by Sharon Sala
Jud gasped. “No, no, I would never hit her!” And then the moment he said it, he flashed on jabbing that needle into her neck to knock her out. “I didn’t hit her, the Master did. She was disruptive, but I didn’t expect her to ever be in danger of violence. That had never happened before.”
“You don’t call raping little girls violent?” Charlie shouted and then turned away, shoving his hands through his hair to keep from putting them around Jud Bien’s neck.
“We marry them. We honor them. We take care of them,” Jud said. “I defied orders when I stayed to take care of her and it got me kicked out. I’ll do anything it takes to get her home safe to Tara. What do you need to know?”
Charlie pointed to the people in the room. “Except for my assistant, everyone in here is a federal agent. I don’t know what they plan to do with you when this is over, but don’t think your help is going to get you any special treatment, understood?”
“Yes, yes, I understand,” Jud said and started to cry. “I’m sorry. All I can say is I lost my way after I joined, and I guess I lost my sanity, too, or I would never have been able to justify to myself that what I did was okay.”
Charlie was short on sympathy, and while he already knew a lot of these answers, he wanted them on record and glanced at Hank.
“Are you guys ready to record?”
Barry adjusted the angle of the tripod, checked the camera one last time and gave Charlie a thumbs-up.
“For the record, what’s the name of the cult leader? Who is the Master?” Charlie asked.
“His name is Aaron Walters,” Jud said.
“Where is he from? Is Fourth Dimension his creation, or is there someone higher up?” Charlie asked.
“I think he grew up somewhere around here, but I don’t know where. Just that Kentucky was the state where he was born. I know he’s the Seraphim. We call him that, or we call him Master. He is the ultimate authority there. But I’ve heard some of the Archangels talking about the Master answering to someone else. Archangel Robert is his houseman. He once mentioned something about the Master getting monthly calls regarding the tests that are run there, and that he reports to that person as to what’s happening within it.”
“Damn it,” Willis said. “We thought this cult was Walters’s baby. So unless he talks later, we might never find out who’s behind this, or if there are other places like this operating under other names.”
Charlie’s job was not about the bigger picture. “How many girls are married with babies?”
Jud paused, mentally counting. “There are six who are married with five children among them. Two of the six are newlyweds, having married within the last three months. One of the newlyweds recently lost the child she was carrying.”
“Do they each have a home of their own?” Charlie asked.
Jud shook his head. “Not separate dwellings. There are two large buildings set up with apartments. They live in those. The men who aren’t married live in another building, each with a private room of their own. The Sprites, which is what the unmarried girls are called, live together in a dormitory setting in a separate building. They have their own tasks to work at inside during the day.”
Before Charlie could comment, Wyrick interrupted, and the shock in her voice was evident.
“You aren’t saying they’re locked inside?”
“It’s for their own good,” Jud said. “They’re learning how to keep things clean and how to sew...to repair clothing. They have books to read and games to play. They’re learning duties any wife would need to know.”
“How old is the youngest?” Wyrick asked.
“I think she’s ten,” Jud said.
Wyrick flashed on her own life, a child kept away from everyone but the men who viewed her as a successful experiment in manipulating DNA. She had endured constant testing as they recorded her rapidly growing skills, and she felt sick to her stomach for those little girls in lockup.
Jud sighed. “Look. It isn’t as bad as it sounds.”
“Well, it is to them, and you’re an idiot, so there’s that,” Wyrick said, then looked at Charlie. “The upside of this is that they’re all together.”
Charlie nodded. “Easier to keep them out of harm’s way until it’s safe to remove them.”
Hank also had questions needing answers.
“Okay, Bien. We know what the girls do, but what about the married ones? When their husbands aren’t with them, are they locked up, too?”
With each question Jud was forced to answer, he was beginning to see how off-kilter the world of Fourth Dimension really was. They’d all been so wrapped up in what they were going to accomplish for humanity that they’d completely lost sight of what they were doing to make it happen.
“Yes, the building where the married couples live does stay locked up, too. But there’s a large common room where the mothers and babies can go to be together, and where the babies can play. The fathers have little tests they perform daily with the babies, to check for signs of innate psychic abilities.”
Hank frowned. “So we have victims locked up in two places.”
Charlie handed Jud a pen and slid a large black-and-white photocopy of the compound in front of him.
“Label every building, stating what it’s used for. Label the place where the controls are for the security system. If there are motion detectors, mark their locations. If there are daytime or nighttime guards, tell me how many and where they are located. What, if anything, sets off the alarm system besides opening the gates? Write down everything you know and don’t skip anything. Your daughter’s life depends on us being able to take this place down without a shot being fired, or anyone being injured. I’m sure you have friends there, so you wouldn’t want them hurt, either.”
Jud turned the photo around so that the entrance to the compound was in front of him, and then began to write.
