They

Chapter Twelve

HE HATED LYING to Carol, but he’d just told her a dozen lies as he was packing his bags in their master bedroom. Carol Peterson stood at the threshold of the bedroom, looking worried and concerned. She was wearing a pair of denim shorts and a white blouse, her auburn hair falling about her shoulders in curls. She’d been lounging on the sofa in the family room watching a soap opera when Mike came home, and now all she could do was pace back and forth between the den and the bedroom. “This has something to do with John, doesn’t it?”

Mike zipped up his duffel bag. He had packed bare essentials; underwear and socks, two pairs of jeans, some T-shirts and some more sporty shirts, and toiletries. He sighed. “What makes you think this has to do with John?”

“Because he was acting just as strange as you are right before he went downhill again,” Carol said, hands on her hips. “He was being evasive and now you are, too. You don’t have any consulting job lined up. You can’t fool me anymore, Mike.”

Mike stood up and tried to walk past her, but she blocked his path. “Carol!”

“Mike!” Her tone was stern. She glared up at him, fire in her eyes.

“What do you want from me?”

“I want you to tell me the truth! The past month you’ve been acting like… like you’re on some goddamned spy mission! Every time we go out you’re always looking in the rearview mirrors like some paranoid freak! Like you’re afraid we’re being followed. And you’ve checked the phone lines outside the house half a dozen times, and don’t tell me that whatever it is you’ve been scouring the floors for is your high school class ring. I found it in your junk drawer the other day. You think somebody’s bugged the house. You can’t keep lying to me, Mike. This has something to do with John and what happened to Jesse, doesn’t it?”

Mike felt torn; he wanted to tell Carol everything he’d discovered, but he also wanted to protect her. And he couldn’t keep lying to her. Perhaps the best thing to do was to give her a little bit of the truth. He nodded reluctantly. “You’re right, honey. It does have to do with Jesse. His son, Frank, recently contacted me. He’s trying to find out what happened to Jesse, and I’ve just been helping him out a little. That’s all.”

“That’s what drove John crazy!” Carol said, her cheeks flushing red.

“I’m not John, honey.”

“No, you’re not, but…” Her lips trembled as she tried to muster the sentence out. “For God’s sake, Mike, I know you kept me in the dark on a lot of what happened to John, but you can’t do it anymore. I know something is up. I know something terrible happened. Exactly what, I don’t know, but I know something bad happened.

“Listen,” Mike said. He took Carol by the shoulders and sat her down on the bed. “I’m sorry I haven’t been telling you the whole truth. But… well, I felt bad for Frank, and he’s doing most of this on his own. I’m just pointing him in the right direction. I’m just—”

“Then why are you leaving town if all you’re doing is pointing him in the right direction?” she asked, accusation in her eyes. “Surely Frank’s a big boy now. Can’t he take care of himself?”

“Yes, but he asked me just this once to fly back east with him. His mother recently passed away and she left a lot of papers behind and he asked me to help him sort through them and provide some sort of explanation.” The lie slipped easily through his lips and he hoped Carol bought it. “That’s all I’m doing. That’s all I told him I would do. He seems satisfied with that.”

“Are you sure you even want to do that?”

“What do you mean?”

“All John did was do a little checking, too,” Carol said. “He even had other people doing the work for him. And what about Jesse’s sister and her husband? They had a private investigator and look what happened to them.”

Mike nodded. “Yes, I realize that, but all that happened a long time ago. And I’m not getting close to it the way they did, either. Frank is the one getting his hands dirty. All I’m doing is making suggestions.”

Carol appeared to think about it. Her eyes were worried and scared. “Why didn’t you tell me all this sooner?”

Mike took Carol’s hands in his. “Because I didn’t want you to worry like this, that’s why.” He leaned forward and gave her a kiss. “I promise, I’m not getting too involved. I’m being careful. I’m only going to be back in Pennsylvania for a week tops, and all I’ll be doing is going over paperwork and photo albums with Frank and answering his questions, giving him some background. That’s all. Anything Frank wants to pursue on his own, that’s his problem.”

“I just hope it doesn’t become our problem, too,” Carol said.

“It won’t. I promise.”

Carol looked at him, as if trying to read his thoughts to see the lies floating there. Finally she looked away. “God knows I want to believe you,” she said. “But…”

“You still don’t believe me.”

She shook her head reluctantly. “No.” She looked at him. “I—I don’t know what to think.”

