The next day dawned, and they got up early to keep researching, but there was nothing, not online or even in Toby's precious hoard of boring old books. It was as if the language – and subsequent spell – that Emily Jett used twenty-three years ago simply didn't exist.
It was nearly lunch when Toby put an end to their fruitless search. "It's been nearly twenty-four hours, and nothing," he declared, as if she wasn't already painfully aware of just how little progress they'd made.
Faith looked up from at him from the bunch of old Celtic symbols that had begun to lose what little meaning they'd had in the first place. "So, what?" she asked, voice rough from how little she'd used it since waking. "We give up?"
"So, we work a different angle."
He stood to his feet, beginning to gather up all the pieces of his fake FBI suit.
"Change into your suit," he ordered her over his shoulder as he shouldered his way into the room's tiny bathroom. "We're going to pay Peter Gilbert and his barn a visit."
Not twenty minutes later, they were on their way to the Gilbert property after only a brief stop at the local gas station to ask for directions. Faith had lifted a cheap pair of sunglasses while Toby was distracting the cashier with his questions, and now back in the car, she ripped off the tag and slid them over her eyes.
"Yes, very classy," said Toby dryly. "Clearly, an essential item."
"Maintaining good eye health is essential to everyone, Tobias." Toby shook his head and seemed to think it wiser to ignore her.
The Gilbert property was less of a farm than a large stretch of empty pastures, overgrown, untended crops and numerous wooden buildings in varying states of disrepair. The only two structures that didn't look like a twister had blown through them was a cream-coloured bungalow with wind chimes dangling from the overhang and a sturdy old barn nearby – unquestionably the barn everything had gone to shit in all those years ago.
There was no movement in the small house as they pulled up at a large patch of dying grass a few feet from the front door. The whole place had an uncomfortable feeling about it, like it was home to the ghosts of the long-dead – not totally out of the realm of possibility, she supposed.
Toby knocked on the bungalow's door, a warm breeze blowing over the property, sending the wind chimes above them into a chorus of song. There came a shuffling from beyond the door, and it was pulled open to reveal the owner of the house and the person they'd come to see.
He was old, skin the colour of old tree bark and just as weathered. His hair was a piercing shade of white and his eyes had turned milky, giving him the appearance of a mysterious fortune teller from a dark fantasy story. He wasn't blind – she could tell by the way he caught and held her stare. She lifted her hand to wave, feeling like an idiot.
Toby ignored her awkwardness and pulled out his fake badge. "Mr. Gilbert?" he asked, slipping back into that flawless American accent. "I'm Agent Orwell, this is Agent Atwood. We're with the FBI. We're here about an incident that happened on your farm a little over twenty years ago?"
Peter Gilbert didn't appear to hear a word Toby said. He was too busy staring at Faith like he was seeing a ghost. Caught in his stare, Faith could do nothing but hold his gaze and try not to look guilty – though for what, she wasn't entirely sure.
Toby nudged her and Faith cleared her throat. "Mr. Gilbert?"
Gilbert pursed his lips, brow furrowed, and cloudy eyes narrowed, like he was trying to see past an illusion. "Emily?" he finally rasped.
Like a deer caught in the headlights, Faith stared back in mounting panic. How were they supposed to converse with a man who thought she was somebody else, someone she couldn't possibly pretend to be? Faith had never known her mother – had no idea how she'd moved, or spoke, or sounded. She had no idea who the woman was, beyond what she looked like and how her absence felt to a lonely, idealistic child.
Toby took a moment to assess the situation. "Mr. Gilbert, I'm afraid you're confused. This is Agent Atwood of the FBI-"
Gilbert sniffed, like he'd assessed Toby's worth and found him lacking. He turned abruptly where he stood, using a cane Faith hadn't noticed to make his way back down his narrow hallway, deeper into the one-storey house. He left the door open, which Faith figured was about as close to an invitation as they were likely to get.
The both of them stared silently after his retreating, hobbled figure. Faith was the first to step into the house, only for Toby to stop her with a hand on her arm.
"What?" she whispered, but when she turned, she found him staring at the threshold where the rotted wooden flooring of the small porch became the smoother, polished wood of the inside of Gilbert's house.
