Phasmatta -ch 15-

Ryan made a groggy groaning sound as his brain spun up and tried to put together all that’d happened.

He’d spent most of yesterday filling out reports, giving statements, being interviewed, and providing information.

Everything that the police would need for their case against Mirella and her father.

As well as the numerous anonymous accomplices that’d been noted as having been at Mirella’s home.

Just in case Mirella didn’t show up for years, Ryan died, or something else happened.

That and downloading his phone completely into a computer, then pulling the hard-drive out his phone had been saved on, and sealing it. It had his GPS data of when he turned it on, location information, and usage

He didn’t get it.

Didn’t care.

The only thing that’d made him nervous was the idea of them keeping his phone.

No sooner than he’d dealt with all that, he’d gone home.

And went straight to sleep.

The clock told him it was ten after eight in the morning. Not to mention tomorrow had become today.

Which meant whoever was at his front door, and ringing it repeatedly for the last ten minutes, had literally waited for eight am to begin their assault on him.

Stumbling out of bed, still partially asleep, he made his way to the front door.

It rang again even as he made his way over.

When he got to the door he hesitated.

His mind had offered him up a stunning thought.

He should look before he answered.

Turning around he went to the security panel and tapped into the camera view for the doorbell. There was no way he’d be opening the door to just anyone. Not after almost getting killed by a serial killer.

Two thumb taps at the security panel and he saw the camera.

It was a very well dressed and rather pretty Sister Santos. She was dressed in street-clothes that any twenty-something attractive woman like herself would be wearing.

Raising his eyebrows, still not thinking properly, he decided he might as well open the door. The way she was hanging on the doorbell meant she wasn’t going to leave any time soon.

Agents of the DDF didn’t tend to leave off once they decided to do something. They tended to only dig deeper and get more involved.

Until they got every question they had answered, they didn’t relent.

“Well, to be fair, they’re the Inquisition,” mumbled Ryan as he got to the door and then opened it.

The beautiful woman looked surprised when the door opened. She blinked rapidly, her eyes stuck to his face.

“Sister,” Ryan got out in a soft huff and leaned against the door. “Wasn’t ignoring you. Sleeping. Didn’t see it was you till I checked the doorbell camera.

“Just tired. Was a… rough day. Really rough day.”

“So I hear!” agreed the Sister with a wide smile. “I’m pleased that you decided to answer the door after seeing it was me. That’s quite flattering.”

“I’d be an idiot not to open the door to a pretty lady,” Ryan agreed and nodded his head. A second after that and he had laid his head to the door, his eyes closing. “What can I do for you, Sister?”

“Call me Isadora,” answered the nun. “And before you dismiss that and think to call me Sister anyways, I should confess I’m not a traditional nun. I took oaths to god, but not the ones you know.”

Ryan raised his eyebrows, then opened his eyes, and looked to the woman in front of him.

He opened up his gaze to see her again. To see her through the Soul’s Mirror.

With the intent to look at her in a way that’d reveal more to him, rather than just how she viewed herself. He’d had enough of that experience with Mirella.

Isadora Santos was a woman that was outside of her time.

Ryan thought of the DDF as the Inquisition in a new suit.

Isadora Santos was proof that the DDF was indeed what he believed it to be. Her soul was littered with justifications for actions she’d taken, and turning them into virtues.

She’d even taken the lives of people, though Ryan got the impression they were judged to be possessed by demons and killing them, was saving them.

A nun in name, a warrior in truth.

“Oh,” Ryan mused. “Inquisition indeed. Father, too?”

“Yes. He took different oaths of faith as well than you’d expect,” confirmed Isadora. Looking at her again, Ryan got the impression she had a gun holstered at the small of her back.

“Right… then… what can I do for you, Isadora?” Ryan tried again, keeping his eyes open this time, yet still hanging onto the door.

With everything he’d gone through the day previous, he didn’t feel quite right. He was almost positive he’d end up having a break down at some point in the future when his mind unfucked itself and started to process he had once again, almost died.

“You found a great evil,” Isadora said, still smiling, still watching. “A great evil. You brought it into the light and gave closure to many. Hundreds. Their families will gain an ending where they thought there would never be.”

“Don’t know how to tell you this, Sister,” Ryan muttered and shook his head. “But I didn’t manage that. No bodies. No identification. It’s all… it’s guesswork at best.”

Isadora lifted a hand, covered her mouth with the fingertips, and laughed. A laugh that sounded rich and warm. A laugh that was musical and woke Ryan up fully.

