by Selena Kitt
“It’s a small town. I guess.” He shrugged. “So she gave me his number, and sure enough, we struck gold!”
She grinned, holding out her hand for the slip of paper. “You really did some good detective work there, Hardy Boy!”
Father Michael laughed, glancing down at his list, his smile slowly beginning to fade as he talked. “There’s one more. Jean—Norma Pyke—she’s actually still at Magdalene House. Working in the laundry. That’s where I found my mother.”
Erica raised her eyebrows at him. “What?”
“You know, I was very young when I came to the nunnery here at St. Mary’s. Three or four, I think?” Father Michael mused. “I barely remember a time before, but I do have some memories of that place. I remember hearing my mother’s voice. She used to sing to me. And I remember them calling her Lily. But that was all I could remember.”
“That’s not much to go on,” Erica agreed.
“But while we were down here, looking for these girls, Gertie and I got to talking about Magdalene House and I mentioned my mother and what I remembered, and she said, ‘I bet I can find her!’ So I told her the month and date of my birth, and what do you know, she goes straight to her little card catalog, and pulls out the two Lilys who had stayed at Magdalene House around that time. We looked up their files, and found their real names. The first name was a dead end. But the other name—Marianne Locke—that was my mother.”
“You talked to her?”
He nodded, but he looked so sad. “I went to see her. Before the holidays. At Magdalene House. She still works in the laundry.”
“But you found her!” Erica reached out, taking his hand. “Isn’t that good news?”
“Come on, I want to show you something else.” His smile was still far too small and sad for Erica’s liking. She followed him down the corridor, her belly clenching with the memory of her last trip through them as a representation of The Virgin—not at Father Michael’s sweet living nativity scene, but at a bastardized pagan ritual turned on its head, made Catholic for Father Patrick’s perverted purposes. She knew, the deeper they went, where Father Michael was taking her, what secret he had discovered, and she wished she could take it back, take it all back, give him back his innocence because hers was lost forever.
“Father Michael,” Erica said as they neared the heart of the circle, the inner sanctum, the center of the star, putting her hand on his arm. “I need to tell you something—”
She took a deep breath, swallowing, the words stuck, and when she looked up at him she saw she didn’t need to say it after all.
“I know.” He held his hand out to her and she took it, hers trembling in his. “I’m so sorry, Erica. So sorry.”
The worst thing wasn’t her pain, her fear, her sudden sense-memory returning, her body reliving the experience in hot flashes and gooseflesh. The worst thing was, she didn’t know what he was apologizing for. What did he know, exactly?
She let him lead her, just like she had let Father Patrick lead her, a lamb to the slaughter. They didn’t speak as he opened the door and turned on the light, leading her toward the mammoth crosses in the center of the room, glancing up at him and wondering what he knew.
She had a feeling she was about to find out.
Inside, Erica couldn’t catch her breath, looking around at the huge, empty cavern where she had been strapped to a cross and sacrificed to priest after priest. Father Michael must have seen the panic on her face, stopping to put his arms around her, and she let him hold her, helping still her quivering limbs.
“Why did you bring me here?” she whispered.
“I’m sorry, Erica.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’m so sorry for what they did to you. What they did to all of you. My mother told me about this place. She told me… about the place I’m going to show you. The place she lived for fifteen years.”
“What?” Erica lifted her head, meeting his eyes, seeing tears there. “What are you talking about?”
Father Michael walked to the platform where the crosses were mounted. They were mechanized, the gear and pulley system used to raise them while the Mary and the Magdala were strapped down, bodies on the vertical axis, arms on the horizontal. Father Michael pushed a button and the crosses began to rise, no drugged, terrified girls on them this time, and Erica watched, heart in her throat, as they hit their maximum reach, still at a three-quarter angle to reduce the strain on the girls’ arms.
“Come on.” He took her hand, leading her around the platform to the opposite side. Father Michael stepped over the thick metal framing that surrounded and supported the platform, into the space created underneath, the crosses looming overhead, throwing deep shadows.
“What—?” Erica took a step forward, curious, always curious, and saw him grasp something at his feet and pull, lifting up, and she realized it was a door, like some sort of trapdoor, right in the floor.
“What is that?” she asked before she thought. Did she really want to know?
“It’s where Father Patrick kept his daughter for fifteen years.” Father Michael took a step into the darkness under the door and Erica’s heart leapt, but she followed him anyway, climbing over the steel railing and seeing stairs leading down.
“His daughter?” Erica whispered, gladly taking the priest’s offered hand. The smell hit her first, like something rotted, long-dead. She gagged, covering her mouth and nose with her hand as they made their way down the stairs in complete blackness. “Aren’t there any lights?”
“At the bottom. Watch your head.” He flipped a switch and fluorescents hummed, revealing a small cell-like room, no windows, the ceiling so low Father Michael had to duck—he couldn’t even stand straight up. How deep under the ground were they? she wondered. There was a small vent near the ceiling.
