Orphans of Wonderland Read online

  “She was this little tiny peanut, so innocent and happy, you know?”

  Lying next to him on her stomach, legs bent and crossed at the ankles, Taylor was nude as well, but partially wrapped in a sheet. “Your depiction of her parents was absolutely heartbreaking.”

  Their pain, coupled with Joel’s realization that there were things in this world that could conspire to hurt and maim and torture and kill something as precious as the Mello’s daughter, had been a determining factor as to why he and Taylor had never had children of their own. He’d used his breakdown as an excuse, just as Taylor liked to blame her career. But when it was just the two of them in the dark, both knew the truth. “They were the most thoroughly destroyed human beings I’d ever seen,” he said softly, “and all I kept thinking about was what was coming for that little girl, the horror waiting on her, that she had no idea, no way of knowing what was on its way to her. I remember wishing I could step into that movie and warn her. I couldn’t, of course, so I did the only thing I could do. I told her parents I’d find justice for their daughter. I told them I’d find out what happened to their precious little girl, and who’d done such terrible things to her.”

  “Joel, don’t do this to yourself.”

  Rather than reply, he listened to Taylor’s slow and steady breathing a while, and admired the small gold-and-black butterfly tattoo on her ankle he’d always found so sexy and mesmerizing. Not long after Billy left, they’d gone to bed, made love, and had since lain there quietly, trying to figure out how to approach something neither wanted to think about, much less discuss.

  Earlier, before Taylor got home and Billy arrived for dinner, Joel had gone into their cellar and rummaged around until he located a dusty old suitcase he’d packed away years before. Sitting on an overturned crate, he laid the suitcase across his lap but didn’t open it for several minutes.

  Once he finally convinced himself to look inside, he found one hardcover and two paperback copies of his book, Chasing Down the Night. All were pristine and had never been read. After digging deeper, he located another paperback copy, this one with a badly cracked spine and dog-eared pages covered in highlighter markings and various notes he’d scribbled in the margins in pen. In addition to numerous newspaper clippings, a few old VHS tapes, a portable cassette player, a handheld microphone and a small stack of audiocassettes in plastic cases, there were several old notebooks too, creased and aged and full of notes from years before. He next found a manila envelope containing several photographs, but couldn’t bring himself to go through them. Everything was there, just as he’d left it. He’d saved everything. Like a damn time capsule, he thought.

  And damned it was.

  A twenty-year-old college girl had gone missing, only to be found two days later, what remained of her massacred body sprawled across the altar of a local Catholic church. A story Joel would follow and eventually link to a large, wildly violent but shadowy satanic cult operating in the area at the time, a cult that had possible nationwide ties and more power and influence than anyone had previously imagined possible. And the deeper he looked, the worse it got. His proof, even in the end, was largely circumstantial, but juries had convicted people for less. He knew some names, had identified certain members, but could prove nothing. Like the dark master they believed in and claimed to serve, these types and their activities existed largely in shadow, glimpses and rumor, like fleeting trails of smoke, whispers in the night. There, then gone, leaving one to wonder if they’d ever really been there at all.

  He wrote the book, it took off, and he reaped the benefits and tried his best to forget what he’d seen and experienced. What he’d learned.

  But by then, the Devil already had a hold of him.

  Or maybe he was just weak, his mind and spirit not strong enough to fight off the things that had begun to course through his head, haunt his dreams and stalk his waking hours. The strange phone calls, the people following him, watching, the odd things left at his doorstep—talismans made of sticks and animal bone, warnings—the severed heads of dogs and a litter of dead kittens, their little heads twisted, necks snapped. Just nut jobs who had read his book, believed his nonsense and were sick themselves, everyone assured him. As if they had any fucking idea what they were talking about.

  What the types who said such things didn’t know was how it all crawled into Joel’s mind and nested there. How it festered and slowly began to cripple him.

  No one was willing or able to help. The Globe let him go, and colleagues who had once considered him a young investigative journalist with tremendous potential, now shunned him as a charlatan and an embarrassment. He was a pariah with the police as well, as he’d been highly critical of them and their investigation in his book and on numerous television appearances, and had implied that a handful of them might have even been involved.

  And then came the backlash.

  The entire satanic scare of the 1980s lumped everything—even legitimate cases like the one he’d been involved with—into a single mass of nonsense and hysteria. There was no proof, people said, no hard evidence, and even the small amount that did exist simply wasn’t enough. It was all a bunch of lunatics and religious fanatics, people making accusations and telling stories with nothing to back them up, resulting in innocent people going to prison and having their lives ruined for the sake of sensationalism. You’re a hack, Joel Walker, people said, a liar more interested in sensationalism and making money and being on television and selling books than the truth.

  In the end, Cindy Mello was still dead. She’d been slaughtered.

  Not by some devil cult like in the movies, everyone claimed. Just one or perhaps two very sick individuals who were never caught. And the satanic symbolism and writings in her blood found all over that church in New Bedford—the areas in the nearby Freetown State Forest he’d found where ceremonies had obviously taken place, where dogs had been sacrificed and possibly even other human beings—it was all coincidental, they said. It was just a few crazies, or drugged-out kids playing cult in the woods. None of it was what he’d claimed, because that sort of thing didn’t exist, and if it did, then why couldn’t he prove it?

