Dark Rites

by Heather Graham

  “Which book is it?” Vickie asked.

  “I can’t remember the title exactly. It’s on the arrival of the first Puritans in the colony, up to the birth of Benjamin Franklin and how he, and others of his ilk, brought a repressed people into the Age of Enlightenment. It’s by Nathaniel Alden, I believe.”

  “I can look for it for you, Professor Hanson,” she said. “But I may not find it. My dad isn’t the most organized man in the world. My mom tries to keep his books in some kind of order, but—”

  “Maybe you could let me into their place and help me find it,” he said.

  “I’m leaving town today,” she said.

  “I’d just need five minutes. If you let me know when you’re on your way out, I can meet you,” he said hopefully.

  Vickie glanced up to find that Devin was watching her; she also had her phone in her hand and was looking as if it was important that they speak.

  “Excuse me a moment, please,” Vickie said. She muted the call.

  “Professor Hanson. He wants one of my dad’s books,” she said, pointing at the phone.

  In turn, Devin pointed at her phone and said, “Griffin—he couldn’t reach you so he called my number. They want us at the hospital. Jane Doe is awake and talking. But she doesn’t remember anything. Griffin thinks that she should see you.”

  “Okay. Okay, so...what do I tell Professor Hanson? Devin, the man is kind of creepy. He was at the coffee shop when Roxanne and I were there the other night—waiting for Alex.”

  “We can meet him together, then. Just tell him that you’ll call him and let him know what kind of timing will work.”

  “Okay.”

  Vickie did just as Devin had suggested. Devin was already up, reaching for her bag.

  “Let’s go. Maybe you can get some answers. There should be an officer waiting outside for us by now.”

  Once they were sitting together in the back of the cruiser, Vickie turned to Devin. “Amnesia. She doesn’t remember anything, huh?”

  “Some things, but not about the immediate past—or where she came from actually. She knows her first name—Gloria—but not her last.”

  “Do you think it’s true? Or do you think it’s some kind of a fake?” Vickie asked.

  “You mean, do I think she’s faking amnesia?” Devin asked.

  “Yeah, it just seems convenient. Bizarre. I feel as if we’re being blocked all the time. I could be crazy, too,” Vickie said. “The thing is, we were about to head out to Barre, but it’s almost as if we’re being stopped from getting out to where things are really taking place. And, of course, we’ve been talking about Jehovah since this all began. Jehovah was out there somewhere between Barre and the Quabbin, or maybe half in what is the Quabbin now.”

  “I just don’t think this girl could have known that we were heading to Barre today. And she just came to—so she doesn’t know that we were in Fall River yesterday. Could she be a fraud? Sure. But we go through a lot of training. If she was playing us, I think that Griffin or Rocky would know, or Barnes would have a sense of it. You don’t get to his position in a city like Boston without having a unique talent for reading people.”

  “Do you really think that her seeing me will help snap her out of it?”

  “You never know,” Devin said. “You just never know.”

  They arrived at the hospital and met up with Barnes, Rocky and Griffin in the cafeteria. The three men told them about their initial encounter with “Jane Doe.”

  “She’s very young,” Griffin said.

  “You can be very young—and be an excellent performer,” Devin pointed out.

  “Don’t forget, the person pulling all the strings during the Fall River Satanic murders in the late 1970s was a seventeen-year-old girl,” Vickie pointed out.

  “True,” Griffin agreed.

  Barnes cleared his throat. “Do you feel bitter about this girl because she targeted you? I don’t blame you, but it might make it hard for you to go see her. She, of course, should be grateful to you. You and Devin saved her life.”

  “I’m not bitter. I guess I just wanted to get out west to Barre and get closer to finding Alex,” Vickie said.

  “We’ll get out there,” Griffin assured her. “And I’m not easily taken in. But I don’t want to say anything else. I don’t want to color what will happen, or what your feelings will be.”

  “And don’t worry about heading west later than you had planned,” Barnes said. “This in an interagency situation. State police have already been at the Quabbin. We’ve kept divers searching just in case...” He broke off with a shrug.

