CHAPTER 2: Her Nine Lives.

Part 2.0: The Devil in Her.

A little girl hid behind the skirts of her social worker, flea-bitten, stuffing-leaking bunny rabbit gripped tightly in her left hand. Marshmallow was its name. The only keepsake she was allowed to keep with her after the accident.

The social worker- Maria- cringed slightly, but her professional, steely-eyed expression didn't falter.

For some reason, the girl gave her the creeps.

She didn't look any different- in fact she was downright adorable. Chestnut brown hair down to her waist, wide hazel-green eyes. Few freckles dotted over her nose. Short, but who could really tell? She was six.

It was weird for anyone to not like a six-year-old. Admitting it to herself made Maria feel like a right bitch. But she wasn't alone. The child was different and strange.

Her eyes, though pretty, were lamp-like- getting stared at (something the girl liked to do very much) made people on the receiving end of her gaze feel as if they were being X-rayed. She never got along well with the other children in the home. Never played in the sandbox, never spoke to them unless it was necessary. 'Pass the salt/pepper' was the most dialogue they got most days. Rarely went outside, and even when she did, she sat under a tree and read a book. Or stared some more. Unease radiated from her petite form.

Her favorite hideout was the top of the attic stairs. A visit up there had revealed to her a pile of books. Not the general child adapted Dickens they stocked their library with. No. On the shelf were books by Shakespeare. Plato. Nietzsche. Freud. Good Heavens, Maria could barely understand the first page. But flicks through the book revealed theories on homosexuality, incest and a whole other planet of bizarre ideas.

Maria, sadly, instead of identifying the child as a genius, saw her as a freak. That notion quickly spread from word of mouth and quite soon, the child was informally the house crazy person.

It was tragic. Not everyone had the mental capabilities to tell an apple from an orange. Some people were born with negative IQ figures and Maria, as well as the majority of the staff at the Caitle Foster Home were under that category. The only thing the buxom, aging woman was good for was packaging off children to homes. Which was what she was doing now, to her great relief.

Hopefully, the couple taking her in could part the child of the Devil's touch and cure her unsavory desires.

The girl, unaware of the discomfort she was unknowingly causing the older woman, huddled in some more. Her purple bunny was crushed closer to her body. The place was… scary. A graveyard, she recognized. A stone house… in a graveyard. A giant cross stood tall on the roof.

Maria rapped on the wooden door with the lopsided cast iron knocker that was attached a touch too enthusiastically. A minute later, a woman walked to the door.

"Yes?"

She flipped on the soft smile almost involuntarily, decades of practice making it effortless. And almost convincing.

"Hello. Are you Mrs. Royce?"

The woman at the door nodded, squinting through her thick glasses. Maria continued.

"I'm from the Caitle Foster Home. My name is Maria. And this… is Leah."

Leah was nudged forwards by a gentle, yet firm push. She stumbled slightly and emerged from behind Maria, almost decapitating her rabbit in her nervousness. The squinting woman's face cleared, obviously now remembering her fostering duties she had agreed to. It was the Lord's will to help those in need. After her husband passed, she had decided to take up a child to fill that loneliness. A child- something the Lord hadn't blessed her with.

The little girl blinked with her large eyes, scanning every inch of the woman in front of her. Slightly portly, shrewish eyes that had purple bags under them, a ratty nest of ginger-blonde hair. Nicotine stains on her fingers.

Leah half-expected the woman to refuse to take charge of her. Most of the other places did. Week after week, she would travel with Maria to various homes. Some kept her for a week, some less. But none of them ever called back for adoption. Her record was four weeks.

But to her surprise, the woman gruffly grunted.

"Hn. Leah, is it? You best come in then."

Maria hid her utmost delight and crossed her fingers behind her back, hoping fervently that the woman would keep the strange waif. Her smile on her face, this time real, she spoke.

"Thank you, Mrs. Royce. Please let us know if you have any problems. Although, I doubt you'll have any with Leah. She is a very well behaved child."

Please don't call. Please don't call.

And yes. Well behaved. So well behaved it was creepy.

The petticoat-clad woman half-snorted again and nodded curtly, moving aside a smidge so the girl could go in. Leah didn't move though, still staring. A smile still fixed on her face, Maria inserted some honey into her voice.

