by David Risen
Rider smirked.
First off, we already know where she is. She’s in Skitts Mountain, Tennessee. Secondly, how are we supposed to teach an international organization a lesson they won’t soon forget?
Amelia tilted her head back with recognition.
The ghost town you showed me on the computer, she thought.
Rider nodded.
So, what do you think their problem with you is? he thought.
She nodded, grabbed the mouse, and exited the subject A folder, and then she clicked on the folder labeled “SUB_US_GA_Darien_B.”
Just like the file folder pertaining to Rider, the first file in the order was a DOS file labeled “Compendium of Maleficent Spirits excerpt.”
She double clicked on it and once it loaded, she typed the password and found herself looking at the same document. The only difference was that the entries within named her “The Conciliatory Matron.”
Just as the text registered, the doorknob rattled.
Rider stepped on the glowing toggle switch on the surge protector beneath the High Priestess’ desk. The computer monitor blinked off.
He grasped Amelia and pulled her to the furthest corner just before the door swung open.
Ginger, still wearing her ceremonial, silver robe stopped just inside the doorway and looked about like a dog sniffing the air.
She shut the door behind herself still looking about to spot something amiss.
Ginger gasped, and then she began to claw at her neck. Her feet rose from the concrete, and she began kicking, clawing, and flailing at the air.
Rider stared, wide-eyed and stunned.
Then he realized that he was watching Amelia kill another woman.
He grasped her shoulder hard, but her intensity could not be broken. At last, she stopped kicking. Amelia dropped her in a heap on the floor.
Is she...?
Amelia shook her head.
Just passed out. We should probably go, now.
Rider smirked.
Ya think?
Back in the pouring rain by the Navigator, Rider glowered at Amelia.
“What the fuck were you thinking back there?”
She sneered.
“They fired the first, second, third, and forth shots. We’re a long way past the ignore them and they’ll go away stage.”
She looked inside his Navigator. Sparks flew from the dashboard and a thin plume of smoke wafted up from the instrument cluster.
“What the fuck was that?” Rider barked.
“I just fried your instrument cluster. If you want to have a futile argument, I’d prefer to do it in the car.”
He huffed.
She rolled her eyes, rounded the long nose of the black juggernaut, and climbed in the passenger’s side.
Rider hesitated for a moment, and then he climbed in the SUV and slammed the door.
“I’m not going to be a part of killing anyone.”
She smirked.
“Is your memory still a little fuzzy? What about the men in the van?”
“And that’s how I know how awful it is to kill another mother’s baby. I’m not goin’ there again.”
She gave him an exasperated look.
“These people have totally made a fool out of you. They’ve been manipulating you throughout your entire life.”
Rider ground his teeth.
“So we fuck ‘em up! Expose them for what they are! That’s almost worse than death for these people. Can you imagine the feeding frenzy that would follow especially considering that they’re tied in with every major branch of Christianity?”
“And how do you propose we do that?” she snapped.
He nodded and looked at the rain sheeting down the windshield.
“I’m a journalist. We go to Skitts Mountain, Tennessee. Take plenty of pictures of everything we see there. Get all kinds of irrefutable documentation pertaining to the ownership of the property, and hard proof of the real nature of The Sisters of Divinity. Then I’ll do what I do best. I’ll write a scathing article about the Sisters of Divinity Coven. Not only will the order go down in flames, but a righteous lot of them will end up in prison.”
She gave him a serious expression.
“Do you honestly think that will work? They are politically connected and have an uncanny ability to cover up the fact that they even exist to the public.”
“I think so. And exposing them would be worse than killing them. Hell, it might start the second Inquisition.”
She squinted and looked down at the glovebox as she considered it, and then she looked back at him with a question on her face.
“How will we get proof linking them to Skitts Mountain, and all the other foul things they’ve done?”
Rider grinned.
“That’s why we capture this Grand Arch Sorceress of theirs and take out some frustration. I’m pretty sure she’ll be able to provide all the proof we need.”
She rolled her eyes.
“How are we going to know who she is? Do you think she wears a nametag?”
Rider’s grin broadened.
“I’m sure Mrs. Grand Arch Bitch is going to want to speak with Dena. Give it plenty of time to happen, snatch her, and then we make her tell us everything.”
Amelia thought it over again, and then she nodded halfheartedly.
“I suppose I can go for that.”
The sat in silence a few moments longer, and then Amelia opened the door.
“I’ll be in touch soon.”
Then she disappeared into the rainy night.
After a brief stop to pick up Aurora, Rider headed home.
But on his way, he stopped by the only all-night convenience store in Darien and bought a cheap case of beer.
When he returned home, he arranged his clothes in approximately the same place they were – in a heap before the dresser and opened his first beer.