A filthy mattress sat in one corner and for a moment, as Erica’s eyes adjusted to the light, she thought she saw a baby with thick, dark hair under the cover of a threadbare blanket, like someone had tried to cover it to keep it warm, and a scream rose to her throat before she could stop it, clutching Father Michael’s arm in terror.
“It’s okay. It’s a doll,” he assured her, squatting in front of the mattress and pulling the blanket down, revealing the naked, plastic limbs. “I thought the same thing at first...”
The doll was missing an eye and there was something wrong with its mouth, like it had been cut—or chewed. Rats? Erica shivered, hugging herself and looking around. In the other corner was a bucket and as Erica took a step toward it, her foot kicking something. She glanced down and saw a book with a red cover and gold letters—The Holy Bible.
“What is this place? How did you know this was here? And what is that awful smell?” Erica gagged again, pulling her collar shirt up to cover her nose. She glanced over the rim of the bucket and saw the thing she’d feared—a rat—but it was long dead. It looked like something had been eating it.
She went over to where Father Michael was squatting by the mattress, looking down at the doll with the missing eye and deformed face. He looked up at her and she saw tears welling in his eyes.
“Come on.” He half-stood—that’s all he could do, walking stooped over, taking her hand and leading her back to the stairs. “I’m sorry. I just had to show you.”
“I don’t understand,” Erica said as they climbed the stairs. “You said Father Patrick kept a daughter down there? He had a daughter?”
“My mother.” Father Michael closed the trap door and Erica frowned, looking at the latch. It was seamless, hidden completely from view. No one ever would have known it was there, if they hadn’t been looking for it. It bothered her and she wasn’t sure why. She had seen something like it before…
“Your mother?” Erica was having a hard time making sense of anything. “Can we get out of here?”
“Yes, of course.” Father Michael returned the crosses to their previous horizontal state, shutting off the lights before leading her out of the inner sanctum. Erica took deep, cleansing breaths when
they stepped out into the hall, clearing her head.
“So Father Patrick had a daughter he kept down in that hellhole?” Erica surmised, the thought of it making her want to gag again, in spite of her distance from that awful smell. “And your mother told you about it? How did she know?”
“She was that little girl.” Father Michael let that sink in, and when it did, Erica sank too, sliding down the wall in utter disbelief, staring up at the young priest with wide, horrified eyes. “I’m sorry, Erica. I had to show you. You wouldn’t have believed me otherwise.”
“Oh I believe you.” She rested her forehead on her knees, trying to think, but her brain felt fuzzy, warm, too bright, like her mind was a breaker box that had just blown every fuse at once.
Father Michael sat beside her on the cold basement floor—the tunnel floors were cement—putting a hand on her shoulder. “There’s more. I don’t want to tell you, but I have to.”
Erica groaned, wrapping her arms around her knees, but nothing would keep out the words.
“Marianne… my mother…. She was born with a birth defect. A cleft palate. Do you know what that is?”
“Yes.” Erica had seen a girl like that once on a vacation in New England. Boston, maybe? They were on a boardwalk, it was summer, and they were feeding the birds, when a mother had walked by holding a young girl’s hand, and the child had smiled at Erica with that strange, twisted mouth. She’d been very young and had pointed and exclaimed about it. Her father had taken her aside and explained it to her, but she couldn’t remember the incident now without reddening in shame.
“The nuns raised her for a long time, like they raised me.” He swallowed, she heard the thick click of his throat, not looking up at him. “But when she got older, he came to get her. My mother told me the story...”
Erica did look up then, when he hesitated, and saw the tears brimming in his eyes.
“She was a teenager by then. A beautiful young teenager—with that damnable cleft palate. She showed me a picture. She was beautiful, just beautiful, and he came to get her, and she thought he was coming to bring her home, to live with him.”
“Did she know he was a priest?”
“No.” Father Michael’s voice broke. “All she knew was her father was coming to get her. That’s what the nuns told her.”
“Oh my God.”
Father Michael didn’t reproach her for taking the Lord’s name in vain. “And he did bring her home, didn’t he? Right here, to the place she was conceived. And he kept her locked up down there. Until she got pregnant.”
“Oh my God!”
He didn’t say anything about her second offense either, continuing the story. She noticed he was crying. Silently, no sobs or hitches or sniffles. Just tears. Rivers of them running in rivulets down his face. “That was 1915, the year she turned twelve. She had a little girl.”
“A… girl?” Erica lifted her head, puzzled. “You have a sister?”
“She named her Susan. He let her choose the baby’s name before he took it, and gave it to the couple he had hand-picked to adopt her.”
“Susan...” Erica repeated the name.
“Can you guess who that baby was?”
“No!” she cried, incredulous.
“Yes, Erica. Your mother was my sister. My mother spent another fifteen years in that hole, and I don’t know how she managed not to get pregnant for another fifteen years. Maybe he didn’t visit her as often, I don’t know. A lot of her mind… is muddled… she wanders.”
