Cursed Presence (Trilogy of the Chosen Book 2)

by J. M. LeDuc

  “Help me move this thing, will ya, doc?”

  Together, they pushed. Still it wouldn’t move. Dr. Crane grunted as he pushed hard.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “Why would there be tracts, if this thing can’t slide?”

  “Doc, you’re a genius.”

  “I am? What did I say?”

  “Slide, you said slide.”

  “Huh?”

  Seven, lying on his belly, looked at the junction where the mirror met the tract.

  “Bingo!” he said, jumping back to his feet. He applied light pressure on the left front edge, and it swiveled toward the back. “The mirror sits on a ball joint in the middle of the tract. It doesn’t slide, it rotates,” he said.

  As it rotated, the wall behind it opened, revealing a hidden room.

  “Amazing!” Dr. Crane said.

  “Not as amazing as you might think. Back in the Eighteenth Century, a lot of the homes were built with hidden rooms and staircases.”

  “Like the House of Seven Gables,” the doc said.

  “Exactly.” Seven flipped the light switch next to the wall opening.

  Inside the opening, they found a small square room. On the floor, they saw the painting of a pentagram; on the wall, a horned goat.

  “What the heck is that?” The hairs on the back of Seven’s neck stood at attention.

  “The goat of Mendes,” the doc replied. “It’s a satanic symbol meant to mock Jesus Christ.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Christ is the Lamb of God. Those who believe in Satan have a goat.” He shrugged. “It’s not a true satanic symbol, but it has developed that connotation.”

  “Who’s Mendes? Is that another name for Lucifer?”

  “Actually,” Dr. Crane said, “Mendes was an Egyptian god of fertility, of sexual freedom. The goat is a sign of sexual perversion.”

  He pulled open a drawer in a small table and found what they had been looking for.

  “Check this out,” Dr. Crane said.

  When Seven turned, he saw the doctor flipping through a handful of snapshots.

  “My God, that woman was sick.”

  “Whatcha got?”

  “Here. Look for yourself,” the doc passed the photos to Seven.

  The pictures showed a woman, presumably Aunt Peg, in all stages of dress and undress. She wore black clothing and thigh-high leather boots or stiletto heels. As Seven looked through the stack of photos, he understood Dr. Crane’s words. He saw images of girls, college-aged girls, tied up, shackled, bruised and beaten. Thirteen different girls.

  “My God,” Seven said. “There it is.”

  “There’s what?”

  “The connection to those figurines I saw downstairs. None of the figurines had a mouth. Look closely at the pictures of the girls. What do you see?”

  The color drained from the doctor’s face. The mouth of each of the victim had been sewn shut. “Why in hell would she do that?”

  “So no one could hear them scream,” Seven replied. Looking closer, he said, “These pictures were taken in a different room than the ones we’ve seen so far. We better check out the basement.”

  “Check this out.”

  Seven looked up from the pictures. Dr. Crane stood next to an open door. “There was a small latch over here in the corner. When I pulled it, this door opened.”

  Inside was a staircase. “Those stairs will probably end up in the basement,” Seven said.

  “Only one way to be sure,” Dr. Crane started down the stairs.

  “Take it slow, doc. She was just crazy enough to have booby-trapped those steps.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice, I’m stepping carefully.”

  “You’d also better watch out for…”

  “Ech, pth…”

  “…cobwebs. I guess you found them, huh?” Seven chuckled.

  “Yeah, thanks for the warning,” Dr. Crane pulled clingy webs off his face. “It must have been a long time since anyone came down here.”

  Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Seven turned on the lights. “Not as long as I would have liked. Look.”

  “Dear God in heaven, how sick was she?”

  “Not she, he,” Seven said. Hanging in the corner of the room, from nooses, were baby-dolls. Facial photos of the sorority girls, killed by the Omega Butcher, were attached to the bodies. “He must have come back here between killings, to update his doll collection.”