"Go on, sweetheart. Go to Mrs. Royce. She'll take care of you."

Leah looked up at Maria, putting her faith in her. And walked forwards, into the darkened house. With a gruff goodbye, Old Bag Royce (as the cul-de-sac kids called her) followed her charge, closing the door firmly behind her with a loud thud.

The social worker, if she wasn't wearing five inch heels, would have jumped up with a great whoop. Instead she settled for a happy jingle of her car keys as she walked to her sedan, a spring in her step.

The Untouchable was gone. With a little luck, this time for good. Who knows? Maybe she could be cured and taken off the highway that lead straight to lesbianism and incest, quite possibly in the future, pedophilia. Mrs. Royce would straighten her out. She was a church woman. Religion saved souls.

And six months later, Maria's wish upon the stars was granted. She stamped a seal reading 'APPROVED' onto the form that confirmed that Leah Johnson was now the daughter of Roxanne Royce, widow of Pastor Royce (may his soul rest in peace) and that the child was happy and comfortable in her new home.

And that manila folder disappeared into the depths of a filing cabinet, so full of lies that it would make Pinocchio's nose grow into a pine tree.

The child was by no definition, 'happy' or 'comfortable.'

But she didn't know that. And she didn't care, frankly. That was how the job was done. You know what they say. Out of sight, out of mind.

(One Year Later)

"Felicity, dear, come and play."

Leah, who was now Felicity in the eyes of her new mother, knew full well she needed to tread carefully. Very carefully. Mrs. Royce was beyond religious and God-fearing. She was certifiably nuts. Batshit crazy. By her calculations, Leah was now seven. She should be in school, but-in Mrs. Royce's words- she was 'touched by the Devil.'

The small girl was perturbed by the terminology. She was different? But how?

She was getting her questions answered a little by little. For one, she knew that she shouldn't read large books with too many words. The time she once unknowingly did that, she was locked in a closet for sixteen hours with no food or drink. Also, using big words or sentences, failing to pray before bed or staying out too late in the graveyard earned her a myriad of punishments depending on the 'severity of her crimes.'

The lightest being getting locked up in the dreaded closet and the worst being chained onto an altar table and getting the Devil beaten out of her.

Leah was seven- impressionable. But she didn't fail to understand that the woman was nuttier than her grandmother's pecan pie. The one she made every Sunday before the car carrying her, Leah's parents and yet-to-be-born brother went off a bridge its way back from Mass. Leah had been sick with an ear infection. She waited and waited in the daycare to be picked up.

But they never came.

She knew that Mrs. Royce could hold her composure when she was in the presence of others. She was courteous, albeit a bit rude at times and sang gospel at the local church. She was a God-fearing lady to the rest of the world, bound by the teachings of Catholicism.

Mrs. Royce saw herself as a liberator. Purging the world of evil. In her eyes, she was doing the child a great mercy with her punishments.

But Leah never saw it as that. She was always left clueless as to why she was being punished. But she didn't need to learn the same lesson twice. Whatever she was punished for, she didn't do again. It was the only way of survival- she didn't have the luxury to question Mrs. Royce's motives. Or why she had the Devil in her.

"Coming, Mother."

She spoke the way she had seen some children in the park speaking to their mothers. Loud, chirpy and bright. She found that this thoroughly enthralled Mrs. Royce.

Leah winced as she came forward, putting down the well-thumbed-through Children's Bible that the woman had forced her to read. Her back still hurt from last month's exorcism/ lashings. Having read so many books before, she was initially struck by how ridiculous the ideals were and made the foolish error of pointing it out. Rookie mistake.

She was chained to the ground and beaten. Spittle had flown from Mrs. Royce's mouth as she screamed for the demon to 'get out, get out, getoutgetout!'

Needless to say, Leah read her Bible dutifully after that. Out of fear initially. Now by choice. She still found that it was ludicrous- especially about the part with some ark that carried two of every animal in the planet. It was all poppycock. But still, with no other entertainment or books that were not about fairies, dwarves or Thumbelina's, she read it over and over again until she could recite the book by heart.

