She thought it was over. She thought she was cured. She thought that the dreams, the memories, were gone forever.
She was wrong.
Lizabeth Carstairs shifted about under the single sheet, tossing and turning in bed, in the dark room, in the wee hours of the morning. Faint moans escaped from her, occasional words: "wicked heathen", "without shame", "on my hands", "abomination!"
It was happening all over again.
Had she been wrong? No. The Good Book was clear in the matter. She had done no wrong. Then why did they lock her up? Why did they restrain her, drug her, force her to talk about it?
They had convinced her that she had done a bad thing, an evil thing, and she believed them, but now, now that it was happening all over again, Lizabeth knew that they were wrong, they were all wrong. She was only doing God's work. She had merely punished the wicked. She destroyed the means of sin to save the souls of the sinners.
"No, mama, no!"
"Mama, please!"
Lizabeth clutched at her pillow, locked in the dream, her memories carrying her back to the past.
"In the name of Jesus!"
Wicked! Blasphemous!
"You wicked heathen!" Lizabeth said in her sleep.
Over three decades. She thought it was over. A bad dream. A nightmare. But it was happening again. Their souls had not been saved. She had failed.
She was being tormented!
Satan.
They were Satan's children now. The dark one, he was always the child of Satan. He corrupted her son. He turned her son towards evil. She had a lot of time to think about it in the hospital, in the white room, after they made it so that she could not move her arms, in that jacket. She should have known. That boy came from tainted stock. Sins of the father. Sins of his father. If only she had not... But she had, and because of it Satan took her son.
And now Satan had returned her sons, her son and the Devil's spawn! to her, but only to torment her.
Maybe she could save them now. Maybe she could succeed this time. She was being given a second chance.
"I don't want your Christ!"
The middle-aged woman rolled about on the bed, kicking the sheets to the floor. Her eyes still closed, she growled low in her throat, baring her yellow stained teeth, holding the pillow tightly in both hands and squeezing it. Squeezing it.
Satan was using the souls of her sons, her son and that other boy! but God was using Satan. Yes. God was using Satan. It was God who was giving her a second chance.
"You can have a whole new life," Dr. Bergman told her the day she was released after almost twenty-four years. "You can start over again, Lizabeth. Go anywhere you want to go in the world. Do anything. Be anything. You have a second chance, Lizabeth."
A second chance.
Now she was getting her real second chance.
Then, oh then, dear Lord, may I have the life I always wanted?
She was only nineteen when she found her thirteen year old son with that...that demon her husband had taken in. Her husband, the Reverend Carstairs, was a godly man, a righteous man, and when he took in one of the two boys orphaned by the death of their last living relative he thought it would be good for their son, give him a brother. But they became... They sinned. Peter sinned and it was Calvon who had led him into sin. Calvon, the son of evil.
Sins of the father.
Sins of the flesh.
"Daddy," Lizabeth cried in her sleep, her voice that of a little girl, the little girl she had been a long long time ago. "No, daddy. I don't want to."
"Honour thy father, child," he had said, his huge hands caressing her naked child's body.
"No, daddy...please," she implored in her dream, in her memories, in the dark room, a woman in her fifties speaking with the voice of a child, crying in her sleep.
"Mommy's gone now, Lizabeth, and you must one day soon take her place."
"Why did mommy have to go?"
"She had to go because she could no longer give me children, or pleasure. I had to send her away, Lizabeth. You don't want me to send you away, do you?"
"No, daddy, no!"
"Then you will have to take mommy's place and you will have to let me show you how to do that...show you what you must do."
"But I don't like it, daddy."
"Neither did mommy. And that's why I had to send her away."
"I don't want you to send me away, daddy."
"Then you know what you have to do, don't you, Lizabeth?"
"Yes, daddy."
"And you will be a good girl, won't you Lizabeth?"
"Yes, daddy."
"And you won't tell anyone, will you?"
"I won't tell anyone, daddy."
"That's my little girl, my precious little gift from God."
"You won't send Petey away, will you, daddy? Petey's just a little baby."
"I won't send Peter away. Not if you take real good care of him. Not if you be his mommy from now on."
"I'll take care of him, daddy. I'll take real good care of Petey."
"My precious little girl. Now don't worry. Everything will be all right. Everything is just fine. Give daddy a big kiss now."
Lizabeth tore the pillow case with her clawed hands, her eyes still closed deep in sleep.
"Dear Christ, forgive them! Forgive him!"
She still heard them.
"No, mama, no!"
"I don't want your Christ!"
"Dear Christ, forgive them! Dear Christ! Dear Christ!"
Suddenly the tormented woman sat up in bed and screamed, then screamed again because she could not hear her own scream. Deaf! Deaf again! For almost ten years afterwards, her first ten years in the hospital, she had been deaf. Dr. Bergman said that it was hysterical deafness. There was nothing actually wrong with her hearing. But she could not hear for almost ten years. And now, was she deaf again?
Lizabeth jerked her head to the right and saw dimly in the dark room the outline of the lamp on her night stand. With her right arm she swept it off the night stand and it crashed to the floor, it crashed and shattered with a terrible sound that she could hear.
She could hear.
Then it was all right. It was all right. Everything was all right.
All she had to do was succeed where once she had failed.
All she had to do was to save their souls.