  “It’s like a shrine,” Crane said. “Those poor girls. It looks as though he photographed them in the act of torturing them.”

  “That would explain the camera equipment we found at his last hideout. He wasn’t able to bring his last captive to the location. We weren’t quite sure what the equipment was for, though—we assumed. We just hoped we were wrong.”

  Seven placed the palm of his hand on each picture and prayed a silent prayer for each girl and their families.

  “Compared to the size of the house, this is a very small room,” the doc said.

  “I don’t think this is the entire basement.”

  The two walked around the room, knocking on walls until they found a hollow spot.

  “Bingo,” Seven said. He felt along what appeared to be the outer brick wall of the basement. He found a hole too small for either man’s finger to fit in. He inserted a pencil and pressed. They heard a clicking sound and a door opened into another room. The room Jonas had described to Dr. Osgood. His aunt’s ‘prayer room.’

  Their eyes traveled to the room’s main fixture, an altar. Behind it, they saw a large, upside down crucifix, the symbol of the church of Satan. The altar itself looked more like a medical table, complete with leather straps on all four corners and on it, stains of dried blood.

  “What the hell,” Seven muttered.

  Dr. Crane dropped to his knees and recited the Lord’s Prayer.

  Seven helped him to his feet. “What do you know that I don’t?”

  “This is the traditional setting Satanists use for what they call a ‘Blasphemous’, or ‘Black Mass,’” Dr. Crane said in a shaky voice. “What we’re looking at is not the altar.

  The altar is what’s placed on top of it.”

  “Which is?” Seven asked, his head slowly rotating back to the table.

  “A naked woman. Preferably a virgin.”

  His head snapped back. “Are you serious?”

  “Afraid so and it gets worse. The tabernacle—the place on the altar where the Eucharist is kept is her—vagina.”

  Seven put his arms out, stopping Dr. Crane. He looked back at the stainless steel table, trying to envision, yet trying not to envision what the doctor just told him. His eyes squinted, the right side of his upper lip curled in an Elvis-like expression. “Sick bitch,” he growled. Closing his eyes, he inhaled a deep slow breath, calming his deepening disgust. “Is there more?”

  Swallowing hard, Dr. Crane continued. “The priest or priestess has sex with the victim to consecrate the mass and then the girl is sacrificed to Satan. They believe their power comes from drinking the blood of the sacrificed.”

  “Dear Jesus,” Seven said.

  The doc opened a metal door on an old wood-burning stove. “This is where they would have burned the victims when they’d finished torturing and sacrificing them. A specific Satanic sect, a viral, sadistic sect, believes that the greater the pain and fear instilled into the victim, the greater the sacrifice. That’s the reason for the torture and that’s where our friend Jonas came in.”

  Seven packed his lower lip with tobacco to help abate his aggression. “Wadaya mean?” he said. “Why would Peg have Jonas do it? I would think she would get off on torturing and killing them herself?”

  “The priestess always delegates that ‘honor’ to someone else. It’s considered beneath them
.”

  Seven pulled a collapsible tin cup out of his back pocket. With the snap of his wrist, it sprung to full size. Pursing his lips, he sucked the juice from the tobacco and spit into the cup. “I guess the only unanswered question is, why Liz?” Seven said. “Why did Aunt Peg force Jonas to dress like a girl?”

  “That one is easy,” the doctor said. “The Blasphemic sect believes that the satanic priestess is married to Lucifer. Therefore, there can be no other males in her life. When Jonas came along, he was a problem, so Aunt Peg…”

  “…made him a girl?”

  “As close as she could so not to upset Satan.”

  Seven thought back to Dr. Osgood’s notes documenting that Jonas had been tortured as a child. Everything clicked for him at that point.

  “So, when Jonas was late or did something Aunt Peg didn’t approve of, it was he who got punished, not Liz. That’s why when the name Liz was mentioned, it gave him comfort. He felt safe when he was Liz.”

