Dark Rites

Dylan was now an experienced ghost. He was quite capable of manipulating items, like moving a can of pop a few inches or using a remote control. And he had no problem making himself seen to those with the special gift of seeing the dead. Vickie had noticed that while most of the population didn’t see Dylan or Darlene, they did often stop and frown when the ghosts passed, or shiver, as if aware that they’d been brushed by someone or something that they hadn’t seen.

“Alex didn’t show,” Vickie told them.

Dylan immediately looked perplexed. Alex couldn’t see Dylan—he didn’t see ghosts. But Dylan had tagged along with Vickie to a couple meetings with Alex.

He liked the nerdy historian. And he admired him.

“Alex didn’t show? I think he lives for his time with you and other friends with whom he can actually talk a lot of history. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but... It’s weird he flaked.”

“I’ve told Griffin that Alex didn’t show up. We’ll figure out something when he gets here. By the way—since I doubt you guys watched the news at any point—Griffin stopped one of the attackers tonight. A head-smasher, just like Alex’s assault. And the guy killed himself rather than be taken.”

“Wow, heavy,” Dylan said, very serious despite his words.

“That’s extremely scary,” Darlene agreed. She hopped up off the sofa. “Vickie is worried, and Griffin is headed home. Let’s go, Dylan. We need to leave them with some privacy. We’ll go see how Noah and your folks are doing.”

“Sure, yeah, sure, we should get out of here,” Dylan said. He looked worried, though. “Darlene is right. Griffin is going to be wrecked after a night like that. He’ll want to talk.”

“He’ll want to be alone,” Darlene said softly.

“That’s fine,” Vickie said.

“No, you’re in a relationship now. Can’t let it grow ho-hum,” Dylan said, grinning at Vickie.

“Thank you. I’ll remember that!” Vickie said.

“Dylan, really,” Darlene murmured.

“It’s fine. Dylan has enjoyed tormenting me for years, Darlene. And I’m sure it will all be okay.”

“No, none of it sounds okay,” Dylan said. “Alex is a cool guy—it won’t be okay until you know that he’s all right. Don’t forget, we’re always here when you need us.”

“But you don’t need us tonight,” Darlene said firmly.

“Not to worry, Vick—we always come back to haunt you!” Dylan told her, trying for a light grin.

“Haunt me—and help out,” she reminded him. “Remember, I’m quite accustomed to you and that we both—Griffin and I—appreciate the two of you very much.”

“I just wish my parents watched The Walking Dead,” Dylan said, shaking his head in puzzlement that anyone wouldn’t want to watch the series from beginning to end. “And Noah, well, he’s great, he’ll put on anything we want, but...he’s only nine.”

“Maybe in a few years we can do a marathon viewing with Noah,” Darlene said.

“That will be fun!” Dylan agreed, grinning at Darlene. But then his grin faded and he turned back to Vickie. “I will see you tomorrow. We need to know everything that went on with Griffin—and, most importantly, with Alex.”

“Absolutely,” Vickie said.

She watched them go. They both simply disappeared through the wall. When Dylan came to visit when she was home, he made a point of knocking. Only emergencies caused him to do anything less thoughtful or proper.

When they were gone, Vickie tried Alex’s number again. No answer.

Maybe he’d lost his phone. No—he would have called her from another phone. Actually, he’d have been at a store in two seconds to get another—he had a Facebook group that talked about all kinds of history, travel, weird places and such similar things, and she was pretty sure that Alex went into withdrawal if he couldn’t catch up on the latest at every possible opportunity.

She opened the app and checked Alex’s Facebook page.

He hadn’t been on the site in over twenty-four hours.

She called Griffin quickly then. He didn’t answer at first. Frustrated, she plopped down on the sofa in her parlor.

Her phone rang right back.

Griffin.

“You all right?” he asked.

She smiled; she could tell he was trying to keep any touch of anxiety out of his voice. She knew that he’d always be concerned about her—it was part of what he did for a living, and by vocation. He saw too much that was bad.

“Fine. I’m home. In the apartment. I had an idea. Can you trace Alex’s phone?”