“I’ll be fine.” He rose to his feet and helped her up. He picked up his duffel bag and together they walked out to the garage where the car was parked. “I’ll be gone a week. I’m just going to help Frank get a good start and be there to answer any questions he has. That’s all. Once he’s settled in, I’ll come home.” He opened the rear door and stowed his bag in the back seat. He turned to Carol and smiled. “Okay?”

Carol had that pleading look in her eyes again. She grasped his hands. “I still don’t feel right about this, Mike. Please don’t go!”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, kissing her again. “I promise. Okay? I don’t intend on getting into this as deep as John did.”

Something on Carol’s face seemed to change; her eyes clouded over, her features became grave, dark. “Somehow I don’t know if I can believe that.” Then she turned and walked out of the garage back into the house.

“Carol!” Mike called out as she slammed the door to the laundry room that opened off into the garage. For a moment he almost sprinted after her. She was clearly pissed off about not only his evasiveness, but leaving for a week to work on this. He also sensed she knew that what he was telling her wasn’t the entire truth. They’d been together long enough to know when one or the other wasn’t being entirely truthful. Carol had obviously sensed that Mike was bullshitting her with his story, and that pissed her off. He started across the garage, intending to go into the house to apologize and tell her everything but then he stopped. He was already behind schedule, and if he stayed and apologized and offered a truthful explanation to Carol that would take hours; she would no doubt argue her point even more. He would miss his flight, and it was imperative that he, Frank, and Vince be on the same flight. He couldn’t miss it.

What if she’s right, though? he thought as he stood at the driver’s side of the car. What if something happens to me when I’m out there? With all the trouble I’ve taken to conceal my identity, my work will disappear along with me. What if something happens to all of us?

He was just about to head back into the house to tell her about his David Connelly pseudonym, to tell her where the key to his safe deposit box was, the whole truth to what was happening. But that would simply result in another argument. And he couldn’t be late for this flight.

He opened the door to the car and slid behind the wheel. He started the car, opened the garage door, and then backed down the driveway. I’ll call her tonight, he thought as he cast one quick glance at the house before closing the garage door and heading out of the neighborhood. I’ll call her from the airport, tell her I’m sorry, and tell her where I’ve left the key to the safe deposit box. I’ll tell her that everything she wants to know is there, that if something should happen to me she’s to make sure the information gets out. She’ll probably be curious and open the box anyway but that’s fine. Let her read through it and come to terms with it. We can talk about it when I get back.

Still, he wasn’t entirely satisfied with that decision. But it was the best he could do.

Mike Peterson drove to LAX, wishing Carol hadn’t been so snoopy, hoping it didn’t come back to hurt either of them.

THEY WOUND UP not staying in Lititz after all. Instead, Vince directed them to an out-of-the-way motel in Ephrata. They’d already made the decision prior to take-off in Los Angeles that they would stay overnight in Philadelphia. Mike asked a travel agent at the gate for a list of hotels near Philadelphia International Airport and succeeded in getting a room at one with a late checkin. This way they had a room waiting for them when they arrived at 2:30 a.m., East Coast Time.

Snaring a rental car in Philadelphia, Vince drove the three of them to the hotel, a Marriot near the airport. The room price was steep considering its proximity to the airport, but Mike paid for it with the credit card he had secured under his David Connelly pseudonym. As Vince stood in the lobby with Frank, Mike signed them in. They’d met at LAX and traveled together without talking much. Mike had spent a considerable amount of time on his cell phone, back turned to the two of them some twenty yards away while they waited to embark on their plane. Judging from the animated conversation, Mike was probably arguing with his wife. Frank had watched through mirrored shades, his features grave. When Mike came back, Frank nodded. “Trouble?”

“No trouble,” Mike had said, sitting down, his features pensive. “Everything’s fine.”

Things didn’t look fine to Vince, though, but he kept silent about it.

After checking into their room, Mike had suggested they get some sleep so they could wake up early for the drive to Lancaster County. The room had two queen-sized beds. Mike and Frank shared one after flipping coins for dibs on the beds, and Vince wound up the winner.

After an eight a.m., wake-up call they showered in alternating shifts, dressed hurriedly, and then checked out. After stopping at a restaurant for breakfast and coffee, they made their way to Lancaster County.

They were heading south on Route 222 when Vince suggested the Ephrata Motel. “It might be a good idea to be outside of Lititz, just in case,” he suggested. Mike felt that was a good idea. He pulled off at Main Street in Ephrata at Vince’s directions and they pulled in front of the motel within five minutes.

