Chapter 17: Disclosure

"I saw it. A darkness. It dims her spirit, clouds it, weighs it down and she is lost in grief and sadness. I've never seen anything like it before."

Graydon sat in the warmth of the small fire outside Mike's cabin; they shared the flickering firelight. Fleeting shadows outlined worried frowns on their faces.

"I've seen it before. Not often, but often enough. It weighs so heavily on a person's soul they can become lost, lost to themselves and everyone around them. This is a terrible burden for anyone to bear. For one so young as this girl you describe, it can be the end. She could be lost and never recover."

"Please, Mike. Don't say that. I feel a powerful urge to help her. I don't know why, and I sure can't say it's all that smart, or even that it's my part to get involved in this, but something mighty strong is pulling me to help her."

Mike smiled inwardly. He remembered himself as a young man. He too had been foolishly moved to get involved, and look where it had led him!

"Follow your instincts, but be careful. Move slowly, softly, and be careful not to stir her awareness or touch any feelings you find. Let yourself explore and learn, but beware of doing anything before you have more understanding."

Mike stirred the glowing embers, returning burnt ends to the center of the small fire. "Visit her dreams; learn what you can. If it becomes too painful, ease away and rest. Gather strength, surround the evil with wards, and return to her another night. When you have learned enough to know where the darkness originated, come here and explain it to me. We will consider it together and see what next we might do.

"Above all, do nothing alone. You have great ability but little experience. Rash interference could destroy her, and put your own soul in great peril, young shaman. Come to me and we will deal with this together, if deal with it we must, and from the darkness you felt, I'm sure we will. I say "we," young Graydon, for it will take your growing power and my lifetime of experience with the dark side of life to intercede safely into this horror that binds her."

That said, a wisp of wind curled around the fire, raising a slender tower of sparks and smoke, and it danced away into the night as an omen of a journey, perhaps a journey into darkness itself.

She tossed under her sheet, her pillow damp, her blanket hanging half off the small bed. Her hands clasped and gripped at something unseen. Her face was twisted in the rigors of fright, revulsion, and pain.

The dusky doe lay under the girl's window, her slender head with its long nose and great ears raised in the darkness, sniffing the damp night air but otherwise she lay still, her vision focused inward, linking, seeing. She could not understand what she saw but it was of no matter. She saw shapes, movements, heard the words and cries and whispered threats, and these she linked to her spirit companion, the young shaman who lay in a wake-sleep state on his sleeping bag in the dark hayloft of the homestead barn.

The girl was young, too young, barely nine years old. The priest, her family priest for all those years and more, was holding her against his bulging belly, his fat hands fondling her thin legs under her summer dress. She sat pinned on his lap, facing him, feeling his rough hands on her, moving, touching. She could smell his rancid breath, see his greedy eyes, and she sobbed a quiet protest.

"Please," she sobbed, "let me go. I won't say anything. I'm sorry I didn't know the lesson. You asked a different question than the ones we studied; I don't know that answer but I'll study more, I'll get it right."

"No, young Mari, you'll have to do better. I'm not punishing you, but I must move the spirit into you. I must chasten your small body and stir your obedience. Trust my hands and my holy person to move the spirit into you; you'll come to understand the special feelings. Your body will begin to tell you when it's right..."

Graydon turned his mind away; he could feel her revulsion building, and worse, he could feel her innocence being drowned in a flood of guilt. "I must be bad, a bad girl, or I wouldn't be here. Father Bernard wouldn't be doing this, he wouldn't touch a good girl like this ... If I studied harder..."

He followed her dreams. Not dreams, nightmares. A series of fragmentary glimpses, horror followed by horror, a girl trapped in a family tradition of Sunday services and Sunday school and church picnics and outings and a long summer camp where Father Bernard followed. Glimpses of afternoon "chastening sessions" in Father Bernard's office; an evening of painful invasion in Father Bernard's cabin at church camp; rough-handed groping and violations tumbling one after another in her serial nightmares.

Graydon knew, after several evenings of sharing her nightmares, that the horror had spanned several years, not ending until the day she could endure no more and she confessed everything to her parents.

"I'LL KILL THAT SON-OF-A-BITCH!" Frank screamed, punching his fist against the bedroom wall. Marilee shivered and shrank against the pillow on her bed where she'd been sitting as she sobbed, confessing the horrible things she'd "done" with Father Bernard. It was her fault, she said. She caused it. She just couldn't get all her lessons right, and she needed to be chastened, she explained. But it felt wrong and it frightened her and she couldn't do it anymore. She had tried to make him stop, but he threatened that her disobedience would be an evil that would harm herself and her family. Especially her family, the priest threatened. Her disobedience would cause her to be taken from her family. He threatened that her parents would be excommunicated and everyone in her family would descend into Hell. Despite his threats she could endure no more. She would not go to church and Father Bernard, no, never again.

Madeline sat on the bed, reaching out to her thirteen year old daughter, horrified that Marilee must have endured years of abuse at the hands of their most trusted family institution. Madeline's face, streaked with tears, was frozen in a white mask, her mind paralyzed with conflict: disbelief, betrayal, revulsion, grief, fear, all bound together in a tight knot that threatened to cause her to vomit in disgust on her daughter's bedroom floor.

Frank felt no such paralysis. He clenched his fists and held his arms frozen in mid-air. He had struck the wall and screamed his rage. He looked to his terrified wife and daughter; he saw his duty to provide assurance and comfort to them, not to terrorize them by indulging his rage against the walls of their home.

"God! Holy Mother of God! Holy Jesus born of Mary, what have we done to offend God that He would let loose this monster against our child!"

It was the longest, most terrible night, one they never dreamed in their darkest nightmares could ever visit them; once visited upon them, it became a corruption of faith and authority.

"You monstrous spawn of Satan who professes to wear the cloth of our Church and speak in the name of our Saviour, you miserable Hell spawn ... How DARE you put your hands on my child!"

Frank stood, shaking with rage, in the Priest's office, his large hands gripping the edge of the massive carved desk lest he leap over it and strangle the life from the fat-bellied, robed caricature of a human being sitting in the oversized chair.

"Your child? You accuse ME of touching your child?! I certainly did no such thing, Mr. Jacobs. In all my years as priest in this church, I have never done such a thing. It is YOUR child who tells damnable lies, Mr. Jacobs. She has been a headstrong and willful child, slow to obey and quick to neglect her lessons!