Her hand came down after her laugh came to an end.

“Ah, it seems you’ve yet to hear the news. Perhaps this is a bit telling on myself, but… they found Mirella’s trophies,” Isadora said, her accent coming out a bit more pronounced. It was an accent that Ryan felt was similar to the Spanish he knew, but it also wasn’t. He knew that the Spanish spoken in Spain was different than what was spoken here in North America. “Driver’s licenses. She kept driver’s licenses. They were all stacked, back to front, and bound in a shoe-box. In her crawl space and hidden away. I do not know the exact numbers but it’s a significant number.”

Trophies.

That’s… well… I guess.

Especially as an EMT.

She probably used to go into wallets to find information and that just carried over?

Maybe?

Dunno.

“So, yes,” Isadora concluded and raised her eyebrows. “You have given a great number of people closure. For those who were faithful, we can also provide for them last rights with precision.

“Though, so far, they were unwilling to tell me the location of the bodies. Given what you said about there being no bodies, it is perhaps a problem I cannot solve.”

“Well,” Ryan began, meeting the woman’s eyes and holding her gaze. “It seems maybe I can help you. I know where all the bodies were… were… what was left of them was put into the ground. I don’t know who went where, or that we’d find them all, but I could easily show you where.”

“Ah! Yes? You could? That is-yes. ¡Vale!” Isadora declared with a strength in her words.

Balley? I… what?

“You will take me there, yes?” Isadora said, her eyes widening. Her arm pressed in tight to the purse at her side and crushed it to her hip.

“I mean, yeah, sure,” Ryan agreed. “Police probably won’t let us anywhere near though while they’re doing their thing.”

“No, no. That is not a problem. I will solve this,” she said excitedly. “The Bishop of Wheeling-Charleston has already spoken with the Captain. They are working to make sure this does not become a large issue for the media.”

Ryan felt like maybe some of those words didn’t belong where she’d put them, but he found the way she spoke rather enchanting. Much the same way he did with Misha.

“We will get access. It is a shame Father Navarrao had to go tend to an issue, but I am here, and I can assist with the rites. I have much more ability than a normal nun, you see?”

Isadora had turned her head to the side, opened her purse, and plucked out a phone. She started tapping at it and her eyes turned to him.

“You should dress. The view is not terrible, you see, but we cannot leave with you in nothing but boxers,” she chided him, then gestured at his apartment with her free hand. “You go dress. I will remain here at the door.”

Not waiting for him, she pressed the fingers of one hand to his chest and moved him backward, then closed the door on her own.

Uh?

Walking over to the security panel, Ryan tapped it.

Isadora hadn’t moved away from the door or the doorbell camera.

Feeling a bit curious, and paranoid, Ryan hit the volume button and moved it up a bit.

“—yes. He seems to know the location of the bodies,” Isadora was saying. “He is very trustworthy. I have put my faith in him. No. He believes in all things evenly. It is well.

“Good. Thank you. We only need access to the location around the home. Yes. Exactly. Yes. Thank you.

“Ah, we can do that. Though that’s more in line with the Father and—”

Ryan moved away from the panel and went to get ready.

He’d eavesdropped on her enough and felt rather guilty.

***

Ryan looked at the woods.

The serial killer scary woods where there were more corpses than many graveyards had. A place he really didn’t want to come back to any time soon at all.

Yet even as he stood here, he knew he would’ve been coming back here today regardless of who’d shown up at his door this morning.

Glancing at the attractive and distracting Sister Isadora Ryan felt his mouth screw up in a frown.

She was currently clutching something on a chain. He couldn’t tell if it was a prayer rosary or a crucifix, but in either case she was clearly using it as a conduit for prayer.

“This place is very wrong,” she murmured with a shake of her head while standing at the front of her own car.

Ryan’s car had yet to turn up.

“Its—¡Madre mía! It’s just wrong. It’s all wrong. Wrong,” she stated firmly and shook her head.

Grimacing, Ryan looked at the woods again.

He couldn’t disagree with her.

Reaching to the censer hanging on his plate carrier, he tilted it to the side. Pulling out the lighter, he set it’s contents to smoldering and let it dangle.

It would soothe all the lost souls in these woods. It wouldn’t antagonize, bother, or subjugate them.

They were already starting to appear as well. Standing between tree trunks or behind them.

Peering out at him from bushes and foliage.

If Mirella was in those woods, or anyone helping her, they wouldn’t be casually watching here at the edge.

Adjusting the blessings stuffed into the plate carrier he then touched the holy-water pistol. Making sure it was there.

