Faces of Beth, page 24
other random texts. Framed diplomas, certificates of completion, and
awards hung on the walls for several different priests and nuns. Most
of the furniture was old, oak, dark, and the office smelled of
cinnamon.
This was exactly the kind of place Andrew could imagine being
summoned for getting in trouble in class. He’d heard tales of nuns
hitting kids’ knuckles with rulers. His grandmother used to tell him
stories of when she’d gone to Catholic school and had been
disciplined in such ways. It was the ruler or the paddle. This was the
kind of office where such disciplinary measures would be carried out.
“Sitting here, I kind of feel like I’m in trouble,” Andrew said with a
snicker.
Nobody else laughed. Alex’s fingernails scraped nervously at her
wooden armrest.
“I’m sorry Sister Antoinette is not here to share this moment with
us,” Sister Mary Francis said. “She was there from the beginning, the
beginning being when he first came to the school and first began
leading the sermons. This was before Bethany came to study with
us.”
Alex kept her face lowered, her eyes in her lap.
“Do you remember much about your time here with us?” the nun
asked, her question obviously directed at Beth, even though her
eyes remained straight down the middle of them both. When
Andrew’s wife didn’t answer, Sister Mary Francis added, “It is okay to
speak to me.”
“No, ma’am,” Alex replied. “I… I don’t want to talk.”
Andrew wasn’t used to hearing Alex so serious. So shy. She
usually used the word “nope” more than “no.” She was clearly under
the impression she needed to behave herself in the nun’s presence.
Order and obedience had been established with Sister Mary Francis.
This wasn’t fear like it had been out in the hallway with Father
Frederick. Alex was afraid of priests and for obvious reason.
He wondered if this was the nun Father Dennis kept insisting he
ask Gore about. Was this the nun he mentioned repeatedly?
But why? It’s clear Alex isn’t afraid of her.
“Her voice,” the nun said. “It’s so childlike. Does she always
speak like this?”
Andrew wasn’t sure how much to tell her. He was still untrusting
of this place but knew if anybody might be able to help, it was this
church. If they’d been the start of it all, maybe they could end it.
He must have let the silence linger too long because she added,
“I ask because I’ve also studied quite a bit of child psychology during
my years here and—”
“She has dissociative identity disorder,” Andrew informed her.
Sister Mary Francis stopped talking. In her silence, Andrew once
again felt like a child about to be scolded for interrupting the teacher.
He felt a strong urge to apologize.
“I’m sorry for interrupting,” he said.
“No need to apologize. That is good information to have. I’m
thinking. I do recall this child, and it’s my turn to apologize as I know
it might sound cold, but I obviously remember Bethany because of
the events that led to the fire.” She passed an open palm across her
face, letting her fingertips touch her closed eyelids. “A fire that took
my eyes and has led to a lot of therapy of my own. So, the events
themselves are still quite fresh in my mind. But some of the details of
the children involved evade my memory. I remember Bethany clearly.
She was a sweet child. So young and so innocent. Absolutely
stunning. I’m afraid it was that pure beauty and innocence that
seemed to call to the evil entity stalking our halls.”
Is she blaming Beth’s beauty and innocence for what happened
to her?
“You see,” she continued, “evil is drawn to the divine. It has a lust,
if you will, a desire to destroy the exquisite, the most immaculate of
God’s creations. Bethany was a child like no other. She sang like an
angel. Did she ever tell you she was in the choir even at such a
young age?”
Andrew glanced over at Alex. A smile had formed at her lips. She
was proud of the things Sister Mary Francis was saying about her.
“How old was she when this all happened?” the nun asked
herself, sifting through her mental Rolodex for the answer. “I believe
she was in kindergarten, maybe the first grade.”
“She was six,” Alex said, “like me.”
“Six, like you,” Sister Mary Francis agreed. “Yes, I suppose that
makes perfect sense. That was when you were born, right little one?”
Alex shrugged.
“How many personalities does she have now?”
Andrew chuckled, not in amusement, but in a bit of disbelief as
he thought of how he should answer the question. “Well, that’s a
tough one. I thought it was originally five.”
“Please explain,” the nun said.
“Well, Alex, who’s here now. The six-year-old. Peter, a teenage
boy. Ruby, kind of the um…” he was too embarrassed to flat out say
the slutty one, so he went with, “the promiscuous one, Gore the
aggressive one, and I thought Father Dennis was another.”
Sister Mary Francis’s smile faded. Her lips were a flat line. Her
face showed no emotion at all when she said, “Please explain
further.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Andrew said.
