All The Pretty Dead Girls

by John Manning

  In the kitchen, he ate his pancakes without talking, his mother on one side and his younger sister Meghan on the other. “Now, Billy, I want you to take down all the lawn furniture today. We’re going to get walloped with a snowstorm tonight, and I want the grill and the tables and chairs all safely put in the basement. Comprende?”

  “Yes,” he sighed.

  “I’m heading to the office because I have a deadline I just have to meet.” She smiled over at him, then at Meghan. “It’s all going to change now for us. I won’t have to work so hard. We can buy a nice house, a new car…”

  “You getting a raise?” Meghan asked.

  “Better than that.” Gayle only smiled enigmatically. “I’m getting a new job.”

  “When?”

  “Soon. It’s been promised to me. By some very important people.”

  Billy just sighed. Mom was always coming up with crazy schemes that were supposedly going to make them rich. They never did.

  “Okay, enough jibber-jabbering,” Gayle announced, standing up. “Clean off these breakfast dishes. And Billy, get to work right away out back. It could be snowing by noon.”

  He sighed again and mopped up the last of his syrup with a piece of sausage.

  In a few minutes, his mother’s car was backing out of the garage and Billy trudged out onto the back porch. He hoped to be finished with his little task quickly and then he’d call Mike—or maybe another one of his friends. Mike probably wasn’t interested in hanging out.

  “He might be,” came a voice.

  Billy spun around. There, in the driveway, on her bike, was Bernadette deSalis.

  “What?” Billy asked. “Who might be what?”

  “Mike,” Bernadette replied. “Mike might be interested in hanging out.”

  Billy approached her, dumbstruck. “You just read my mind…”

  She smiled. “Don’t worry about Mike. He’s just adjusting. He saw a lot of things in his coma he can’t really talk about yet. There just aren’t words. But he’ll come around.”

  Billy stared down at her. “How the fuck did you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Read my mind!”

  The girl smiled. “Oh, I guess I was just lucky.”

  “No,” Billy said. “It’s the Virgin Mary stuff, isn’t it? Ever since then, you and Mike…”

  “One can’t be in the presence of the divine and remain unchanged,” Bernadette said.

  “So you believe it really happened.”

  “Of course it did.” Bernadette lifted her eyes to the gray sky. “I know it’s been difficult for Mike. I keep praying that he will find his way.”

  Billy said nothing, just looked down at her. Finally, he tapped the side of her head gently. “Are you okay in there, Bernie?”

  “Right as rain.” She smiled at him for a moment, but then her face darkened. She was looking over his shoulder, and he turned slightly to see what she was looking at. There was nothing behind him.

  “What is it?” Billy asked.

  “She’s here,” the girl said quietly.

  “Who’s here?” Billy had to admit to himself that Bernadette was really creeping him out.

  “The one you think about constantly.”

  Billy felt his face flush.

  “Beware her, Billy,” Bernadette warned.

  It began to rain, a cold icy downpour all at once. A prelude to the storm that was to come.

  “I have to get back home,” Bernadette said, pushing off on her bike. “Billy, when I said to beware her, I meant it very sincerely. But still—you’ve got to find a way to see her.”

  “Who?” Billy said, the rain pouring down over his face.

  “You know very well who I mean. You’ve got to find a way. You and she—it’s not a part of their plan, you know.”

  The girl was pedaling away down the street as the rain fell even harder.

  “Why do I have to beware her?” Billy called after her.

  “Just whatever you do,” Bernadette called back, “don’t tell your mother!”

  And then the rain was so hard and so fierce, Billy could scarcely see. He hurried back inside. Within an hour, the temperature had dropped, and the rain had turned to snow.

  55

  “I’m going home!” Ginny sang to herself as she unlocked the door to her apartment, juggling several books in her arms while snow accumulated on her shoulders. “I’m getting out of this godforsaken town and going home!”

  Not even the unsettling encounter she’d had with Deputy Perry Holland could shake her good mood. She was done with this place. Good-bye Wilbourne!