The motel was an L shaped building with twelve cabins facing a small parking lot. It reminded Vince of the Bates Motel in its simplicity. Mike went to the office and came back a few minutes later. “We’ve got a room that sounds pretty cramped. It has one queen sized bed and one single rollout cot. Best I could do.”

“That’s fine,” Vince said. They carried their luggage down the short walkway to cabin number 5 and waited while Mike got it unlocked.

The room was small, with the bed, the cot, a small dresser, a small television mounted on a stand bolted to the wall, and nothing else. There was a small bathroom off the entrance. “What do you expect for thirty bucks a night?” Mike said, flipping the light on.

It was just after twelve-thirty in the afternoon. Vince flopped down on the bed. “Well, what do we do now?”

“How far is Lititz from here?” Mike asked.

“About ten, fifteen minutes maybe,” Vince said.

“Does Reverend Powell have any other job outside of ministering to his church?” Frank asked.

“When I lived out here I remember he used to be a general contractor,” Vince said. “I think he’s still doing that.”

“So if we call him at home he might be there,” Mike said. “Unless he’s off at a job site.”

Vince nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Why don’t you give him a call? Tell him you’re in town and see if he’s willing to meet with us. Is there a library around here?”

“Yeah, there’s one off 272,” Vince said, motioning outside. “It’s probably about a half-mile walk or so.”

Mike turned to Frank. “If the Reverend is in, why don’t you head over to the library and do some research? Check out back issues of area newspapers and see if there are any stories of unusual crimes that have occurred in the past few years or so. You know what to look for.”

Frank nodded. “Sure thing.”

“You have your cell phone with you?”

Frank nodded, patting his hip pocket.

“Keep it on. I’ll call you from the Reverend’s home if anything happens. Otherwise, let’s plan on meeting back here in three hours.”

“What are we going to tell Reverend Powell?” Vince asked.

“We’ll tell him the truth,” Mike said. “Surely as a man of God, he’s going to have to believe what we have to tell him.”

Vince picked up the phone and began dialing Reverend Powell’s number from the business card he’d given him last week.

WHEN MIKE PETERSON and Vince Walters pulled up to Hank Powell’s house he was waiting for them on his front porch. He looked paler than the last time Vince had seen him and his eyes had a haunted look. He kept looking out at the cornfield across from his home. “Come in,” he said, ushering them in the house. “I’m glad you could get back here so quickly.”

Vince introduced Mike to Reverend Powell and the two men shook hands. Vince had explained to Hank on the phone that he’d just arrived back at Lancaster County with two friends who were helping him unravel the mystery of his mother’s death. He’d told Reverend Powell that Mike had information on his mother’s background and upon hearing this, Hank had told Vince in a breathless tone that he’d found the box Maggie buried. “I’ve made some startling conclusions that I hope and pray to God aren’t true,” he’d said. “Perhaps your friend can help me understand it.” Excited by the fact that Reverend Powell had found the box, Vince told Mike, who suggested they head over to Lititz immediately.

Reverend Powell closed and locked the front door. It was ninety-five degrees outside with high humidity, making it feel like the tropics. The house was cooled by central air conditioning. Reverend Powell patted the butt of a handgun he had tucked into his belt. “Don’t mean to startle you with this, but ever since finding… what I’ve found out, I’ve been a trifle scared.”

“That’s understandable,” Mike said. “We’ve been taking our own precautions as well.”

Reverend Powell nodded, then turned to Vince. “It’s downstairs.”

They followed Hank Powell downstairs to the basement. Reverend Powell motioned to the sofa and chairs in the den. “Have a seat. I’ll go get it.” He headed toward the storeroom.

Reverend Powell unlocked the door to the storeroom and Mike and Vince waited by the pool table as he rummaged in the cubby and pulled the box out. They retreated to the den and sat down. Reverend Powell opened the lock with a key and looked at Mike Peterson. “I’m hoping you’ll be able to make some sense of this. I… I have my own suspicions based on… what I’ve seen here, but… I don’t know if I’m just being paranoid or what.”

Hank handed the box to Mike, who positioned it on his lap. Vince was sitting next to him on the sofa and the minute he saw the pictures, a thousand memories exploded in his mind. They came as a kaleidoscope of images; playing on the back porch of an apartment building somewhere in a big city; sitting quietly at the feet of his mother as her and daddy’s friends gathered at the house (but was it really daddy or was it Tom?), their dress and hair counter-culture-like; the long-haired bearded man trying to kill him as his mother screamed and the others made a mad grab to save him; sitting on a raised dais in a darkened room as black robed adults bowed before him.