At his left hip he’d tied up a large salt-shaker can.

Across his throat were all the religious icons he had left after losing the car.

Thankfully most of his primary gear had been in the apartment and he hadn’t lost his most important gear.

“I honestly did not think to see you like this,” Isadora remarked with a fluttering hand wave at him. “You appear to me more as a monk. A… warrior priest. Yet when we first met I saw you as a warrior of the physical sense.”

“Heh. Yeh,” Ryan remarked and forced his feet to move him forward. Into the woods. “I get that. But that part of my life is over. I work mostly with the deceased now. They’re easier to understand.”

“You find them easier? Then… the living?” Isadora asked, falling in beside him.

He noted that her left hand still held the religious device, a rosary he now saw, and her right hand had dipped into her purse.

“She’s not in the woods. Nor… is anyone else other than police,” Ryan remarked. “No one that would disturb the spirits. They’re all here. Around us. They’re watching.”

More and more of those that’d died here began to move toward him once more as they had previously. They seemed far less agitated now though.

No longer filled tension.

Or fear.

“I… feel them,” Isadora whispered, her hand coming out of her purse. As if she realized she needed no physical weapon here. “I—”

The beautiful woman’s voice failed in a squeak.

Becoming nothing but silence as Ryan led her through the woods.

He was fairly certainly he didn’t need to try very hard to find a location that he wanted. The police would likely be all over it when he got close.

Not to mention the spirits that’d met him at the edge of the woods began moving out in front of him.

As if they were heralds of his arrival.

“They mean you no harm, Sister,” Ryan offered with a grim smile. “They’re just lost. Untethered. Bound by only what remains of their bodies and where they were truly cut from the world.

“Though I do think there’s a darkness in this wood. An evil that has been building. Each death laying down the groundwork for it to become something far more sinister.

“That’s where you and the Father likely need to come in. I can’t do anything for the land or even all the spirits here. That’s not something I can do for something this large.

“You can help send off quite a few of them given your-your religious convictions. I’m afraid I lack such spiritual fortitude. I’m more of a guide and guide post for the inbetween areas.

“I can banish those bound to a single location and when they’re trapped in it. But an entire forest? No, that’s… not something I can handle.”

“I can see why you were willing to bring me here,” whispered the sister.

Ahead, Ryan could see police yellow tape strung between trees.

There were also a number of people actively digging in a spot that he could see through the trees. Though he couldn’t quite see much of what was actually happening.

“You would be a very proficient Knight Templar, Ryan,” Isadora whispered as they moved further through the trees.

“Oh. They not as extinct as people think they are?” Ryan asked and held up his hands as several pairs of wary police eyes snapped toward his approach. The crunch and pop of branches and twigs made it hard for him to get close quietly.

“They serve,” answered Isadora simply. “The papal bull that was issued was only to bring them out of the public. That is all.”

“You’re sharing an awful lot,” muttered Ryan as the police started moving toward him and Isadora quickly. One even had their hand on their service weapon at their side.

“Hello, we are here on behalf of the Bishop,” Isadora called out with some volume to the approaching officers. “I assume he told you we were coming, ¿Verdad?”

“Uh, what?” replied one of the officers.

“Yes, we heard from the Bishop,” answered a different officer. “You can-it’s fine. Don’t get involved in the digging or sifting. We’re trying-it-that… just… do what you need to be but please be careful.”

Ryan now saw what was going on.

The police had mobilized a large number of people who were all now digging into the pits Ryan had seen previously. The one he was closest to had two people digging.

Emptying their shovels into what looked like sifting machines. Large wooden things with mesh bottoms that would be moved back and forth to let things fall into various trays.

Like a stacked set of boxes with the top one being the smallest.

Others were actively sifting the boxes and then emptying the contents into a different pile.

Holy shit this is going to take a long time.

A long time and gruesome as hell.

“Of course. We’re here to help those who were taken,” Isadora answered as she and Ryan moved passed the strung up yellow police tape.

Ryan grimaced at that and then looked around.

The reason he needed to be here was to find Vern.

He’d been his partner in this little mystery hunt and he wasn’t going to leave him here. Not without making sure he had what he needed to move on.

Wasting no time at this pit, as Mullins wasn’t here, Ryan began moving away. The censer that hung from his plate-carrier slid back and forth through the air smoothly.

Reaching to the religious icons at his neck he sorted through them till he felt the crucifix that represented Mullin’s faith in particular.

“Vern?” Ryan whispered as he moved away from the closest pit and toward another in the distance.

