Chapter 11:

There was eerie feel to his house the moment Cole walked in from the emotionally-scarring church visit and seeing Dr. Landau for his weekly appointment. It was like no one was there; not Abigail, nor Rebecca, as she was at school, and even Barbi seemed to be absent. He took off his cap and set it down on the coffee table in the foyer, attempting to walk through the room and into the main hallway, where he saw Barbi standing there.

He gasped; there was something so strange about the look on her face. It was one he had not seen before. Barbi's dark chocolate, almond-shaped eyes looked at him with pure happiness, and her light, peachy skin glowed radiantly. Her fiery locks were partially pulled back in her silver barrette, and any bangs she once had were now wisps that fell on her forehead. She had been wearing something a little different than what she had worn when he left the house; she had been wearing a light blue dress, but was now wearing what looked to be her dark gray nightgown that buttoned on the top. It was not like her to wear pajamas during the daytime. Cole just looked at her, walking toward her, but before he could put his arms around her, he stopped himself – something in her eyes told him not to take a step forward.

"B-Barbi?" he asked. "You alright?"

She nodded serenely and replied: "I'll be as good as I'll ever be."

"Uh…y-you sure?" Cole was extremely uncomfortable.

All she did was nod, not a single hint of expression on her lovely face.

"Hm…uh…" He was at a loss for words. "W-Where's Caroline?"

Barbi pointed down the hall: "oh, she's in her nursery, right where I left her." The tone in her voice was unsettling, catatonic with elusive thought and state of mind.

Wha….whaaa…..whaa!

The baby began to cry, loud as a fire engine. Cole was immediately startled, but was too distracted by the abnormal vibe in his house, and the strange behavior when communicating with his wife. She didn't even ask him how his appointment went, or why he was gone for so long for that matter. Not a single concern from her. Not one.

"You may wanna go check on her," Barbi said with a chuckle. "She may need a change."

Nodding, Cole moved past her and down the hall, following the sound of his crying baby daughter. He opened the door to the small nursery, and heard guttural whines and shrieks coming from Caroline. He neared the crib and picked her up, holding her close to him and cooing to her, patting her back to soothe her.

"Aw, Daddy got you," he said softly. "Shh…tsk, tsk, tsk…"

Then a smell hit his nose. It seemed a bit strong if Caroline's diaper needed to be changed, but to make sure it was her, he lifted the whining infant up and sniffed the rear-end part of her yellow onesie. Turns out, there was no odor coming from her diaper, not even the smell of pee. So he continued to talk to the crying baby to calm her down.

"Why you sad, lil' one?" he cooed. "Aw, it's okay, Daddy got you…"

As he kissed her forehead, the same stench from before hit his nose. It was stronger this time. It was definitely not the baby, so he placed her back in the crib and tucked her in with the blanket and gave her the miniature teddy bear laying by her tiny feet. Leaving the nursery, he was literally punched in the face with a familiar, foul stench that was enough to trigger an episode. Cole, trying to take a deep breath to calm himself down, found it impossible to do so because the odor was overpowering. He had tears falling down his face as the reek led him to the master bedroom.

When he opened the slightly cracked door, he was in for the shock of his life.

The reeking odor of death hung in the air like a thick cloud as Cole noticed blood had saturated the sheets of their perfectly-made queen size bed. His eyes widened, nearly suffocating from the intensity of the smell, seeing the blood gathered on one side of the bed; Barbi's side. Cole walked over slowly, his body trembling with pure fear as he saw the source of the blood. It had indeed been his own wife, a bloodied kitchen knife near her stiffened, pale hand, with her throat slit clean across. It was clearly done in one attempt, the wound deep enough to hit both major blood vessels to the brain. He remembered the dream he had described to Dr. Landau, seeing a badly-burnt Sarah and witnessing Barbi kill herself in the exact same fashion as this scene he was trying to take in. Her eyes were slightly closed, dead-looking, like a fish that had given up flapping for life back in the water.

He let out a scream: "AHHHHH!"

