“Well, I never thought I’d see you three times in one day,” Dr. Larringer said.
Liam’s eyes were burning, and he could feel exhaustion setting in behind them.
“What can you tell us about the bodies?” Liam asked, not bothering to address the doctor’s previous comment. It had been a long day, and now, as evening bled into night and caressed its way into the early hours of the morning, Liam doubted that any rest was forthcoming.
And perhaps not for many nights to come.
Dr. Larringer suddenly became serious.
“You want to know about the fire first? Or the bodies?”
“The bodies.”
“Well, most of the evidence burnt, of course, but I’ve seen enough to give you a preliminary assessment. For one, the male outside where the porch used to be, was dead long before the fire started. Maybe as much as a day before, or maybe two, but I can’t be more specific than that.
Tommy Ray Ross, Liam thought.
“As for the others, I counted eleven female victims; judging by the size, I’m guessing that they were anywhere between five and ten years of age. The other male, an adult, like the children, appeared to be trapped inside when the fire started.”
Jesus Christ, thirteen dead… with the preacher and his daughter, that makes fifteen.
Worried that his emotions would soon overwhelm him, Liam quickly asked about the fire.
“Definitely no accident. The accelerant was likely something common. Probably gasoline, but could have been kerosene. Judging by the black marks there, by where the front door used to be, that’s the likely location where it started. That’s pretty much all I can tell you; you’re going to need to get an expert in if you want anything more specific.”
Liam turned to face his two deputies and the detective, who looked as tired as he felt.
“You know, it’s going to take me a month just to sort out these bodies,” Dr. Larringer said, drawing Liam’s attention back. “I think we need to call in some help.”
Liam couldn’t agree more, but it wasn’t his call.
It was Bobby Lee Ross’s.
“I’ll run it by the mayor, but I don’t know how much help we can expect.”
“You think? Even though his son is lying here, burnt to a crisp?” Stevie asked.
Liam glared at the man, but when he saw Stevie’s wide-eyed expression, he realized that he was just scared.
Scared and running his mouth, as per usual.
“I dunno, I’ll try. In the meantime, Dr. Larringer, how long do you think it’ll take for you to gather up these bodies and get them back to the hospital?”
Dr. Larringer surveyed the scene.
“Not sure. A couple of hours at least,” he checked his watch. “It’s already 1 AM, so by the time I’m done here, it’s likely to be closer to four or five in the morning. If you’re okay with it, I’d like to call in the EMT to give me a hand. And maybe some of these firemen can help out, too.”
“Well, that’s one thing I can approve,” Liam replied. Then he turned to Dwight. “Think you can give Susan a ring?”
Dwight nodded, but didn’t add anything. It dawned on Liam that it had been a while since the man had said anything, and he wondered if he would be able to keep it together. Liam knew that he should tell the big man to go home, to sleep it off, only he couldn’t; this was only beginning, and Liam needed all hands on deck.
Even if those hands were shaking.
The sheriff reached over and squeezed his deputy’s arm, and Dwight turned to face him. Liam didn’t say anything; he just gave him a stiff nod, letting him know that none of this was his fault. He might have been the last one to see Principal Zanbar, but he had been doing so at the Sheriff’s request.
“Alright, so here’s what I propose we do,” Liam began, surveying his men again. “Dr. Larringer, you stay here with Dwight and wait for Susan to arrive. When she gets here, I want you, Dwight, to make sure that nobody comes wandering by, no wayward camper, no member of the press, and snaps any pictures, you got it?”
Dr. Larringer nodded, as did Dwight, who had already taken his phone out of his pocket and had started to dial Susan’s number.
“Stevie, you and me will go back to the—”
“He’s here,” Hugh suddenly gasped.
“What? Who’s here?” Liam demanded.
But Hugh didn’t answer; before Liam could even react, the detective was off, sprinting toward the left side of the property, heading directly for a large oak tree that marked with burns from another fire long ago.
“Hey!” He shouted. “Hey, Hugh! Get back here!”
Liam wanted to run after the man, but he simply didn’t have the energy.
Judging by the lack of reaction from the other men, they didn’t either.
“Hugh!” Liam shouted, instinctively bringing a hand to the pistol on his hip. But Hugh was gone; the man had fled into the forest in pursuit of a phantom only he could see. Liam ground his teeth. “What the fuck!”
He felt like screaming, felt like tearing out what little hair he had left, felt like just going to sleep and not waking up until this nightmare had finally fucking ended.
But he couldn’t do that; he was Elloree’s Sheriff, and as long as he held that title—not much longer now, he presumed—he would see this thing through.
