The truth was, Liam had no idea what this meant. He could see how somebody who believed in this sort of thing would link the book about the woman in the swamp—Anne LaForet—and the missing children, maybe come up with some sort of narrative about her coming back from the grave to seek revenge for what had been done to her, but Liam wasn’t one of those people. He believed in facts and figures, believed in what was real. Sure, he believed in the Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior, but that was different.
“I have no idea. Some sort of cult, maybe?”
Stevie blinked.
“A cult? A cult that has been in operation for over a 100 years and we haven’t heard about it?”
Liam chewed the inside of his lip.
“Yeah, far-fetched. But still… none of the missing girls out in the swamp are actually from Elloree, are they? In the census, they’re actual residents that go missing.”
Stevie stared at him, and Liam was grateful that for once the man managed to bite his tongue.
His expression said it all: None of the actual residents had gone missing… yet.
Stevie again reached for the book about the witch, and while Liam’s first instinct was to repeat his previous claim that it was a waste of time, he was too tired to bother now.
“I’m just going to take a look; there has to be a reason why the Curator told me this book was important.”
Liam yawned, barely raising a dirty hand in time to cover his mouth. As his head tilted backward, his watery vision fell on the interrogation room at the back of the police station. Dr. Larringer, or maybe it was Susan Bauer, had since removed Father Smith’s body, but there was still blood on the table, and although Liam couldn’t see the floor, he assumed there was some there, too.
It dawned on him that he hadn’t reached out to Ginger Smith. How could he bring himself to tell the poor woman that not only had she lost her daughter, but that her husband was dead, too? That he had committed suicide after hearing a cryptic Latin phrase uttered from the mouth of a missing girl?
How could he possibly explain any of this to her?
As Liam mulled over the best way, the only way, to break the news, he started to nod off.
His dreams were filled with images of the swamp, of fire, of burned and blackened bodies.
Chapter 39
“You almost done, Dr. Larringer?” Dwight asked from a safe distance.
For the past two hours, Dr. Larringer, Susan Bauer, and two firemen had been busy collecting the burnt remains of the bodies and putting them into separate body bags. They were meticulous in their work, which Dwight should have expected, but he was so tired that all he wanted to do was get out of there.
“Just two more bodies,” Dr. Larringer replied in a matter-of-fact tone.
Dwight assumed that this was the man’s way of depersonalizing the victims, of helping him deal with the horrors that they had discovered. Unfortunately, Dwight had no experience with such defense mechanisms.
He kept getting visions of the house starting to burn, and the girls inside screaming, their eyes and mouths wide, their tiny fists banging against the boarded-up windows trying desperately to get out. He saw their golden hair start to curl and fray in the heat, then erupt into a halo of fire.
He saw their eyes go first white, then dark, and then pop altogether, splattering their cherubic cheeks with thick jelly.
Dwight felt his stomach lurch, and he gagged.
“Fucking hell.”
To distract himself, he wandered along the tree line that seemed to surround the property almost like fingers cradling a palm.
There was a particular oak tree that appeared burnt, but it was too far from the house to have been part of this fire. Dwight crouched and ran his fingers along the charred wood.
Did this happen before? Was there another fire? More bodies?
A scream suddenly sounded somewhere to his right, and Dwight bolted to his feet and looked around. Dr. Larringer was busy trying to scoop the remains of one of the little girls into a large black bag that Susan was struggling to hold open.
“Did you hear that?” he gasped.
Susan’s eyes flicked up, and he realized that she too was feeling queasy from the scene, which offered him a modicum of relief knowing that he wasn’t the only one.
“Hear what?”
Dwight stared at her for a moment, then he shook his head.
“Nothing,” he said quietly. His eyes fell on the area that the firemen had cordoned off, the crawlspace or whatnot.
Why would a house like this have an underground passage? What was—
A flicker of movement in his periphery caught his eye, and he whipped around to face the woods. Squinting, Dwight thought he saw a bobbing blond head, roughly four feet off the ground. It was hard to tell; the bright lights that Dr. Larringer had erected over the crime scene didn’t extend this far, couldn’t penetrate the darkness of the swamp.
“Stacey?” he whispered. It was impossible, of course; Stacey Weller was back at the station with Sylvie and Liam.
But it looked like her.
Dwight quickly reached for the radio on his shoulder.
“Sheriff? Sheriff, you there?”
Eyes still fixed on the bobbing head as it continued deeper into the swamp, Dwight waited for a response.
When none came, he took several steps beyond the large oak and into the swamp.
He clicked the radio again.
“Sheriff?”
The girl in the woods turned to face him and in that moment, a shaft of moonlight illuminated her features dead on.
It was Stacey Weller, and she was beckoning to him.
Her lips parted and she half-smiled.
Come with me, she mouthed. Come with me, Dwight. Come meet Mother.