  She’d miss the girls, of course, Ginny thought as she settled her books on the dining room table. But not the administration. Not that nefarious, smarmy Ted Gregory.

  “I’m going home and I’m going to write my book!” Ginny said out loud, glancing around the apartment, planning what to pack first,

  When she’d left campus today, it had been practically deserted, as it always was the Wednesday before the holiday. There was no one to officially bid Ginny good-bye. Some girls had left early, taking the entire week off, but even the most dedicated students who’d stayed for last minute cramming before the holiday were gone by five, the time Ginny drove out through the gates. Probably for the last time, she told herself.

  Ginny had canceled her last week of classes, scheduled to resume after the Thanksgiving break, and given her students a final project that would serve as their final exam. The projects would be mailed to her in Louisiana, and she’d read them there, submitting her final grades to the registrar by mail. Wilbourne had an early finals schedule anyway—most girls would be home by the second week of December—but Ginny had decided she couldn’t wait even that long. She wanted out. She wanted to start writing about Bernadette deSalis and the dozens of Virgin sightings that were happening all over the world.

  She’d already started shipping things to the house in Hammond, and had spent most of the day today cleaning out her office. The backseat of her car was filled with boxes, and she planned to spend Thanksgiving drinking wine and packing boxes. Friday morning, bright and early, she was setting out for Louisiana.

  Home. She hadn’t thought of Louisiana as home in years. Her accent was long gone, stomped out of her by her postgraduate work at Harvard. In Harvard Square, it hadn’t taken her long to learn that to her colleagues and students, “Southern accent” equaled stupid. As far as Ginny had been concerned, Louisiana was the past. She’d fully intended never to look back.

  But once she made up her mind to go back to the house where she’d grown up—back to small-town Hammond, Louisiana—she found herself looking forward to it. The house was a perfect place for her to get the book done—and the more she worked on the book, the more confident she became that it was going to be the biggest thing she’d ever done. And that meant no more Wilbourne College, which was more than fine with Ginny. She was tired of the brutal winters—this latest cold snap and the early snow seemed to settle into her bones and joints. No matter how high she turned up the thermostat, she couldn’t get warm.

  Of course, it might have been the words of that crazy Perry Holland that still gave her the chills.

  “Professor Marshall! Professor Marshall!”

  He’d looked like a madman waving down her car. He was unshaven, disheveled. His shirt was untucked and his greasy hair hung down into his eyes. Cautiously, Ginny had slowed her car and rolled down her window.

  “They’re out there!” he’d said, eyes wild. The snow swirled around him. He wore no coat, and was shivering.

  “Who’s out there, Deputy?”

  “The killers,” he told her. “They’re a cult. They meet here, on the campus. I’m sure of it. They kill girls. They kill every twenty years. They killed my father!”

  “Deputy, I’m sorry, I can’t help you…”

  He gripped her window with dirty hands. “They made sure all evidence was destroyed. They blew up the house! They’re out there watching!
”

  Ginny recoiled, her hand on the knob to roll up the window again. “Deputy, why don’t you talk to Gayle Honeycutt? She can write the story for you…”

  “No! She’s in on it! They must have gotten to her. She won’t write anything now, she says! They must have promised her something…”

  “Deputy, I’m sorry, I’ve got to be somewhere…”

  Ginny had managed to roll the window halfway up when Perry’s fingers grabbed it.

  “That’s what they do!” he shouted, his nose and mouth just inches from her. “They promise a person what they want! To be rich! To be powerful! That’s how they got people in the state police, the fire department…that’s how they keep the news from spreading.”

  “What news, Deputy?” Ginny asked indulgently.

  “The news of the cult they’re running right here at this school! The cult that kills girls like Bonnie Warner every twenty years!”

  “Really, Deputy, I have to go…”

  “Gregory’s one of them!” Perry was shouting as Ginny’s window rolled all the way up. “He’s running the cult! It’s like a devil thing—or witches. That’s why the girls went missing! That’s what happened to Bonnie Warner!”