Two ghosts off to Ryan’s right turned to look at him as he moved past.

Then Carl slid up out of the ground. Only his neck and head coming up and out of the dirt.

“He’s further ahead. To the right,” Carl offered up. There was no laughter in his words.

No teasing.

Just an answer to Ryan’s unasked question.

Where was Vern?

Ryan let go of the icon and kept moving. Passing several other pits.

He kept to what Carl had told him.

Further ahead and to the right.

When there was an odd path that led to the right after a while, he took it.

At the end of the path, Ryan found another batch of people.

Digging and sifting.

Looking entirely uncomfortable, grim, determined, and unwilling to leave.

Ryan noted that a great many of them didn’t look like police, but volunteers.

Off to the side was Vern. Crouched low over an undisturbed patch of earth and watching the ongoing situation.

“Ryan,” Vern said, his head turning to watch Ryan’s approach. “I’m glad to see you’re well. Though, you seem a bit… dressed for a fight.”

Ryan gave the detective a rictus of a grin and slowly moved over to where the man was. Ignoring the diggers and sifters entirely.

Turning around and putting his back to them, Ryan looked out into the trees.

“I suppose I am,” Ryan allowed in a very quiet voice. “Brought the nun with me. She’s going to see about cleansing the area I guess. Releasing people.”

“Ah. I felt her arrive. It was like a cool breeze on a hot day,” Mullins explained with a sigh. Then he stood up, brushing his ethereal hands against his knees. “When you left… it felt like I should remain here. I came back this way and found what’s left of me.”

“Gave your badge to Tilly,” Ryan said rather than responding to Vern’s forlorn statement. The man sounded rather bothered at the fact that his body was gone. “She was rather happy to have it. It was obvious she didn’t much care for the fact that I had it and not her to begin with.”

Vern only chuckled at that, then ran a hand over his face. Followed by a sigh.

“We got her. Got the serial killer,” he whispered, a small smile curling up the corners of his mouth. “Put a stop to it. Ended it. There’s no-where for her to go now that won’t lead back to this.”

“We got her,” Ryan agreed. “We got her, partner. Though, it feels like maybe this is where we go different paths?”

The last was a question more than a statement. Ryan was guessing here, but it felt like Vern was on the edge of crossing over into the after.

“Yeah,” agreed the detective. “Yeah. Gonna leave the badge with Tilly and let things move past me. Past where I-I stopped. I get the feeling I could push if I wanted to but I’m tired.

“I’m tired, son. Real tired. I don’t think I’d be much of a partner from here on out. Just a… dead-weight.”

The man had said it like he needed to drop a pair of sunglasses with those final two words.

“Agree to disagree. Such a funny funny guy,” offered Ryan with a soft snicker. “Think you’ll need help crossing over?”

“I don’t think so,” Mullins answered. “Can feel a pull at me. It wants me to go somewhere. Feel it. What’s… what is it? What am I going to?”

“I don’t know. Carl doesn’t know. No one alive or dead knows,” explained Ryan. “Only those fortunate enough to pass over. Though—”

Ryan stopped as the soft sound of twigs and leaves rustling and crunching was comign his way.

Turning his head, Ryan found Isadora moving toward him. Her eyes locked to him as she closed in on him.

Grimacing, Ryan was not very happy about her coming toward him. He’d wanted to be able to say goodbye to Mullins.
Their time together had been short but the man had been there when he needed him. He’d been a partner to him that he hadn’t realized he needed.

“The detective is here,” she said. It was a statement, not a question at all. “I can sense him. It’s a warm presence. One at peace. May I offer him my Commendation of the Dead and a prayer for eternal rest? Is this his resting place?”

“Oh thank heavens,” Mullins said in a tired and weary voice. As if her offer had been exactly what he’d been wanting, but hadn’t dared asked for.

“It is,” Ryan answered in a choked whisper. “He’s here. This is where Mirella left what remained of him. His spirit is here as well. He’s quite calm and… he said he could feel the call of whatever came after.”

“I envy you, Ryan,” Isadora said, then lifted her rosary up and held it in both hands. “It is a blessing to be able to see the true mysteries of all things with an open mind and heart.”

Saying nothign more, she closed her eyes, bowed her head, and seemed to be focusing entirely on praying for Vern.

Whom, smiled at Ryan, and then faded away into nothing. With little more than a head-nod before he completely vanished.

Ryan nodded his head, looked down to his boots, and watched as the censer that hung free drifted in small lazy circles.