“Well, there are a lot of legal ramifications,” Griffin said.

“I’ll report him missing—how about that?” she asked.

“You know, unless we have good reason, twenty-four hours is—”

“We have good reason! He was clunked on the head. He had a police guard for a couple of weeks after. Go figure—he disappears after that guard is taken off.”

“The attacks appeared to be random,” Griffin reminded her. “No community has the manpower to watch victims endlessly, especially when it appears the danger has moved on.”

“I know that.”

“He could be fine.”

“No. I don’t believe that even as a ray of hope anymore,” she said.

“Okay, we’ll take the angle that something is wrong. We’ll get a missing-person report going, and...we’ll get into his phone records,” Griffin said. “I’m in a paper tangle right now as it is—I’ll get Barnes to have a man from the right department get everything started for Alex. Lord, if he’s just off doing...doing whatever scholars do...well, I guess that’s the best-case scenario. But we’ll treat him as a missing person and work on finding him with all possible resources, okay?”

“Much better. Are you coming home soon?” she asked.

“Well,” he told her, his tone ironic, “I’ll be a little longer now.”

“Don’t be too long.”

“You going to make it worth my while?”

“Hmm. You bet,” she told him.

“Aha.”

“I can be full of surprises,” she assured him before hanging up.

Restless, she headed into the kitchen, made herself a cup of tea and then settled down at her computer with the pad of scribbled notes she’d made from research sites and her own library.

Ever since seeing the scrawled quotation on Alex, she’d been looking up Satanism and witchcraft in Massachusetts.

Most of what she could find on witchcraft had to do with the travesty of justice that had occurred during the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. She’d recently turned in a nonfiction book for a university press that had dealt with the Puritan rule in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, with a special focus on Puritan ministers. While Cotton Mather had “saved” a few witches, by caring for them himself, he’d also been instrumental in the executions that had occurred in Salem. There had been a few other trials and executions of so-called witches in the colony, as well. It seemed so appalling now and, in her mind, so ridiculous she couldn’t believe anyone had abided it—even in the devil-fearing darkness of the early days of the colony.

Of course, Salem—and surrounding areas—also had a nice population of modern-day real witches: wiccans. They were an acknowledged religion and Vickie had friends among them. They didn’t cast evil spells—they lived by a threefold rule, where any evil done to another comes back on one threefold. It was a pretty good framework for not hurting people!

But there were instances of Satanism rather than witchcraft that had taken place in Massachusetts. According to the Puritan fathers, there would be little difference. In the Puritan world, witches danced naked in the moonlight, signed the devil’s book and frolicked with all manner of decadence and enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh—in return for being wicked, of course.

The first accusations of witchcraft had occurred in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1645. Hugh and Mary Parsons had accused one another. Hugh was eventually acquitted; Mary was set to hang for the crime of killing her child—by witchcraft, or so the records implied. Between 1645 and 1663, eighty more people were accused and thirteen women and two men were put to death.

The fear of the devil had begun in Europe in the 1500s—thousands were put to death, burned at the stake or hanged, or through some other even more painful means. In comparison, what went on in the colony was pretty tame.

But even then, there were dissenters, and there were those who were ready and eager to take a faith and twist it around and give it a few new guidelines.

At the same time—circa 1665—Ezekiel Martin was growing stronger in influence among the young people swayed to his sect.

Missy Prior was a stunning young Puritan woman, an orphan who survived through selling produce from her small garden and from doing handcrafts—mending and sewing. Ezekiel Martin wooed the girl.

She turned him down. Sweetly. She talked about her youth—and mourning for her parents.

Ezekiel was hurt—deeply offended.

Since he’d never made it to being ordained—suspected of not being a learned or good man himself—his orations weren’t sanctioned by the church. But according to the diary of an ordained minister of the time, Ezekiel was capable of talking the good talk; he could preach convincingly and sway people, and he had a following that terrified the others before they even began to become aware of just what kind of a danger he could be.

He lured many people away from Boston, taking them west. There, he created the village of Jehovah.

