by David Risen
“Are you having a little trouble with your body, Patrick?”
He glares at her and shoves himself up from the chair. The force yanks him back down in his seat.
He stands again.
Same result.
“What have you done to me, bitch?”
She sits up straight and folds her hands on the cool surface of her metal desk. “I can keep this up all day. If you want to keep on going, I can make you take off all your clothes and violate yourself with a knife the same way you intended to rape Sister Clarence. The more nurturing side of me would rather just fix you.”
“What are you?”
She responds with the same professorial look that she offered Amelia. “I’m concerned for your soul.”
“You expect me to believe that you would help me?”
She gives him her most gracious smile. “A male libido can be dangerous and unpredictable when supercharged with traumatic memories of bad women who constantly and publicly emasculated you. In that way, this is not your fault.”
“What do I have to do?”
She relaxes in her chair.
“Pay me for my services.”
“How?”
She opens her middle desk drawer again, removes another manila file folder, and sits it on her desk beside the other – taking care to straighten it so that the edges of the folders are perfectly parallel.
“There’s this nurse who is causing me a great deal of trouble. I would like you to extend your own brand of hospitality to her on my behalf.”
Back in the alleyway behind the store, a loud crack reverberates off the cinderblock walls.
Amelia releases Patrick the rapist and stares at his writhing and moaning form considering everything she learned.
“Who the fuck are you bitches?” he shrieks.
Amelia stares through him. “You’re paralyzed from the waist down. I’ll call the police and tell them where they can find you as soon as I return to my apartment.”
“Fuck you.”
She brushes by him and climbs back into her car.
Amelia sits on the tweed couch watching “Bewitched.”
The credits are about to roll on the tube of her gaudy Zenith console TV when the canary yellow wall phone on the kitchen wall jangles its three-second staccato rhythm.
She rises and crosses the living room into the kitchen in time to answer it on the third ring.
“Amelia, this is Sister Hunter.”
Amelia wraps the phone cord around her index finger and paces back toward the den.
“Stay away from me.”
“What’s wrong?” Sister Hunter replies.
Amelia tightens her grip on the receiver. “I know what you did.”
“Are you talking about Patrick? I had to get you to use your powers, so I could trace their origin.”
Amelia shakes her head as if Sister Hunter can see her. “I don’t care. Forget you have my number, and if you approach me again, you’ll regret it.”
“It’s very important that you listen to what I have to say.”
“No, it is you who should listen to me. I will not tolerate any more of your experiments, intrusions, or inquiries, and I will not suffer your presence in my life. Do you understand?”
“You’re not a practitioner,” she blurts. “You were born with your abilities, but the form that you’re in puts everyone in danger. You have to let me help you.”
“I’m not interested in your brand of assistance.”
“Don’t you want to know who you are?”
Amelia hangs up.
The phone rings again a few moments later, and she takes it off the hook.
Hard hands clasp Amelia’s wrists.
Her eyes pop open. The pale, shapely countenance of Sister Hunter hovers over her.
She opens her mouth to scream but another hand presses hard against her mouth.
She looks left. Her friend, Sister Parker held her left hand down. Sister Parker’s face is completely devoid of emotion as if she’s looking down on a frog she’s preparing to dissect.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she says as if speaking to a small child. “But you’re just too dangerous to exist here in this form.”
All the passion inside Amelia boils into fury.
Sister Parker flies backwards and into the wall hard enough to crack the paneling in the shape of her back.
The sister to her right clasps her arms and pins her to the mattress.
Amelia recognizes her, too – the haughty, little nun who accosted her at the convent.
“Cover her eyes!” Sister Hunter commands.
Amelia throws them all backwards. The paneling cracks as they slam into her walls.
Amelia scrambles to her feet and bolts for the door.
Another nun slams it before she reaches it.
“Get control of her!” Sister Hunter cries.
Sister Parker tackles her and flings her against her own door – grinding her face into the wood.
“Don’t make me hurt you,” Amelia warns.
Sister Parker laughs at her.
“Don’t worry, you can’t.”
Amelia glares.
The rage inside her boils over. Power surges from her flinging all six of the women in her bedroom against the wall and pinning them.
Sister Hunter nods at a ceramic vase on Amelia’s nightstand. It flies up and hurls toward her head.
Wrath explodes inside Amelia.
A shockwave of energy ripples outward from her body.
The vase razes into powder in mid-flight.
When the blast reaches the nuns pinned against the wall it strips the glamor that presents them as beautiful, young women leaving only hideous truth.
Six wrinkled, old women with gray and silver hair peer back at her with loose skin dangling from their jaws.
The Sisters of Divinity join hands and began chanting in a language Amelia doesn’t recognize.
She releases them, and they drop like rag dolls to the gold shag carpet.
Amelia flings the door open and stumbles down the hallway with her eyes trained on the white, raised-panel door leading to the breezeway outside her apartment.
She reaches for the doorknob.
A hard hand clamps around her ankle.
