Dark Rites

  There was something that suddenly struck Alex as odd; he couldn’t place what.

  Did he know the man?

  “Don’t play games with me, or you will die. I know when you’re lying, and when you’re telling the truth. And right now, you think this is all a bunch of bunk. Well, think of it this way, Alex. Satan is coming. And he will either arrive in a streak of brimstone—or he’ll enter right into my flesh and blood and bone. Either way, he’ll kill you, Alex. Unless, of course, he does decide to let you live. That’s all going to be in the way that you come around, and the way that you behave. So, I’ll go back to where we started. Forget the woman. She’s not going to be here for you.” Alex sensed his smile. “I hope you did get some reading in. We need the place, Alex—the precise place where Ezekiel had his altar. And the precise words he used in his rite. You’ll have more time tomorrow. I am patient. This evening, you’re not going to feel so well.”

  “Why?” Alex asked, moving back nervously. “I’m feeling fine.”

  “Oh, you’re not going to hurt or feel sick or anything, just a little weak,” the man said. He moved back and two of his followers entered the room. Alex felt his mouth go dry.

  They grabbed him by the arms. He was leaving his little cell. He was being dragged somewhere; they were going to do something to him.

  He began to scream.

  No one seemed to care.

  * * *

  They drove back to Boston for Griffin and Rocky to head to the station and study the endless pages of material they had received since the pictures of Audrey Benson, Helena Matthews and their red-haired Jane Doe had gone out in the press.

  Devin accompanied Vickie to her apartment where they found Dylan Ballantine and Darlene—once again curled up on the sofa together, enjoying a season of The Walking Dead.

  Dylan jumped up, clearly upset.

  “You really need to leave a note or something. I didn’t know where you were. No one knew where you were. I even had Noah ask our parents for me, and they were oblivious—they have no idea that you’re involved in anything.”

  “You’re a ghost,” Vickie said. “Dylan, I’m sorry. I didn’t think to leave a note.”

  “I’m dead, not stupid or illiterate,” he informed her, talking to her as though she was a dumb little sister.

  “Dylan!” Darlene warned, rising to squeeze his hand and smile at Vickie and Devin. “He was worried. I mean...we can’t be everywhere, you know. And you guys were just...well, you were gone.”

  “It’s okay,” Vickie said. She looked at Dylan. “I’m sorry. We’re going to be heading out again. I’m not sure exactly where we’re going.”

  Devin’s phone rang. She answered and they all looked at her as she listened to the person at the other end, replying here and there with monosyllables.

  “What’s going on?” Vickie asked her.

  “Okay, so, I know where we’re going.”

  “Where?” Vickie asked.

  “Barre.”

  “Barre, Massachusetts?” Dylan asked.

  “Yes. It seems that they finally pinpointed Alex Maple’s phone,” she said.

  “And it’s in Barre?” Vickie asked, trying to keep her voice steady. They’d found Alex’s phone. It could mean they were coming closer to finding Alex.

  Or it could mean that her friend was dead.

  “Not exactly,” Devin said. “It was actually at the bottom of the Quabbin. They had state police divers go down. Barre is the closest city to the area where it was discovered.”

  “Toward the west,” Vickie said thoughtfully. “Four towns had to be destroyed to form the Quabbin. And, I believe, if it had been standing at the time the reservoir was formed, Jehovah might have barely made the cut.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Devin said. “Where exactly is this place? It doesn’t sound to me as if there is an exact location that anyone can really pinpoint.”

  “There are theories,” Vickie said.

  “But if there isn’t an exact, how come? Is there an almost exact? I’m thinking that there has to be an educated guess exact? I think we were so inundated with the stories of the witch hysteria, we never found out enough about Ezekiel Martin. He was a known rebel, and known to commit murder—without any kind of spectral evidence coming into the mix. Now, of course, everyone knows that the so-called Salem witches weren’t witches at all—and if they’d confessed to being witches instead of risking their souls with a lie as they saw it, they wouldn’t have been executed. But here’s the thing. Ezekiel Martin was a murderer. He deserved the punishment for murder. And he claimed that he could summon Satan.”

  “Ezekiel Martin took his own life—slit his throat—when his people panicked and started to desert him.” Vickie elaborated for her. “I believe when Charles II had his men come in, he was truly weary of the restrictive bull that had cost his father his head. Okay, so Charles I did believe in the divine right of kings and was kind of an arrogant bastard, but all in all, not really such a bad one. Still, while most historians say that Charles II showed admirable constraint against the enemies who had done in his father, he wasn’t exactly any man’s fool. And his commander in the field, Captain Magnus Grayson, knew what Charles II’s opinion of a man like Martin would have been. No doubt about it, Ezekiel Martin would have been executed, so it’s not a terrible surprise that he took his own life.”

  “Slashed his throat,” Devin said. “That’s meaningful, I think. He slashed his own throat.”

  “Well, there’s definitely a pattern. We don’t really know a lot about the crime in 1804, but we do know that the saying was used, and we could reasonably presume that whoever was killed also had their throat cut,” Vickie murmured.

