They (30 page)

“Soul-cracking?”

Mike explained. “It’s a ritual designed to literally crack the soul of the intended victim with the goal of letting elemental forces out into our world. Think of it as being used to provide a gateway, a door.”

Vince thought about this, trying to wrap his head around it. Everything was coming at him so fast.

“We aren’t certain of this,” Mike continued. “But one member who defected from the group shortly after they returned to the states told a source I was able to talk to. The soul-cracking ritual is very rare, and is only performed by extremely experienced magicians.”

“Why would they do this?” Vince asked.

“We don’t know,” Mike said. “You were conceived around this time, and it’s possible you were born in Iraq, not in California as your birth certificate states. When the group arrived back in the states in July of 1966 they came home with you and several rare artifacts dating back to ancient Summer. One of the members had a permit to bring the items into the states—he’s a well-known archeologist with a major university on the west coast.”

“Do you suppose this soul-cracking ceremony later drove my mom crazy?” Vince asked. It made sense to him. The emotional trauma they would have inflicted on her could have been suppressed for years until it eventually manifested in her extreme shift to Evangelical Christianity.

Mike nodded. “Yes, it’s very possible.”

“So if this ritual worked, what would they have let out into the world?” Vince asked, mostly to himself.

“We’re not sure, and keep in mind we’re only going by second-hand information,” Mike said. “The cult member who spilled this all to my source later disappeared.”

“So Maggie somehow wound up with this splinter group,” Reverend Powell mused. “This Children of the Night group?”

Mike nodded. “Yes, because unlike what mainstream Christianity teaches, serving Satan ultimately serves the will of God. As to what led her to…join this splinter group, I still don’t know.”

“Could it have been Tom?” Vince asked.

“Possibly.”

“That still doesn’t explain the Manson family aspect of this thing,” Reverend Powell said.

“By 1969 The Children of the Night were a very powerful, very secret satanic organization,” Mike continued. “They’d been around since the 1920s, but in the 1960s they’d experienced a resurgence of sorts. They were headquartered in San Francisco, and Samuel Garrison led them. Part of their goal was to spread total chaos in order to aid in the breakdown of society. They promoted the total worship of evil. They became so secret that contact between them and The End Times was completely severed. Because there are some vague connections between Manson’s group and The End Times when the Family was in the Bay Area, it is believed they remained in contact with select cult members, including the satanic faction—The Children of the Night.” Mike Peterson looked grave. “The theory is that Garrison ordered the bloodbath in August to stir things up and that Manson’s group not only did it, but took the fall.”

“The same with Son of Sam?” Vince asked.

Mike nodded. “Berkowitz admits to belonging to a satanic cult in New York, but crime experts have denounced that as the ramblings of a man trying to cop an insanity plea. Berkowitz maintains this story to this day, especially after having converted to Christianity in prison. He claims he was a member of a satanic cult when he committed the murders, and that the purpose of the murders was the spread of chaos. Again, in full accordance with the beliefs of The Children of the Night.”

“And all these murders,” Reverend Powell said, his fingers drumming along the bar. “They were committed for the same reason?”

“Some,” Mike said. He finished his beer. “Others, like the murder of Arlis Perry, were committed because the victim knew too much. Berkowitz apparently had inside knowledge of the Perry murder.”

Vince thought about all this, his mind whirling with the craziness of it. “What did mom tell you when I left home?” he asked Reverend Powell. “I…I always thought she had become a real…religious fanatic in the last ten years and…she used to tell me I was…the spawn of hell. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she thought I was the Anti-Christ himself.”

“Your mother always feared for you, Vincent,” Reverend Powell said, his features grave. “She always prayed for you. In all the years I knew her, I never knew her to reveal much about her past, although I used to guess that she was involved with some sinful people in California. She always seemed…as if she were running away from that past.”

“Do you think that’s it?” Vince said, turning to Mike. “Do you think this devil group Mom was involved with thought I was their Anti-Christ? Do you think that’s why they’re trying to kill me?”

“If they thought you were the Anti-Christ, why would they want to kill you?” Mike asked.

“
Somebody
wants me dead.”