He stood in the Master bathroom staring into the mirror and realized that his whole life was a lie. His wife didn’t marry him for love but because she was commanded to do so. His current wife had never even slept with him. His real daughter was dead. Who knew who the current one was. And he wasn’t even sure that his recent success in journalism was real.
He took a swig of beer, and realized he no longer enjoyed the taste.
He spat it out in the sink and wiped his lips with his forearm.
Then he stared into his reflection and burst into tears.
He had nothing for which to live.
No reason.
He descended the stairs, into the kitchen, took the case of beer from within the refrigerator, and tossed it in the trash.
Then he returned to his bedroom, lay in his bed, and clamped his eyes shut.
But no sleep came.
Around four in the morning, he heard his bedroom door squeak open and someone, presumably Dena, peeked inside. Then she shut the door again.
He debated the merits of climbing out of bed and confronting her, but decided it would be better to let things cool down first.
At last, he rolled over and drifted into a fitful sleep.
Amelia parked her faded 1984 Dodge Rampage a mile away from the church.
After she left Rider, she walked in the rain down Main Street, and retrieved it exactly where she left it – in a dying shopping center that contained a Pizza Hut Delivery and Carryout restaurant and the local chapter of DEFACS.
She drove her hunk of junk back across the bridge and through the marshland to Brunswick, Georgia where she had a room at the Super 8 near St. Simon’s island.
She dressed herself in her cotton Pink Panther nightshirt and fell asleep as soon as she hit the mattress.
The sensation of someone yanking a black bag over her head and pulling the drawstring startled her back to life.
She reached up to grasp the bag, but the movement of her hands summoned the clinking of chains. She attempted to use her powers, but found quickly that it only caused something embedded in the center of the chains to bu
rn hot.
“Good morning, Ms. Long,” a familiar voice said.
“Who are you?” She demanded.
She felt the woman hovering at the foot of her bed.
“You know me as Lauren. At present, my title is Arch Sorceress and First Counselor to the Grand Arch Sorceress of the Sisters of Divinity.”
“So you’re one of them?” she said.
Lauren laughed smugly.
“I always have been.”
Amelia struggled against her bonds, and gave up. She was beginning to feel exhausted.
“That was quite a stunt you pulled last night,” Lauren said. “You single-handedly changed our strategy. Your kind has never been powerful enough to avert our wards of protection before.”
A harsh, bitter laugh erupted from Amelia.
“So let me get this straight. You never loved Rider. He was always an assignment to you, and you were so enamored with the thought of being upwardly-mobile and gaining more power that you whored yourself out for your benefactors.”
Lauren sighed.
“At first maybe, but you can’t spend as much time with a person as I did with Rider and not feel for him. Especially when you have a child with him.”
“You’re going to burn for this,” Amelia growled.
“Well, since we’re past the initial pleasantries, let me explain what we’re doing. I’ve brought a container for you here that we simply call ‘the vault.’ The sisterhood built the first design hundreds of years ago specifically to contain one like you. We’ve made a few refinements to it. You’re not going to get out of this one.”
“And you don’t think that your estranged husband will try to find me?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about him. He’s got everything he’s always wanted. The little girl, Aurora? We bound the actual soul of our daughter, Alyssa to the freshly posthumous corpse of a girl who died of cancer. And Dena Carcer? She’s about to become much more accommodating to her husband. His career is flourishing....”
“You can bury the truth, but you can’t kill it. Sooner or later, Rider’s curiosity is going to get the better of him.”
Lauren laughed again.
“I wouldn’t bet on it. People are born in chains. Without realizing it, their parents show them all about their limitations. People appear to hate their chains. They overtly curse them, but if they can remove them and step outside their bonds, most of them demand them back.”
“What’s your point?”
“Rider was born in captivity and under surveillance. That’s all he knows, and he’s too old to learn something new. He’s not going anywhere.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“Well, if he does, we’ll deal with it. Now, if you don’t mind, we have a tight schedule. Let’s get all of this over with.”
Rider had an emotional toothache.
He sat in his tan cubicle with his hands on the home row of his keyboard trying to resist the urge to write an exposé article on an ancient group of women practicing witchcraft while hiding in the ranks of churches pretending to be philanthropists and nuns.
That would really get them going.
From a logical perspective, he had to tip his cap to The Sisters of Divinity. The drug addiction that ruined his life was now a memory.
They replaced his wife and daughter to abate the spiritual pall of his loss.
As weird as it seemed, part of him wanted to give Dena a chance. He wanted to see if she could make good on her quest to be his wife for real.
“What if I’m not good enough?” Dena asked the High Priestess.
Perhaps he should have a come-to-Jesus session with her and force honesty.
No Glamors.
No Lies.
The time he spent in Darien was the most content he’d ever been. He could never have a real relationship with Dena, but he could pretend.
