Page 4 of Lucifer's Revenge
“Honestly? I have no clue.” She took a bite of her own pizza and stared off into space as she got her thoughts together. “First, I don’t know if it has anything to do with my name, or not.”
“What does ‘Lilith’ have to do with anything?”
“Are you religious?”
“Not really, I know someone is watching my every step, and when my times comes, they’ll open their ledger to my name and tell me if I was good or not. Other than that, not really.” Sally shrugged as she continued to eat.
“Same here, but Lilith was Adam’s first wife. According to the bible, anyway. If you look up the meaning of Lilith, it means ‘night demon’. I think that’s why I go by Lily most of the time. I went to middle school when a new family moved into the neighborhood, and when they found out my name was Lilith, they tried to run me and my family out of town on the rails because they said I was evil. They did everything in their power to get my family discredited on everything we did. Dad’s job, Mom’s, my older brother’s football scholarship.” She sipped her wine and looked at Sally with a grin. “I think that’s where my love of research came in.”
“I know this is getting off topic, but what happened?”
“Because these guys were so relentless in trying to get us to leave town, I started doing some research on that family. It took several weeks, but by the time I was done with them, it was a mess, and the entire county was out for blood. Not mine, nor my family’s, these new people’s.”
“Oh my god, what happened?”
“Do you want the long version, or the nutshell?”
“Nutshell, please.”
“Okay, it turned out the ‘father’, and I use that word loosely, of the family was a cult leader. All his children, there were eight of them, had been kidnapped from their homes at an early age and brought into the family to worship the ground he walked on.When the girls, they were all girls, turned fourteen, he married them, and had sex with them. I did my research, and was able to get some DNA from the girls in my class. I didn’t know what to do with it, but once I couldn’t go any further in my research, I went to the local police station. I asked to talk to the person in charge. I think they only humored me until I started producing kidnapped open police case file numbers, and I had paid for an age enhancement program. It turned out that seven of the girls kidnapped looked like the current girls living in the home. They took the DNA of one of the samples I took, and a few weeks later, they called me in and asked me how I got it. I told them I got it from the silverware at the school. As soon as they were done with it, I used a napkin to put that and the spoon in a plastic bag. It turned out the kidnapped girl’s DNA was in the system, you know, in case they found a dead body and needed it for comparison.” She shrugged as she grabbed another slice of pizza and settled back in her seat.
“Anyway, it turned out I was right, and it did take some time, but they were finally able to get the DNA back from all the samples I took. All were formerly kidnapped victims. Oh, and what I didn’t know at the time was that this family had started taking boys and instead of having sex with them himself, he had other members of his cult, pedophiles that liked little boys, do the deed with them. From the time they moved to my town, and started harassing me and my family because of the meaning of my name, and the arrests were made, it was a year.”
“Why so long if they had all the information?”
“They wanted to build a big case against them, and they, the authorities, wanted to see how far this asshole would go. They got him dead to rights when the neighbors called the police on a domestic disturbance. It turned out that the newest kidnapped victim had only been ten when he tried to have sex with her. She started screaming and yelling, then all the others did thesame. The neighbors said it sounded like someone was being murdered. I heard the 9-1-1 tape, you could hear the screaming in the background. They got a team together, and raided the place. By the time they got everything sorted out, CPS was there, and again, it took a few weeks, but they were able to get the stories from the children. The ‘father’ and ‘uncles’, there were no adult women in the home, were arrested and weren’t granted bail.”
She sighed as she finished her second slice of pizza, wiped her mouth, and picked up her glass of wine to cradle in her hands. “The trial was a frenzy of media from all over the country. In the end, the victims were returned to their homes, the adult males were sentenced to life in prison.” She looked at Sally with a grin. “I remember, I was only thirteen at the time, but I remember walking up to him and saying that being a night demon was a hell of a lot better than being a sick fuck like he was. I used those words. Then I looked him dead in the eye and told him that if he hadn’t thought he was superior than everyone else just because of a name, then no one would have found out his secret. See, I also had to testify as to why I did the research I did, what led me to the conclusion that things weren’t right. I also let him know that this night demon will be in his thoughts every night for the rest of his life and that all his new roommates will teach him what it’s like to be a pedophile in a maximum security prison.”
