All The Pretty Dead Girls

by John Manning

  My father…

  79

  The front door, to Ginny’s great surprise, had been open.

  Or maybe, simply by placing my hand on it, I unlocked it, Ginny told herself.

  She understood now she was not alone. All of her years studying Virgin sightings had left her coldly rational, steadfastly cerebral.

  Now the part of her that wanted to believe came rushing back full force.

  Holy Mother—you of the sacred feminine—walk with me.

  Ginny hurried through the dean’s foyer. From below, the chanting had suddenly ceased, replaced by a low, steady, rumbling sound.

  She located the door to the basement. It was dark down there, and a terrible coldness blew from the stairway, almost like air-conditioning at full blast.

  But she knew that coldness was not man-made.

  Ginny took a deep breath and headed toward the door.

  As she did, she passed a large gilt-framed mirror. She caught her reflection, and behind her—a woman in blue, carrying a sword.

  She spun around. There was no one there.

  But she knew she was not alone.

  She started down the stairs.

  80

  Billy felt the house begin to shake. It felt as if something was moving under the concrete beneath his feet.

  An earthquake.

  Billy shuddered. He had never been so terrified in his life.

  Hell was erupting.

  And his mother was inside.

  81

  “Lord Jesus,” Father Ortiz prayed in the snow. “I beseech you! Save this house and the people within from the demon’s clutches!”

  He wished he had Bernadette’s faith. The little girl knelt serenely in the snow, mumbling her prayers. Ortiz was trembling, terrified.

  So many times I didn’t believe, he told himself. So many sightings of the Virgin I simply called hysterical. So many times I told the Vatican that the lost Book of Revelation was a hoax. So many times I didn’t believe…

  He could feel the earthquake now through the blanket of snow. The moon was gone. Snow fell more heavily as the power across the campus went out and everything was plunged into darkness.

  Darkness that took life around them.

  Darkness that began to close around Father Ortiz’s throat.

  “No!” he screamed.

  “Pray, Father!” Bernadette shouted. “Pray!”

  But it was too late. The darkness had him by the throat. The darkness seemed to grow limbs, and it lifted him high in the air, higher and higher—

  And then, like it had Miles Holland, it dropped him headfirst into the snow.

  The last words that went through Father Ortiz’s mind were: I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth…

  Bernadette did not move as the snow around her turned red from the priest’s blood. She continued to pray.

  From the house came a great roar.

  The roar of a lion.

  82

  Sue saw him first. The red eyes in the dark. The figure—both enormous and small at the same time—moving down the center aisle toward her.

  We have the same eyes, Sue thought dispassionately.

  He was called the Prince of Darkness, and now Sue could understand why. Darkness rolled down the center aisle—a deep, pulsating darkness. It was darkness that lived, that encased a beating black heart. Sue felt its damp coldness as it grew nearer.

  Behind her, Malika screamed again, but Sue was barely aware of the sound. All of her attention—her entire being—was focused on the roiling darkness that loomed ever closer.

  On either side, people fell from their chairs. Some dropped to their knees. Metal chairs clanged. Cries and gasps disturbed the silence as the breathing darkness passed down the center aisle.

  The demon seemed to smile amidst the chaos. Not a smile in the physical sense—but Sue could sense its pleasure. It continued its approach to Sue on the dais.

  Daughter, it said in words only Sue could hear.

  Father, she replied.

  The darkness reached out to her.

  She put out a hand to meet it.

  “Sue!”

  The voice came like a spear thrown unexpectedly at them. Everyone spun around to look. Sue withdrew her hand, and the demon whirled around in a great rush of darkness, its red eyes growing large.

  Then it was gone.

  At the bottom of the stairs, looking into the room, stood Dr. Marshall.

  “Sue!” she called. “It’s not too late! You can stop this! You know you can!”

  “Get her!” Dean Gregory shrieked to his guards, who made a beeline toward Ginny.

  Sue’s vision went red.

  There was a terrible high-pitched thrumming in her ears.

  My father…

  He’s gone!

  Anger began to well up inside her. She stood, eyes blazing.

  “Sue!” Ginny shrieked again, just as the guards set upon her. “You are your mother’s daughter as much as you are his!”

  My mother…

  Sue spun around. Her eyes met Malika’s on the cross.

  With a wave of her hand, Sue caused the straps that held Malika in place to fall away. The girl slumped to the ground, free. Sue spun on Dean Gregory, who was running toward her. Her arm flew out, and without even touching him, she sent him staggering backward, propelled into the wall.

  People were standing now, many trying to flee. Some were screaming. With another wave of her hand, Sue caused the door to the stairway to slam shut, locked, preventing anyone from escaping.

  They will all die. All of them. Sue felt the power rising up in her. All die. In honor of me!

  “Sue!” Joyce was saying. “Control yourself! This is all new for you, very heady…maybe we rushed things too fast…sit, Sue, sit…we’ll take care of Virginia Marshall.”

  Sue turned to look at her. “No, Joyce,” she said, delighting in her treachery. “I’ll take care of you!”