Toby crouched down, touching something on the threshold. From her standing position, it seemed like sand was spilling out of the little bump separating the porch from the house. Strange enough in and of itself, but when she knelt down next to Toby, she realised it wasn't sand at all.
"Salt?" she whispered, glancing after Gilbert, who was still slowly limping his way down the hall.
"Well, if that doesn't confirm he knows something…" said Toby, just as soft.
"Come on," she said, standing to her feet. "Let's find out what he knows."
The walls of the narrow hallway weren't lined with pictures, but rather artwork, mostly paintings of colourful birds. There was a certain life to the art, like the painted birds themselves could have flown from the canvas and soared off into the sky.
"This artwork is amazing," Faith said as she reached the end of the hallway, where the house opened up into a modest living room, complete with an old-style TV and a brightly coloured rug. "Did you paint them yourself?"
Gilbert was slowly and carefully lowering himself into a well-used armchair opposite the TV. He didn't answer her question – didn't even acknowledge she'd spoken. He just focused on catching his breath after the trek from the front door and back. Faith watched him gasp for air with pity in her gut.
"We'd like to ask you a few questions," said Toby as he appeared. "May I sit?"
Gilbert's only answer was a grunt, but Toby took it as permission enough. While he sat on the sofa across from Gilbert, Faith was full of far too much nervous energy to be able to sit still, and so she slowly began to pace her way around the room, eyes taking in every knick-knack and dent in the wall like she might find among them the clues to the puzzle before her.
"Mr. Gilbert, we understand you've lived on this farm your entire life," Toby began steadily, pulling out that ridiculous notepad again, pencil at the ready. "We've seen the files regarding the incident in your barn in 1982, but we'd like to hear about that day, and the days leading up to it, from your point of view."
There was a glass of something that didn't smell like water beside him, and the old man's hand trembled terribly when he picked it up. So much so that he nearly couldn't take a sip of the liquor inside. He drank, put it back down with a clatter of the glass, then turned to peer at Faith like she was a creature in a zoo.
Uncomfortable under his unyielding, nacreous stare, Faith turned to the glass door that led out onto a small pack patio that was completely overgrown by weeds. There was what used to be a corn field beyond that, but now it just looked like the set of a cheesy 80's horror film.
"Mr. Gilbert," said Toby again, the tiniest seed of frustration leaking into his voice. "I really need you to try to focus."
A long minute of silence stuffed full of tension, then:
"It's been so long," said Gilbert so suddenly that Faith flinched. She looked over her shoulder to find him still staring, studying her from every angle. Comparing her to the memory of a woman he'd somehow known two decades before. "I've missed you, Emily."
Her heart froze, then pressed on in a gallop. Faith forced herself to forget how uncomfortable she felt under his scrutiny, turning away from the window and slowly kneeling down in front of the old man, whose milky eyes seemed clearer than they had been a moment ago.
A terrible plan was forming in her head, but she wasn't exactly drowning in options. "I've missed you too, old friend," she said in little more than a whisper.
How did you pretend to be someone you'd never met? How did you act like you remembered something you hadn't been there to see? She supposed she was about to find out.
"Agent Atwood," hissed Toby, but Faith ignored him, her attention focused on Gilbert. She reached out and took the man's gnarled, weathered hands in her own. His skin was leathery to the touch and too warm. Faith held tight, surprised when he turned his hands to grip her back, though with only a fraction of her strength.
He shut his eyes a moment, as if his memories caused him pain. When he opened them again, they seemed somehow cloudier than before. He leant towards her, a strangely tender look on his face. "I didn't tell them," he said in a voice like two stones being ground together.
Faith's brows pulled together in confusion, but to be a successful pickpocket, you had to be able to read a mark. And, like it or not, Peter Gilbert was a mark. He had something she needed to steal; only it wasn't the kind of thing he could keep in a pocket.
"That's good," she said in a furtive tone, like they were both in on the secret. "We must never let them know."
Tears began to fill Gilbert's cloudy eyes, and he reached out with a hand, stroking wrinkled fingers down the length of her face. "I'm sorry you had to pay the price."
Faith allowed her eyes to flicker to Toby, who was watching them with laser-like focus. He nodded once, but she couldn't respond. There was no way to step aside and talk to him. In this task, in this moment, she was on her own.