He was really crying now, tears just streaming down his face.
“But she knew enough to tell me about the tunnels and the inner sanctum. She described the crosses, the rituals, the trap door under the crosses. She told me what I’d find in that little room. And it was there, everything she said.”
“No, oh God, no...”
“And when she did get pregnant again, when he noticed her belly was growing big, he took her out of that hole in the ground and he had the nuns clean her up and he sent her to Magdalene House. My mother said he wanted a son this time. A son to carry on his legacy.”
“That was you?”
He nodded grimly. “That was me. I’m sure he didn’t count on his infant son contracting polio, but it certainly gave him a good excuse to give me to the nuns to raise until I was old enough for him to take over that job.”
“What happened to your mother after that?” Erica asked.
“I stayed at Magdalene House for the first few years. And he let her stay there too. She threatened to expose him if he brought her back… here.”
“So she stayed in the laundry?” she asked. “She worked at Magdalene House?”
“Yes. He came for me when he decided I was old enough.”
Erica puzzled over this. “But she didn’t expose him?”
“No. I think she just kind of lost all her fight when they took me away.” He wiped at the tears on his face, as if noticing them for the first time. “Do you know what this means?”
“That Father Patrick is a lying, sick, disgusting pervert?” she snapped.
“It means we’re related,” Father Patrick repeated quietly.
“What?”
“Susan Nolan was my sister. That would make me your…uncle.” Father Michael told her. “And it would make Marianne Locke your…grandmother.”
“Oh...” Erica laughed. She threw back her head and laughed. What else could she do? Father Michael looked at her like she was insane. “We’re not related. Oh my God if that’s the only bright spot in this humungous pile of crap, I’m going to kill myself.”
“Don’t even joke about that, Erica,” he said, squatting and putting a hand on her arm.
She just looked at his hand resting there, shaking her head. “I was adopted. I don’t know who my parents were. I might have been one of those Magdalene babies. I just happened to fall into the hands of a woman who decided to sterilize me and perform sick rituals on her only daughter. Because apparently I’m just that special.”
“That’s what he did to my mother,” his voice was a stunned whisper now. “After I was born. And to Susan after that, and every woman who became a Mary after that. The first doctor did it because my father told him Marianne was his daughter and had given birth to a monster like her. Every doctor after that, he paid. The church paid. We have endless coffers, Erica. Bottomless amounts of money. The doctors did what he wanted them to do.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Gertie told me. She told me about the rituals. About what goes on. How it all works. She told me about you...”
“Gertie...” Erica gaped at him. “Gertie, as in Clay’s mother, Gertie? The woman upstairs who created this insane card filing catalog systems so the church could keep track of the number of babies it sells every year? That Gertie?”
He nodded dumbly. “I’m so sorry, Erica. I’m so sorry about what’s happened to you, what they’ve done to you.”
He went to put his arms around her, but she pushed him away, shaking her head. “No… we can’t do this. I can’t torture myself anymore. Or you. I just want it to stop. I need it all to just… stop.”
“I know,” he agreed. “I thought I was helping those girls I sent to Magdalene House. I didn’t know they were being coerced into signing adoption papers. I didn’t know about Father Patrick, about what he’d done, what he was doing, the way he lied and manipulated...”
“We know now,” Erica said. “That’s all that matters. Now the question is, what are we going to do about it?”
“I’m going to report him to the Bishop,” he said, and Erica heard the steel in his voice, despite the tears. “I just need enough evidence...”
Erica met his eyes and a slow smile spread across her face. “I think I can help you with that.”
Chapter Nine
Leah woke up the morning of her wedding to the sound of rain on the warehouse roof. She and Erica had slept together in Erica’s little twin bed, just like they used to, and Rob had spent the ni
ght in a hotel room, because the entire place was filled with squealing, screaming, giggling girls, and he fell back on the excuse that it was “bad luck to see the bride before the wedding” to hightail it the hell out of there.
Solie, who still had a terrible cough, wrangled them all, feeding them popcorn and Cokes and homemade cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate, and Leah’s mother brought Ada with her, the housekeeper who had practically raised Leah while Patty Wendt worked in Donald Highbrow’s law office all day. Ada shadowed Solie, helping where she could, but she kept bursting into tears and hugging Leah and saying, “My baby! My sweet baby girl!” so often the shoulders of Leah’s sweater was soaked by the end of the night.
Leah’s mother stayed over, sleeping up in the loft, and Solie and Ada had bunked on the pull-out sofa, and the rest of the girls were sleeping on Erica’s floor in sleeping bags. They had stayed up talking and giggling and playing records and making inappropriate jokes until the wee hours. She couldn’t remember when she’d fallen asleep, the excitement in her belly buzzing, but she did remember looking over at Erica asleep, thinking how much she loved her, had always loved her that way, like a sister. Finding out they were twins had been shocking at first, but now it felt so natural. Of course they were sisters. Had they ever been anything else?