He collapsed to the floor, getting some blood on his pants from the carpeted flooring as he began to sob heavily. His heart was in his chest, seeing the hours-old corpse of his wife on the floor of their bedroom through thick, blubbery tears that only fell down his cheeks and onto the stained carpet.

"W-Why…" he sobbed incoherently. "Why..."

He sniffled, taking in the odor of decomposition emanating from Barbi's corpse. He found himself mumbling, the same dogmatic teachings from the church he had just renounced an hour before.

"Do you…n-n-not know that you are…G-God's temple…eh…a-and that G-God's Spirit…d-d-d-dwells in you?" he asked the corpse, leaning down. "I-If anyone destroys God's temple…G-G-God will destroy h-him…" He cried for a moment, sobbing before he could spit out the rest of his religious rambling; "for God's temple is holy…and you are that temple…" Then, his voice because a shrill screech of anger and hatred, "but…not anymore…YOU'RE GOING TO HELL!"

Cole burst out crying even harder, so hard that he could not hear baby Caroline crying in the other room. His wails and cries filled not only the reeking, bloody room, but the entire house. His eyes were as red as his dead wife's hair, and he tried to collect himself to speak once again.

"But…then again…s-so ain't I," he muttered tearfully.

He looked to his left on the bed, seeing three pieces of lined notebook paper. Cole immediately took them, seeing the first and second pages stained with blood spatter. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve, and tried to make out the handwriting. He immediately recognized it as his wife's and he began to read:

"You see I'm now dead, but I'm at peace. I'm free. Free from my marriage, free from the torment, free from any care. I'm sorry I ended things like this, but I had to. There was no other way.

I married Cole not really out of love. Though I did love him before. I can't say that's true now. I married him because I knew it was a chance at a new life and a new chance to make things right with my conscience."

Cole's dream was prophetic – this confirmed it. He cried for a minute at the words written down on the paper, and he sniffled, wiping his eyes and continuing.

"My sister Sarah has been dead for a year, so it wasn't really so much her as a reason for me to break free. Though she did have an impact on me, for sure. My Uncle Martin was never a problem to me, though I owe it to him that we were able to live with him after Sarah killed our parents. But our place in those woods didn't come easy to us. We needed to earn it."

Cole sniffled, and was taken aback by the last sentence. He kept reading out of curiosity, revealing what she had hidden from him the entire time, and refused to tell him while still alive.

"Thomasin wouldn't just let us live there. Uncle Martin was there before we got there. When he took us in, she wanted me or Sarah dead, sacrificed for her and the colonists. He couldn't do that, obviously. He was given a responsibility. He hunted, though. He staged a few "hunting accidents" in the area around the house, our old house, set out traps that clamped on legs and caused injuries. He'd leave them there, make sure they couldn't get help and were immobile, and God only knew what happened after. I knew about these traps, because I started setting them out. It was mostly Sarah, but I helped when I was much younger, when my parents died. I didn't necessarily know these traps were out to disable potential sacrifices for Thomasin until later, when I knew that people injured by the traps were captured by the colonists for sacrifice during the Blood Moon season. It was the night I saw Cole out in the wilderness. I was in the hospital because I fainted."

He was horrified – how could she have kept all of these secrets while alive? He just kept reading the letter, continuing onto the back of the second page of the letter.

"You may think I had no conscience, but I didn't have a choice in the matter. I was forced to do this. For my own survival's sake. It was that, or I'd be up for sacrifice. Martin ended up taking my place though. I'm still very sad about that, and even a bit guilty. His death could have been avoided. That's why I was out that night.

I love my daughter. Please, as my last wish, give her my malachite pendant when she hits 13 years of age, no younger, but no later than 16. And most importantly, DO NOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCE let her near that house at Roanoke. I can't bear to see another person suffer from that awful place. My own husband needed counseling because it was so bad. I didn't because I was used to it. But I'll never get over my sister's two attempts to kill me. Never ever.

So goodbye, God bless, I love you all.

Barbara MacLean."