  And with a grand sweep of her hand, she sent Joyce flying across the room, arms outspread, coming to rest on the cross that Malika had just vacated. The straps reassembled themselves, securing Joyce in place. She screamed as the cross clicked into gear and inverted itself once again, leaving her upside down, her long black hair hanging in front of her face.

  On the dais, Sue laughed maniacally.

  She began pointing at people in the crowd, feeling the power surge down her arm and through her fingers. How wonderful it was to watch them crumble under her power, fall lifeless to the floor. She killed a state cop. Then her boring biology teacher. She laughed uproariously. The whole room was screaming, in a panic.

  Her eyes came to rest on her grandfather.

  “You made me like this,” she said to him. “You made me a creature that would be born without the capability to love or be loved.”

  “Susan,” he argued, terror on his white face. “You will be great—”

  “I am great,” she said, and with a flick of her hand, she blew the head off his neck. Her grandmother screamed as the old man’s blood covered her.

  “Sue!”

  Amid the pandemonium, she heard a new voice. She spun in its direction.

  “Sue!”

  Billy.

  It was Billy—standing in front of a door he’d just broken down.

  Billy.

  “Sue,” he said. “You’re wrong. I loved you. I did! I loved you!”

  Their eyes held.

  83

  Dean Gregory was getting to his feet. As Ginny struggled with the guards who held her, she watched the dean waver across the room, heading for Sue.

  He wants to subdue her, Ginny thought. Harness her. He knows her power is great, and that she’ll use it against all of them.

  “Holy Mother!” Ginny shouted. “Save your daughter! Sue is as much your daughter as his!”

  In that instant, the two great torches on either side of the dais fell, bursting into a huge fire that separated Gregory from Sue and Billy.<
br />
  In moments, the whole room was on fire.

  84

  “Billy!” his mother shrieked, grabbing his arm. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  But he kept his eyes locked with Sue.

  He felt a calmness he’d never known in his life before.

  “I did love you, Sue,” he repeated. “And I think…I think you started to love me.”

  85

  Yes, Sue thought. Yes, I did.

  And she started to cry.

  The door sealing off the room from the stairs flung open. People began scrambling to get away from the flames. Even the guards who held Ginny let her go, hoping to save themselves from the inferno. People were trampling over each other as they attempted to get up the stairs, just as the fire caught hold of the walls.

  “Go,” Sue said to Billy. “Take your mother and save yourself.”

  Their eyes continued to hold for a moment. Gayle Honeycutt was crying hysterically, tugging at Billy’s sleeve.

  “Sue,” Billy said.

  “Go,” she told him again.

  Billy turned, pushing his mother in front of him, and headed for the door.

  Sue watched them go, the intense heat of the flames now reaching her face. She turned, and helped a sobbing Malika to her feet, removing her own robe and placing it around Malika’s naked body. Her roommate was still obviously drugged and unable to walk. “You will be strong now, Malika,” Sue told her. “Your legs will carry you. You will go up the stairs and save yourself.”

  Malika looked at her. “Sue, you must come, too…”

  “No,” Sue said, shaking her head. “My place is here.”

  She reached down and also brought Perry Holland to his feet. “You, too, Deputy. You, too, will find your legs strong enough.”

  Perry glanced at her a moment, shaking off whatever last inertia still hung over him. His handcuffs suddenly opened, freeing his hands from behind his back. Then, he gripped onto Malika’s arm, and together they made their way out of the burning room.

  Flames were jumping across the ceiling now.

  Sue looked down at Joyce Davenport, upside down on the cross.

  “Yes,” she said. “You were right, Joyce. All of this can be so much fun.”

  Joyce screamed.

  86

  Upstairs, as smoke billowed up from the cellar and the sound of sirens could be heard in the distance, Ginny made her way among the screaming throng of people toward the front door.

  “Not so fast, Dr. Marshall,” came a voice. A hand reached out and grabbed her by the arm.

  She spun around and came face-to-face with Dean Gregory. His head was bleeding and he was covered with soot.

  He gave her a thin smile. “So pleased I could offer you so much material for another best seller,” he seethed. “Too bad it will never see print.”

  He poked a gun into her ribs.

  “I should have fired you long ago,” he whispered in her ear.

  Ginny tensed for the shot.

  But instead—

  A sword suddenly plunged through Gregory from behind. Ginny saw its blade emerge from his chest, and then the blood streamed down the front of his shirt.

  His eyes registered surprise, then horror, then nothing.

  He crumpled to the floor. Ginny looked around. The sword was gone.

  And the Woman who had wielded it was nowhere in sight.

  But Ginny knew she would never be far away.

  As the flames began popping up through the carpet, Ginny hurried outside into the snowy night.

  87

  The fire engines arrived too late. The dean’s house was engulfed by flames in just minutes. Most of those who had escaped from the basement tried to flee, but Perry had angled his car across the driveway, preventing them from driving away. The snow continued to pile up, thwarting any attempt to drive over the grass. Immediately, many people were proclaiming in loud voices that they’d had no idea the ceremony was going to include murder. Perry listened with a stoic face, taking down names. He didn’t worry that he’d be undermined by higher-ups who were secretly cult members. Two of the state cops he’d recognized inside had perished in the flames.