  Devin looked at Vickie unhappily. “I don’t want to believe that Helena Matthews is dead—no one does. But the amount of blood that was thrown at you was...was a lot. If she had her throat slit, too, I’m afraid that it’s part of the ritual being carried out.”

  “Then why take Alex? It’s so frustrating,” Vickie said.

  Devin nodded and smiled slightly. “It is frustrating work—but it can be rewarding, too.”

  “Oh, I know! It’s just that Alex became my friend when he helped me with the Undertaker case. People did die, but some did live—including me!—so I care about him, and I owe him.”

  “We need to come with you,” Dylan said.

  “Out to Barre?” Vickie asked. “But, Dylan, your family is here, in Boston.”

  “I spent plenty of time down in New York City with you when you were in college,” Dylan reminded Vickie.

  “But when Noah and your parents were in danger, it was so important that you were here,” Vickie said.

  “They’re not in danger—you’re in danger,” he told Vickie. “And besides, what? I could be in danger? I could die young?” He looked at the two of them determinedly. “You haven’t come across anyone else ready to help you on this, right? I mean, to be specific, anyone dead?”

  Vickie glanced at Devin, who was smiling. She shook her head.

  “No,” Vickie admitted.

  “Shocking, really. These victims should be bitter and hateful and longing for justice somewhere along the line for someone!”

  “There is someone out there. I see her, and then she disappears. I think that she may be a woman whose name was Sheena Petrie. She was killed in Fall River in 1980 and the truth regarding her death was never discovered.”

  “I know what it’s like to be adrift, a remnant left behind, lost and unable to touch the world of the living,” Darlene said quietly. “We just might be able to help.”

  “And we’re going to need two cars, anyway,” Devin said.

  “I guess...” Vickie murmured.

  “You guess?” Dylan asked.

  “I guess you’re coming with us
,” Vickie said.

  9

  “She’s awake!” Barnes said. He hadn’t even hung up his phone before he conveyed the message to Griffin and Rocky.

  They’d met in Barnes’s office to go over the “sightings” that had been called in on the police tip. Most of what they had received had been about Audrey Benson, or the pretend Audrey Benson.

  “Wonderful waitress—the police should not be hounding her,” read one message.

  “You’ll find her at the coffee shop,” read another.

  Of course, a number of people had called in about Helena Matthews; they had met her somewhere at some time doing some good deed. She was a wonderful woman. She might have been at the bowling alley in Worcester; she might have been at a shoe store in Gloucester.

  “The redhead...she might be a girl I dated in high school out in Orange, Massachusetts,” was another message.

  They had only found a few tips that might provide any real leads; he did, indeed, intend to follow them through.

  But for the moment, the announcement that Barnes had just made was of key importance.

  “Our Jane Doe? She’s awakened?” Rocky asked.

  “Yes, that was the hospital. She’s awake, and she’s stable. The doctor warned me—there’s no way to tell what kind of brain damage she may have suffered. She could have total recall, or remain a Jane Doe. So far, they’ve asked her what her name is, and she hasn’t managed an answer. But her condition could change at any time.”

  “Let’s go see her,” Griffin said.

  They were at the hospital in a matter of minutes. Their Jane Doe had been transferred from a critical care unit to a room.

  She still had an IV bearing fluids into her body, but she was sitting up. Her hair had been brushed and smoothed from her face. She was, however, wearing a look of tremendous anxiety.

  Griffin didn’t ask before he took the lead. “I’m Griffin Pryce, miss. I’m with the FBI. My friend, Rocky—Craig Rockwell—is also with the FBI. And this gentleman here is Detective David Barnes. He’s with the Boston Police Department.”

  “What did I do?” she asked him, her face crinkling with fear and worry.

  “You don’t remember?” he asked her.

  She shook her head, looking as if she was about to cry. “I don’t remember. I don’t even know...well, they said that this was Boston. That I’m in Boston.”

  “Yes, you’re in Boston,” Griffin told her. “Do you know your name?”

  Again, her face crumpled, and she looked terrified, and as if she was about to burst into tears.

  He took her hand and squeezed it. “It’s okay,” he said quietly. “It may take you some time. Do you remember anything, anything at all? You don’t know your name, and you were surprised to be in Boston.”

  She shook her head. “I remember...a park. There were guys playing music. I was listening to songs, and I heard it again, right before...before—oh, Lord! Right before I threw the blood. The same music.”

  “Do you think you were taken by someone—kidnapped?”

  “I don’t remember that... I’m not a bad person!” she whispered.

  “It’s okay—we believe you.”

  “I just remember the park... I went to the park. I think I met a man and then...then I don’t remember. But I think...in the park, and then later, I kept hearing songs. Hearing music. I love music. I mean, I think I love music.”

  “Then you do love music,” Griffin told her gently. He glanced up. The doctor had come into the room.

  Naturally, he was watching out for his patient. The law was important, but his first priority was her physical well-being.

  Griffin smiled at him, trying to assure him that they would go slowly. “Think about the music you love. A lot of songs have been written for young women, you know. Using names. Of course, that’s true of men’s names, too, but it does seem to me that more have been written for women. Let’s see, there’s Roxanne, Susie, Angie, Rhiannon—Rhiannon was written about a woman, but I actually think that it was the name of a Welsh prince first. There’s Lola, of course, written for a drag queen.”