She went towards the kitchen and her new mother sat at the table with a giant mug of her special blend of spiced coffee. Leah averted her gaze and bowed her head slightly. Respecting your elders, it was called.

"Come here, child. I got a present for you."

Leah raised her head inquisitively. A present? For her? It wasn't her birthday. Maybe it was because she was so good of late?

She slowly walked forwards and picked up the box, feeling a little excited. It had been quite some time since she had something new to do. Taking the offered box, she smiled up a little shyly at Mrs. Royce. Not that she was shy- she had just worked out what kind of smile worked best. And by far, the shy variety worked the best.

"Thank you, Mother. May I please play with it now?"

The older woman smiled down nicely and nodded, yet Leah felt something that she couldn't quite place. A sense of unease. But she pushed it away. It was something she felt every day. Nothing new, really.

She unwrapped the gold foil wrapping and sat down with the box on the floor. A puzzle. A big puzzle. In times like this, even the simplest gift seemed like a Godsend. This would keep her busy for hours and the best part was that she could break it up, shuffle the pieces and start again! She turned the box over for a picture to follow, but there was none. She was undaunted. It just made it so much more exciting.

A little smile on her face, she got down to business.

Lost in her own world, she expertly slid pieces across the linoleum, snapping them into place one by one. Half of it was blank, but starting from the top right corner, it was easy enough to figure out what went where. Clouds… the sky.

She went forty-five minutes straight, not even registering the sounds around her. She forgot her lunch. Strangely enough, Mrs. Royce didn't even bother to remind her- she simply sat down at the table with her plate of Chicken Parmesan, watching the girl on the floor out of the corner of her eye. Another fifteen minutes passed.

The puzzle was almost done. The last piece.

Leah already knew that she was in deep shit. She had realized it ten minutes ago, when it became obvious to her that the puzzle was nothing but the sky. This was another test. The only reason she even completed the thing was because it bought her more time. She'd messed up royally.

She didn't dare look back the woman. She was petrified.

The last piece was slid in.

Leah didn't even get time to straighten from her hunched position over the completed puzzle before something solid came crashing into her skull and her world went dark. The last thing she heard was a feral scream of pure, unchecked rage.

The little girl lay bathed in the eerie glow of red candlelight. She was face down on a stone altar in a hidden barn somewhere on the property. And older woman was feverishly flipping through a giant, leather bound book of some sort, muttering under her breath. Or rather chanting.

Leah's eyelids fluttered as she came to.

It was dark. And cold. So cold. And her head was throbbing like a stubbed toe.

She knew where she was. She was careless and she was facing the consequences. Her back hadn't fully healed from the lashings she had received before, so she knew that today, the pain would be even more excruciating. Which would mean that being relatively quiet would be all the more difficult.

And being quiet was most important. Mrs. Royce was of the belief that physically maiming a girl of six wouldn't hurt her- no, it would hurt the demon inside her. If she screamed in pain, it meant that the treatment was ineffective, so she would double the dosage. Leah had to be quiet. Otherwise, she knew that she wouldn't be able to sleep for a good fortnight.

So she just lay there shirtless, face down on the stone table.

She heard the crazy woman chanting. That was all normal. As was the rag and the bowl of water waiting to be dyed red with her blood after her rinsing. After the rustling of papers, however, came a noise that was not normal. The sound of metal against metal. The sound of knives clinking against each other.

Mrs. Royce dipped the curved, ornate blade into a bowl of Holy Water with added spices meant for the purification of the soul. Her hand shook. It had to be done perfectly- the ritual. This was the most powerful ritual in the book. If this didn't work, nothing will. The demon was powerful. For months, it seemed as if her Felicity was fine. But the demon was still there. It was still there.

She sharply sucked in a breath. If she got it wrong, the demon could possess her. She couldn't let that happen. She couldn't fail the Lord.

"Exorcizamus te, omnis immunde spiritus, omni satanica potestas, omnis incursioinfernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica, in nomini etvirtute Domini nostril Jesu Christi, eradicare et effugare a Dei Ecclesia, ab animabusad imaginem Dei conditis ac pretioso divini Agni sanguini redemptis."

She dipped her blade into the water again and ran it through some heavily perfumed herbs, oblivious of the stifled whimpers coming from the now awakened girl.