Seventeen
After the hair glitter incident, the mood in the dining hall reflected the discomfort of all the diners. The young girls with babies secretly admired the new Sprite for her defiance, but, at the same time, were now afraid of conflict within the group because of their babies. Despite their young ages, the innate sense of a mother to protect her young was strong within all of them.
There were times in the early hours of the mornings, as they woke up with the babies, when they allowed themselves to remember life before. It made them sad, but they’d been within the group for so long that this life had become their new norm.
After the incident with Archangel Thomas, the Sprites had eaten their meal in silence and filed back to the dorm the same way.
The medic who’d initially tended to Jordan’s injuries had gone back with them to check on Jordan, but when he started to approach her, she backed up.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, holding both hands out in front of her.
“I won’t hurt you,” David said.
“You hurt me the first time. You don’t touch me again. It will stop bleeding on its own.”
David was torn. He’d become a paramedic to help people, but his empathic abilities had been a deterrent rather than a help. He felt pain and trauma and their fear as if it was his own, and what he was feeling from Jordan was pure horror.
He’d helped deliver babies here, both alive and dead. He’d stitched up small cuts and tended to insignificant injuries since he’d joined three years prior. He’d felt the sadness of the new Sprites from time to time, but until this one, his contact with them had been minimal. This one had been the exception, and now that he’d locked into her world, he saw them for the children they were. They hadn’t been given a choice to be part of the Master’s grand plan. They were the sacrificial lambs for the greater good.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I’m truly sorry for your pain.” He dug through his bag, pulled out a tube of antibiotic ointment and some small
gauze pads and laid them on her bed, then stepped back. “Clean the place that’s bleeding, then put some of this ointment on it. It will keep it from getting infected.”
Then he left the building with his head down, his shoulders bent as if he’d suddenly taken on the weight of the world.
It wasn’t until they were locked in and alone that the girls all crowded around Jordan again.
“Barbie, bring me a clean wet washcloth. Jordan, sit down and I’ll see what Thomas did to make it bleed again,” Katie said.
Jordan sat. Her head was bleeding and her body was bleeding. She didn’t know how long a first menstrual period lasted, and she wanted her mother. She wanted the hugs and reassurances that everything happening inside her body was normal. She wanted to text her girlfriends about it. She wanted to cuddle up on the sofa beside her mom, with a bowl of popcorn between them, and watch their favorite movies together again. She wanted all of this to be a horrible nightmare from which she would awaken, still safe in her own room, in her own bed, but the horror of this place was wearing her down. She was losing her edge to fight.
And so she sat, her head down as Katie wiped away the blood.
“He knocked the scab off the cut,” Katie said. “Probably with his fingernails.”
“His fingernails give me the creeps,” Randi said. “They’re long like the way women wear them. My daddy’s hands don’t look like that,” she said and then started to cry. “My mommy is a nurse. When she worked the night shift, Daddy always tucked me in bed at night. Uncle Ted, who brought me here, says they think I’m dead. Nobody can find me, because nobody is looking.”
Jordan grabbed Randi by the wrist. “There are people looking for me. And when they find me, they’ll find all of you, too.”
The girls gasped, and then they all began to cry. The concept of their old life became the glimmer of hope they’d long since lost.
“You mean we could go home some day?” Barbie whispered.
“I mean we will go home. My mom knows what happened to me, because I sent her a text before Jud took me away. He didn’t know that. But she knows why I disappeared, and she’ll never stop looking for me,” Jordan said. And with that affirmation, her will to keep fighting returned.
Katie finished cleaning the cut, dried it with one of the gauze pads, then applied the ointment.
“All done,” she said. “You know, we’re supposed to be memorizing a recipe from the cookbooks today.”
“But we could play hockey instead,” Jordan said.
“We aren’t allowed to play,” Randi said.
“We don’t have hockey sticks or pucks, and you need to play on ice,” one girl said.
Jordan stood. “But we have wood floors and brooms, and we have bars of soap. And we have all this room. Shove the beds against the wall and choose up teams. They locked us up in here, so this is our space. We can play if we want to.”
The idea of play had almost been forgotten, but with Jordan in their presence, they felt powerful enough to do what they wanted—even play.
All of a sudden beds were being pushed out of the neat rows and up against the walls in jumbles, leaving a wide open space between.
They dragged twin mattresses from two empty beds to use for padding behind their goals. They propped one against the door and dragged another mattress to the far end of the room and stood it up against some chairs for the other goal.
They had eight brooms in total and a mop apiece for each goalie. Their teams consisted of four players each on the floor at the time, with others trading off. The puck was a new bar of soap, and by the time teams were chosen, the girls were in high spirits.
Jordan was excited now, too, and had set herself up as the referee.