Jehovah was no longer in existence, but it had once been situated between present-day Barre, Massachusetts, and what was now the Quabbin, the massive water reservoir created in the Swift River Valley.

Missy Prior, along with some of her friends, had been ahead of Ezekiel; she’d left Boston in order to escape Ezekiel’s attention, and she’d had a cottage in the woods, right in the area that Ezekiel would soon name Jehovah. It seemed that no matter how far she went, she couldn’t outrun Ezekiel, a man who had become obsessed with her.

There was nowhere else to run, and Missy’s friends were forced from her side as Ezekiel gained power and determination. But she still wanted nothing to do with Ezekiel.

He, in turn, woke one night screaming and shouting words of warning about Missy—and he woke the population of Jehovah and rounded them all up in front of Missy Prior’s cottage.

And he’d showed them all the words that had been written in the earth.

Hell’s afire and Satan rules, the witches, they are real. The time has come, the rites to read, the flesh, ’twas born to heal. Yes, Satan is coming!

According to the diary and journals from others who had lived during the time, Ezekiel then proceeded to convince a number of people that he was their salvation. They could not stop the arrival of the devil; they could only embrace him when he arrived. He would reward them, of course, if they were to come to him through his vessel on earth—Ezekiel Martin.

Missy Prior was terrified; she had turned down a madman one time too many.

She feared for her life.

She didn’t die; not then. She was taken in to be “healed” by Ezekiel.

Missy Prior, however, wasn’t enough for Ezekiel.

Ezekiel did what those who were both charming and evil at heart had a talent for doing—he seduced his followers into his House of Fire and Truth, a cult in which, of course, they followed a Mighty Power, pretending to still be Puritans to those around them, since those who were not Puritans in the colony at the time were killed or banished. What he was really doing, ministers and public officials became certain, was practicing out-and-out witchcraft or Satanism. He, Ezekiel, as Satan’s disciple on earth, was absolute ruler with absolute power, demanding the sweet fruit of the innocent and beautiful among the maidens, bestowing those he had used and deflowered upon those of the men of his congregation, those who had earned his admiration and devotion.

Missy Prior tried to flee. She was caught. By then, of course, Ezekiel had many women. She was to meet the fate reserved for one who betrayed her master. Death.

How that death came about, Vickie could not ascertain with certainty. She tried a number of her resources. Some suggested she was burned, not as a witch, but as a heretic. Some said that she might have actually been drawn and quartered, and others suggested that her throat was slit and that her blood was passed about to imbue the rest of the congregation with strength.

But while the Massachusetts Bay Colony was, at that time, still working under the charter that allowed for Puritan rule, the Crown did have a decided interest in the county. Cromwell had died in 1658 and Charles II had been asked back to rule in England—a good majority of the population had grown weary of Cromwell’s very strict ways. Charles happened to have men in the colony, soldiers under Captain Magnus Grayson. Grayson eventually got wind of Ezekiel’s activities. Heading into the village, he hadn’t the least problem demanding the immediate arrest of Ezekiel and his little pack of cronies. The small would-be self-governing colony was dispersed. Ezekiel found himself deserted when his men were faced with the armor and arms of the king’s men, and he slit his own throat—swearing that Satan would embrace him in his fiery power, and he would live again.

Captain Grayson had found skeletons and an altar stained with blood. It was believed that one of the skeletons found belonged to poor Missy Prior.

It seemed a heartbreaking story to Vickie.

Poor Missy.

She had been relentlessly pursued by Ezekiel Martin in life.

Perhaps her only escape from him had been in death.

Jehovah had been quickly begun—and even more quickly ended.

Captain Grayson had loathed and been sickened by the entire place, and he’d had all of what had been Jehovah burned to the ground. The settlement disappeared into the landscape, and where it had been, no one now knew.

Erased from memory.

But not all memory.

Because someone was violently attacking people and leaving behind the words Ezekiel Martin had once written into the earth in order to have Missy Prior.

Vickie couldn’t wait to tell Alex the depths of what she had discovered.

She looked at her phone and tried Alex’s number again.

No answer...

“Alex! Where are you?” she murmured aloud.