He could not believe what he was reading, what he was seeing – it was all surreal. No words would have been accurately able to describe how he felt. He wasn't as distraught to see his wife's dead body there on the floor at her side of the bed. In fact, he was completely shut down, numb, no feelings whatsoever.

Thank God he renounced the church he was brought up in – all those Bible verses didn't mean anything to him anymore. He had spoken to the corpse out of spite. Now, he would soon join her in hell.

All it took was for him to walk to his side of the bed and open the drawer to see the usual array of items – prescription bottles, grooming tools including a folding razor, and the Glock 27 for which he had become licensed to carry upon coming back to his home state. Before today, it provided comfort and a sense of safety for he and his family. Now, it provided a way out.

Cole wondered, as a Christian man, how he could dare attempt to take his own life following Barbi's death by the same rhyme and reason. Then again, all of those teachings by the pastor in cahoots with his family did no good now. The same pastor also blamed him for his own defilement by Scáthach, the Witch of the Wood and true power over the Roanoke colony. Then he thought about baby Caroline, how she would grow up with no parents; she'll be with her granny, she'll be fine without two crazy parents in the house. He thought about Rebecca, how she would fare in the rest of her high school career and then as a success in college; she's smart, she can do anything. As for his mother, Abigail, she came to mind as he looked at the clock to see it was nearly one hour past noon; she can survive without me, I feel so bad that she will experience the loss of her child.

As he lifted the front of the gun to his face and into his mouth, he felt his body jitter, tears falling down thinking of Abigail. He shut his eyes, a muttered a quick, "I'm sorry, momma," before pulling the trigger.

Some concerned neighbors waited outside their houses, watching a police car, ambulance, and coroner's truck parked outside of the Paterson's home. Many were scared about why they were called to the property, but many looked and watched as Abigail, hysterically screaming in the arms of a police officer who was trying to calm her down. Rebecca had not been home from school yet, not until 3PM that day, but Abigail knew her daughter and sole-surviving child would be in for a shock.

Abigail just wailed louder as the sight of a black tarp body bag coming out of the house on a stretcher by two men in hazmat suits came before her eyes. She buried her face into the chest of the cop, whose uniform was soaked in her mournful, shocked tears.

"Ma'am," the police officer said in his deep, smoky voice, "d-don't look. T-That's your—"

"MY SON! DAMMIT I KNOW IT'S MY SON!" she screeched. "WHY IN GOD'S NAME WOULD HE…"

Back to sobbing again, crying heavily. Her cries were too intense for her to open her eyes to see a second black tarp body bag coming out of the house on another designated stretcher.

"Ma'am, stay with me," the cop said to her softly, trying to keep his calm in the erratic scene. "Stay with me. This is stressin', I know. Y-You'll need to stay elsewhere while your house gets cleaned from…everythin' that happened."

Abigail immediately thought of her brother, Lucas – he was now the de facto patriarch of the Loring family. Even though all of the fortune belonging to Charles went to Cole, which he was later screwed out of, Lucas still had the respect and esteem Charles had in life before his passing a year before. Another religious zealot in her family, she wondered how he would take the news if he knew that Cole had committed suicide. Little did she know, that Cole had renounced the church of his upbringing just an hour before his suicide by gunshot.

Rebecca had come home a little past three, and the police were still at the House. Abigail was slightly calm, but still sobbing behind the yellow crime scene tape separating her from the house she lived in with her son, his wife, and the newborn baby granddaughter she was now given to hold after she was inspected by paramedics for injuries. She had been in another room, so the little soul was no harmed. She was still in her onesie and wrapped in a brown shock blanket, crying and wailing in tune with her grandmother as she was held. She was too wrapped up in the misery of the moment to notice her daughter had arrived with tears in her eyes.

"P-Please say it ain't true," the teenager said.

Abigail nodded and sniffled loudly: "h-he's gone…and s-she's gone."

Her daughter's blue eyes widened: "Barbara, too?"

"YES." Abigail sobbed heavily.