She returned her attention to Gilbert, whose eyes remained lined with silver. "It was a price I was happy to pay," she whispered, reaching up to lay her hand over the one he had resting on her face.
"My time comes soon," said Gilbert. Faith had no idea what to say to that, but thankfully Gilbert wasn't finished. "I'll be glad to rest. In death, I'll be glad to finally know the truth."
Faith paused, taking a moment to wet her lips, searching her mind wildly for a way to phrase her questions in a way that wouldn't upset him. She didn't know much about dementia or its symptoms, but she got the feeling that Gilbert was a hair-trigger away from some sort of a meltdown. This had to be handled with great care.
"Peter, can you tell me what happened?" she asked, so soft that it seemed the words were meant only for him. "After I was gone, what happened?" she added, because he thought she was Emily, and even though the idea of pretending to be her dead mother to trick information out of a man with dementia made her feel about as lowly as the very demons they were hunting, it was the only plan currently presenting itself.
Gilbert blinked, struggling to focus. "I did exactly as you asked, Emily," he said eagerly, suddenly filled with more light than in all the minutes before. "I cleaned away every last trace of you, and I sent her far away from here, where they won't ever find her."
Faith's tongue felt swollen and dry, but she couldn't allow herself to emote. She had to play this part now, and there would be time to react later. "Good. Thank you, Peter, that's…that's good," she whispered, still holding tight to his weathered hand. What came next was a gamble, she knew it. "And…and I left something for her…didn't I? In case she ever came back?"
Gilbert's eyes flickered and clouded over again, but not in the peaceful way from before. This time he seemed distressed, and Faith knew instantly that she'd said the wrong thing.
"This is a trick!" he shouted, ripping his hand from hers like she was poison.
Before a stunned Faith could figure out how to respond, there came a knocking from the door at the end of the narrow hallway. Toby didn't hesitate to stand to his feet, pulling out his pistol and positioning himself behind the wall, where he could surprise anything entering the room. Faith's hands itched to reach for her own gun, but something told her that showing Gilbert she had a weapon on her would only escalate the situation.
"You're one of them!" Gilbert continued to shout, struggling to stand up from the deep set of his armchair, eyes wild. "You're just a thing wearing her face! You won't get what you came here for! I won't ever tell you where I sent her! The curse won't ever be broken!"
Whoever it was at the front door must have heard the old man's screams, because they let themselves inside. A woman appeared, with sand-coloured hair and outrage on her face, dressed in a blue nurse's uniform.
"Get away from him! Who the hell are you?!" she demanded hotly, only to notice Toby's gun still aimed at her and freeze, hands flying upwards in the universal sign for surrender. Toby didn't lower the gun – probably on edge from all the screaming – so Faith fumbled with her jacket to pull free her fake badge.
"We're with the FBI, ma'am," she told the nurse in the most official tone of voice she could muster.
Gilbert was still shouting like a madman. "You'll never get to her! You'll never be free of the curse! You'll be banished back to Hell again, just like all the others!"
"We were just asking Mr. Gilbert some questions," said Toby, finally seeming to realise the poor nurse wasn't in any way a threat and lowering his pistol. Without the gun aimed at her face, the nurse was free to move across the room to Gilbert, pressing a hand to his shoulder and gently lowering him back into his armchair.
"It's okay, Peter," she was cooing over and over again. "You're okay. You're in no danger."
"Demon!" Gilbert was hollering, pointing a crooked finger at Faith, horror and hate gleaming in his dark eyes. "Demon!"
"I think you need to leave," said the nurse, shooting the two of them a hard glare. Faith got the feeling that if they refused, the police would be brought into the situation, and that was the very last thing they needed.
Faith glanced to Toby, who was frowning deeply but nodded once all the same. "We'll be outside," he said over Gilbert's hoarse cries.
The nurse didn't respond, still trying to soothe a spiralling Gilbert. Toby made to leave, but Faith didn't follow. She stared at Gilbert, who was still pointing at her damningly, like a beacon for God to follow to smite her where she stood. It took Toby grasping her by the elbow and physically dragging her from the room to get her to leave.
Outside the sun was still high in the sky, but the breeze that ruffled the overgrown crops and flapped their coats out behind them was icy and brittle. Faith tugged her jacket tighter around her body to keep out the chill, moving to the far side of the little porch where the sunshine would hopefully warm her up. But it didn't matter how long she stood in the light; she remained cold.