“Oh my God,” Vince whispered.

“What?” Mike said, pausing from his perusal of the photo album.

“Looking at these brings back so many memories.”

“Good,” Mike said, turning back to the photo album. “That’s what we’re here for.”

Reverend Powell was watching them from his perch on the easy chair. He looked nervous. He rubbed his mouth with his left hand, glancing up the basement stairs every so often as Vince and Mike went through the photo album.

“That’s Gladys,” Mike said, tapping a photo that Vince remembered from when they’d lived in Orange County. The photo showed a woman in her late twenties or early thirties seated at a table with a man around the same age. They were smiling into the camera. The perfect picture of early seventies normalcy.

“I remember her so well now,” Vince said.

When they got through the last photo album, they turned to the clippings. At first the clippings held no significance for Vince, but Mike seemed to recognize something. He began nodding. “Yes, just as I thought,” Mike said. Vince tried to draw some kind of correlation to what he was seeing—clippings about dead dogs, missing people. He didn’t remember anybody he or his mother knew going missing.

When Mike came to the clippings on the Manson family, Vince felt no particular kinship there, either. “I don’t get it,” he said, looking at Mike.

“This all corresponds to what John and I dug up,” Mike said, flipping through the clippings quicker now, nodding along. “Everything she saved here is stuff I’ve already connected.”

“Then it’s true then?” Reverend Powell said in a fearful, trembling voice. Vince felt his stomach plunge down an elevator shaft as he looked at the man. He’d never felt the aura of fear so much as he did that minute when he looked at Reverend Powell. Hank fidgeted on the chair, his hands moving nervously, licking his lips. “I have been praying to the Lord ever since I found this box that it wasn’t true.”

“Does all this stuff mean that the cult my mother was involved with had something to do with Charles Manson?” Vince asked.

“No,” Mike said. He got to the end of the clippings and put them back in order carefully. “They didn’t have anything to do with the Manson family, although there has always been speculation that they might have crossed paths.”

“I don’t understand.”

Mike closed the lid to the box and snapped the lock shut. “There have been a lot of theories about the reasons Manson ordered the Tate-LaBianca murders. One of the most vague and outlandish is that Manson had volunteered to have the murders carried out for somebody else. Somebody who was a powerful member of a satanic cult. Of course, Manson himself denied this, as did those convicted of the murders. They’re right, of course.”

“So you are saying that Maggie was involved with Satanists!” Reverend Powell asked, his eyes wide with fright, almost pleading for this to be a cruel hoax. His voice rose in a shrilling crescendo. “Is that it? Were Maggie and Vince exposed to Satan and—”

“Calm down, Reverend,” Mike said. He set the box down on the sofa beside him. “I’ll explain everything.”

“I think I’m going to need a drink,” Reverend Powell said. He rose to his feet and headed to the bar. He didn’t offer Mike or Vince anything; he merely opened a bottle of Jack Daniels, poured himself a shot and drank it down. Then he poured himself another and slammed it down. His face reddened. He sighed. “Okay. Lord forgive me for this weakness, but I can’t bear to hear another word without taking some of this to calm my nerves.”

Mike headed toward the rear of the basement, carrying the box. He placed it on the pool table and approached the bar. “I think we could all use a drink.”

Vince joined Mike at the bar as Reverend Powell stood behind it, leaning against the polished wood surface. Hank handed them each a shot glass and asked if they wanted something to chase it with. When both men nodded, Hank opened a small refrigerator under the bar and pulled out two bottles of Budweiser. He opened them and set both bottles on the bar and went for a third. Mike set them up for a shot and the three men pounded them back. Vince felt the bourbon scorch his throat, warming him up. He took a sip of beer, which felt good as it went down his throat.

Then Mike told Reverend Hank Powell what he, Vince, and Frank had discussed the past three nights.

Reverend Powell listened, his eyes riveted on Mike as he drank silently. Listening to the narrative again was just as frightening as it had been the first time around. For some reason it brought him closer to the series of events that had fallen into place. For Vince, listening to Mike retell his side of the story, how his best friend had been waylaid and destroyed by the cult, hearing it again from his own lips, brought the horror to shuddering realization. This was a man who had lived it, who knew the parties involved. He had met Gladys and her husband; he’d possibly known Gladys when she was living her secret life as a bloodthirsty devil-worshipper. This wasn’t just another sensational story cooked up by rabid Christian fundamentalists. This was the real thing, spun with plain truth by a man firmly grounded in the secular world.