  Poor man, Ginny thought, looking in rearview mirror as Perry stumbled in the snow and flailed his arms. The deaths of his parents, the explosion at the house have driven him mad.

  Not that Ginny wouldn’t like to believe the worst about Gregory and Wilbourne. In many ways, it was a cult. Gregory had stacked the board of trustees with ideologues like himself, crowding out freethinkers like Ginny. If there had been previous murders on campus, Ginny found it quite believable that Wilbourne’s repressive, tightly controlled administration would do everything in its power to cover them up and prevent the memory of them from filtering down to new classes of students. It was a story that was worth exposing—but Perry Holland no longer seemed such a reliable source.

  “Poor man,” she said as took a bottle of wine from the shelf. But even her sympathy for Perry Holland could not dim her sense of celebration. She’d drink a toast to her time at Wilbourne—and to bidding the school good-bye.

  I won’t be returning at the end of my sabbatical, she thought. Not with this dean, with this board. My contract will simply expire.

  She was struggling with the corkscrew when there was a knock on her door.

  “Damn.” She put the bottle down on the kitchen counter and walked over to the door. She peered through the glass. At the bottom of the steps was Father Ortiz, white snow dusting his black hat and coat.

  Ginny pulled open the door. “Father Ortiz, hello! Just in time to join me for a glass of wine!”

  “I got your message that you were leaving town,” he said, entering, wiping his shoes on the mat.

  “I’m glad you came by. I was planning to call you before I left. Here, let me take your coat.”

  She hung his coat on the rack and gestured to the priest to sit in the living room. “Will you join me in a glass of wine?”

  “Thank you,” Father Ortiz said.

  Ginny smiled. She’d grown quite fond of him. Of course, the fact that he’d gotten her the interview that was going to make her book the definitive one on the subject didn’t exactly hurt. But there were other reasons to like him. He was kind, smart, funny. He’d taken to stopping by Ginny’s apartment from time to time for a glass of wine and some theoretical theological discussion. For a Catholic priest, Ginny found Father Ortiz to be fairly open-minded and intellectually curious, which she enjoyed.

  Ginny finished opening the bottle, filled two glasses, and carried them into the living room. “Cheers,” she said.

  “Cheers,” Father Ortiz echoed. They both sipped.

  “How is Bernadette?”

  The priest smiled. “Back to being a normal girl. Riding her bike, watching television, studying for school. Of course, she and her Mother say several Rosaries a day, and Bernadette sits in quiet mediation for about two hours a day. She has become wise beyond her years.”

  Ginny nodded, taking a seat opposite him. “She’s been fascinating to interview. I hope to come back, perhaps in the spring, and interview her again.”

  The priest gave her a wry smile. “If we are all still here.”

  “Where do you plan on going?”

  His eyebrows raised. “I was referring to Bernadette’s prediction that we are in the presence of the Antichrist.”

  Ginny smiled. “Oh, yes, of course. So you meant ‘we’ in the broadest possible sense. If the human race is still here, you meant.”

  He smiled. “I admit to a bit of melodrama.” He looked over at Ginny intently. “I am sorry that you are leaving now, at this particular time.”

  “Father, you know how much I’ve wanted to get away from Wilbourne. This sabbatical will change my life.”

  “Yes, of course. Where will you be going?”

  “I’m heading down to my place in Louisiana to finish working on the book.”

  He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “I brought you to meet Bernadette in the hope that you could help me understand. I appreciate all the context you have provided, Ginny, all the details of other sightings over the years. But I must ask you for absolute honesty. After speaking with Bernadette all these times, what do you believe?”

  “Well, it’s not about what I believe, it’s what the girls who have the visions believe,” Ginny said. She’d told him this before.

  He leaned forward in his chair. “I want to know what you believe, Ginny.”