Leah didn't understand much of what she was saying, but she caught something about blood and Satan. To say she was scared didn't even begin to cover it. She was positive Mrs. Royce was coming towards her, heels clacking, brandishing a knife. Was she going to get sacrificed? Killed?

A cloyingly sweet, disconcerting smell of lavender, cayenne pepper and something distinctly like thyme wafted towards her nose as she heard the dripping of water. She wanted to be Mrs. Royce to stop, that there was no demon, that she'd do anything she'd say, but her words simply turned to whimpers with the black dishrag she was gagged with. All she could really do was scream.

"Mmmmmph. Mmmmmh!"

The indistinguishable pleas fell on ears deafened by years upon years of untreated schizophrenia, narcissistic personality disorder and God knows what other ailments.

"Exorcizamus te, omnis immunde spiritus, omni satanica potestas, omnis incursioinfernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et sectadiabolica, in nomini etvirtute Domini nostri Jesu Christi, eradicare et effugare a Dei Ecclesia, ab animabusad imaginem Dei conditis ac pretioso diviniAgni sanguini redemptis!"

A clash of metal again, like a sword being drawn echoed through the room and Mrs. Royce's final words rose in pitch and loudness. Leah screamed, knowing that the metal was going to pierce her flesh. She wanted someone to hear her, to save her. But she knew realistically that if Mrs. Royce wanted her dead, she'd almost certainly die.

She screwed her eyes shut and she held on to the sides of the table with a knuckle-whitening vice grip. Bracing herself for a world of pain to make the whipping pale in comparison and quite possibly, her journey to Mu.

But a knife blade was not what touched her next.

Mrs. Royce gently stroked through her hair once. Twice. Thrice.

"Don't worry, Felicity, my sweet. I'll save you. I will, I promise. This won't hurt you even the tiniest bit. It'll only hurt the Devil within."

Leah screamed again, tears streaming down her face, desperately hoping- praying even.

Alas, there was no divine intervention.

A shrill shriek pierced the stillness of the night, drawing only the attention of a wayward owl, which them focused its lamp-like eyes on its mouse again. They dead lay… well… as dead as ever. There was no one to help her. Absolutely no one.

"Come on boy! Come on. No, don't! Leave that cute squirrel alone… That's it. Come on. Daddy's this way."

A great, big, fat golden retriever bounded around the tombstones, frolicking in the baby grass, reveling in the freshness of the smell. It wasn't at all bothered about the fact that it was in a land inhabited by the dead- after all, it was a dog.

Casper the Friendly Dog was dangerous to the rodent populace. It was… far too friendly. It loved the squirrels to death. Quite literally. One swift smack from his giant paw- meant to be a gesture of goodwill- was all it took to send the creatures to the little Squirrel Heaven. May their tiny souls rest in peace.

Catherine Wilkins was here to visit her husband. Her late husband. Casper tagged along, being both her best friend, as well as Doug's.

A bouquet of fresh red roses and moonflowers was clutched in her hand as she made her way along a well-trodden path between gravestones towards the particular one that she sadly knew all too well. She hadn't been there in a good six months. Catherine had fallen in love once more and had just gotten remarried. Before she met Robert, she had visited Doug every single month on the sixteenth with a bunch of fresh wildflowers. But then it stopped.

Pining over one's dead husband all the time would throw a monkey wrench into any new relationship and marriage.

So she resolved to visit him every few months. Few being six. Today was hers and Doug's wedding anniversary, hence the red roses. Simply because she loved another didn't mean that her love for the first had faded. They had never fallen out of love. He had died. Some part of her will always burn with mourning for him.

She arrived at a creamy white marble headstone with a bowing angel standing gracefully at the top, looking down at him.

Douglas Wilkins.

1974-2010.

Loving Son and Husband. Here lies a man who lived his life with kindness, compassion and altruism. May he Rest in Peace.

The epitaph was nothing special- she was in no mindset to decide at that time what the headstone would say. She didn't really give a shit. She was too busy weeping rivers to care about that. So she gave the job over to the funeral directors and this was what she got. In retrospect, she probably should have done it herself. But what was done was done.

Catherine knelt down in the grass and gently traced his face in the photo as she lay down the flowers.

