Unholy Shepherd by Robert Christian (classic literature list .txt) 📗

her phone, and I called them and told them about the mile marker, and that Braden was buried off a path in the leaves.

“I know they found him quickly the next day, and they took my mother out to the crime scene. I was left behind. I found out soon enough that it was because I was to talk to an FBI psychologist. I didn’t know any better at the time, so I told her everything that I had dreamed—seeing the mile marker, the arms and hands carrying Braden into the woods, everything. I really thought that they believed me, but a few days later, I was sent to the hospital with a bunch of other children. Apparently, they concluded that I had an emotional instability or something like that, and they said they wanted to remove me from the environment that caused me to make up these stories. What they were really doing was trying to observe me to find out if I had something to do with killing my brother.

“While I was there, I had more dreams. As I look back on it now, I’m fairly certain that one of the orderlies, I still don’t know which one, was a kid fucker. The sicko would sneak into the other kids’ rooms at night and touch them under the sheets. And I watched it all through his eyes. I tried to tell someone in charge, but they just said I was making it up for attention and did nothing. When we were in the common room, I would go find the kids that I had seen him abusing and tell them that I knew what was happening. One girl denied it, another boy yelled at me for telling, and we got into a fistfight and were put in isolation for a day. I had weekly therapy sessions with a shrink. They told me that if I accepted that I wasn’t seeing the things I was, that the dreams didn’t mean what I said they did, and that I was lying about the things I was saying, then I could go home. To this day, I don’t know why I stuck so hard to my guns. Childish willfulness, I suppose.”

Maureen paused for a sip of her drink and looked up at Father Patrick. The old man hadn’t taken his eyes off her and sat as still as a statue.

“I was there for about three weeks before my mother bothered to come and see me. I hadn’t even been allowed out to go to my brother’s funeral. When she came to the hospital, she was accompanied by a very stern priest, and I was told that I would be going away to a special school where they would help purge me of the evil that was inside me. I was to stay there until I was clean. And that’s how I ended up in Maine at Saint Dymphna’s.”

At the mention of the name of the school, the priest blinked.

“You’ve heard the name,” Maureen said and Father Patrick nodded. “Then you know its reputation.”

“I do,” he confirmed.

Maureen polished off the rest of her scotch and filled her glass again before continuing. “All that stuff that came out in the press after it was closed down, it’s not even a tenth of the story. The first thing they make you do when you get there is strip naked, put on a cotton robe, and kneel in this little chapel, praying to their statue of the patron saint. You have to stay like that for twelve hours, and if they come in and find you’ve fallen asleep or gotten up or done anything rather than kneel, they hit you with a rod and make you start over. I had to start over twice and was in there for something like twenty hours when it was all said and done. After you finish with that, you get sent to an isolation room with nothing in it but a picture of Jesus for you to reflect over. You have to stay in there for two days with no food, only holy water. They call it ‘the purification period’ and it was supposed to make you receptive to their interventions.

“I was one of the youngest there when I arrived. In all, I would say there were around one hundred girls at any one time. The older girls who had been there longer and were indoctrinated into the way things were done formed a kind of self-policing coalition and sometimes even helped the priests and nuns in dispensing punishments. Most of the girls paired up or collected in little groups to look after each other. The exceptions were the girls who had devils or demons in them like I did. There were only a few of us and, because of the severity of our conditions, we were the outcasts. Our education was also more specialized. We were placed on a regimen of regular exorcisms along with the usual Catholic education curriculum. I lost count of how many exorcisms I went through over the years, but it’s probably somewhere in the mid-hundreds. The methods they used escalated until I’d grown big enough to be whipped.”

Maureen stood up and turned around, lifting up her shirt a little so that the priest could see what she meant. “Ugly, isn’t it?” she said, hoping he’d be shocked.

“Maureen,” she heard him say gently, “I have to look very hard to see the physical marks on your body. But I do mourn for the toll they’ve taken on your soul. The people who did this were not working in the name of God. Please continue, if you can.”

Maureen felt a tear begin to form in her eye as she listened to his words. She angrily brushed it aside and yanked her shirt back down, turning back and flopping down in her chair.

“I still had the dreams there,” she went on. “You have no idea how true what you just said is. At least one