Without a second thought, Dwight bolted after the little girl.
PART III - Open Flame
PART III - Open Flame
Chapter 40
A static squawk roused Liam from his slumber. The sound startled him so greatly that his chair bent backward, and then slingshot forward. His left elbow smashed on the edge of the desk, and he cried out in pain.
Stevie, who had fallen asleep with his head in his arms, sat bolt upright.
“Wha—? What’s this about?” he slurred.
Liam wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth, then rubbed his sore elbow.
“Must’ve fallen asleep,” he grumbled. After several rapid blinks, he slowly became adjusted to the wakened world.
“Fuck, no kidding,” Stevie replied. He had conked out on top of the strange authorless book, Mater est, matrem omnium, and when he saw it he was compelled to read it out loud.
Stevie’s eyes went wide for a moment, and he focused on the plain cover.
“Hey, you know the FBI Agent at the end? The one that gets burned at the tree? Kendra what’s-her-name?”
Liam yawned and nodded, only half listening to his deputy’s prattle.
“Well, you think that maybe that happened at the same place as the house fire yesterday? 8181 Coverfeld? I mean, it certainly sounds like it could be the place. And the agent? Could it be the woman that partnered with Hugh’s FBI buddy?”
Liam shrugged.
“I’d put my money on the book being a crock of shit, to be honest. But we’ll never know, will we? Seeing as the completely sober and sane Hugh Freeman up and—” as he spoke, Liam let his eyes drift about the room. “Shit!”
He leaped to his feet, sending his chair rolling backward where it slammed into the wall.
“What? What is it?” Stevie asked, fear in his voice.
Liam raised a finger.
“The girl… Stacey Weller… she’s… she’s gone.”
Chapter 41
Dwight lost sight of the girl not twenty paces into the woods. It was so dark that the pathetic glow from his flashlight could barely illuminate his hands in front of his face, let alone help him migrate through the swamp.
A toad burped to his right, an
d Dwight whipped around.
He saw nothing—only more darkness.
I should go back, I’m exhausted… hungry and tired. I imagined all of this.
Dwight’s foot suddenly suctioned in the mud, and he struggled to free it.
“Goddammit,” he swore. To his left came the sound of something heavy dropping into a body of water. It hadn’t occurred to him that the swamp was this close, and now, with almost zero light to guide him, he was suddenly worried that he would take a wrong step and end up with sepsis or something worse.
I should go back.
There was another splash, and when Dwight finally got his foot free he turned in the direction of the sound.
It was still difficult to see, but the weak light from his phone seemed to skip across the water, offering the best view he’d had since entering the thicket.
What he saw made him stop mid-inhale so suddenly, that he sputtered and his diaphragm spasmed.
There was someone coming out of the water.
But the person—a girl—wasn’t emerging naturally. Instead, she seemed to simply be walking from the depths at a pace that was more languid than relaxed. The top of her head emerged first, followed by her eyes, then the bridge of her nose.
There was no rush to her movements, no hurriedness at all, even though Dwight surmised that she had been under water for at least a good thirty seconds before her nostrils broke the surface.
And yet, she continued forward undeterred.
Dwight’s eyebrows knitted, and he tried to convince himself for what felt like the hundredth that he was just imagining this whole thing.
Patty Smith’s scarred body, what was left of the priest’s eyes clinging to his cheeks like egg whites, the smoldering bodies lying on piles of soot.
A girl emerging from the swamp.
It was all just an exhaustion-fueled hallucination.
And yet this did nothing to stem the fear that seemed to encompass every one of his cells.
His terror was not imagined; it was palpable.
The sensation only intensified when a second head, and then quickly a third broke the surface of the otherwise still swamp. Only then did Dwight pick up on the smell; a reek of death so strong that it made his stomach lurch and bile burned the back of his throat.
“Stacey?” he managed to croak. “Stacey, is that you?”
All three sets of eyes were suddenly on him, and his blood went from chilled to pure ice inside his veins. The girls’ eyes were completely black.
As Dwight watched in sheer horror, their lips parted and out droned a single phrase.
“Mater est, matrem omnium,” they hissed.
Dwight couldn’t move. He wanted to run, to get the hell out of there, to go back to the horrible burned bodies, to Susan and Dr. Larringer, to be anywhere but here.
He hadn’t wanted to do something this badly in his entire life.
But the only thing that moved was his lower lip: it trembled. Soon, Dwight felt tears starting to well in his eyes. Exhausted or not, hallucination or not, he could feel that the end was near.
“Mother of one, mother of all,” the girls gasped, their words skipping over the sheet of glass that the swamp had become before assaulting his eardrums.
A hand suddenly grabbed his arm, and Dwight let out a high-pitched scream. And yet, the simple touch of another human being seemed to break the hold terror had on him, and he staggered away from whoever had seized him.
When he saw who it was, however, Dwight once again stopped cold.