“It couldn’t be them,” Mike said. “And it couldn’t be the original group, The End Times. Besides, I think you’re letting your emotions get a little carried away. They’re obviously trying to get to you for something—perhaps to bring you back into the fold—but they’re not trying to kill you.”

Vince was livid. His blood was boiling in his veins. “Look at the facts! My mom joins this group in 1965 shortly before learning about the two opposing sides of the cults’ beliefs—darkness and light. She chooses darkness. They take her to Iraq, do this soul-cracking thing on her or whatever it’s called, I’m conceived there and am born there. If I were a paranoid, fanatical zealot with an Armageddon complex,
I’d
sure think I was the Anti-Christ.
Fuck
!”

The room grew quiet as Vince seethed. Reverend Powell appeared to visibly flinch at the sudden expletive, but remained silent. Vince took a long drink from his beer and set the empty bottle down on the bar with a thud that almost cracked the bottle. Reverend Powell opened a fresh one for him. Vince took it and downed half of it.

Mike shook his head. “I…I don’t think that…”

“You don’t think these psychos think I’m the Anti-Christ?” Vince shouted. “Use your head, Mike, c’mon! Mom joins an apocalyptic satanic cult that believes the end times are a good thing. And hell, why not? It’s all according to God’s big plan for us, right? And everything that comes from God is good, right? Even a little destruction and doom and pestilence. In fact, why not help God along? Why don’t we just call up ’ol Scratch himself during a satanic ritual, get him to impregnate some impressionable teenager and
bam
! You have your Anti-Christ.
Me
!” Vince slapped his chest and took a pull from his beer. He felt high but he wasn’t drunk. He was scared and angry.

“Vince,” Mike said, his voice low and calm. “I think you’re rushing to conclusions. We don’t know why they’re—”

“Cut the bullshit, Mike!” Vince said, loudly. “He’s probably thinking the same goddamned thing!” He gestured to Reverend Powell. “Why else would mom suddenly pull stakes and leave California without saying a word? Why else would she become such a religious lunatic and believe the devil was hiding behind every corner? Why else would she curse me for walking my own path? Why else would she say I was spawned from hell and that—”

“Vince, I agree that your mother had some very extreme views but—”

“—she never wanted to have anything to
do
with me!” Vince was almost screaming now. His face felt hot and flushed with anger. “She told me time and time again, ‘I won’t have anything to do with that which isn’t Godly,’ and goddamnit, the minute I told her I was leaving for college she began to not have anything to do with me. She told me that I was turning my back on God, that I was walking down the path of darkness, that—”

“Vince,” Reverend Powell began.

“—if I left her I’d be damned to hell. And it only got worse after I married Laura.” Vince paused briefly, heaving with exertion. He could feel his emotions rising and he felt his throat constrict. “Why else,” he muttered, trying to keep his voice from cracking. “…would some…psycho come along over twenty-five years later and kill mom like that and…leave all that shit at the crime scene? Why else would somebody try to kill
me
?”

Mike laid a fatherly hand on Vince’s shoulder. “I don’t know, Vince,” he said softly. “I honestly don’t know. But that’s what we’re here to find out.”

And then, unable to control himself now because the pain of it all was so great, Vince Walters collapsed into Mike Peterson’s arms and broke down in heart-wrenching sobs.

THE DESK CLERK at the Ephrata library had a smile on her face when she looked up as Frank approached but the minute she looked at him, the corners of her mouth turned down in a frown. Frank ignored the look—he was used to it to some degree—and cut to the chase. “I was wondering if you could help me with something,” Frank said, launching into his rehearsed spiel immediately. The minute he entered the library he’d headed straight for the speculative fiction racks and searched for his titles. He found his latest novel in hardcover, and with the knowledge that he was being read by Ephrata’s finest, he sauntered over to the reference desk. “I’m an author, and I’m setting my next novel here in Ephrata and I was wondering if I could have access to the microfilm of the local newspapers.”

“An author?” The woman still looked suspicious.

“Yes.” Frank smiled and held up the title he’d pulled off the shelves. “You guys even carry my books. See?”