  More smoke…more whispers in the night…

  All he’d wanted to do was find out who had killed that poor young girl and help bring them to justice. Not only had he failed, but the attempt had cost him his career and, for a while, his sanity. They hadn’t seen the things he’d seen, the broken souls he’d met or the stomping grounds they inhabited. They didn’t hear the growls, the whispers, or feel the evil moving within them, trying to control them and take over, to grind them down into insanity…or worse.

  The rest of society knew nothing of the world behind the world, the one that existed beyond the veil few were even aware of. But Joel knew the truth. And that truth had almost killed him.

  Do you believe the Devil is talking to you, Mr. Walker?

  After three months in a psychiatric hospital, he came to believe the same as they did. He turned his back on what he knew because he knew he’d never leave that place unless he did.

  Do you believe he’s inside you right now?

  The Devil’s not real.

  Even now, he told others that. He told himself that. And he believed it.

  But was it true? Did it matter either way? If those who serve a god and its doctrine are real, does it matter if the deity actually exists?

  With all those old memories and experiences flooding back into his mind, Joel had transferred everything into a newer nylon duffel bag and thrown it in the back of his closet. There would be a time and place to look through these things, to bring them back to life again like toys thrown long ago into boxes and forgotten, but that time had not yet come. Maybe one day.

  “Lonnie’s daughter should’ve left you the hell alone,” Taylor said.

  “But she didn’t.”

  “You don’t have to do this. It to
ok you years to get to where you are now. Where we are now. We have everything we ever wanted. Why risk ruining that?”

  His eyes found her in the moonlight. “What can I do?”

  “Stay here with me.”

  “You have no idea how badly I wish I could.”

  “Then do it.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “You don’t know if you will. There’s a difference.”

  Joel touched her face, gently ran his fingers across her cheek. “I’ll just go back and check some things out, see what I can see. That’s all. It doesn’t have to rule our lives or become a big—”

  “Don’t lie to me, Joel.” She pressed her palm against his chest. “There are more than enough lies in this life already, enough cruelty and deception and fear and uncertainty. We don’t need it between us. It’s just you and me now.” She delicately stroked the hair in the center of his chest, traced it with her fingertip down along his stomach, where it encircled his navel. “I’ve spent forever watching and helping you put yourself back together. I know firsthand what this did to you last time. That was bad enough.”

  “This isn’t the same thing. Different time, different story, different me.”

  “It could very well lead to some of the same things; you know that. Lonnie told his daughter he was being stalked by demons, for God’s sake.”

  “Katelyn also told me he had issues. Besides, we’re talking ancient history when it comes to the other case.”

  “Are we?” Taylor’s beautiful eyes blinked at him slowly. “You were just replaying the home movie you watched with Cindy Mello’s parents in your head.”

  “So what?”

  “So that’s what you were thinking about, Joel, not Lonnie or what may have happened to him, but that woman and her murder.”

  The wind blew snow from the trees, spraying it against the windows.

  “Even if it had any similarities to what happened back then,” he eventually answered, “which it doesn’t, all those old trails will be long cold anyway. This has nothing to do with cults or any of the satanic crap that was taking place back then. There’s a strong possibility Lonnie got himself into something he should’ve stayed clear of, got in over his head or crossed the wrong kind of people or something along those lines. But we’re not talking about the types involved in Cindy Mello’s murder. Lonnie had nothing to do with that kind of thing. It’s not him. He wouldn’t have been anywhere around that sort of stuff.”

  She searched his eyes. He could feel her fear.

  “It’s coming back to you though, isn’t it? It’s already seeping back into your mind, those things from all those years ago. Frightening things. Things the doctors warned you needed to—”

  “Taylor…”

  She sighed. “I know if you’ve already made up your mind, you’ll go no matter what I say.”

  Joel stretched his legs out a bit, pushed his feet under the blankets they’d kicked off earlier. “Katelyn was right about one thing,” he said. “Deep down I am still an investigative journalist. It’s still a part of me.”

  “You were a gifted journalist—”

  “Exactly, past tense.”

  “No, you still are, and you could be doing any number of more fulfilling things than you’re doing now, but that doesn’t mean you have to go back to something that nearly destroyed you.”

  “I was a flash in the pan, a one-trick pony. That story was all I ever had. It made me and broke me all at the same time.” He lay there a moment, thinking. “Part of me wants—needs—to prove I can do this and not stumble like last time. Maybe I’ll get lucky and actually find something out and be able to give Katelyn some closure and peace. Something I was never able to do with Cindy’s family. Maybe then I’ll be able to leave this darkness and all those demons behind once and for all.”

  Taylor looked away, as if something in the shadows had caught her attention. “I thought you already had.”

  “So did I, baby. Believe me, so did I.”