Liam did the only thing he could think of in that moment, short of running after Hugh and tiring himself even further. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and continued as if nothing had happened.
“Stevie, you and I’ll back to the station, go over the notes you got from the library and contact the other boroughs and tell them about the missing girls. See if they can give us some dental records for Dr. Larringer to compare to the corpses.”
The word ‘corpses’ made them all cringe, and Liam regretted such an informal term.
They weren’t corpses; they were girls. Young girls. And no matter what Hugh Freeman said, that they were possessed, that they were demons, they were still just girls to Liam.
And now they were dead.
Liam wanted to say more, to offer some sort of encouragement to his exhausted-looking men, but he couldn’t find the strength.
Tears filled his eyes and then spilled down his cheeks, making muddy tracks on his soot-covered skin.
They were just girls, except now they weren’t.
Now they were dead girls.
Chapter 36
Detective Hugh Freeman bolted into the woods, ignoring the Sheriff’s shouts that followed him. He had seen his friend, he’d seen Brett Cherry, staring at him, and he had to find him.
His shoes threatened to stick in the mud, but Hugh found that if he kept striding forward, if he kept running as fast as he possibly could, he would hydroplane on top of it. This made things difficult, because it was dark in the woods, what with the canopy above blocking out almost all of the moonlight. Several wayward branches cut his arms and legs, but like Liam’s voice chasing after him, he paid these no heed.
Hugh had to catch Brett—he absolutely had to before Liam got a hold of him. When they had first come to the swamp, stumbled upon the now burnt house, something inside Brett had broken.
And when they had come across Patty Smith and Tommy Ray, the children already bearing down on them, the man had snapped completely.
He’d drowned three of the blond kids before Hugh could even react. It was all he could do to first save Patty, and then Stacey Weller.
Given how things had gone since, however, Hugh was beginning to regret doing both of those things.
After all, Brett was right: the children were dead already.
Hugh had seen a lot of crazy shit in his time—he’d seen his partner Ed the Nose stabbed in the gut, he’d seen the dead walk, and he’d been offered a glimpse into what could only be described as the depths of hell—including a winged demon crawling out of a man’s chest.
But this… the children—
Movement in the shadows to Hugh’s right drew his
attention.
“Brett? Brett is that you?”
More movement, but this time it didn’t come from his right, but in a semi-circle across his entire field of vision.
Shadows merging, blending together, shuddering, becoming one.
“Brad? Is that—”
Grimy fingers suddenly snaked their way around his nose and mouth, stifling a scream. And then he was pulled backward, yanked behind a tree.
“Be still, Hugh,” a hoarse voice whispered in his ear. “Don’t move a muscle.”
Chapter 37
Liam Lancaster finally made it back to the station at 2:30 in the morning. He could barely keep his eyes open, and twice during the drive from Stumphole, Stevie he had fallen asleep in the passenger seat.
The deputy was still asleep when Liam parked the police cruiser. He reached over and gently shook the man’s shoulder.
Stevie jumped.
“It’s okay, Stevie. It’s just me.”
Stevie looked at him with his offset eyes, but said nothing. Then he reached for the two books that he’d retrieved from the library and gripped them in both hands.
“Had the weirdest dream,” he said. Liam waited for him to expound on this, but when he didn’t, he gave Stevie a nod and a head tilt indicating that they should head into the station.
It had been a long time since Liam had been here well after dark. Sure, he had been aroused from his slumber on more than one occasion, usually by one of Elloree’s elderly who was convinced that someone was trying to break into their home. This was almost never the case—which didn’t stop them from calling—but Liam usually just went straight home after, filling out any required reports the next morning.
What was even stranger, was the fact that the lights were still on.
Liam picked up the pace and when he reached the door, he was surprised to find it unlocked. He pulled it wide and stepped inside, Stevie following closely behind.
“Hello?”
A tired looking Sylvie Sinclair appeared, her blond hair usually so perfectly coiffed, slicked, now a scrambled mess atop her head.
“Shit, I forgot all about you…”
Liam regretted the words as soon as they exited his mouth, but couldn’t take them back. For once, however, Sylvie didn’t notice the curse or didn’t seem to care.
Maybe both.
“Stacey’s sleeping,” Sylvie informed him in a soft voice.
Liam looked over the woman’s shoulder and spotted the young girl lying in the cot by the back wall of the cell. He didn’t like the idea of her being behind bars, but the door was open, and it was probably the most comfortable place in the entire station. Without thinking, he walked over to the bars, and peered inside. The girl was lying on her side, her hands in a prayer position tucked behind one ear. She looked so quiet, so peaceful, that Liam wondered how Hugh could think that she was some sort of demon, no matter how deranged he was. Liam was reminded of his own daughter who, although many years older now, had once slept exactly the same way.