  “Bernadette’s a very sweet girl.” Ginny took a sip of her wine. “I was struck by her sincerity. And by her seeming understanding that all religions are connected…that this was a sort of pan-spiritual experience, not simply rooted in Catholic dogma.”

  “That still doesn’t tell me what you believe.” Father Ortiz sighed.

  “I’m sorry,” Ginny said. “I guess I’ve trained myself not to believe or disbelieve.”

  The priest was nodding. “You’re a skeptic. You would have to be to write about your subject objectively. Otherwise, it would have no value.”

  “I try to keep an open mind, Father. I don’t judge either way.”

  “Yes, that is why your work is so respected.” He nodded. “I have to tell you, I am really looking forward to your book, as are a number of my superiors. Does it surprise you to know you have fans in the Vatican?”

  “Just who exactly are your superiors, Father?” Ginny set her glass down on the coffee table and leaned forward. She smiled at him. “I’ve researched you—or tried to—and found nothing. Do you work for some secret society in the Church that no one knows about?”

  “Don’t tell me you buy into those Catholic conspiracy theories?” He laughed. “Hardly, Ginny. I’m just a priest, a simple priest who works for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Hardly more than an administrator.”

  “You’re dissembling, Father.” Ginny peered at him with a new respect. The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith was one of the most important offices within the Vatican. It was they who determined miracles, pronounced sainthood, and interpreted Church doctrine. “You wouldn’t have come here to Lebanon if you were merely some clerk.”

  He gave her a smile.

  Ginny smiled back. “I’m curious, Father—why are you still in Lebanon? In the past, in every instance of a sighting of the Holy Mother, the seers were quickly whisked off to Rome…which is what happened in Los Zapatos, where we first met all those years ago. And yet here you are. Bernadette is still here in Lebanon, too. Let’s be frank with each other, shall we? Off the record?” She picked up her glass. “Do you believe Bernadette’s visions?”

  He toasted her with his own glass. “To frankness, Ginny.” He took a sip, then held her eyes seriously. “None of this, of course, is for your book.”

  “Agreed. Off the record then.”

  His eyes moved past her as he seemed lost in thought. “Bernadette’s visions…” He paused, returning his gaze
to Ginny. “Yes, I believe them to be true. And since we are off the record, I will add this. What the Holy Mother told her was consistent with other secrets true seers have been told. There was no earthly way that Bernadette could have known these secrets, Ginny. Therefore, it stands to reason Bernadette’s vision was a true one.” He smiled. “Pure logic and deduction, Ginny.”

  “Then why has she not been taken to Rome?”

  “Well, let’s return to one of the primary theses of your work. The idea that the books of the Bible have been rewritten, over and over again, throughout history, for political purposes. You have written that what we today know as the Bible is not, in fact, purely Holy Scripture that came directly from God, but rather is a mix of words of men with agendas, is that not correct?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Suppose I were to tell you that you are correct, Ginny.”

  “My only surprise would be your confirmation.”

  “Deep within the vaults of the Vatican there are original texts of the Bible, in the handwriting of the actual authors. They tell us many things not found in standard Bibles today. Throughout the millennia, the Vatican has kept these things secret—and not only for political purposes, as you believe, Ginny, but because it has been the opinion of the Papacy that the world—that mankind—is not ready for the truth they reveal.”

  “It’s not for the Pope to decide what the world is or is not ready for…and a decision made thousands of years ago might not still be valid today.”

  “Spoken like a true American.” Father Ortiz laughed. “Suppose I were to tell you that probably the most incendiary of those texts contains prophecies—prophecies that are not vague and symbolic, but word-for-word constructs of what is to occur at the time of the Antichrist.”

  “I—” Ginny couldn’t find words. “Word-for-word constructs…?”

  “Suppose I were to tell you that a copy of that text somehow managed to leak out of the Vatican over a hundred years ago, and that there is a group—a society if you will, perhaps you might call it a cult—which is determined to force the prophecy to come true sooner than what is predicted…sooner than what God’s will intended?”