An email notification telling him that his Editor accepted his new article with a few changes snapped him out of it.
He clicked on the dialogue box, which opened the email in Outlook.
In the subject bar, it read: “Just a little proofreading.”
The body text:
“Another terrific story. Please review the suggestions, and send me a final draft.
-B.”
Rider clicked on the little paperclip to open the attachment with his edited article, but Word hadn’t finished loading before his cellphone whispered the first chorus of the song “Little Black Submarines” by The Black Keys.
He unclipped the otter box from his belt and looked at the display of his IPhone 6s to find a black and white headshot of Dena smiling seductively.
He took the photo of her shortly after they moved to Darien and he replaced his phone – that is if all of that wasn’t fake, too.
Dena was so strikingly attractive that the photo could have just as easily been a headshot of a model.
He tapped the send icon and muttered a greeting.
“Hi,” she said in her most buoyant tone. “Are you done for the day?”
Rider gave the surface of his desk an uncomfortable look.
“I think.”
“Are you okay? You sound funny.”
“I was just looking over revisions on the new article.”
“Should I be scared?”
Rider frowned. “Why?”
“Law Suits and threats of lawsuits.”
Rider shook his head.
“You know me better than that – I think.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.
Rider grinned. “We’ll talk later.”
“Actually, I was going to ask for your help. My brakes were making noise, so I dropped it off at the shop. Can you come get me and take me to get a bite to eat?”
Rider didn’t respond.
“C’mon, I’ll even let you pick the restaurant, and if you hurry we might have time to fool around before we have to pick Aurora up.”
He smiled genuinely.
What if I’m not good enough?
“Sold,” he said.
Rider rolled slowly through the Meineke in Brunswick, Georgia.
He found Dena standing beneath an umbrella with the rain pouring from its points like a fountain.
She spotted him and speed-walked through the wet parking lot, threw the door open, closed her umbrella and pivoted inside the truck.
Instead of her normal business attire, (blouses, blazers, shin-length skirts, and slacks), she wore a little, black dress with white, knee-length stockings.
Dressed like a teenager lookin for a slice.
“You got a date or something?” Rider sparked.
She gave him a sour expression, and he felt rotten for making her feel self-conscious.
“We need to talk,” she said.
Rider grinned mischievously and shifted the Lincoln in park. “Yeah?”
“Who’s the chick?” she snapped.
Rider couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but then he recalled the instructions from the High Priestess.
Accuse him of something. Put him on the defensive.
He adjusted himself in the driver’s seat.
“The only women I’ve spoken with either had something to do with babysitting, teaching, or something work-related.”
She sat perpendicular to the seat giving him a sassy look.
“What about the chick who came over to our house last week while you were cutting grass? Who is she, and where did you have to go with her at one in the morning?”
Rider gave her an Ah-hah look.
“Yeah, and about last night, where the hell were you?”
She gave him a pouty look. “Yeah, that’s right. Try to turn it around on me.”
Rider cocked an eyebrow. “You did it first.”
“Who is she?”
Rider zoned-out gazing at the rain sheeting down the windshield. He watched with mild amusement as a woman sprinted from the door of the shop to her Kia as if the rain would make her melt. Pa
rt of him wondered simultaneously why people acted so when rain was nothing more than water.
“She’s a Mormon Missionary. We were discussing her faith. Her name is Sister Amiss.”
She huffed.
“Yeah, there’s something amiss, alright.”
Rider shrugged as if he didn’t care whether she believed him or not. “Seriously, that’s who she is. Now, it’s your turn. Why did you feel the sudden need to leave last night after having fake sex with me?”
She gave him an incredulous look.
“So not only have you suddenly waxed religious, but you’ve decided to go fundamentalist and chauvinist?”
“Okay, since you insist on talking about me, because you can’t explain you, I’ll bite. I’m talking to her because I’ve decided to do a story on the Mormons. Many people call their church a cult, and there are people who believe that they have concubines and everything else. What they really are is just another protestant church.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Did you come up with all of that on the fly, or was that the excuse you had planned for when I found out?”
Rider grinned humorlessly and cocked his head toward the driver’s side window.
“Once again, this whole conversation is based on knowledge you shouldn’t have. You were at work the only time Sister Amiss came by the house, and you weren’t home last night when I met her. So how exactly do you know what you know?”
She sighed and looked up at the white headliner.
“I’ve had a feeling something was off about you for a while, so I hired someone to find out what you were doing.”
Rider tilted his head back and laughed assertively.
“With what money? You don’t work for Conrad International – a fact that you’ve cleverly disguised by insisting that you manage all the money which also begs the question of what you actually do during the day when you’re supposed to be at work.”
She hung her head.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you about that, but I was embarrassed. I was hoping to get another job before I broke that to you.”