  “In case Alex is dead, and weighted down somewhere in the Quabbin?” Vickie asked.

  “We all know it’s a possibility that he’s dead, but I can’t help but believe that he’s been taken for his mind—his ability to search out the past,” Griffin said. “Which, actually, should be something that we focus on now, too. I keep thinking that there is some person behind this—maybe the same guy who killed Sheena Petrie thirty-plus years ago—and that he’s convinced that he needs to be in the same place Ezekiel Martin was during the 1600s. I don’t think that’s so farfetched. So, Vickie, that throws it into your corner. You’re going to have to figure out exactly where Jehovah might have been.”

  “That is something we were both interested in since the night he was attacked,” Vickie said. “I mean, I’ve been trying, but people have been searching for the exact location for well over three hundred years.”

  Griffin leaned toward her, smiling. “Those people haven’t been you—desperate to find a friend,” he told her. He reached for her hand and squeezed it.

  “Let’s go talk to this young lady,” Vickie said. “With any luck, she’ll solve the whole thing for us!”

  No one responded to that.

  No one was expecting that much luck.

  Upstairs, they waited while Griffin found the young redhead’s doctor.

  When he was present, they went into the room. The girl had been lying on her side, just staring at the wall. Her television was on; Griffin turned it off.

  “Miss,” he said quietly. She turned to look at him. And then she studied Devin and Vickie, and she began to frown, as if something stirred in her memory.

  Huge tears suddenly filled her eyes.

  “It was wrong. I’m so sorry. It was wrong!” she said.

  Vickie perched on the side of her bed, looking into her troubled eyes.

  “What was wrong?” she asked.

  “I threw the blood on you! I condemned you!”

  “You threw a cupful of blood at me,” Vickie said softly. “But I’m fine.”

  “You’re...you’re trying to ruin us. You don’t understand,” the girl said.

  Vickie was startled. “I’m trying to ruin you?” she asked. “But I don’t even know who you are.”

  The girl was perplexed. “It was blood, yes. I know that it was blood. And you’re...you’re supposed to leave us alone. I wasn’t going to hurt you. You just had to know that you’re supposed to leave us alone. Your place is yet to be revealed. There will be no walking the line in the new world order. You are with us or against us. But he knows about you. He knows, and he is watching and deciding what your fate will be.”

  Despite herself, Vickie felt a tremor of fear. “Okay,” she said flatly. “First off, who is ‘us’? And who the hell is ‘he’?”

  The girl’s face seemed to be twisted into an anguished pucker. She was fighting hard within her own mind, trying to draw out some sense.

  “He is all powerful,” she said. But she said it strangely, as if it was a learned mantra, and not even something she really grasped herself.

  “Satan? Who the hell, indeed!” Vickie murmured, looking at Griffin.

  “Gloria, you’re alive beca
use of these two women,” Griffin told her quietly. “You’re glad to be alive, right?”

  She nodded. “I am... I know that the award for obedience is eternal pleasure, but...the punishment for disobedience is eternal flame. I didn’t obey. And... I failed. I’m supposed to be dead.”

  “Please keep trying,” Vickie said. “Who am I going to ruin, and why are you supposed to be dead?”

  The girl thought.

  And thought.

  And began to cry, tears coming down her cheeks as if her eyes had become waterfalls.

  The doctor cleared his throat and started to move forward. Vickie didn’t want him to stop her, not then.

  She leaned forward and told the girl, “It’s going to be all right now. You’re not part of the cult anymore. You’re safe. You’re going to have a good life. But the blood came from another woman. It was a lot of blood. Please...is she dead, do you know? And what about Alex?”

  Saying the name Alex seemed to trigger something.

  “Audrey had Alex. I wasn’t a part of that. Alex would watch the Dearborn brother and sister, and Audrey would take care of him. It’s all right. Alex is a vessel—he is a messenger. He doesn’t know it, but he will show the way,” the girl said.

  “So, they do have Alex,” Vickie said. “Why? Because he is so smart?”