He handed the book to her and she looked it over, then turned to the back cover, which bore an author photograph. She looked from the back jacket to Frank. In the author photo he was leaning against a graffiti-stained wall in North Hollywood looking the same as he always did—black leather jacket, mirror shades, badass biker pose.

The librarian’s smile returned and her demeanor changed. “Well, I surely wasn’t expecting a literary celebrity to be visiting us so soon,” she said. “What can I help you with?”

A few minutes later Frank was seated in the corner of the reference area, a microfilm machine in front of him and spools of fiche from the past three years in a metal tray on his right. The librarian had been helpful from then on, ferreting microfilm at Frank’s command. Frank spooled through the paper, his eyes peeled for anything that might catch his fancy. The librarian—Nancy Koja—had turned out to be a nice lady once Frank started talking books with her. She’d even agreed to help him out on his project, and was currently at her desk on the telephone with an editor at the
Lancaster Intelligencer
asking for the information he was seeking. Hopefully the two of them would come up with something fairly quick.

When Frank told her what he was looking for she didn’t seem particularly disturbed. Maybe it was because she trusted him—after all, he was a ‘celebrity author’ visiting this little hamlet deep in the Amish Country. “Sounds like your next book is going to be a thriller,” Nancy said, jotting down notes. “I just
love
thrillers!”

So far Frank hadn’t found a thing. He started scanning headlines beginning in late January of this year, a few weeks before February 2, the day of Candlemas, which was an important day in most magical circles. The next important days were the Spring Equinox and Walpurgisnacht—April 30. He was now scanning headlines for the week of March 15, one week before the Equinox, and so far he hadn’t come across anything resembling what he was looking for.

Nancy Koja returned to Frank’s side. “I think there might be something in the Lititz paper for the date of April 30,” she said. She approached a file tray, opened it, and began rummaging through. “We just had these converted to microfilm, too. We only keep area newspapers for a month.”

Frank stopped and turned to her. “What did you find?”

Nancy found the box of film she was looking for and handed it to Frank. “My friend at the
Intelligencer
told me to call the
Lititz Record
. He’d
heard about a crime involving dead animals that this friend of his in Li
titz reported. Isn’t that what you’re looking for? Dead animal cases?”

“Yes,” Frank nodded, slipping the microfilm in the spools and fast-forwarding to April 30. “Specifically dogs.”

Nancy leaned forward, peering into the screen as Frank scanned through the April 30 issue slowly. Finally, he found what he was looking for.

It was a very brief article:

DEAD DOGS FOUND IN FIELD BELIEVED TO BE FOUL PLAY

By Richard Harsh, Lititz Record Staff Writer

Two adult male dogs, one a Doberman Pinscher, another a German Shepard, were found yesterday morning in a field bordering Mill Lane.

The discovery was made by Greta Jones, 73, of 87 Mill Lane, a semi-detached home that sits on the corner of Mill Lane and Meadow Lane. Ms. Jones had just ventured outside to water her plants in a flowerbed when she noticed a flurry of activity in the field across the road. “A bunch of crows,” she said, flocking about and picking at something. It’s not unusual to see them eating road kill, but there was an awful lot of them in that field and I caught a glimpse of something that looked a lot bigger than a gopher, so I went inside and called Alan Pierson to take a look.”

When Pierson, who owns the land, investigated, he discovered the two dogs, who had been skinned of their pelts.

Lancaster County Animal Control officials agree that somebody with knowledge of canine anatomy killed the animals. They report that both animals were skinned alive and then killed with precise cuts to the throat and dumped in the field.

Lititz Police are investigating the matter and are urging anybody with information to come forward.

Frank read the article twice, then hit the COPY button. “Thanks,” he said. “Did your contact at the paper mention if there were any other similar cases since?”

“None,” Nancy Koja said, looking pleased. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“None right now,” Frank said, glancing at his watch. He had an hour and a half left to spend at the library before heading back to the motel. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to look through the rest of this microfilm. Where do you keep the hard copies of the paper you were mentioning?”

“In the periodical room,” Nancy said, motioning to a room on the other side of the building. “Local newspapers are along the north wall. Feel free to help yourself.”