Free John Jordan05 - Blood Sacrifice by Michael Lister Page A

how you both wound up in the clearing.” Father Thomas nodded, his eyes looking up and off into the distance, his face wincing with the first images of memory.
    “I’ve been doing this a long time,” he said, “and I’ve never seen anything like it. She started out doing all the vile stuff you’d expect—stuff she would’ve seen in movies. She spit out obscenities at me, touched herself sexually, and—”
    “I thought she was strapped to the bed?” Steve said.
    “All but one hand,” he said. “She couldn’t do it. She asked me to, but I told her one hand was enough.”
    “So her hand was free to do sexual stuff to herself?”
    If talking about sexual matters embarrassed Father Thomas, he gave no indication. On the contrary, he seemed quite comfortable with the subject. He didn’t blush or grow tentative, nor did he become aggressive in an attempt to overcompensate. I was reminded how much I disliked people making assumptions about me in general or my sexuality in particular because I was a minister, and realized I had done the same thing to him—though in my defense he had taken a vow of celibacy.
    “And violence—to herself and to me,” he said. “I should have strapped her free hand down, but by the time I knew what was going on, I couldn’t.”
    “Whatta you mean you couldn’t?”
    “It was too strong. I tried, but with both my hands and all my weight I couldn’t hold it down.”
    As tired and frayed as the rest of us looked, Father Thomas looked worse—and it wasn’t just fatigue or the result of enduring an event as obviously traumatic as he had. It was how frail and feeble he was. Maybe what Sister Abigail had said about his condition was more than an attempt at making him seem innocent. Maybe he really was physically incapable of the brutality done to Tammy.
    “Which hand?”
    Father Thomas thought about it for a moment, looking up in the other direction this time.
    “Her left,” he said.
    “Father, Tammy was right-handed.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It wasn’t her strength I was dealing with anyway.”
    “No, if she really strapped herself to the bed like you said, wouldn’t she have used her right hand to do it?”
    He nodded. “I would think she would.”
    “Sure you don’t want to change your story now? Before it’s too late?”
    “I’m telling the truth, Steve. I’m sure the medical examiner can tell you which of her wrists was bound.”
    I wasn’t sure if Father Thomas was telling the truth—I was inclined to doubt it—but the longer we talked, the more thoroughly convinced I became that he was telling what he believed to be the truth.
    “I’m sure she’ll be telling us a lot of things,” Steve said.
    “And every one of them will confirm what I’m saying’s the truth,” Father said.
    “We’ll talk about that some more when I get the autopsy report back,” Steve said, “but for now I need you to explain to me why you carried her outside.”
    “I didn’t.”
    “You carried her down the path to the clearing close to the Intracoastal Waterway. Don’t tell me you don’t remember. We found both of you in the clearing.”
    “I didn’t carry her. I followed her. She ran out of the cabin. I thought she was going to hurt herself so I ran after her.”
    “Was the exorcism over?”
    “No.”
    “Why did you unstrap her?”
    “I didn’t.”
    “Then why’d you let her do it?”
    “I didn’t
let
her do anything. Besides, she didn’t unstrap herself.”
    “Father,” Steve said in a weary, incredulous voice, “if you didn’t unstrap her and she didn’t unstrap herself, who—wait, let me guess.”
    “Be careful, Steve. Don’t play around and poke fun at evil. All I did was underestimate it, and look what’s happened. Take it too lightly and you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
    Steve let out a heavy sigh. “How did Tammy get out of the straps?”
    “All throughout the rite, her body contorted into a variety of forms,” he said. “Things