  “Yes, our leader, the high priest, knows that Alex is very smart, especially when it comes to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. That is why you may and may not live—you are a speaker for the past. You have been seen. You are watched.”

  “Is Vickie in danger?” Griffin asked, the sound of his voice like sandpaper.

  “Vickie is like Alex. She may be a messenger,” Gloria said. “Messengers are exalted. They must understand that they are messengers.”

  She started to weep again.

  “We want to help you,” Vickie assured her, “and we need you to help us.”

  “I am so...lost!” Gloria said.

  “Gloria, do you think, if you tried for a while, you could remember your last name?” Griffin asked her.

  Again, her face crinkled and puckered.

  Vickie didn’t think that anyone could feign that much pain.

  “My last name,” she repeated. “I am to forget my first. I am to become Mary—we are all Mary. We will bring Satan’s children in the flesh. We will all bear fruit. And we will be rewarded.”

  “Rewarded by who?” Griffin burst out, sounding frustrated.

  The red-haired girl looked over at him and said solemnly, “Satan, of course. The devil. He will deliver us with his children, and the earth and his power will be ours.”

  They were all silent for a minute. Vickie asked quietly then, “Where do you live, Gloria? You aren’t Mary, and you aren’t going to have Satan’s child.”

  “I live...”

  She stared blankly at Vickie. She frowned, appearing painfully confused again. “I live somewhere in the woods.”

  “With other people?” Devin asked.

  “Yes. There are others.”

  “Close to Boston? Far from Boston?” Griffin asked.

  “We go in the van. We may travel far. We may stay in one place as we feel that we’ve traveled far,” the girl said. Then she buried her face in her hands again. “I’m so sorry. These are the answers that come to me. I know that they’re...crazy. And... I have been with Satan. I will have Satan’s child. He came to me at the ceremony. I must have his child. If we don’t embrace Satan, we are for sacrifice. If we don’t please Satan, we will die. We must be chosen. We must...”

  She stopped again, shaking her head.

  “What about the blood that was thrown at me?” Vickie asked. “Do you know who it came from?”

  “Mary. We are all Mary. But she hates him. She fights him,” Gloria said. She began to cry softly again. “I don’t know... I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t want to die. Thank you. And I’m still so afraid and... I don’t know where I was. I don’t remember... I don’t remember anything before the woods, before...being Mary.”

  “Agents? Detective Barnes?” the doctor said, pressing them to leave.

  Griffin nodded. He walked over and took Gloria’s hand. “It’s okay. Thank you. Thank you for trying to help us.”

  “I need to pay for what I did!” Gloria said.

  “No. You were coerced into what you did. You were naive and foolish and they twisted and warped you. But you’re away from them. You need help,” Vickie told her. “Please keep trying to remember.” She hesitated. “Alex, he is alive, right?”

  The girl nodded solemnly. “Alex is the way. He is the messenger.”

  The doctor cleared his throat. “My patient is distressed,” he said firmly.

  “We’ll be back!” Vickie promised cheerfully.

  She smiled and squeezed the girl’s hand, and then rose. She felt a fierce rise of anger and tension as they headed out of Gloria’s hospital room.

  It was very frightening. Gloria had said that women—plural—died. Those who did not please Satan—or the high priest, or whoever was playing Satan in the flesh.

  They had to stop what was happening, stop anyone else from dying.

  And they had to find Alex. He sure as hell wasn’t going to bear Satan’s child, but at any point, he might just rebel, refuse to help and refuse to believe...

  And then, messenger or no, he might well find that he was a sacrifice himself.

  “Where do we go from here?” she asked, turning to look at Griffin as he, Devin and Rocky and Detective Barnes joined her in the hallway.

  “She might remember more and more,” Griffin said. “And she might not.”

  “Alex is being kept somewhere. There’s an entire group living and surviving somewhere—and we don’t know where,” Vickie said, frustrated. “It seems to me that we have to find them.”

