3:6
Sergeant Lunderman was leaning over his cluttered desk looking closely at the top page of the file. He flipped through, finding the pictures. He spread them out across the mess of papers and McDonalds wrappers. They were photos of the scene from every possible angle.
The girl was young, seventeen years old. She had been a junior in high school.
In the pictures she was naked with her back to the ground. She had been completely disemboweled. Her organs were strewn around the field where she was found. Also a symbol had been cut into her chest with a very sharp knife. It was a circle with an inverted star overlapping the edges. There were smaller symbols at each intersecting point, five in all. He studied the design carefully. He had definitely seen it before.
Another man walked in carrying a large manila folder.
“Got it,” he said, setting it down on the corner of the desk, “What are we looking for?”
Lunderman stood up and turned it open. There were piles of pictures. Crime scenes, victims, weapons. He thumbed through quickly. He stopped at a black and white photograph that showed the inside of a room. In the center stood a large concrete platform. What he had been searching for was painted on the top in thick black lines. He put his finger onto the glossy surface.
“This.”
“Shit. It's the same goddamn thing.”
Lunderman was pleased with himself; “I knew it.”
“Do you think these crimes are connected? This picture is twenty years old.”
He held up the image of the dead girl, “Yeah, and this one is twenty hours old. But, guess who got released from the Colorado State Hospital six months ago.”
“Who?”
Pulling another black and white out of the stack he announced, “Linda Holland.”
“Who’s she?”
“She is one of two survivors of Howard Killien's cult.”
“Jesus, you think she did it?”
“Why don't you ask her to come in for a few questions, and we’ll find out.”
He grabbed his jacket off the chair; “I’m on it.”
As his partner left the office he shuffled through the stack. He found the cult members’ bios. Linda was three down from the top.
If she was thirty-five in 1971, that'd make her, um, sixty-four now. Damn, that's a bit old for a murderer. But, lord knows I've seen stranger things.
3:7
Elizabeth’s eyes were focused on the squirming naked girl on the altar. She had been tied down with duct tape and rope around her wrists and ankles. She was pleading with the man that was leaning over her.
“Please let me go. Please.”
Her screams echoed through the basement in sharp bursts. She tugged as hard as she could against her restraints. They held tight. Her legs jerked from side to side, kicking.
Every robed person in the room stared blankly at her panic. They all appeared to be as unfeeling as the cold steel blade each one held in front of them.
The daggers had been sharpened to razor perfection. There were seven in all, but only one would be put to practical use tonight. It glimmered in the twitching candlelight. Elizabeth held it steady in her right hand.
This isn't happening. It can't be.
She tried to find a place in her mind, a memory, an image, anything she could hold on to. But the here and now had her in its grasp. She was looking right at it. There was no turning away, she was totally helpless. Her ears were ringing from the high-pitched fear echoing off of the walls. The begging. The shrieking.
It's the screaming that will drive you mad.
Looking up, she saw Linda standing at his side. The fallen ones had taken her too.
Why Linda? Why?
The man was speaking now. He read scripture from a large black book. Elizabeth couldn't hear what he was saying. He was just a voice in the background. All she could hear was the girl. He called out a few phrases in a language she’d never heard before.
He took a moment to look down at his victim. He smiled and caressed her cheek. She screamed and tried to pull away. Her fear pleased him. He leaned down close.
“Say goodbye, my sweet.”
He sat down in a chair behind him. Linda turned and hung the necklace around his neck. He closed his eyes and leaned back into the thick cushion. His body remained motionless throughout the rest of the ritual. Linda took over the reading as Elizabeth stepped up into position beside the altar.
I have to stop this. I have to...
She looked down. The girl looked up. Their eyes met.
"Please don't hurt me. Please."
The steel blade was held in two hands with the point down toward its victim.
God, no. I can't be here. No...
The screams were deafening.
Not happening. Oh god...
The point was over the sternum.
This isn't real...not real...
Over the abdomen.
God make me stop.
When the edge pierced the skin the girl jerked upward, driving it deeper.
No...no...no...
She shrieked in pain, fear. It filled the whole room, the house, the entire universe.
A large oval was cut into the skin over the stomach. The bright red blood poured down the sides and onto the icy concrete. She was pulling, jerking, crying. Elizabeth’s hands peeled away the skin, exposing the muscle and fat. A deep slit was cut through the tough abdominal wall. With the knife carefully set aside, her hand entered.
The screaming stopped. The girl had passed out from shock.
Elizabeth’s hand was under the ribcage now. She could feel it moving. When her hand emerged from underneath it was grasping the organ tightly. It was held upwards for the whole group to see.
It was still pumping.
Somewhere far back in the dark recesses of Elizabeth’s mind, she could hear them.
They were cheering her on.
3:8
Sally couldn't help thinking about the odd story that Jack had told. She was amazed at how strongly he believed it.
“Astral travel. Yeah, right.”
Still, she felt sorry for him. He seemed really worried. What an outlandish tale her grandmother had him believing. Sally hadn't heard anything like it from her, or anyone.
Would she really make up that nonsense to sell a necklace?
She didn't really know her grandma that well. All the memories she had of her were of the last few months. Up until then Linda had resided at the Colorado State Hospital. Sally's mother visited her once in a while, but never took her along. She wondered why her mother didn't want her to go.
They hadn't been together in more than twenty years, when Sally was very young. All that time she had been locked up in that institution. A third of her life had been taken away because of that terrible man.
Sally hadn't asked Linda about any of it. She didn't want to drudge up painful, perhaps horrifying memories for her grandmother. She'd talk about it in time, if she wanted to.
What an awful thing to go through, the cult, the murders.
Sally was sure she wouldn't have been able to handle it either.
She didn't have many details, just newspaper clippings that her mother had kept. She couldn't figure out for the life of her why her mom would've had them stashed away in that box.
She found them one day when she was fifteen, looking in the attic for a Halloween costume. They said that he had held them all prisoner. He raped them. He killed them, all but Linda and one other girl whose name Sally couldn't remember. He had left them alive, locked up in the basement of a house in the woods.
They would have to live the rest of their lives with the pain of what had happened to them. Both survivors experienced mental breakdowns and psychotic episodes. That's why they had spent all those years in the asylum. That's why Sally had grown up without her grandma.
But finally, after two decades, they had let Linda out of that place. And Sally thought that she seemed all right. A little odd, but all right.
Sally's mother had left the bookstore to her when she died, three years ago. She took it over and added the metaphysical stuff, tarot cards and such, and the cappuccino machines. It became a popular hangout for the high school and collage aged kids. The business had really picked up since she became the boss. That was why she could afford to give her grandma the job.
Years ago, Linda had been a nurse at the local hospital. She had assisted in numerous surgeries. Sally wasn't a bit surprised when her grandma told her she didn't want to return to that kind of work.
She was really working out great at the store. She was always so friendly and helpful with the customers.
Sally just couldn't imagine Linda telling that fairy tale to people. Maybe it was something that awful man had told her all those years ago.
Picking up the phone, she dialed the number again. There was still no answer.