"I…I saw it on Twitter, momma," Rebecca cried, kneeling down and pushing a piece of her soft brown hair behind her ear. "I-It said 'I saw bodies being dragged out from next door,' and hashtag, 'rippatersons'…i-it was from our neighbor...h-he goes to my school…but he was absent…s-sick today. I knew because I had to get him his homework."

She broke down crying, her freckled face turning red as she hugged her mother with the baby between them on the sidewalk, sitting there and separated from the house as the police investigated around. It didn't take long for them to find the note, but it was not presented until Abigail, Rebecca and baby Caroline were transported to the Loring plantation, the only place Abigail could have thought of at that moment.

Lucas, who had lived on the property for a year now, had not taken the news very well – in fact, he was infuriated. When the police brought Abigail, her daughter and granddaughter to his house to stay for the week about two hours later, she told him what had happened and he was ballistic.

"That dumbass RAISED THE BAR as FAMILY DISGRACE!" Lucas spat. "Bein' raised a Christian man, you'd think he'd follow the RULES and the scriptures! It says it in the Bible, Abby! Ecclesiastes 7:17 states specifically to be not overly wicked, and neither a fool, why in God's name die before your time?! WHY?!"

"You know he wasn't doin' well, Lucas," Abigail sobbed loudly while Rebecca was crying into the baby in the living room. "This ain't a time for preachin'. All we ask is to stay here. The police brought us here for a reason. T-They need a week to c-clean the house…"

Lucas shook his head: "I'd let you stay here, but as long as I ain't gotta plan no funeral!"

"Y-You wouldn't help me?! How dare you?!" Abigail shouted tearfully.

"No, 'cause the church ain't gonna hold a service for a suicide victim!" Lucas challenged. "So forget it! I'll let you stay in our guest rooms, but that's about it!" He continued to ramble angrily. "God, in Heaven, Abby, here I am thinkin' you were a good wife and mother. Well, when you were a wife!"

"I never remarried, I shouldn't suffer for it! Cole was always a good kid," Abigail argued. "You know he wasn't the same since comin' back from North Carolina."

"Little bastard squandered my fortune," Lucas hissed, banging a fist on the credenza. "Gave me this damn plantation, and all the debts from Uncle Charlie's death! And two good-for-nothin' cars that can't run on shit!" He turned to his sister, who was still upset over her son's death. "I WAS IN LINE FOR IT ALL! UNCLE CHARLIE HAD BAD JUDGEMENT GIVIN' IT ALL TO HIM!"

"He gave you somethin', damn it!" Abigail exclaimed. "He's young, and he negotiated with you! I don't wanna hear another piece of shit comin' from your mouth."

"Woman, I'd tell you to watch it," Lucas snapped, "but a deal's a deal!"

"W-What's the deal?" Abigail asked, her brother nearing her and leaning down menacingly.

"Deal is, don't you ever mention the name 'Collin Paterson' in my presence again. EVER!"

As he paced out of the room, Abigail found herself crying on the chair, sitting down and crashing her head onto her knees. Cole was now the family disgrace, fully taking the place of David's occult involvement by a long shot. Everything would be difficult in those months following, but even worse, she had been invited to speak publicly about the deaths of Cole and Barbi within two weeks of word hitting national news.

"Tonight on Access Hollywood, the tragic deaths of Cole Paterson and his wife from the smash TV special interview My Roanoke Nightmare leave the public astounded as we also look for answers to solve the puzzle of their tragic end."

Every night, it was torture for Rebecca and Abigail to see.

Then, three weeks later, after countless headlines obsessing over the deaths of the reclusive "superstar" and his wife, Abigail took advantage of the chance to come forward – it was the call from the agent of Lana Winters, the world-renowned journalist who had written an exposé about Briarcliff Manor, a notorious mental institution that, in 1971, was shut down and left to ruin due to torture and mistreatment of the inmates and patients within its walls. Having admired Winters' career and work, Abigail gave it a "yes", as a chance to put her son's legacy to rest once and for all.