I wonder what she’s dreaming about, Liam thought absently.
He shook his head, then turned to Stevie and said, “Put some coffee on, would ya? It’s going be a long night.” Then to Sylvie, he added, “But you should go home, Sylvie. Get some rest, come back in the morning.”
The woman’s wide eyes moved from Stevie to Liam then back to the girl in the cell. With a subtle nod, she grabbed her keys and purse from the chair and started toward the door.
Liam didn’t have to ask her twice.
“See you in the morning,” she said, and then was gone, clearly relieved to be out of the station, and the girl’s presence.
As Stevie set about making the coffee, Liam turned his attention to the books that the man had retrieved from the library. He recognized the first one—the worn and tattered cover, the frayed binding—it was the town census. The other one…
Liam picked it up, and turned it over in his hand. It was a thin book, with no author listed on the spine nor the front cover. There was no synopsis on the back, and the front was adorned with words that he didn’t recognize at first.
Liam tilted the cover in the harsh lighting of the station and read the red, embossed letters out loud.
“Mater est, matrem omnium,” the words rolled off Liam’s tongue, and with them came a flash of recognition.
He almost dropped the book.
Can’t be… it can’t be.
His eyes flicked up and fell on the girl sleeping on the cot. They were the exact words that he’d heard her say to the priest before he gouged his eyes out.
Liam blinked long and slow, expecting when he looked at the cover again, the words would be gone.
They weren’t; they were still there. He looked over at Stevie.
“How did you find this?” he almost gasped.
Stevie, in the process of filling the carafe, glanced back.
“The Curator gave it to me,” he said simply.
The Curator?
“You mean the librarian? Ms. LeBlanc?”
Stevie shook his head and turned off the tap.
“No, the Curator… a Mr. Seth Parsons, or something like that.”
Liam just stared at the deputy for a minute. He wasn’t up-to-date on all the comings and goings of Elloree, but he thought he would have remembered if the library had acquired a curator, or if Ms. Leblanc had hired any help. But he couldn’t remember anything of the sort. However, Liam was coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that many things happened in Elloree of which he wasn’t privy.
Let it go, Liam. You have more important things to focus on.
With the book gripped tightly in both hands, Liam retreated to his desk and plopped himself down in the chair. A sigh escaped his lips; the only sitting that he’d done all day was in the uncomfortable squad car, and to his sore cheeks, the IKEA swivel chair felt like a pillow made from angel hair.
With one, final slow blink, Liam opened the cover of Mater est, matrem omnium and started to read.
Chapter 38
Liam slammed the cover closed and tossed the book onto his desk. It landed with a bang, startling Stevie from a daze.
“What a crock of shit,” Liam muttered under his breath. He rubbed his eyes, and then dared a glance at his watch. It was closing in on 3:30, and he hadn’t heard from Dwight yet.
“Did it help? At all?” A sleepy Stevie Johnson asked.
Liam had learned much about Charleston in the 1800s, about a woman named Anne LaForet, a rapist who went by Benjamin Heath, a pathetic woman from more recent times named Ariel Reigns, and a depressed, alcoholic FBI agent named Kendra Wilson who was burned alive.
Liam shook his head.
“What it did was help me realize that there are some people out there with fucked up imaginations,” he said under his breath. “The real question is,” he continued, his eyes drifting to the girl on the cot, “how did she know about it.”
Stevie reached for the book, but Liam shook his head.
“Don’t bother; don’t waste your time.”
Liam opened the census instead, leaning away from the small puff of dust that filled the air.
“Dwight said something about girls going missing every twenty years or so?” He asked as he scrolled through the pages of names, genders, ages.
“Yeah, but the online data only went back to 1985 or so.”
Liam nodded and skipped back to the section marked 1984. The top of each page included a summary for that year, complete with the number of residents in Elloree, including a breakdown by sex and age range. It didn’t take him much time to see what Dwight had been talking about: there was a precipitous drop in the number of children—girls—in 1984 and 85, compared to the years around it.
“Yeah, I see that here,” Liam said, his brow furrowing. He turned back a few pages and found that by 1982, the numbers rebounded to more even distribution. He was no statistician, but the drop was so obvious that even his untrained mind noticed it. There was a similar tre
nd in 1964, and then 1943. The latter might be explained by the war, but the former…
“What the hell?”
Stevie was leaning over his shoulder now, reading along with him.
“What do you think it means?”
Liam didn’t answer; he just continued to scroll back to 1924-25, then the first few years of the 1900s. There was a definite pattern here: every 20 years or so, the number of children in the town of Elloree dropped dramatically.
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