When Mike was finished Vince saw that Reverend Powell had already finished his first beer and was reaching for his second. Despite the shots he’d pounded down—four by Vince’s count, he didn’t appear drunk. “I knew it,” Reverend Powell said. “It was just as I thought. Maggie was involved with Satan and broke away. Praise the Lord that she saw the light and was saved.”

“That still doesn’t explain the Manson clippings,” Vince asked.

“The group Maggie and Gladys were involved in, The Children of the Night, was an offshoot of an apocalyptic cult called The End Times,” Mike explained. He nursed his beer as he spun the narrative. “They were formed in the mid 1800s in England by a fanatical Church of England minister named Graham Peters and his common-law wife Sally. Their belief system was based on the theory that it was God’s will for Satan to fall from grace and that following Satan was part of God’s will since it was all part of his plan for us humans.”

“In other words, both are working for the same goal—the coming of Armageddon.” Reverend Powell understood loud and clear.

Mike nodded. “That’s the short end of it. The End Times preached that Armageddon wasn’t far off. And that the quicker it came, the quicker it would be for God to take his chosen people up in the great tribulations. But in order for that to happen, there had to be an Anti-Christ born as prophesized in the Bible. So what happened was that the group split—one part remained devoted to the Christian side of the sect, the God part, if you will. The other half formed an alliance with the dark side and became The Children of the Night. Over the next hundred years they rubbed shoulders with many infamous occultists and killers, finally evolving into the current group headed by Sam Garrison.”

“The group my mother was involved with,” Vince said.

“Exactly.”

“How did Maggie get involved in such… in such wickedness?” Reverend Powell looked like he couldn’t believe that somebody he had known, somebody from his own church, could have been a blasphemous devil-worshipper.

“By all accounts, it appears that Maggie got involved through the original cult,” Mike continued. “When The End Times Church came out to California in late ’64, the counter-culture scene was already in full swing in the Bay Area. They were the first to capitalize on recruiting the flower children. At first their recruitment efforts weren’t successful. After all, this was the beginning of the hippie-movement, and people were experimenting with mind-altering drugs and alternative eastern religions. They were frustrated by the hypocrisy and failures of religious and political institutions that preached a Christian tolerance while supporting the ecology-destroying practice of big business, racial intolerance and the war in Vietnam. The End Times was rooted strictly in the prophesies of the New Testament. That was a little too close for comfort for those that had run away from home to explore religious beliefs anathema to their parents. But the End Times weaved their dogma in with a kind of mysticism that appealed to some of the dropouts. They encouraged sex, love, free will, and a communal type of living. And they also encouraged a dual acknowledgement to two gods—Yahweh and Satan. Yin and Yang. Graham Peters prophesized that in order for the biblical prophesizes to come true, the Lamb and the Goat must come together—pure love from Heaven united with hate from the depths of hell. Armageddon would begin. Those committing to either path would achieve salvation when the battle was over because those involved would be fulfilling God’s word. Everybody else—primarily every other religion—would be swallowed up in the great battle and destroyed.”

“That is the…” Reverend Powell sputtered. He was so flabbergasted he couldn’t finish.

“I know how you feel,” Mike said. He took a sip of beer. “It sounds insane. And in 1966 and ’67 it probably sounded no more insane than the dozens of other crackpots out there proselytizing among the counter-culture crowd at Haight and Ashbury. But they’re also the kind of ideas which would have been easy to find a receptive ear.”

“And they found it with my mother,” Vince said.

“They did,” Mike said, nodding. “One of the things I found out about Maggie was that she came from a very repressive background. Her father was a rabid fundamentalist minister and he was very strict. From what Frank’s father told me, Gladys came from a similar background. They would have been eager to embrace such ideas since they corresponded with belief systems they had grown up in. It would have made them feel powerful, that they felt they belonged to something far greater than anything they’d ever experienced. It would have allowed them to be manipulated more easily. In fact, shortly after your mother joined the group, they made a pilgrimage to the Middle East. From what I gather, they participated in several archeological digs in what is now modern day Iraq. It’s also suggested they performed several rituals there, possibly a soul-cracking ritual on your mother.”

“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 Lititz 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.”

“Thanks.”

Frank read through the rest of the microfilm and followed up his research in the periodical room. And despite a careful analysis of the local newspapers, he didn’t find anything else, save the local reporting of Maggie Walter’s murder.