"Happy Anniversary, Dougie. Casper says hi too."

She brought her knees up to her chest and let out a deep sigh. Where to even begin?

"I miss you. Everyday. I love you and I always will. I'm fine. Robert's good to me. Casper's becoming fatter by the day and I don't have the heart to reduce his diet. Ummm. Oh, and I got a promotion a couple months ago. I'm manager now, can you believe it? I boss people around all day, drink coffee and get paid for it!"

She chuckled for a bit. It was what he always said. She then let out another weary sigh and leaned against the cool marble. Casper came to her, lay down and nuzzled her belly. She smiled a little and ran he fingers through his thick fur.

"Damn. I miss you and I'm sorry I couldn't visit for so long. I hope Heaven is treating you right. At least now you can eat all the bacon in the world and not have to worry about getting fat. No, wait. That's my Heaven. You're probably holed up in some ethereal auto-repair shop."

He was always a sucker for vehicles.

Ironic it was that he was run over by some drunk fuck as he was crossing the street.

She snuggled in closer, pushing some of Casper's weight off her legs that were beginning to lose their feeling under his doggie lard. God, he was honestly fat. Something must be done. As she idly fondled his ears, she heard something. A soft moan. Like something, or someone begging for help.

She sat up and listened intently, but all was silent. She shook her head slightly and sank back down. Graveyards did drive people a little off their rocker sometimes. She was imagining things.

Twenty minutes later, she decided it was time to leave.

"Babe. I have to go now… Robert might be getting worried. I promise… I'll come to visit when I can. Watch over me, sweetheart. I know you are. I love you."

She kissed the cold stone and straightened out the flowers a little more before she roused the sleeping dog and stood up.

"Up you get, Casper. Good boy. C'mon. We're goin' home."

The retriever lazily stumbled to his feet, disgruntled at having his blissful dog nap disturbed. She clipped on his leash and with a last flying kiss goodbye, turned away from the bouquet of flowers and the marble headstone. Walking back towards the cast iron gate of the graveyard, she heard that same moan again.

She would have written it off as just her imagination if it wasn't for one thing.

She wasn't the only one who heard it this time. This time, Casper was her witness. The normally lazy dog pawed the ground with abnormal energy and vigor and whined. He heard it too. Someone was here. Someone needed help.

Thinking quickly, she unclipped the struggling dog, who promptly shot off like a bullet from a muzzle. Using her expertise in track, she gave chase. She needed to call the police- she had the phone in hand on standby. Firstly, though, she needed to confirm whether or not there was actually someone there, else she could face charges. She sincerely hoped she was wrong in the assumption that there was a murder taking place.

Running as fast as her legs took her, she jumped over short headstones as she ran. She could see the dog as a large blob of golden-brown fur. Never had she seen the obese dog run so fast for anything- not even to the car to sniff for pork rinds.

After two or three minutes, she slowed down. The dog had stopped in front of a barn and was now barking furiously at the door, scratching and whining intermittently.

"Good boy, Casper. C'mere."

Catherine called out and the dog came running back, although its gaze was sporadically turned back to the door. Yep. Something was most certainly not right.

Picking up a particularly thick branch fallen off a tree, she edged closer, Casper following her. There was the chance that there was an axe murder on the loose. No matter how much she wanted to run off and let the police deal with it, her good conscience wouldn't let her do that.

She could really end up regretting her valor. But she had to do something.

Catherine was now at the door. Her heart hammering in her chest, blood throbbing through her temples, she refrained from calling out. She had seen too many serial killer movies end badly simply because of that. Sucking in a deep breath, she slowly opened the door.

And gagged as nausea hit her like a ton of bricks falling off the top of the Empire State building.

Dear God, the smell.

It was rancid. Like aged fish guts, rotting cabbage and toxic-waste-bad eggs. Coughing and retching, she drew her sweater over her nose and mouth and looked up, eyes watering.

To this day, Catherine Wilkins wished she didn't. The woman's glassy, clouded eyes staring back at her empty and listless, her blue, bloated face infested with larvae and her expression of anguish were things that refused to leave her mind. She saw it in her nightmares. No amount of therapy helped.

