All The Pretty Dead Girls

by John Manning

  “You really should call your grandparents and let them know you’re all right.” Dr. Marshall was talking behind her. “They’re worried sick about you.”

  “No.” Sue replied. “They aren’t worried about me. Didn’t you listen to anything I said?”

  She turned to face Dr. Marshall, who sat in silence now.

  “I explained why they want to find me.” She laughed bitterly, shaking her head. “It has nothing to do with concern about me.”

  “Sue…”

  She wiped her eyes. “I’ll go. But promise me you won’t call them. You won’t tell anyone I was here.”

  “Sue, you’re exhausted. I can’t just let you go—”

  “You can’t stop me.” Sue was hard, angry. “Promise me you won’t call my grandparents.”

  “All right. I won’t call them, if you don’t want me to. But I insist you not leave here until after you’ve rested a bit, gotten something more solid to eat than a peanut butter sandwich.” Dr. Marshall held up her hands. “And besides, I didn’t say I didn’t believe you, Sue. It’s just a lot—a lot to take in.”

  “Swear to me you won’t call them.” Sue was fierce. “I’ll lay down, take a nap, whatever you want, but swear to me you won’t call them!”

  “All right, I swear.” Dr. Marshall gave her a smile. “I won’t call them. But once you’ve gotten some rest…”

  I never want to see or speak to them again, Sue thought, and no amount of sleep is going to change my mind.

  3

  Sue fell asleep almost the moment her head hit the pillow.

  Dr. Marshall closed the bedroom door and walked back downstairs into the living room. She refilled her wineglass and sat watching the fire for a moment. Picking up the pile of papers from her coffee table, she thumbed through them again. She’d read all this material before. She had most of it in her files and had, in fact, accessed information the news media had never gotten their hands on. She’d even been to visit many of these sites—and some that weren’t included in Sue’s folder.

  She rubbed her forehead, remembering the terrible conversations she’d had with that police officer back in Lebanon, the college town where she’d spent several mostly unhappy years.

  Dr. Ginny Marshall had come back to Hammond to finish her book. She’d been working on Sightings of the Mother now for almost twenty years. All too frequently, she’d get distracted from it, getting stuck in mindless academia and forced onto other, more mundane projects that resulted in other books. But she always came back to this book. No matter how many times she’d given up on it, put it out of her head, boxed up her materials and hidden them away, somehow Sightings of the Mother always came back to her. She called it her personal Vietnam, the book she’d started without an exit plan. It was a joke she’d use when she was still married to Jim.

  Los Zapatos, Mexico—that was where she’d started. Twenty years ago, when she was fresh out of graduate school and looking to start her Ph.D. Her marriage to Jim was still new and fresh, still in the honeymoon phase. He’d passed the bar and was working insane hours at his new job with a firm in Boston. She was teaching a couple of theology courses for undergraduates at Harvard, determined to get her Ph.D., tenure, and a name for herself in her field.

  Research into the sightings of the Virgin Mary was an odd choice for a Ph.D. dissertation. Still, Jim was all for it—back then, her career was just as important to him as his own, even though the trip to Los Zapatos would strain their already strained finances. But it was also an adventure: flying to El Paso, renting a car and crossing the border, driving through the deserts of northern Mexico to that godforsaken little town. The roads were bad and there were times when Ginny feared she’d run out of gasoline in the middle of nowhere. The Mexican people of the region weren’t very friendly to her either; to them, she was the gringa with the bad accent. The Mexicans looked at her with suspicion in their dark eyes. They weren’t used to Americans, despite their proximity to the border. And Los Zapatos itself…

  Calling it a town was a misnomer. It was a village, dirty and poor, with dusty unpaved streets and poor sanitation. The faithful who flocked to the village were better prepared than she was; they’d brought their own food, their own tents and sleeping bags. None of the villagers would speak to Ginny. But the pilgrims, from all over Mexico, they were different. They were happy to tell her about the Virgin and their faith—even if none of them could see or hear the Virgin. They only came to watch as the three young girls had visions, and to pray, and to leave flowers at the Holy Site.