“We’re not on ice, so our face-off has to be a little different. One of you from each team come to center. If I drop the soap, it might break, so I’ll just lay it in the middle of the floor. When I say, Go, you’ll both have equal chances to gain control of the puck. No wild swings. No broken windows. And no pushing or shoving, because we don’t hurt each other, agreed?”
They nodded eagerly, giggling with unconcealed delight that they were going to play. Everyone was in place, waiting.
Jordan put down the new bar of soap and stepped back.
“Go!” she cried, and within seconds, the girls came alive, some of them in a mad race to push the soap toward their goal, and the others doing their best to steal and push it the other way.
The other players were cheering on their teammates, and the laughter was contagious. The first slap shot was blocked by the goalie, and then the opposing team swept the bar their way and took off down the room with guards trying to steal. By the time the first goal was finally scored, they were red-faced and sweating, but their elation was impossible to miss.
One of the Archangels heard noise coming from inside the dormitory and went to see. As he got closer, he realized it was laughter; he slipped around to the back side of the building and peered in through the window. He saw Ella, his cousin’s little girl, pushing something around with a broom, and two other girls trying to get it, and he saw their laughter, and their red, sweaty faces, and knew a moment of guilt.
They were playing. Just playing. And after everything else that had happened in the past couple of days, he wasn’t in the mood to run tattle about this. He just walked away.
Unaware they’d been found out, the teams switched out players, and the next set began.
The game finally ended at a two-to-one victory. The girls were exhausted but happy, and no one really cared about the team win, because today, they’d all won back their right to childhood.
In their exuberance, they’d lost track of time, and when it dawned on them that the sun was slipping down below the treetops, they began the mad race to put the room back together before anyone knew what they’d been doing.
They’d just dragged the last bare mattress back onto the metal bedsprings when one of the girls called out.
“Here they come!”
But the beds were in their neat rows, the brooms and mops were back in the closet, and the bar of soap was tucked away with the rest of the supplies. The only visible signs of the game were the faint streaks of dry soap on the hardwood floor.
“We’re good,” Jordan said. “No giggling. No smiles. We follow their rules until we don’t want to, got it?”
“Got it,” they echoed and lined up as always, with Jordan in the middle, waiting to be taken to supper.
* * *
Aaron had been in his office all afternoon entering the test notes from the latest baby exams, and when he had finished, he segued to a little bookkeeping and paid some bills. He was logging out and getting ready to go to the dining hall when the phone rang. He glanced at the clock. 6:00 p.m. on the dot. He answered promptly, knowing this would be the Boss.
“Good evening, sir,” he said.
“Good evening, Aaron. It’s good to hear your voice.”
“And yours, as well,” Aaron said.
“So now that the new Sprite has arrived, how is she fitting in?”
Aaron frowned. He’d been dreading this because the discord would fall back on him for not being able to handle her. But lying to the Boss wasn’t an option.
“She’s not, sir. She’s been defiant from day one, and continues in that behavior. We isolated her at first to keep from spreading unrest among the others, but that was unsuccessful because she destroyed property. She was then housed with the other Sprites, and they were given orders to shun her. They obeyed, but she continued to defy our rules. She was punished.”
There was a long moment of silence, and when the Boss spoke again, the jovial tone was missing from his voice.
“How was she punished?”
Aaron’s gut knotted. “I hit her several times for screaming at me. She fell. Her father witnessed it and went to her defens
e. When he defied my orders and stayed with her, I was forced to null his membership. He is no longer with the group.”
“What about the girl?” the Boss asked.
“She’s still here and with her father’s understanding that her safety depends upon him not divulging the rules of the path upon which we walk.”
“I am not happy to hear this. You should have eliminated both of them.”
“Given the circumstances, sir, I knew it would have undermined all we were doing here. We would have lost the trust of the others. They would then fear for their own family’s safety.”
“Yes, yes, I see what you mean. Still, I don’t like loose ends. I need the name of the man who was cast out.”
Aaron sighed. “His name is Judson Bien. I’ll send you his file.”
“Yes, thank you,” the Boss said. “And what is the behavior of the Sprite, now that her father is gone?”
“The same. She didn’t have much of a bond with him before, and it was broken when he took her from her mother. I tolerate the insubordination now, because I believe she will eventually settle, and because I sense her psychic abilities are already far beyond most of the adults here.”
The Boss’s voice shifted back into a more interested tone.
“Really? This is, indeed, good news.”
“Yes, and by not forcing her to marry, we may avail ourselves later of all of her skills with her full cooperation.”
“Yes! Yes! I like that. That is a good solution to a nasty problem. Don’t worry about anything else. I’ll see to tying up the loose ends. Enjoy your evening meal. We’ll be in touch.”
The connection was broken before Aaron could say goodbye. He was glad that call was over, but as he left to go to supper, he had to accept that giving up Jud’s name meant the man was as good as dead.