She plunges forward. Her head smacks into the door.
She rolls over on her back -- dazzled.
The shag carpet beneath her burns her skin as her unseen attacker drags her back toward the hallway.
She kicks blindly at the other woman’s face. Her heel glances off the old woman’s cheek.
The nun lets go and grasps her face.
Amelia clambers to her feet and pours all of her hatred into the nun.
The old woman rose into the air, and a loud crunch resounds through the apartment as her head rotates backwards.
“Margaret!” Sister Hunter cries.
Amelia drops her. Margaret’s lifeless form falls to the floor in a heap.
Sister Hunter scowls at Amelia.
Something hard crashes into the back of her head, and Amelia blacks out.
A blindfold covers Amelia’s eyes.
Taught ropes hold her arms and legs straight in an X.
The damp cold beneath her back tells her that she’s lying on concrete.
“Help!” she cries. But the sound that escapes her is more like a whimper.
Amelia pulls at her bonds but finds that she has no energy to fight. She feels as though she’s in that strange place between sleep and consciousness in which her muscles don’t work.
Rider knows this feeling. This was how he feels on his Xanax and Klonopin cocktail. The sisters drugged her.
“Good, you’re awake,” Sister Hunter says brightly with the exact tone and inflection a doctor might use just before performing a procedure.
“I’m going to kill you,” Amelia grumbles.
Sister Hunter’s knees pop as she kneels beside her.
“That’s why we’ve covered your eyes. You ca
n’t attack with your eyes covered.”
“What have you done to me?” she mutters.
Sister Hunter’s knees pop again as she stands. “You’re contained inside a very special pentacle. The fact that you can move or speak at all is a testament to how powerful you are. Most mortals would instantly die.”
“I’ve done nothing but protect myself from those who would harm me.”
Sister Hunter paces around to her feet to the area just beyond her feet.
“I need to speak to you candidly without interruption. I’m going to bind your tongue for a moment.”
Amelia opens her mouth to respond, but her lips and jaw don’t obey.”
Terror bubbles inside her. Rider senses the cloth of the blindfold superheating – almost as if someone is ironing it.
“We are the sacred Sisterhood of Divinity – the oldest and largest coven in the world. We have chapters in almost every city and township in the world. All of our vast resources are dedicated to preserving the balance of creation.”
The cloth around her eyes stings her skin. Rider smells the acrid pall of fabric burning.
“Our normal struggles usually do not pit us against one such as you, because your kind is exceedingly rare. You’re one of six in the world. Over the course of our long history, all of you at some time or other have approached the sisterhood, and we have lent you our aid. But in all of those cases, you were operating within the balance of nature.”
Even the concrete beneath her scalds her back now. Amelia remains perfectly still.
“Had you spoken with me last night, I would have explained that you were born with some of the divine powers of the supreme creator at your disposal. These powers cannot be stripped, and there’s no power in the universe strong enough to bind you.”
Rider doesn’t understand why Sister Hunter can’t see smoke rising from the blindfold or feel the heat of the floor beneath her feet.
“You are a balancer. That is why you command both creative and destructive powers, but you are living outside the balancing laws of nature. The event you described to me, your waking in the middle of a field naked, was something we call spontaneous regeneration. This has happened before, but usually not without numerous summoning spells and incantation.”
Amelia reaches out with her mind. She feels the presence of not only Sister Hunter but also five other women. One stands a few feet behind her head, and the others hover just beyond her arms and legs. Sister Hunter paces around the circle behind the other women as she speaks.
“This must be a very lonely and unsatisfying existence for you. Because your soul didn’t return through normal corporeal channels, you’ll always be an outsider. You will never meet your mated soul. You shall grow more frustrated until you bring about a very real apocalypse.”
Amelia clinches her hands into fists – straining with all her might against the cloth covering her eyes.
“I know you neither understand nor agree with what I’m saying consciously, but unconsciously, you know I’m telling the truth. That is why I urge you to not fight us as we free your spirit so that it may restore its own balance through natural birth.”
Sister Hunter stops pacing and squats. Amelia’s senses are so attuned now that she can sense the perplexed expression on Sister Hunter’s face. Sister Hunter turns her head and eyes the nun standing before Amelia’s right arm.
“Do you smell something burning?”
The blindfold disintegrates.
Sister Hunter – young again with her glamor restored – falls backwards and skitters away from Amelia.
Amelia eyes each of her bonds, and they fall apart.
“Cover her eyes,” Sister Hunter shrieks.
Amelia tries to stand, but the power of the chalk pentacle on the concrete beneath her renders her too weak.
She concentrates hard on the floor.
The concrete shudders and cracks.
Amelia lunges just as the other sisters descend.
She flings them all backwards and pins them against the concrete walls just as she had done in the apartment.
She turns just in time to see Sister Hunter hurl a cinder block at her head.
She glares at it, and it explodes into powder. She eyes Sister Hunter.
The nun shrieks and writhes as her body disintegrates into a mound of ash.