“I thought you were simply here seeking a reason for her
condition, answers to questions because of the trauma she’s
experiencing due to the dissociative—”
“No, that’s not it at all,” Andrew said. “We’ve been dealing with
that our whole relationship. I’ve come to deal with it by considering
her personalities family members. You know, Alex is the daughter,
Peter the son, Ruby the sister-in-law, Gore the brother-in-law, and I
thought Father Dennis was the grandfather. I know it’s strange, but
it’s my own way of keeping myself sane about it all. When each one
comes out of his or her room and takes over, I simply pretend I’m
dealing with that family member until Beth is back in place.”
“I understand, and I think it’s a very mature way of dealing with it.
I commend you, Andrew. It sounds like you love Bethany very much.
But I’m concerned about this Father Dennis personality.”
“He’s not a personality at all, Sister. At first, I thought he was. He
was only coming out when it was his turn, or at least that’s what I
thought, you see – the others – they all take turns. It’s a pretty
consistent rotation. Alex, Peter, Beth, Ruby, Gore, Father Dennis.
But then the old man became violent. He would throw me across the
room and demanded I asked Beth about the nun.”
“The nun?”
“The nun. So, I thought maybe something happened with a nun,
like maybe it was a nun who…” Andrew turned to Alex and said,
“Honey, close your ears for a second.” Alex did as she was told and
Andrew leaned in closer to Sister Mary Francis as he whispered, “I
thought maybe a nun had molested her here. It’s the only thing that
seemed horrible enough to fracture her mind the way it is. I mean I’m
no psychiatrist, but I work at a hospital, at Myles-Bend, and I know
how this stuff works. It’s usually something pretty damn – I’m sorry –
pretty darn serious to mess someone up the way Beth’s been
traumatized.”
“Maybe if I explain what happened here,” the nun replied, “it’ll
help shed some light on things. One specific nun does come to mind.
A nun who wasn’t a nun at all. Pure evil is sometimes too cunning,
too manipulative for the human mind to fathom.”
A nun who wasn’t a nun at all. Andrew thought of The Quiet
Man’s words. The priest who is not a priest.
Sister Mary Francis put both hands to her eyelids as she told the
story.
“Father Dennis came to us when the church was in dire need of
direction. We were struggling with the girls’ school and the head
priest before him, Father Christopher, was old and very sick most of
the time. So, we saw Father Dennis’s arrival as a blessing. He was
kind, he always wore a bright smile, and he was so full of energy and
light. You would think the man never slept. He bounced around
constantly.
“He was a scholarly man, too. That is, he would read not only the
Holy Bible but other texts. He once explained to me that it was
important to understand the words of other men in order to battle the
wits of wise men. One book, in particular, he gained a special
interest in. He became quite fond of a black book that appeared
similar to a Bible with its silk pages and tiny words. It had no title
though. None that I could see. It seemed the longer he studied this
book, the more he lost that energy and light I spoke of. He stayed up
late, slept in, stumbled in tardy to his sermons.
“His skin became paler, dark rings formed around his eyes, his
clothes were wrinkled, and his breath was foul enough that others
began to complain about it.
“Father Dennis had changed. First, it seemed to be only his
appearance and his hygiene. Then he started making odd remarks in
the hallways, sexual innuendos if you will. He would say things to the
nuns that would make their faces beet red and would have them
coming to Sister Antoinette and Sister Pamela. They tried, together,
to have a talk with him, but he convinced them he had no devious
intentions and the nuns had simply misunderstood.
“He was our priest. It wasn’t yet to the point we would report him
to the bishop. To do that is a big deal and would cause problems in
our parish. We all understood we needed to give him a chance and
we hoped now that he was aware that he was making people
uncomfortable, maybe he would refrain from these strange
behaviors.
“It only got worse. One of the sisters who reported him, Sister
Evelyn, mysteriously fell down the stairs one evening when going to
check the children. She broke her arm and her collarbone. Too
frightened to talk about it, she left the church after that, but not
before telling her best friend, me, that Father Dennis pushed her
down the stairs. If she’d told me sooner, perhaps I could have done
something that would have stopped the fire, but she told me much
too late.
“While the nuns grew more and more suspicious of Father
Dennis, everyone else thought he was a saint gifted with the powers
of God. He began to speak in tongues during his sermons. I have
heard many people speak in tongues over the years, but I promise
you, I had never before then and have never until this day heard
anything like what Father Dennis was speaking. It wasn’t the word of
God. This was something that sounded like it came from the pits of
hell. And while he did it, people would drop to their knees in the
pews and raise their hands to him. Tithes rose during his sermons,
people flocked to the church to see him.