  The parish church was adobe and baked hard by the harsh sun. The priest, Fernando Ortiz, was only too happy to speak to Ginny in his own cultured Spanish. He was very proud of his origins in an upper-middle-class Mexico City family, and even more proud of the tough parish he had been sent to. His faith was strong, he assured her, and only made stronger by the Virgin’s miraculous appearance to three of his parishioners.

  “Father, I would like to speak to the girls.” Ginny requested, seated in a hard chair in his hot office inside the little church.

  The tall handsome priest shook his head. “Impossible. The archbishop has refused permission for them to speak to reporters.”

  She tried again to explain she wasn’t a reporter. She was a scholar. But her arguments fell on deaf ears. She understood the only information she’d get would come through this intermediary, this upper-middle-class priest from Mexico City.

  “So let me understand,” she said. “The Holy Mother has forbidden the girls to tell anyone what they’ve been told, isn’t that correct?”

  Father Ortiz gave her a warm smile. “The Holy Mother has forbidden them to tell anyone other than their priest, Señora.”

  “So, you know what the Virgin has said?” She leaned forward. “Are you sworn to secrecy, too?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “I cannot tell you the Mother’s message, no. That is for my archbishop’s ears only. I go to Mexico City to meet with him next week.” He smiled at her. He was young, maybe not even Ginny’s own age just yet, with strong white teeth and thick black hair. “The Holy Mother talks to the girls, who are allowed to talk to me, and I can speak to the archbishop, who can only speak to His Holiness the Pope in Rome.”

  “So I came all this way to try to understand this phenomenon…”

  Ginny wasn’t averse to flirting with him, even if he was a priest. She smiled, looking up from under her long lashes.

  He seemed to know what she was doing, and he smiled despite himself.

  “Señora, I cannot tell you the Holy Mother’s message, but I can tell you this, because I like you.” He gestured for her to lean closer to his desk. “You might want to make yourself right with God.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He gave her a smile. A sad smile, she thought. A smile that was both sad and rapturous at the same time. But he would say nothing more.

  That afternoon, Ginny joined the pilgrims and walked out to the field a few miles outside of the little village, over dirt paths beaten down by the footsteps of others before. The sun was high and hot, and her shirt was soaked through with sweat before they reached the hillside. It was a nondescript place, buzzing with flies and dusty. She wiped sweat from her forehead. Close to a hundred people gathered on the hillside; a woman in a black veil offered Ginny a drink from a bottle of water.

  The pilgrims stood in silence as three young girls, not quite teenagers, appeared on the opposite hill. The crowd buzzed with excitement for a moment, then all fell quiet again. Ginny watched the girls climb to the top of the opposite hill, then sink to their knees and turn their faces up to the bright blue sky, their arms outstretched. She watched as their eyes grew wider, and their faces began to glow as they smiled in joy. Not a muscle did they move for almost ten solid minutes. Then the glow faded from their faces and they rose, dusting off their knees. There was a murmur of excitement in the crowd as the girls climbed down their own hill.

  That was it. The girls were hu
stled away by a flock of black-robed nuns.

  Ginny stayed in Los Zapatos for a few days more, buying water and food from other pilgrims, sleeping next to the battered Volkswagen she’d rented, writing down notes and her impressions in the spiral notebook she’d brought along. Father Ortiz was no more forthcoming during any of their subsequent meetings, though he reiterated each time his plea to make herself “right with God.” Though Ortiz was stubborn, Ginny found herself liking the handsome young priest more and more.