“Jesus, Lil, that took a lot of balls.”
“Yes, it did. The day I turned eighteen, he asked to see me. I went there with the cop I had originally told my story to. I just wanted to see how the previous five years had treated the guy. I think it was morbid curiosity.” She grinned and sipped her wine. “I wasn’t disappointed. The guy was sick, I mean like he had HIV, something he got while in prison, and it was eating him from the inside out. He wanted to tell me that I lived upto my name, because he didn’t dream of me every night, he had gut wrenching, screaming nightmares of me so badly that he was put in the mental ward of the hospital. He just wanted to ask my forgiveness so he could get some rest. I know this next part was cruel of me, but I still feel the same way. I told him that I would never forgive him for trying to act superior over the female race by kidnapping, raping, and enforcing his misguided beliefs on poor innocent children. I told him that whatever hell he’s living through in the prison was only a tenth of what he will endure in his afterlife. I told him I had a personal connection to Lucifer, and he was waiting for him to arrive after his body on earth succumbed to the disease. Like I said, it was mean and cruel of me, but I couldn’t see forgiving him just because he thought he had paid enough penance for what he had done to over two dozen children over the years. To this day, deep in my heart, I still believe that he wasn’t sorry for what he did. There was something in his expression that enjoyed telling me what he had done to those children. I knew he wasn’t sorry, so I didn’t give him the one thing he wanted,myforgiveness.”
The two women were silent for several moments before Sally shivered and shook her head in wonder. “Damn, I know it sounded cold when you told me you wouldn’t forgive him, but I can see you saying it. I for one will be the first one to tell you that I do not think for one instant that you are like what your name tries to portray. You are not a night demon, you are the most joyous person I have ever met.”
“Thank you.” They picked up their meal, refilled their glasses, and settled back in their seats. “With that out of the way, I have to say that I saw evil in that man from the day I met him. Oh, and his name was Merril Wilson. He died three years after he asked to speak with me, and I never even went to his funeral. The papers tried to reopen the case by hounding me and I gave one interview. I said on live television, that if the mediawants to portray pure evil as a newsworthy segment, then the interviewers, TV stations, and newspapers were no better than that man was. I refused to give him a name.”
“Good for you. How did that go over?”
“I found out later, it wasn’t live, they lied to me, and not one newspaper, radio, or TV station aired it. They said it was better not to dig up the past.”
“Good.”
“Okay, you asked me why I liked going to these paranormal spots. I can’t give a definitive answer. Like I said, I knew pure evil, and I’ve seen and actually enjoy the local haunted houses. However, I get a different feeling when I visit the sites I do.”
“What type of feeling?”
“I feel that most of them are misguided spirits that are trying to get their true story told, and can’t pass over until people know the truth.” She shrugged and shook her head. “Like I said, it’s a different feeling.”
“Wow, I never thought of something like that.”
“I know, a lot of places I go to, I see on those TV shows I like. I like to research the ‘spirits’ before I go, and if I feel a presence while I’m there, I ask questions I encounter in my research. I’m not saying I’m a medium, or I can talk to them, but sometimes, I feel as if they have been either put to rest, or moved on.”
They sat there, lost in their own thoughts for several minutes before they settled in and decided to watch a TV show. This was one that Sally had been talking to Lil at work about, and by the time it was time to call it a night, Lil invited Sally to spend the night, and they both continued to binge watch where normal people were transformed into other characters by simple makeup tricks.
Chapter 3
“We ready to move onto New Business?” Luc asked his fellow club members at their weekly church meeting in the upstairs room at the bar the Hell’s Coffin club owned and operated.