Amelia eyes each of the women pinned against the walls.
The cold, damp air of the basement chills her naked skin.
“Relate this to your other sisters: You will all leave me be. If any of you attempt to pursue me further and I’m even remotely as powerful as you claim, I will destroy your entire order.”
Raaaaaeeeeedeeeeeuuuuurrrr.
Rider feels heavy like he’s slept too long.
Rrrraaaeeedeeerrr.
The acrid fragrance of ozone all around him.
He senses that he lay in an uncomfortable position, but he doesn’t have the steam to adjust himself.
“Rraaeedeerr.”
The voice belongs to a woman.
Familiar.
He opens his eyes.
Darkness and cold surrounds him.
He looks down to his feet. A single blurred image hovers below. The shape of it reminds Rider of a woman wearing an elaborate dress.
“Rider?” she says.
Rider’s vision clears.
Amelia stands before him wearing a white dress that extends to the floor with a bonnet covering the top of her head. The bottom of it flares like a colonial dress, and it seems to glow on its own in the darkness.
“Where am I?” he grunts.
“The space between our minds. This is the only safe place from them.”
Rider climbs up from the black floor – his body still heavy from sleep. “Is this a dream?”
“Not exactly.”
She floats toward him. “I needed to show you who I am, and I had to know about your conversation with Sister Jacobs this afternoon.”
Rider furls his brow. “You know about that?”
She smiles. He sees nothing threatening in her demeanor. “I knew last evening. I allowed you to continue, because I needed to know what they knew.”
Rider gazes back at her in awe. “So everything I just dreamed is true?”
“Yes. Since 1972, I’ve had to uproot myself twice because the sisters caught up with me. I’ve actively been on the run since 1994. I came to Bridgeton, Georgia in hopes of meeting with a man who might help me with this sort of trouble, but when I arrived, I discovered that he retired without a trace.”
Rider shakes his head. “So do you still have no idea who you are?”
She gives him a sad smile. “I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t matter. I’ve devoted myself to causes that I consider just, and I bring no harm to anyone who doesn’t first bring harm to me.”
“What’s their beef with you?”
She grimaces uncomfortably. “You know as much as I, and now it seems that you’re a target as well.”
Rider turns his palms up. “What should we do?”
“We’re on the way to the library. We’ll find out what is on Sister Jacob’s property, and then well decide what to do.”
Rider nods. “We’re in deep shit, aren’t we?”
She turns her head slightly to the right. “I wish I could say that we were not. Assume that they’ll pick up on what we’re doing at the library quickly, and they’ll watch our every move.”
Rider sat behind one of the many computers on the second floor of Hall County Library.
Amelia wheeled a chair beside him, sat, and crossed her legs.
After signing in with his fake name and typing the password, he pulled up Internet Explorer and navigated to Google.
In the search field he typed, “Skitts Mountain, TN.”
The first page the engine listed was a Wikipedia listing.
Skitts Mountain, Tennessee is a ghost town located in northern Tennessee amid the Great Smokey Mountains.
Chartered in 1851,
the town grew around coal mines burrowed into the mountain upon which it lays. In 1880, R. F. Whitaker & Co. built a coal refinery within the small town to reduce the cost of transporting and refining coal delivered from the mines.
In 1897, the mine beneath the mountain became unstable. The deeper sector of the mine collapsed burying 15 miners. Many other smaller cave-ins and accidents led to the closing of the mine in 1901. To save the city from failure, the R. F. Whitaker Company sold the refinery and all of its land and facilities to J. W. Stein who repurposed the refinery into a lumber mill.
Skitts Mountain Lumber Mill operated from 1903 to 1929 when J. W. Stein lost his fortune in the stock market crash of 1929. After the mill closed, the town slowly died over the course of 4 years. A private investor bought all the property that was the Town of Skitts Mountain. The Skitts Mountain Post Office closed in 1934.
Rider looked at Amelia when he finished reading.
“A ghost town?”
She shook her head and pressed her finger against her lips, and then she touched his hand.
Say nothing aloud. We can’t be certain that they’re not listening.
Rider was terrified. The woman beside him was so powerful that she could project her thoughts into his head.
She gave him a look of disbelief.
You would balk at my ability to converse with you in this fashion and think nothing of my insertion of memories into your mind in the form of a dream?
Rider turned back to face the computer and clicked the back button, and then he scanned the other links his Google search turned up.
Three links down he found a link simply titled, “The Most Haunted Places of the South.”
He pointed at it, and she nodded.
He clicked the link.
The Most Haunted Places in the South
Skitts Mountain Tennessee:
Over thirty different men died in mining accidents during the 42-year history of Skitts Mountain mine. It became so dangerous that the mine closed at the beginning of the 20th century.
The small town that supported the miners and the workers in the small refinery located near the crest of the mountain reported ghostly encounters in and around the mines. The town closed off the entrance to the mine in 1909, due to the number of disappearances in that area.