  On her third day there, a long black limousine appeared on an unpaved road that led into the village from the south, stirring up whirlwinds of dust. The limo stopped in front of the little church, its back doors opened from within, and all at once Father Ortiz and the three girls scurried from the front doors of the church. The four of them slipped inside the limo, the nuns depositing battered boxes of clothes and books into the trunk. Then the limo doors closed and the vehicle began its slow drive out of Los Zapatos toward Mexico City. The nuns made the sign of the cross as they watched it drive away.

  Ginny knew the girls never returned to Los Zapatos. Indeed, the Church never put its stamp of approval on the sightings. No one was really sure whatever happened to the three young girls who claimed to have seen the Virgin. Not even their parents ever knew. It was presumed they were hidden away somewhere. After all, Rome had centuries of practice in keeping its secrets.

  Now, holding the printouts in her hand, Ginny became aware that she was trembling just a little bit.

  You might want to make yourself right with God.

  She looked up at the ceiling. The room Sue was sleeping in was almost directly overhead.

  Her story is so fantastic, Ginny thought. I don’t want to believe it

  But she also knew it could be true.

  The police officer’s story…and the words of the girl, Bernadette deSalis…they all came together now in some kind of horrible, terrifying logic.

  She was trembling even more now.

  And it’s no coincidence that Father Ortiz has shown up again after all these years…

  Ginny stood and moved over to her desk, clicking open a file on her computer. It was the opening chapter to her new book. Ginny scrolled down to the last few paragraphs.

  There is no question that the Bible has been rewritten and revised and edited numerous times throughout the history of the Christian religion. These revisions have always had a purpose: whether it be to shut out women from the church; extend its political power; or to make the ritualized dogma more palatable to the newly converted.

  The Book of Revelation has often been used, throughout history, to promulgate the dogma of the church, as well as to stigmatize political enemies. Political leaders from Charlemagne to Phillip II of France to King John of England, to Adolf Hitler and Stalin in modern times, have been called “the Antichrist.” But the coming of the Antichrist and Armageddon, while often viewed by the faithful as a horror, are ultimately the end game of all Christian theology—when the faithful are carried off to Heaven for their just reward. So, why do most Christians fear the Rapture?

  There has long been a rumor that several chapters of the Book of Revelation were removed and hidden away by the early Church. These chapters were not written in the mysterious language of prophecy, and very clearly explain who and what the Antichrist will be. They outline in stark specificity the exact conditions of the world that will lead to the rise of this leader. These are what have been termed the “lost revelations.”

  It is believed by some that if these prophecies were ever made public, they would shake the very foundations, not only of the Church, but of Western civilization itself. Some scholars believe these expunged chapters of Revelation are locked away in the most secure vault in the Vatican and, like other prophecies, can be accessed by only the Pope himself when he succeeds to the throne of St. Peter. It is even said sometimes that St. Peter himself decreed that these dangerous prophecies regarding the end times be suppressed.

  Ginny Marshall closed the document. Now it wasn’t just her hands that were shaking. Her heart was pounding, and the electricity in the house was beginning to flicker on and off.

  It must be the rainstorm, she told herself.

  It can’t be anything else.

  Three Months Earlier

  4

  “Damn it!”

  Sue Barlow swore as she drove right past the exit for Lebanon. She stabbed at the brakes, but it was too late.

  I’ll have to turn around at the next exit and come back, she thought, annoyed with herself for missing it. But they should have it better marked.

  The sun was shining bright that day, and the trees on either side of the highway were a vibrant green. But it was upstate New York after all, and here and there Sue had spotted a few patches of pinkish gold, evidence of autumn’s impatience to put an end to summer’s run. She’d missed the exit for Lebanon, in fact, because she’d been admiring the rolling hills of trees as far as the eye could see. She’d also been speeding, she realized now. She’d come around that last curve at nearly eighty-five miles per hour, humming along with the CD of The Magic Flute.

