was accepting fewer women at this time, but when Christine Barker knocked on the door, pain so visibly etched on her face, I couldn’t bring it upon myself to turn her away. Initially, I thought her problems were similar to the others. I was wrong. There was something strange about Christine, something different… but I’ll get to that later.
“Kendra must have been eleven or twelve when Christine arrived, and they immediately struck up a unique relationship—they just clicked, despite their
difference in age, a decade, maybe more. I suppose it was maternal in nature, although it wasn’t always clear who was playing the mother and who was playing the child. But as time went on, the woman didn’t seem to get any better… if anything, she was getting worse. She claimed that her daughter had been taken from her a year earlier—kidnapped—and that no one would take her seriously. Not the cops, not the FBI—no one. Christine claimed to have spent all of her money trying to find a woman in a swamp… I had my doubts, especially because she had no birth certificate for her daughter, but like I said before, it wasn’t my place to pass judgment. Still, I tried my best to keep an eye on her, to make sure that Kendra was safe, but I had other jobs to attend to as well. The parish was suffering, with donations getting as thin as the attendance at Sunday Mass.
“So I missed some of the signs, the most obvious being that when Christine showed up, Kendra’s dreams returned. But the biggest tip-off was probably the way Christine became obsessed with Kendra’s nightmares, always drilling her, asking her for more details, more information. Eventually, she started talking about her own nightmare, of a demon that dated back to the 1600s, a demon that went by Mother, the mater est, matrem omnium—mother of one, mother of all. They talked so often about this that their stories merged, becoming a singular—uhh—cohesive narrative.
“Things spiraled quickly from there. Perhaps I thought Kendra was stronger than she actually was, or that with all her experience helping others with their problems, that she would be more than well-equipped enough to deal with her own.
“I was wrong—and by the time I found out about the cutting, it was too late. I intervened, of course, trying to help both Kendra and this new woman. But their stories had somehow become intertwined, the many hours that the two women spent together transforming Kendra’s nightmares into Christine’s reality, which included her daughter being kidnapped by the demon that haunted Kendra’s dreams—by Mother.
“They became intractable, and I knew then that to help Kendra, I would have to cure Christine. But the more I dug deeper into Christine’s past, the more wrapped up in her demented reality I became. It sounds stupid now, thinking back, but like I already said, I was young, still learning my own way. Obsession overtook me, and the more time I spent with Christine, the more convinced I was that this woman wasn’t just troubled, but she was possessed, in a true and literal sense. Yeah, like I said, I was naive. Stupid. I convinced myself that she was the mater est, matrem omnium, possessed by the soul and spirit of Anne LaForet—the woman who was burned alive more than four centuries ago. And that’s where you come in, John Simone—that was when you arrived. What you didn’t know at the time was that Kendra was here—I had become protective of her ever since Christine arrived, so I kept her from you.
“Call me overzealous, call me a devout, call me whatever you want, but the cold hard truth is that I was simply, and utterly, wrong. Christine wasn’t possessed, she was just a troubled addict. And that’s why the exorcism failed, why we couldn’t tie the demon to another living soul—why my pleas for the matrem omnium to leave her and to enter me didn’t work.
“Kendra saw the exorcism, John; she saw what we did. And when that exorcism failed, I knew that I had not only lost Christine, but I had lost Kendra as well. Christine left the church and within a week she was dead—her body was found in a crack house. Rumor has it that she was prostituting, trying to raise money, and ended up overdosing on heroin. I had had women that left my church still damaged, of course, and some went back to their previous, troubled lives. Some even died, killed by an abusive spouse, or simply from their own vices. But this woman was the first that I felt responsible for. I pushed her over the edge.
“Kendra was the second. She hung around for a few more years, even claimed to have stopped the cutting, but I could tell she was lying. And then, one day when she was just fourteen, she vanished, taking whatever resentment she now held for me and her scars with her.
“It wasn’t until years later that I started to hear rumblings about kidnapped young girls, all around four years old, that I started to put the pieces together in my mind.
“You see, even though Christine wasn’t possessed, I am convinced that the demon does exist—mater est, matrem omnium is real. Mark my words. And I knew then, as I know now, that if one day I am to help Kendra—really help her—it will be by finding and exorcising this demon. By destroying Mother, and relinquishing the souls of all of those that she has tainted, all of those that suffer from her nightmare.”
Chapter 54
Kendra awoke with a sickly sweet taste on her tongue. Her shoulder hurt, her chest ached, and her head throbbed. It felt like the worst hangover of her life.
She was lying on her side in a cell of some sort, her face pressed against the clammy concrete floor.
“Hello?” Her voice was hoarse, and the only answer her echo.
Kendra tried to raise her right arm, but a searing pain stopped her before it had lifted even an inch off the floor. She abandoned this effort and instead rolled onto her back, wincing at the pain that radiated from her chest.
Clearly, the car accident had done more damage than she had initially thought.
She used her left hand to wipe away some of the crusted blood that made blinking a challenge. It took a few moments, but her eyes slowly adjusted to the dim lighting that eked from a naked bulb overhead. Only then did she take a good look at her surroundings.
Her heart immediately dropped into her stomach.
Aside from a cot with a stained mattress and a metal bucket in the corner, the ten-by-ten-foot cell was completely empty. The back wall was made of what looked like solid brick, the mildew and sweat that coated the surface undoubtedly contributing to the rotting stench that filled her nostrils. Kendra had seen some dismal cells in her day, some that rivaled even her current one in terms of sheer destitution. But it was the bars, the inch-thick bars that lined the front and the sides of the cell, that made her question her decision to take Martin hostage and come to Batesburg, or wherever the man had taken her.
Running from the floor to the ceiling, the bars were cold, unforgiving, and archaic. As was the large metal padlock that kept the door closed. It had a strange, medieval feel to it, a cell that seemed out of another time, a time when thinking took a backseat to reacting, when burning someone at the stake was commonplace.
Kendra swallowed hard.
“Hello?” she shouted again, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Her head responded by booming like a snare drum as her word reflected off the brick and fired back at her. “Fuck.”
Kendra rubbed her temples with her left hand, while at the same time trying to shake a little strength and feeling into her right arm.
How the fuck am I going to get out of here?
Eyes closed now, she tried to concentrate, to think, but her mind, such a valuable asset in the field, constantly running scenarios and recreating crime scenes, seemed to have been reduced to only being capable of the simplest of functions ever since meeting Lacy McGuire: breath, blink, swallow.
Advanced thought seemed a near impossibility.
Kendra fought the inexorable tug of complacency, and expended incredible effort to try and make sense of her new world.
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.
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