  He drew a smile from their Jane Doe at that. She was, he thought, very young. Not even twenty, if he was any judge. She was young and scared.

  So how the hell had she come to have a cupful of a missing woman’s blood—and go on a mission to throw it all over Vickie?

  “And, of course, there’s ‘A Boy Named Sue’!” she reminded him.

  “Exactly. ‘Adia,’ ‘Along Comes Mary,’ ‘Peggy Sue,’” Griffin said.

  “Eleanor—Eleanor Rigby, the Beatles!” she told him. And then, her smile and enthusiasm faded. “‘Gloria,’ Laura Branigan,” she said. She looked at him. “That’s it. That’s my name. Gloria.”

  “There you go,” Griffin said, smiling. “Do you know your last name?”

  She shook her head. Her eyes suddenly seemed sunken and her entire posture seemed to deflate.

  “Thank you,” Griffin said. “Thank you. Rest. It will come back to you.”

  She nodded and her voice was ragged and husky when she said, “I’m...afraid. It’s going to be bad. I don’t think—God! I didn’t think that I was a bad person, but... I’m afraid of my own memories.”

  Griffin squeezed her hand again. “I don’t believe you are bad. I think we just need to find out who you are and what happened, and we can get you going in the right direction. We’ll be back,” he told her.

  He, Rocky and David Barnes left the room. Barnes was shaking his head. “This just about beats everything. She seems like the sweetest little angel who ever drew breath. What the hell?”

  “I don’t think she’s faking it in any way,” Rocky said.

  “I don’t think so, either,” Griffin agreed.

  The doctor stepped out into the hallway. “Detective, agents—thank you for stopping when you did. The patient is truly distressed. You can’t fake blood pressure and pulse and physical reactions to stress.”

  “Of course, stress can be caused by fear—a righteous fear of the law,” Barnes said.

  “Detective,” the doctor protested. “It’s a miracle that young woman is alive. Just how much brain damage she might have suffered is still to be seen.”

  “Yes, of course, Doctor,” Rocky said. “But—”

  “What they’re trying to say is that it is convenient that memory loss is the evident damage she’s suffering at the moment—when she attacked a woman with a vial of blood from another woman who may well be dead,” Griffin explained, lifting a hand quickly when it appeared the doctor would protest. “And, of course, she could be in seriously strained condition. We don’t want to cause her further stress. I’d like to let her get some rest. But then I’d like to bring in Victoria Preston—the woman our Jane Doe attacked. Would you be against her seeing Vickie?”

  The doctor stared at him a moment. “I realize that we’re dealing with a serious situation here. And yes, seeing the young woman she attacked might be a trigger. However, right now, our Jane Doe is fragile. If she does show signs of distress, you will have to get Miss Preston out. At least until she’s been stable for several days and is completely on the road to recovery.”

  The doctor looked hard at the three of them.

  “When you wish to speak with my patient and bring in a new catalyst, please let me know.”

  “Of course,” Griffin told him.

  The doctor didn’t appear to trust them in the hallway, but since they weren’t moving, he finally strode away himself.

  “Barnes, we were going to head out to Barre, but I really think that we have to bring Vickie in here first,” Griffin said.

  “Definitely,” Rocky put in.

  “Agreed,” David Barnes said.

  “I’ll have her and Devin come in. They can meet us down in
the cafeteria. Jane Doe will have a half hour or so to rest,” Griffin said, and he pulled out his phone as the other two nodded.

  * * *

  Dylan had managed to access an on-demand program on the television that was considered to be an excellent documentary on the birth of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Age of Enlightenment and the growth of the city of Boston in particular.

  Devin was at her computer.

  Vickie was at her computer, as well.

  She was flying from reference to reference on the possible whereabouts of Jehovah, since every scholar from the past seemed to place it a little bit differently. She researched the flooding of the Swift River Valley in order to create the Quabbin. At the very least, she thought, she was finding where Jehovah definitely hadn’t been. The problem in such research now was that the natural landscape had been changed so drastically. In order to see what had been, she had to keep finding pictures, maps and images of the area before the Quabbin had been created.

  What had once been hills and mountains were now tiny islands.

  Her phone rang as she was working. She didn’t recognize the number, but it had a Boston area code and she answered.

  “Vickie?” asked an unfamiliar voice.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Professor Hanson. Milton Hanson.”

  She was definitely startled.

  And wary.

  “Hello, Professor. How are you?”

  “As worried as you are, I imagine. No sign of Alex yet, right?”

  “No sign of Alex,” she agreed.

  “Well, I probably can’t help, but I’m trying all kinds of things from my end. But I needed to ask you for a favor.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, I wanted to borrow one of your father’s books,” he said.

  “My father is in Europe, working,” she said.

  “Yes, and I know after that he and your mom are taking a bit of vacation—though, to be honest, I’ve never seen your dad do anything that was really just vacation. I tried to reach him—seems he’s out in the field on something today. There’s something I’d like to look up rather urgently.”