And she wished that she wasn’t alone. She wished that Griffin would come soon.

It seemed that the wind suddenly began to howl outside.

Summer was waning and fall was on the way.

And it sounded as if the earth itself was moaning...

Crying out a warning.

2

Griffin sat behind the desk in David Barnes’s office, typing out the last words of his report regarding the evening. As he did so, he saw everything replay in his mind. He shook his head, damning himself. He couldn’t see how he could have stopped what had happened.

The door opened and Rocky walked back in. “How’s it going?”

“Almost through here,” Griffin said. “I’m waiting for a callback from Dr. Loeb.”

“Medical examiner? Theodore Loeb?” Rocky asked.

“You’ve worked with him?”

“No,” Rocky said, “but I did meet him at a crime summit a few months back. Guy is brilliant and looks like a mad professor, right? Crazy white hair and thin as a sack of bones?”

“Yep. That’s him,” Griffin agreed. He drummed his fingers on the table. “I don’t know what he can tell us about our dead man that we don’t already know. He appeared to be healthy before, young and hardy looking. And now dead. Suicide capsule. What makes someone do that?”

Rocky took a seat in one of the chairs in front of the desk. “Well, usually you have to be more afraid of living than you are of dying, I imagine.”

“Right. Afraid of what—or who—he had to face.”

“That’s a solid theory, anyway,” Rocky said.

“If we look at most things that have had to do with that kind of behavior—suicidal sacrifice behavior,” Griffin said, “it’s usually because we’re looking at those who feel disenfranchised or forgotten. If we look at history, men and women born in dirt and poverty are willing to practice terrorism when they’re promised something wonderful on the horizon—a special place in heaven or Valhalla or Mount Olympus. From Japan to Germany to the Middle East, Ireland and beyond. Those who feel that they have been chosen by a higher power to strike back at their oppressors are often ready to fight and die, whether it’s beneath a hail of bullets or on a suicide mission. Then again, there’s the fear that if you don’t carry out the suicide mission, what comes next will be even more terrible.”

“You think we’re looking at domestic terrorism?” Rocky sounded doubtful.

“No, no, I really don’t. So far, people have just been sent to the hospital. We’re not looking at anyone having been murdered—that we know about. But I believe that some kind of statement is being made, that there is something larger going on.”

Detective Barnes came into his office.

“The body is at the morgue, the forensic team is done in the streets and the techs are trying what they have to get an ID on the body. Autopsy won’t be until tomorrow, so we won’t really have real physical answers until then, but then you know that, and you know that we have been able to get Dr. Theodore Loeb on our case. I swear, if there is anything we can get from the body, Loeb will get it.”

Barnes was, in Griffin’s mind, a good cop. He was willing to put in whatever hours were needed. He had nearly a decade more experience on the force than Griffin, but had no qualms about working with him or the FBI.

Except that now he looked at Griffin, and then Rocky, and shook his head.

“Ah, hell! We couldn’t just be pleased—we couldn’t just be certain that we’d gotten the attacker—and that the newest craze in Boston beatings was over. No...you think it’s something deeper, and that we’re about to find out.”

Griffin glanced at Rocky and shrugged.

Devin Lyle tapped at the door and then walked in, carrying a foam tray with four large coffee cups.

“One is for me?” Barnes asked.

“Of course,” Devin assured him. She was about five-nine with a headful of long black hair. Devin had great stature, though; in her “real” life, she wrote children’s books. She still had the ability to appeal regal—and very authoritative.

“Thank you, thank you!” Barnes said.

Then he rose. “I suppose I’m glad I have a few specialists from your division of the bureau here. But I’ll leave you to it. I’m going to run the attacker’s fingerprints, see if he’s in the system.” He started out, then turned back. “Oh! I’ve got a report written up for Alex Maple. I’ve pushed accepted protocol around on this, you know. But we’re looking for his phone, and we’re checking out his apartment. I’ll let you know if I find out anything.”

“Thank you, Barnes,” Griffin told him.

“Yep. All right, I’m getting out of here.”

“Actually, this is your office,” Griffin reminded him.