  Standing in the snow, Ginny watched the house burn, her arm around Bernadette. The fire lit up the dark sky. The falling snow turned to steam as it came close to the flames, producing a weird, otherworldly mist that hung over the entire scene.

  Girls emerged from their dorms to stand in awe before the blaze.

  “Did the dean and his wife get out?” some of them asked.

  “What caused the fire?”

  “Why is Dr. Marshall here? I thought she’d left campus.”

  Ginny just pulled Bernadette tighter to her. She couldn’t bear to look at Father Ortiz’s twisted form, facedown in the snow.

  “So many tragedies,” she whispered, tears falling down her cheeks.

  It was Sue she cried hardest for. Sue—whose destiny overtook her, through no fault of her own. It was better this way. Better that she perish rather than face what she was.

  There would be many questions. Perry was hopeful that the remaining members of the state police could be trusted. The fire wouldn’t destroy all the evidence. Gregory’s twisted activities in the basement of the dean’s house would be exposed.

  “I can’t see her anymore,” Bernadette said, her voice barely discernible over the high-powered whoosh of the hoses fighting the blaze.

  “Who?” Ginny asked. “Who can’t you see anymore?”

  “The Holy Mother.” Bernadette looked up at Ginny. “Ever since I first had a vision of her, I could always see her. I could always hear her. But not anymore.”

  Ginny pulled the girl toward even closer. “She’s still there. She’s always there. Maybe she feels now we can get by a little better on our own.”

  They stood there watching until the house was nothing more than a smoldering ruin.

  88

  “To think,” Marjorie Pequod said as she wiped down the counter at the Yellow Bird, “all of this was going on right under our noses here in Lebanon.”

  “I never liked that Ted Gregory,” Wally said from the kitchen, shaking his head and dropping some frozen french fries down into the deep fryer. “Or his wife either.”

  Marjorie shuddered. “Perry told me they found the remains of those two missing girls, Joelle Bartlett and Tish Lewis, in the ruins of the dean’s house.”

  “The Gregorys were sick,” Wally opined. “Sick and twisted.”

  Marjorie was nodding emphatically. “Well, it’ll all come out in the story Gayle Honeycutt is writing.” She folded her arms across her chest and raised an eyebrow to look at Wally. “She claims she was there that night at the dean’s house as an undercover reporter. She claims she never really joined the cult—she just told people she did in order to get inside and get a scoop.”

  Wally laughed. “It’s absurd really. In this day and age. People worshipping the devil as if he was real.”

  Marjorie’s eyes moved up to the TV set on the wall, where the Reverend Bobby Vandiver was preaching one of his infamous fire-and-brimstone sermons as below him, a 1-800 number scrolled across the screen for people to call in and donate their money.

  Marjorie snapped off the television. “Maybe the devil is more real than you think,” she muttered under her breath.

  “To think so many good people got sucked in. Cops, teachers…” Wally shuddered.

  “Well, at least one good thing came out of it,” Marjorie said. “Perry being named acting sheriff. Wasn’t it wonderful how everyone was crowing over him, praising him for how he rooted out the cult in our midst? He’ll be elected officially this spring, you just watch! And to think people called that boy crazy!”

  “For me,” Wally was saying, “the creepiest part of all was how that TV commentator Joyce Davenport was found burned to death—hanging upside down on a cross! How twisted is that?”

  Indeed, Joyce’s death had ensured that Lebanon was all over the national
news. Crews from all the networks had poured into the little town, filming the blackened husk of the dean’s house. They reported that Joyce Davenport had been a graduate of the college, but her connection to the cult was unclear.

  “I can’t imagine Wilbourne surviving all this,” Wally said, flipping a hamburger. “I mean—to think there’s been a cult of devil worshippers operating at the place for decades!”

  “Well, that Dr. Virginia Marshall seems like one smart lady,” Marjorie said. “I heard the interview she gave on TV yesterday. The board of trustees—the ones who haven’t been arrested, that is—asked her to serve as interim dean of students.”

  “Has she agreed?” Wally asked.

  Marjorie nodded. “She said she would, so long as she didn’t have to teach any classes. She has a book to finish, she said.”

  Wally grunted. “I’ll bet she does. Everyone connected with this thing will write a book.”

  He placed hamburgers on each of three plates, then loaded them up with fries as well. “Order up,” he told Marjorie.

  “I just hope the town’s back to normal by next week,” Marjorie said, expertly taking hold of all three plates at once. “After all, it’s Christmas.”

  She brought the burgers and fries to the three kids in the booth. Billy Honeycutt and Mike and Bernadette deSalis.

  “Thanks, Marjorie,” Billy said.

  “You bet,” she said. “Hey, Mike. You’re all better, eh?”

  Mike smiled. “Yes, ma’am. Fine as can be.”

  Billy clapped him on the back. “It’s good to have my buddy again.”

  “And you, too, Bernie?” Marjorie asked. “Feeling fine yourself?”

  The girl nodded. “No more visions,” she said. But there was a tinge of sadness in her voice as well.