  “And they could all be living in plain sight,” Rocky said. “Like the woman who went by Audrey Benson. They could all just be living and working somewhere—and then meeting up at an unknown destination, or a destination that changes.”

  “But they have a prisoner. At least one prisoner. Alex. They have to be keeping him somewhere,” Vickie argued. “We have to find Jehovah.”

  “And you think that you can?” Barnes asked, the tone of his voice dubious.

  “I can try, and I can come darned close,” she said.

  “What about Professor Hanson?” Devin asked.

  “What about him?” Griffin asked, frowning.

  “He wants to borrow one of Vickie’s dad’s books,” Devin explained.

  “Really? What book?” Griffin demanded.

  “He just wants to borrow a book,” Vickie said. “He’s an esteemed professor—there’s no reason to suspect him of anything.” She smiled at Griffin, though she had to admit she was feeling suspicious of everyone out there, as well.

  Yeah, why the hell did the man suddenly want to borrow one of her father’s books?

  Vickie gave herself a mental shake.

  “You think that Milton Hanson could be involved in any way?” Detective Barnes asked. “That’s just crazy.”

  Vickie turned to look at Barnes. “It’s all crazy—the very concept of everything going on is crazy. I’m sure you’re right, but we can keep an eye on him. We’ll start by checking out the book he wants.”

  “And,” Griffin said, “since Gloria mentioned music, and since Audrey isn’t really Audrey, we should know if Cathy and Ron Dearborn are really Cathy and Ron Dearborn. Cathy said that they’re from Athol. Can we find out if they’re who they say they are?”

  “And I expect you want that checked out with Milton Hanson, too?” Barnes asked, his tone on the dry side.

  “Actually, yes, we should do that,” Griffin said. “Anyone could
be a suspect. We don’t even really know what we’re looking at yet. Gloria said that women died. We don’t know who—we don’t know how many. We have to find out.”

  “And that means finding Jehovah,” Vickie said determinedly.

  10

  “I think that I definitely need to find the book that Milton Hanson wants and look it over first!” Vickie told Griffin.

  They’d gone to her parents’ apartment. While the elder Preston pair were in Europe, Vickie felt as much at home in their place as she ever had, and completely welcome.

  She adored her folks—and was really close to them. She was their only child.

  But she was very grateful that her parents were away, that they weren’t there to fret and worry about her when it simply made them crazy and wasn’t helpful to anyone.

  Griffin—for all of being a solid, talented, determined and striking agent—still was uneasy around her parents. He’d saved their daughter’s life twice, but still worried about their approval, she supposed. But, she told herself, that was because he cared. And that was okay.

  Even their apartment made him nervous, it seemed. He appeared extremely uncomfortable, just standing near her father’s desk, while she plowed through the bookcases, looking for anything that might have been written by a man named Nathaniel Alden.

  “Griffin!”

  “What?”

  “Help me.”

  “Vickie, this is your father’s very personal space.”

  “Dig in.”

  “You’re his daughter.”

  “There is absolutely no reason to be afraid of my father.”

  “I’m not afraid of your father,” he assured her.

  “Good.”

  “I’m afraid of your mother.”

  “Griffin!”

  “Okay, okay, I’m not really afraid of your mother,” he said with a sigh. “Honestly, I just feel like I’m prying and—”

  “These are his books, Griffin. Not his underwear.”

  “All right!

  He moved over to one of the endless rows of books and began searching through the titles.

  “Alden, you said?”

  “Nathaniel Alden. I believe the book was written during the Civil War. It’s out of print now. Hard to find, which is why Hanson needs our copy. It’s a study of social norms in the Massachusetts Bay Colony from the founding through the Age of Enlightenment and onward, to the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts to the Civil War and beyond, to our treatment of veterans who returned from the war, of those who were crippled by it and those who apparently went insane because of it. Remember all the stuff we learned about Dr. Boylston and the crude method of inoculations he promoted? And how Cotton Mather—not my favorite historical person!—actually pressed for the science of it, as well? They were coming into what was then the modern world. But I’m thinking that, somewhere in that book, there’s something that relates back to Jehovah.”