“I do know that. You all take your time. If I don’t find you here, I’ll call when I’ve got something.”

“Thanks.”

He left them.

Devin silently handed out coffee.

“So, nothing yet?”

“Nothing but musings,” Griffin told her.

“And they don’t bode well,” Rocky added softly.

* * *

“Wow,” Vickie murmured to herself. She realized she’d been on the computer for hours.

She looked at her watch; she knew it was late, of course. Paperwork did take a long time. She had to give up working for the night, though.

Her shoulders were beginning to hurt!

She winced, rubbing the back of her neck, wishing Griffin was there to do it.

Then she remembered that she had promised she’d make it worth his while to hurry home.

A wicked little smile crossed her face. She leaped up, heading to shower and shave her legs, now hoping that he wouldn’t arrive until she was ready. After toweling dry, she touched up with some makeup.

Since he was the only other human being in the world to have her key, she figured she was safe with whatever she did. And so, wearing nothing but a towel and a pair of spiked heels, she set up a perch on the sofa with throw pillows. She brought out an ice bucket and, since she didn’t have any champagne, opted for two bottles of Sam Adams beer. All the while keeping an ear out for the entry door to her complex—an old brownstone converted into four apartments.

Lastly, she arranged a plate of strawberries and chocolates and set them at the end of her little throne, right by the ice bucket. She turned most of the lights off and set just a couple lamps down low.

She took off the towel, curled her legs beneath her and posed and waited.

“Ho-hum, eh? Call this ho-hum!” she said aloud.

Then, of course, she felt a little ridiculous, naked on her sofa with high heels on. But their lives seemed to be twisted all the time by life-or-death situations, and—with Griffin’s work—it always would be that way. He’d told her that agents learned to seize their personal time, love it and embrace it. It was how they all managed in their world day after day, to appreciate every life they saved—and accept when there was damage they could not stop.

She decided to turn on the television—if she just held the remote control, she could keep it low and ditch it the minute he came in.

The news was filled with the evening’s reports. A recording of Detective Barnes was shown, giving out what information he could. The assailant was as yet unidentified. Yes, he had committed suicide with a pill; exactly what it contained, forensic experts would soon inform them. Did he believe there would now be a stop to the assaults? The police would be investigating all avenues, along with agents from the FBI.

He promised that new information would be forthcoming as they had it. He reminded the citizens of Boston and environs that they were a large and important city and never immune to harm; whether they had stopped the assaults or not, residents should always be vigilant.

As the news rolled to the next story, Vickie was certain that she heard someone at the building’s front door.

She quickly switched off the television—Griffin didn’t need to hear about the night he had experienced.

She switched into what she hoped was a truly sexy pose.

She heard the key in the lock. And the door opened.

For a split second, she froze.

And then she let out a scream.

* * *

At first, Alex Maple stared in disbelief at the man—the creature?—who came toward him. His mind was not working at all well, he determined.

Why would it be working well? He’d been kidnapped; he was a prisoner in a defunct loony bin!

Get it together, Alex. Survive! he told himself.

So. Figure, yes, figure—that was safe to say. The figure coming toward him was wearing something like a KKK outfit—only it was bloodred and trimmed with strange black markings.

“Ah, Professor! You are awake—ready to join us!” the figure said.

It spoke; it moved. It appeared to be human.

Man.

Alex fought for reason and reaction—for the ability to move his mouth and form words.

“Join what? Who are you? Why am I here?” he managed to ask.

The man came closer.

“I am the high priest,” the man told him. His face was more or less covered by a mask that appeared to be loosely connected to his conical red hood. Alex could see the man’s eyes, though. They weren’t burning red or anything—they were just dark brown.

“I am the high priest, Professor, and you will join with us.”

Alex blinked. It would be laughable if it weren’t for...

For the chains that held him.

For the headless body that lay crumpled in the corner, with rats destroying it.

“I’m sorry, join with you for...what?”

“The resurrection.”

“The resurrection of what?”

“You, sir, are not just going to join us, you see. You are going to help us!” the high priest said.

“Help you...?”