“What rumors?” I ask softly, watching as Jackal walks out of the room with a hand full of fingers and an arm.
“A massive pedophile ring is there. A lot of politicians and celebrities hang around there.”
My eyes widen. It blows my mind that these things actually happen. I can’t understand how people could kidnap and rape boys and girls. Little innocent babies to teenagers. And then sell them and torture them in the worst imaginable ways. Sparks of anger ignite, my mind wandering to all the horrific things they probably do to those poor souls. Poor, innocent souls. Only a truly evil person could do something like that to a child. A baby.
Only demons could do that.
“I’m hoping some of them come through Satan’s Affair,” I say aloud. Then, “What if more than one come through?” I muse. Surprisingly, that hasn’t happened yet. More than one evil soul coming through my house at once. “How would I choose?”
Baine is silent for a moment. His bony, white fingers drift over my skin, eliciting goosebumps from my flesh. I shiver beneath his touch. His fingers trail across my stomach.
“Who says you have to choose? Kill them all, Sibby.”
It took eight days, sixteen hours, twenty-four minutes and thirteen seconds for Mommy to come back.
She walked into our shared bedroom, looking no worse for wear. Her brown hair hangs limp around her shoulders, stringy and threadbare. Her dull brown eyes as lifeless as they’ve always been. Mommy was always been skinny, but as the years pass by, her body grows frailer and her bones curve, like she’s retreating in on herself.
Sometimes I wonder if she ever looked at me with love in her eyes when I was born. Before Daddy sucked her lifeforce away. What did she look like before him? Was she vibrant and full of life and love? Did she do everything with passion and ferocity?
I want to know who she was before she let someone destroy her so deeply.
“Mommy!” I gasp, rushing to her and embracing her in a loose hold.
I learned long ago not to hold her too tightly. It hurts her.
Relief washes through me so strongly, it takes all I have not to collapse from the force of it.
“I’m okay, sweetie,” she says tonelessly, patting my back before stepping away. She ambles past me, her slippers sliding against the floor as she walks.
Did she pick up her feet when she walked before Daddy?
“What happened to you?” I ask, following after her like a lost puppy.
She glances at me, but her eyes shift constantly, never staying in one place for more than a second. Never looking directly at me. Another thing that’s shifting throughout the years—it seems to get harder and harder for her to meet my eyes.
“I was in one of the other houses,” she replies.
Daddy created a small compound for the Church to live in. He came from a long line of old money, so he bought a hundred acres of land and built ten large houses, all set up in a square. He assigns a couple of the trusted Church goers to go outside the compound and get whatever supplies we need once a month.
Otherwise, none of us are allowed outside the premise. Especially without his permission. We go to school every day with one teacher, and then do work around the house to keep us busy.
When a man has eighteen kids, with five more on the way, it’s important to implement some type of law and order around the compound. Daddy does his best to stay at the houses evenly, but even a single day spent in my house is too often.
I’ve never been outside of the premises. Never even seen what the rest of the world looks like. One day I will convince Mommy to leave this place with me, but the first and last time I brought it up, she smacked me in the mouth and told me to never say those words again.
I listened, but only because the terror in her eyes scared me into silence.
But I’m even more scared that if I wait any longer, Mommy won’t be around long enough to get away from Daddy.
“Why?” I ask on a whisper.
“Sibby, honey, don’t get sensitive about it. Leonard wanted me to assist with some things in one of the houses, so I did. You were fine here, weren’t you?”
She sits down on a twin bed, directly across from mine. There are over sixty people that attend our Church, so we’re all forced to share rooms. I got lucky enough to share a room with Mommy. Though, I know Daddy holds that over my head. It’s something he constantly threatens to take away, but never seems to follow through with.
Maybe it’s because he knows Mommy is the only one in this Church that has any type of control over me. And Daddy has all the control over her. Like a house of cards, if I fail—so will she.
And I fail a lot.