“You!”
Chapter 42
“Where the fuck did she go!” Liam shouted. Like a child, he grabbed both sides of the thin mattress and tossed it into the corner of the cell. “Where the fuck could she have gone?”
Stevie was suddenly beside him, following his movements almost exactly.
“What are you doing?” he shouted. “Go look for her!”
Stevie blinked, then walked over to the interrogation room and peered through the window.
“Not there! She’s not in there! Go outside!”
Stevie nodded then headed for the front door. As he did, the walkie on Liam’s shoulder squawked. He ignored this and followed the deputy outside.
The two of them stepped onto the sidewalk, and they peered up and down Main Street.
The street was completely empty; there wasn’t so much as a breeze, let alone any movement.
Liam grabbed his hair and pulled.
“Fuck!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked.
“Where did she go?” Stevie asked quietly.
Liam shook his head.
“I have no fucking clue!” but even as the words passed by his lips, Liam knew thought them to be a lie; he knew where the girl was going.
She’s going to the swamp, she’s heading to meet up with the others.
The main problem with that, of course, was that the others were all dead.
Burned alive.
Liam shook his head and reached for the walkie on his shoulder.
“Dwight, you there?” He waited before calling for his deputy a second time. “Dwight, you there? If you’re there, answer me.”
He stared at Stevie while waiting for a response that never came.
“Fuck.”
Liam pulled out his cell phone next and dialed Dr. Larringer’s number. The man answered on the second ring.
“Sheriff Lancaster, I was just about to give you a call. We’re just—”
“Is Dwight there?” Liam interrupted.
There was a short pause.
“No, I don’t see him. He was here, but I don’t see him now. Susan, you see Dwight?”
Liam heard Susan Bauer’s voice next.
“No, don’t see him. He was collecting evidence—the heroin— and then he was walking around the plot. Thought he was just looking for more clues.”
Clues? Who does he think he is? Nancy Drew? I told him to stay put!
Dr. Larringer returned on the line.
“You get that?”
Liam grumbled an affirmative.
“Is his car still there?”
“Can’t tell, it’s dark here and even with the lights, I—”
“Just go check, would you?” Liam snapped.
Dr. Larringer’s voice went flat.
“Yes, Sheriff. Please give me a—”
Stevie suddenly grabbed his arm, and Liam raised his eyes from the sidewalk.
“What?”
Stevie pointed up Main Street. Where a few moments ago it was empty, he now saw a shadow approaching from the distance.
“Is that—is that her?” Liam asked, even though he knew that it couldn’t be; it was too big, clearly an adult. “Go on, see who it is. Turn them away.”
Stevie nodded and started toward the figure.
“Sheriff?” Dr. Larringer said, reminding Liam that he was still on the line.
“Yeah?”
“His car’s still here.”
Liam’s frown deepened. He had hoped that the big deputy had gotten tired and had stumbled back to the squad car to get some sleep. Better still, maybe he’d just gone home.
He should have known better.
“Okay, keep your eyes—what the hell?”
There was someone else approaching from the opposite direction.
“What’s that, Sheriff?”
“Nothing, I gotta go,” Liam said and hung up the phone.
Squinting into the night, he started toward the figure. As he neared, however, he realized that it wasn’t a single person, but three. One male and two females.
He quickly recognized the man as Thomas Draper, the proprietor of the local supermarket.
“Sheriff Lancaster!” Thomas called out. “I’ve been trying to reach you, but the phone must be off the hook.”
Liam’s hand fell from his hip and holster.
“What is it, Thomas? Now’s not a good time.”
The man hurried toward him, a frow
n etched on his face.
“It’s my daughter… it’s Sherry?”
Liam’s eyes narrowed.
Why did that sound like a question?
“What about her?”
“Sheriff… she’s gone,” he gasped. It was only then that Liam realized that Thomas’s eyes were wet with tears.
“She’s what?”
“Gone… I heard a sound from her bedroom, and I went to check, and the window was open. I think… I think that someone took her.”
For a second, Liam considered that this could all be a sick joke, a fucking hidden camera show that usually took place in LA or NYC. Maybe the citizens of these metropolises had become too savvy to be tricked, and the producers had decided to move to a more rural location. But when the woman beside Thomas spoke up, the thin strands that comprised Liam’s hope snapped.
“My Miriam… she’s gone, too.”
“Hold on, they’re both missing? Sherry’s, what, sixteen?”
“Fifteen,” Thomas corrected.
Liam tried to think, but despite his nap, he was so damn tired that his mind seemed to be working in slow motion.
“And Miriam?”
“Sixteen.”
“And did they know each other?”
Thomas nodded.
“They were friends.”
The third woman, who up until this point had been silent, suddenly spoke up.
“My daughter was only eleven… she didn’t know these other girls.”
Daughter Page 14