She threw up promptly, feta cheese-tomato muffin she had for breakfast splattering over the hay. Wiping the back of her palm over her mouth to clean her face, acrid taste in her mouth, she pointedly averted her gaze from the dead woman. And saw- if possible- a worse sight.

A little girl- maybe six or seven- was tied down to a stone table. The muffled, weak shouts were coming from her. A little more than skin and bone she was. And, oh God. Her back. There was no skin. Or there may have been. But all she saw was dark red, congealed blood that made it impossible to distinguish where the blood stopped and the skin began. She was weak, so frail.

Ignoring Casper for the moment, who had been repulsed by the smell of the corpse near the door, Catherine hurried over to the girl.

"Sweetheart, it's okay. Shhhh. I'm here to help. Don't… Don't move okay? I'm gonna free you. Hold on."

The child nodded weakly- it was a twitch of her head. She had to have been in here screaming her throat off for days. Tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, she scouted the area for a possible tool to pry open the manacles. She found a small chisel and a sledgehammer. It wasn't ideal- one slip up and she could break the girl's arm. Off, perhaps.

As carefully as she could, she made do with what she had. Instead of breaking the cuffs themselves, she focused on separating the links of the chain- a bit of a safer approach. Ten minutes of grueling toiling later, she had the girl free from the table.

"Th…Thank… ou…"

She could barely form the syllables as the gag was removed and the woman shuddered at the thought that she wasn't going to make it. She had to live.

"Don't talk, love. Just hang in there. I'm going to call the police. Hang in there."

The girl shut her eyes, her face relaxing slightly and for a second, she panicked, thinking that the little one died. But when she saw her chest rise and fall- albeit unevenly, she silently breathed a sigh of relief. What the hell happened here?

She pulled out her phone and dialed.

9-1-1.

"Hello, 911, what's your emergency?"

She snapped to attention as the line connected.

"Um yes. My name is Catherine Wilkins. I'm at the cemetery a little of Gladbrooks Street in a barn in the north of the property. There's… a dead body here. And a girl- she's alive. Ummm, I don't know what happened here, but it's bad… please… the child's very weak… it…"

She broke off, unable to continue.

"It's okay ma'am. Help is on the way. It'll be ten minutes to your location, hang on ma'am."

Catherine wiped a tear from her eye and nodded, though she couldn't be seen.

"O-okay. Thank you."

She hung up and put her phone away. She looked at the girl, who seemed to be becoming paler by the second. She desperately yearned to clean off her back and dress her in her coat and carry her away outside, but she knew that it would contaminate the crime scene. It could have been a murder.

Rootling through her bag, she searched feverishly for some food, or water. Or pretty much anything fit for human consumption but came up empty.

Catherine couldn't stay in there any longer. Ten minutes was an eternity more in a place closer to Hell than any other place she had ever seen. And she couldn't leave the child in here alone either. She weighed her options and made up her mind. To hell with the lot of them.

Coming to a compromise, she cloaked the girl in her jacket without washing away trace evidence and gently picked the sleeping child up and carried her outside, making it a point not to look at the bloodied corpse. Settling her down under a tree, she reveled in the smell of the fresh air and firmly shut the door behind her. Sitting down, supporting the girl's head on her lap and keeping a firm grip on the sledgehammer that had replaced her branch as her weapon, she called Casper over- who obediently did as he was told.

Fifteen minutes later, Casper's ears pricked up and he barked just as a great big German Shepherd burst into the clearing. Catherine was startled and instinctively raised her hammer out of fear and an adrenaline rush, but then relaxed as she noted the 'Police' vest on it. Seconds later, a man ran in, clad in the standard blue field kit.

"Are you Ms. Wilkins?"

She nodded, completely lowering her weapons.

"I am. This is the girl I found. I… couldn't leave her there. But I touched her body as little as I could when I freed her. The body is… in there… it's…"

The officer came over and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Don't worry ma'am. We'll take it from here. Thank you for finding her on time."

Catherine gulped and nodded.

A few minutes later, the clearing was full. Paramedics took the girl off her, taking her jacket along with her as evidence. It was alright- she'd much rather never see that jacket again. The coroner rolled out a gurney with a black body bag strapped to it. Hugging herself, with a death grip on Casper's leash, she just waited.

The policeman came back to her.