  Just then, Seven’s phone rang. “Seven speaking. We’re down in the basement. There’s a door in the kitchen. Come on down.” He turned to the doctor. “It’s Kevin. He found records on thirteen missing college girls for the years from 1986 to 1998.”

  When Kevin joined them, Seven said to him and Dr. Crane, “Please gather as much of this stuff as you can to take back to SIA. We’ll match the DNA from the dried blood samples to the missing persons Kevin found.”

  “I’m going back upstairs to look through those photos again. We need to find a picture of Liz.”

  “Do you mind me asking why?”

  “Just a hunch. We need Jonas to lose focus in order to trip him up. That might just be what we need.”

  CHAPTER 35

  As Brent drove along the coastal road from Palm Cove to the neighboring Coral Cove, he marveled at the majesty of the ocean. How can anyone look at the immense beauty of this world and think it was formed by accident. Whatever it’s called, creation, intelligent design, or whatever name you want to tag it with, I don’t understand how anyone can argue that God created it.

  Just then he was reminded of a political cartoon his grandfather kept on the refrigerator at home.

  An angel said to God, “The creationists are fighting with the evolutionists again.”

  The next frame showed God scratch his head and saying, “Sometimes I wish I’d never created evolution.”

  Brent smiled at the memory.

  Not long after he arrived in Coral Cove, he found Father Jessup and the Church of the Lost. Old Town was a rundown, lower economic section consisting mostly of condemned, dilapidated buildings and small shanties that no one should have to live in but nevertheless did.

  On the left side of Front Street, Brent spotted a handwritten sign. “FREE HOT FOOD AND PRAYER SERVICE AT 3:00 P.M.” He didn’t need to look at his watch. He knew it had to be close to three o’clock by the long line of people standing outside the old warehouse.

  Brent pulled his Jeep into the parking lot and asked the first person he saw where he could find Father Jessup. The man pointed to the building and said, “Inside.”

  The doors to the warehouse were open. Brent walked through the door. Inside, the building was anything but abandoned. Most of the five thousand square feet had been turned into a large barracks similar to the one he’d lived in during Army basic training, just on a larger scale. Brent counted twenty rows of military-sized beds. Each row had a minimum of ten beds.

  The rest of the warehouse was devoted to the makeshift church. At the far end of the hall stood an altar. Rows of chairs went from front to back, around three hundred by Brent’s quick count.

  Along the near side of the warehouse stood a line of banquet tables, set up buffet-style. They held all sorts of hot and cold foods. Impressive, he thought, as he surveyed his surroundings.

  “Are we ready, people?” a voice called out.

  Brent turned and saw Father Stephen Jessup for the first time. If they had lived in a different time and place, Brent would have sworn he was looking at Jesus, not so much because of the man’s outward appearance. He didn’t wear sandals or a tunic and he didn’t have long hair and a beard. No, it was his spirit that was Christ-like. Later, when Brent tried to explain his first impression, he would have a hard time putting it into words. It was as if Father Jessup’s spirit shined so bright, it glowed outside his body, like a halo.

  “Yes, Father,” came a chorus of voices.

  “Then let’s say a short blessing and get the show on the road,” he said.

  The murmuring and talking stopped. Even those outside waiting to get in quieted down.

  “Dear Father,” his voice rang out, “we come to you today and ask you to bless the food you were so gracious to provide. We, Your children, ask You not to just bless our food, but to bless our lives. You said that the poor will be wealthy in Your home and in spirit. As Your disciples, we believe Your Word.” Stretching his arms toward the masses, he continued. “Gathered before You today are the richest of the rich and your most spirit-filled children.

  “Though we walk in this world, we are not of this world. We patiently await the second coming of Your Son and our Savior, the Lord and Giver of Life. We offer up to You whatever small tithe we have and ask You to bless it tenfold. It is in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.”

  At prayer’s end, he said, “Let God’s people in.”