  Now she could make out another exit ramp about a mile down the highway. With a quick shake of her head and a rueful laugh at her stupidity, Sue pressed the gas pedal down harder and the car picked up speed. She reached the second off-ramp in the blink of an eye, and a joyful giggle erupted from her throat. Speeding up the incline, she made sure no cars were coming in either direction before she coasted through the stop sign at the top. She shot across the bridge and headed back down the ramp in the other direction, rocketing back onto the highway.

  I love this car, Sue thought again as the speedometer reached eighty with an amazing ease.

  The brand-new white Lexus two-door was a graduation gift from her grandparents. They’d surprised her with it that very morning as she got ready to leave for her first day of college. They’d taken her down to the parking garage beneath their building and there it sat, gleaming.

  “You’ll need a car up there anyway,” her grandmother told her, seeming to try to rationalize their extravagance, her soft Southern accent still pronounced despite years of vocal coaching. “And this way, we don’t have to worry about you taking trains, or sending Radcliffe up to get you for holidays.”

  Radcliffe was their driver. He routinely carried Sue’s grandparents to every occasion, big and small, in the austere black Lincoln town car parked in the spot next to the Lexus.

  “Thank you, thank you!” Sue exclaimed, giving both her grandmother and grandfather giant hugs before running over to the car and slipping inside. It was love at first sight. She’d always wanted her own car, even though she didn’t really need one in Manhattan—the traffic was always horrendous and she’d been getting around on the subways or grabbing cabs ever since her grandparents decided she was old enough to go out unsupervised. When necessary, her grandparents had given the nod for Radcliffe to chauffeur her around in the town car, but riding around with a uniformed driver always made Sue uncomfortable. Putting on airs, as her grandmother liked to say. So when she turned sixteen, finally old enough to drive, Sue had asked for a car of her own—but while her grandfather had agreed she might take driving lessons and get her license, he’d refused outright to get her a car.

  “You are too young,” he’d told Sue in no uncertain terms—and Sue had learned early in life not to argue with her grandfather. His word was law in their family.

  Still, she’d been kind of hoping that she might get a car for her graduation from Stowe Academy. There had been hints, like commenting on other cars to get Sue’s reactions to them. She’d scrunched up her nose at the Mini Cooper, and declared the Range Rover to be “too masculine,” but she’d licked her lips when they’d passed a white Lexus much like this one. Yet when graduation rolled around, she was left confounded. Her graduation gift, her grandparents announced, was a three-week holiday in Paris.

  As much as she’d enjoyed their strolls down the Champs
d’Elysée, however, Sue kept wondering about a car. And finally, here it was, her own wheels, just in time for her move to college, when she would finally be out from under her grandfather’s thumb. No more rules or restrictions. Sue felt like singing.

  Of course, it wasn’t like Wilbourne College didn’t have its own set of rules—part of the reason, Sue suspected, that her grandparents had pushed the school so insistently on her. That and some other reasons, of course. Life in the dorms, Sue had read in the school manual, was pretty strict. No parties, no alcohol, and certainly no boys. But compared to living in her grandparents’ apartment on Central Park West in what some of her friends from Stowe called “the concentration camp”—she was indeed free.

  And now, driving herself more than three hundred miles to her new school, speeding along the highway and coasting through stop signs, Sue exulted in that freedom.

  It was hard not to be excited. She was eighteen, and on her own for the first time in her life. She’d been looking forward to college for as long as she could remember. And she now had her own car to boot.

  And nothing had prepared her for the joy of hurtling down a highway at over eighty miles per hour, the stereo blaring, the wind down and her hair getting tossed about in the wind. Nothing had prepared her for how it felt to have a warm sun coming through the windshield, her expensive sunglasses perched on her nose, stopping whenever she felt like it, passing slower cars without a second thought as she drove farther and farther north. Now I know why people are so attached to their cars, she thought with another grin. It’s all about freedom, she thought as she glanced into the rearview mirror. For eighteen years, her life had been defined by the walls of her grandparents’ apartment. While she had her trips to Florida and Paris, they were always arranged and controlled by her grandfather. For the first time, Sue was on her own.