“Teenagers even attended mass, and we’d always had problems
getting teenagers through our doors. This was when things got
worse still. Father Dennis began to tell dirty, filthy, sexual jokes in the
middle of mass. Some of the older members of the church were
disgusted and left but the teenagers laughed hysterically. They told
their friends and soon even more teenagers attended. The more
arrivals, the dirtier the jokes.
“It was at this time Father Dennis began to pay special attention
to the children in the choir. He would call them out by name and
mention how pretty their hair was or how soft their skin was or how
big their eyes were. For Bethany, it was always her lips. He would
comment during his sermons about how one must have lips of a
goddess to produce the voice of an angel. We, the nuns, were
disgusted by this.
“Father Dennis started spending his afternoons walking through
the halls of the school. This was an all-girls school, mind you. He
had no business in these halls. If they were in the classrooms, and if
he were a normal priest, sure, he could come visit and talk to them
about God and about manners and such. But he wasn’t a normal
priest, and he didn’t only visit during class time.
“He liked to walk the halls when the girls were eating their supper.
He would sit with them and say strange things to them. They weren’t
allowed to look at him unless he told them to. He would feed some of
them who were old enough to feed themselves. He would touch their
hands.
“Other times he would walk the halls when he knew it was bath
time for the girls. Sister Antoinette and Sister Pamela both warned
him that the hour between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. was off-limits to
everyone because the girls were having their baths and getting
ready for bed. He would still arrive, whistling as he made his way
down the hall, peering into every door and window until he found
Bethany.
“It seemed to mostly be her. She’d caught his eye. He was
smitten. Obsessed was a better word. She would disappear on the
playground and then we’d see Father Dennis open one of the doors
and let her out to rejoin us. She would throw the scraps from her
lunch tray away and on her way to the bathroom, she’d go missing.
We’d find her sitting on his lap as he showed her pictures in his black
book.
“Nobody knows exactly what happened or what he did to her, but
we all had our suspicions. Bruises appeared on her sometimes. She
began to change, too. She would hum a song and for a while, we
couldn’t figure out what it was. One of the older nuns who’d lived a
different life in the 80s recognized it as Madonna’s—”
“’Like a Prayer’,” Andrew interrupted her story.
“Yes,” Sister Mary Francis agreed.
“Unbelievable. She still hums that today. I asked her about it, and
she said she’s always liked that song.”
Sister Mary Francis closed her eyes and rolled her shoulders. “It
still gives me the chills.”
“I’m sorry for interrupting,” Andrew said. “Please keep going with
the story.”
“Little Bethany would hum that song on the playground and at
bedtime. She started having a bit of a temper and even bit one of the
other girls for trying to play with her doll. She didn’t sleep much. She
would wake up screaming. Nightmares plagued her. We did our best
to keep her away from Father Dennis, but it seemed he always found
a way. This time, Sister Antoinette and Sister Pamela did report him
to the bishop. He didn’t seem to believe them. They went higher, to
the archbishop, and were reprimanded for going above the bishop’s
head. It seemed nobody would listen to them. Everyone who knew
Father Dennis loved him and refused to believe the stories.
“Meanwhile, Father Dennis’s skin grew paler, he lost so much
weight he was practically skin and bones. You would think he was
dying of a disease. Sister Pamela had the lock changed and made a
new rule that only nuns were allowed on the school side of the
church. No males at all. Period.
“All the sisters were put on rotation to walk the halls and act as
security, to safeguard the children at night as they slept, but during
lunches, dinner, and bath time, the halls were quite busy with nuns
moving about as they assisted the children. With so many of the
sisters on hand, there was no fear Father Dennis would slip by.
There didn’t seem to be a need to pay more attention to Bethany
than to anybody else since all hands were on deck, as they say, and
the deck was void of any male presence.
“That was what we thought. Until, once again, Bethany went
missing. I was on the night shift rotation that evening, and I noticed
she was not in her bed when it came time to tuck her in.
“Of course, we searched every floor of the school until we noticed
the main door had been manipulated. A piece of cardboard had been
placed in the lock to stop it from clicking shut. Nobody would know
unless they exited the school and none of us would have a need to
leave that time of evening.
“I should have taken Sister Pamela with me. I should have taken
all the others actually. I went straight to Father Dennis’s room and
what I found there still chills me to my bones. His door was unlocked,
that was how smug, how sure of himself he was. How unafraid of all
of us he was.
“I heard his deep voice singing before I ever reached for that
door, and she was humming along with him. That song. ‘Like a