  Brent watched as hundreds of people filed into the warehouse. Everyone dropped whatever tithe they were able to give into a collection box, then they grabbed a plate and headed for the service line.

  After a few minutes, Brent approached the priest. “Father Jessup, I’m Brent…”

  “I know who you are,” he said without looking up.

  “Then you know we need to talk.”

  “I know there are about five hundred hungry mouths to feed. Why not pick up a ladle and help me serve?”

  As they served ‘God’s people,’ Brent could feel Father Jessup’s eyes on him from time to time.

  “Just say what’s on your mind,” Brent said. “You’re driving me crazy with all the looks you’re stealing at me.”

  “Do you have eyes in the side of your head?”

  “The same set you seem to have, Father.”

  With that, a smile appeared on Father Jessup’s lips for the first time since Brent met him. “Fair enough.” he said. “First of all, it’s Stephen, not Father Jessup. I’m no longer a practicing priest. Second, you’re not what I expected.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I expected someone who looked like a warrior.”

  “Oh, like David, or maybe Jesus on His triumphal entry into Jerusalem.”

  He laughed a loud, hearty belly laugh. “Touché.”

  “So tell me: How do you know I am…well, you know.”

  “The Enlightened One? I know because God came to me this morning and told me you’d be coming. He told me to prepare a banquet fit for a king and to welcome you with open arms.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that, Father. I am married to the queen of sarcasm.”

  He laughed again. “Our mutual friend, Gabriel, came to me last night and told me to be ready to receive you.”

  Brent smiled and pulled something from his jeans pocket. “Here, for you. It came this morning from Cardinal Bullini. He sends his sincerest apologies and says he hopes to tell you personally when all of this…whatever this is, is over.”

  Father Jessup took the Roman collar Brent held out to him. Instead of placing it in the black collar of his cassock, he placed it, unceremoniously, in his front shirt pocket. Brent wanted to ask what that was all about, but thought it wiser to say nothing. If Father Jessup wanted to wear it, or talk to Brent about what was bothering him, he would, in God’s time.

  After everyone had eaten and the dining area was cleaned up, it was time for Fath
er Jessup to preside over the daily mass. Everyone was invited to stay, regardless of their beliefs, and there was no hard sell.

  Of the five hundred or so present, about three hundred stayed. What really surprised Brent was the number of people who came just for the mass, another hundred or so. It wasn’t hard to pick out the new arrivals. They were not poor and destitute like those who had come for a hot meal. They came from a higher economic class.

  The surprises weren’t quite over for Brent. What happened next amazed him but shouldn’t have. In the times we live in, it was an anomaly. Everyone, it didn’t matter from which economic class, smiled and hugged one another like they were family.

  Brent shook his head and thought, this is how church is supposed to be, everyone coming together regardless of economic or ethnic background, and praising God.

  “Pretty incredible, isn’t it?”

  The woman standing next to him was impeccably dressed.

  “That’s for sure. How did everyone come together like this?”

  “Stephen spoke at a Knights of Columbus meeting about six ago,” she said. “He asked if we could donate food or furniture to the mission here. To be honest, after his speech, he could have asked us for our first-born children and we would have handed them over to him.”

  “He has a way with words, has he?”

  “It’s not words he has a way with, young man. It’s the Word. He is inspired by God. You’ll see.”

  A few minutes later, the service started, and soon it was time for the eulogy. Father Jessup, dressed in traditional vestments sans the Roman collar, came out from behind the pulpit to stand in the middle of the raised platform on which the altar was built. He held a well-worn Bible and lifted it high over his head.

  Everyone watched intently as Father Jessup lifted his eyes to the Lord. “Dear Father, I pray that Your Word becomes life to all those who hear it, and that You use me as a vessel to pour out Your message.” Brent watched as Father Jessup prayed silently. He opened his eyes and lowered the Bible. He kissed it before handing it to a gentleman who sat not far from him.