  “All that evil and horror and darkness and violence is dead and buried. Why do you want to dig it up again? What do you possibly hope to accomplish after all this time?”

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it? It’s not dead, and it’s not buried as deep as I thought it was.” He took her chin in his hand and raised it up until she was looking at him again. “Those old ghosts are still rattling their chains, Taylor, and they’re never going to let me go unless and until I cut them loose myself. I know that now. And I’m afraid, okay? I am, I admit it. I can’t go through what I did before, not again. I won’t survive it. But I can’t let fear stop me either. Not this time. Not ever again.”

  She licked her lips. “What do you want me to say?”

  “That you believe me. That you believe in me.”

  Taylor’s eyes sparkled in the moonlight. “Always.”

  “I love you. More than you’ll ever know, I love you.”

  “Go do what you have to do.” She took his hand in hers, held it against the side of her face and kissed it. “Then come back to me.”

  Joel closed his eyes, snuggled closer to his wife and listened to the wind just outside the windows, distracting him, if only for a while, from the horrible whispers creeping through in his head.

  Chapter Seven

  Joel stood in his room before the partially pulled curtain, watching occasional cars rush along the nearby highway. Though only five foot ten, at first glance, his wiry build made him appear taller than he actually was. Trim and in reasonably good shape, his body resembled that of a swimmer, though he rarely swam, his build understated in clothes but a bit less subtle in his present state: a pair of boxers. His was the kind of unremarkable look and manner that often made it easy to blend into a crowd or go unnoticed, something that had served him well back when such things could be relevant in his line of work.

  The room was dark, the parking lot and areas surrounding the roadside motel dimly lit. Every now and then headlights from passing cars reminded him he was not alone in the night, but it was late, too late to be up. Undeterred, the thoughts storming through his head had prevented him from sleeping, and there seemed little point in going back to bed, at least not yet. They’d begun so nicely, with visions of him and Taylor making love or walking hand in hand along some of their favorite wooded paths not far from the house. But they soon morphed into memories of Taylor waving goodbye, standing in the doorway of their home as Joel backed out of the driveway. She looked beautiful as ever, but even that did little to mask her sadness, which left him riddled with nearly unbearable guilt.

  Joel glanced at his watch. Nearly two o’clock. He’d called home earlier and they’d said good night, but by now Taylor was long asleep, snuggled up in bed, the TV next to the bed probably still on, flashing ghost lights across the otherwise dark walls while some self-proclaimed entrepreneur extraordinaire prattled on about the virtues of his real estate seminar and how it was guaranteed to make attendees wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

  Wishing he were there with her, Joel moved from the window to a nearby table. Taylor faded from his mind, lost in misty shadows and darkness. On the table he found his iPod and a pair of in-ear headphones. He pushed one bud into his right ear but left the other dangling, as was his habit when alone, and, using the lighted face of the iPod to guide him, located Kind of Blue on his playlist, his favorite Miles Davis album. He selected the cut All Blues, then sank down into one of the chairs.

  Joel sat back in the dark, put his feet up and let the sultry sounds entangle him like creeping vines of smoke. And as his head slowly bobbed with the beat, he closed his eyes and drifted back to his memories of earlier in the day, and the events that had landed him in this lonely little motel so far from home…

  It was a dreary, overcast day, the kind that threatened rainstorms but rarely delivered much besides the occasional mist or insipid, icy tri
ckle. The drive from Maine to Massachusetts had been tedious and uneventful, and by the time he’d reached the city of Fall River, his initial thought was that it hadn’t changed much in the last twenty years. Joel hadn’t been back in all that time, but the city looked much the same as it had when he’d last seen it.

  Originally an outpost of the Plymouth Colony, Fall River had rather modest beginnings, but by the nineteenth century it had become the largest textile-producing city in the nation. The death of that industry had ravaged the city, but Fall River had always survived and found alternate ways to thrive and survive. A city of nearly 90,000 people located along the shore of Mount Hope Bay, at the mouth of the Taunton River, it was not only famous for its textile history, but also for Lizzie Borden, for Portuguese culture (due to the large Portuguese population), and for being the home of the USS Massachusetts and a large assembly of World War II naval vessels, an area known as Battleship Cove.

  Although the city had its share of ups and downs over the years, in the 1980s there was a considerable amount of new development and revitalization, including the infusion of a vibrant mix of cultures from around the world. But in 2010, Fall River had also been ranked one of the most dangerous cities in the United States, largely because of a heroin epidemic with ties to the shipping ports in nearby New Bedford. Still, as Joel negotiated the streets and made his way to the address Katelyn Burrows had given him, the city appeared to be on the rise and to have rebounded in most neighborhoods, as the higher crime still seemed to be mostly limited to certain specific areas.

  It was still early in the day, late morning, when Joel’s directions led him to an enclave of single-family town houses. Complete with identical, small front yards, the neighborhood had less of a city feel and more closely resembled the kind of development one might find in a smaller town.

  Following the circular layout of streets, he soon located the correct unit and pulled over, parking on the street so as not to block the driveway. He turned the car off, then studied the property a moment.