"Ma'am, you can go now. We'll handle everything. Get some rest, I'm sure you're shaken up. But we'll need you to come down to the station to give a statement later, okay?"

She nodded, but hesitated. One more thing she had to know, else she'd never sleep again.

"Officer, was it… murder?"

The man in the sunglasses looked at her and shook his head.

"No, ma'am. It was a suicide. We think the woman was trying to exorcise the child and had a particularly violent manic episode. Coroner has to confirm though."

Catherine nodded a final time and turned to leave. And leave she did. But not before taking one last look at the place that still occasionally haunted her nightmares.

And boy did she have those often.

Responding Officer Cory Johnston closed the file on the case. Something straight out of Arkham Asylum. It was insanity at its best- well, worst.

Poor kid.

It took them three weeks to get her statement and even when they did, it wasn't in complete sentences. Bits and pieces here and there they carefully taped together to make something intelligible. Then, she shut up completely.

Apparently, she was a 'cursed child.' And Mrs. Royce was her adoptive mother who tried to cleanse her for the devil. She had been taken into the barn for the ritual when halfway through, the crazy woman had decided that the Devil had decided to switch bodies. She had taken a switchblade through her wrists and carotid too for good measure.

And that kid- Felicity- had watched it all go down.

On top of that, Catherine Wilkins had found her one week or so after. Meaning a week of starvation and hunger. Dear sweet Jesus. Just when you think you've seen it all, some shit like this goes down. Definitely not pretty.

The kid was cleaned up and the surgeons patched her up the best they could. But even a bucket load of latex or spandex or silicon or whatever shit they did plastic surgery with couldn't fix the scars on her back. Forensics found that she was regularly tortured in the 'cleansing rituals'- whipping, lashing, burning, you name it. The most recent was cutting.

A knife at the scene matched the girl's blood.

It had been used to carve some weird ass shit into her back. Intricately drawn angel wings where each feather was carved in precise detail. A pentagram of some sort. A triangle. Jashinism? Witchcraft? Voodoo?

Needless to say, the girl was in therapy now. According to the shrink, she didn't speak. Said shrink also identified that Mrs. Royce suffered from a variety of syndromes based on the girl's statement and the picture of the crime scene. 'Religious delusions,' he called it. Whatever it was, all Cody knew was that the bitch was nuts.

He had also gone on to arrest Maria Gonzales at the Caitle Foster Home and shut down said place for gross child negligence. Of course, the story made national headlines, but fearing for the child's sanity, they didn't give the media her name or her face.

The police wanted to do a psyche evaluation on her and treat her for possible and probable PTSD. Some time to herself might help, they thought. Perhaps the next two years. If she was better, she could be let out of the institute and sent back into the adoption system. Maybe go to school. But first, she had to be rehabilitated into society- get her talking. All she did now was flip through pages of books upon books, most likely glancing through them.

Not most likely, most definitely. A seven-year-old could not understand the full-sized volume of Grey's Anatomy- there was just no way. They couldn't confirm if she was a genius or not- she was mute. But Cody surmised that she was just looking through the pictures.

To test their theory, they had tried to give her some tests in the guise of toys. A Rubik's cube, Sudoku puzzles, crosswords and jigsaws hidden amongst a variety of soft-toys. The only thing she remotely showed an interest in was a blue rabbit in the basket. She never let it go. The jigsaw puzzle was violently tossed out of the window so that the pieces rained down twenty floors like confetti.

Unresolved anger issues too, he suspected.

Cody Johnston sighed tiredly and sipped his coffee. Again, poor kid. It'll take years for her to become remotely normal again. But still, as cold as it may sound, it wasn't his job now. Another day, another murder.

So he closed the manila folder bearing the name Felicity Royce on it.

And with that, like Leah Addington, Felicity Royce was also lost in a pile of paperwork. Samantha Carter was instead born, with no past- only a future to be made.

Hello, hello. So this chapter will be divided into nine parts. 2.0, 2.1 etc. All the way to 2.9. Yay. There are a lot of blanks to be filled and the tension will be delightfully palpable. Holler!

Anyways, I hope you like reading this as much as I like writing it. Ideas and constructive criticism is much loved and cherished. Love y'all! :)