"Well," she began after a long minute of tense silence, "this has been spectacularly pointless."
Toby pushed off the wall and came to stand beside her in the sunlight. "I wouldn't say that," he said, a keen glint in his blue eyes. "We know that your mother was here twenty years ago, and that Gilbert knew her somehow, and knew the truth of what was happening that night in the barn. And we know that he knew you, too, and that he sent you away to keep you safe from…something. And that the curse mentioned in that…note,"–he said the word delicately–"is involved in this, somehow. Now we just have to figure out how all these facts fit together."
"Well done, Sherlock. You write all that down in your little notebook?"
Toby didn't take the bait, staring at her expectantly. Faith forced herself to breathe.
"Sorry," she muttered. "I'm a little on edge."
"It's okay," he shrugged. "This would have been difficult for anyone."
"It wasn't difficult," she insisted stubbornly. Toby was kind enough not to call her out on her lie. "Maybe we should just leave," she continued. The yelled curses from inside the little house had begun to grow quieter, until finally there was no sound filling the air but the creak of the wooden house and the gentle song of the wind chimes over their heads. "Seriously, Toby. We're not going to get anything else out of him."
Toby didn't answer her. He was staring at the barn about a hundred paces away. Large and gleaming red, it stood out starkly amongst the soft yellows and greens of the fields around it. The whole place seemed to radiate its own energy field, and Faith didn't need to know its bloody history just to know something bad had happened inside.
The front door to Gilbert's house creaked open behind them, and Faith spun so quickly she nearly tripped, her hand reaching for the iron knife still tucked into her waistband. She relaxed upon seeing it was only the old man's nurse, a deep frown set into her face and a new stain on the front of her blue scrubs.
"How is he?" Toby asked softly.
Her hazel eyes narrowed at him in suspicion, but she answered all the same. "Sleeping," she said, judgement soaking her tone. "If we're lucky, he won't remember any of this when he wakes up."
"We apologise for upsetting him," Toby told her, and he even sounded like he meant it. "We really were just asking him some general questions. We weren't expecting him to have such a…reaction."
"How long have you known Mr. Gilbert?" Faith asked her before she could get another word out.
The nurse blinked, surprised by the question. "Who are you, again?"
"Agents Atwood and Orwell of the FBI," Faith said, pulling out her badge to flash, only for the nurse to snatch it from her, holding it up to her face to examine. Faith held her breath, suddenly terrified the woman would somehow know it was a fake – but then the nurse simply handed it back with a frown.
"And you are?" Toby asked, putting away the badge he'd also dug free of his pocket.
"Daisy Small," she said, crossing her arms over her chest and looking between them warily. "I've been Peter's nurse for over ten years now. He was the first home-care patient I was assigned after I got my nursing degree. I've been looking after him ever since."
"But you're from here? Riverton, I mean?" Faith asked keenly.
"Yes."
Toby and Faith exchanged a fleeting glance that spoke volumes. "Well then, what can you tell us about the massacre that happened in that barn in the December of 1982?" Toby asked, pulling out his notepad again, ready to record what she said.
Daisy looked uncomfortable at the question. "Not much," she said, and while she seemed genuine enough, something in Faith's gut told her she wasn't saying everything.
"The sheriff mentioned it was something of a local legend," she said, trying to gently prompt her into talking about it. Just like Gilbert, Daisy was nothing but a mark.
Just another thing to steal, she reminded herself silently.
Daisy's eyes flickered to the giant red barn, then just as quickly flicked away, as though she couldn't look at the thing for longer than a moment. Like just the sight of it frightened her. "I don't know much, really," she said, eyes on the ground, toe nudging at a loose nail lodged in the wood of the porch. "Peter never talks about it."
"Never?" Faith echoed. "Not even before the dementia set in?"
Daisy's frown deepened. "I think…I think whatever happened that day – it was the beginning of the end for Peter," she confessed. "I don't think he was ever quite the same. After the dementia began to get bad, he would talk about, erm, demons," she said the word sheepishly, like they might laugh in her face. When neither of them did, she continued. "Said the barn was full of them, and that I should stay away from it."
"And have you?" Toby asked. "Stayed away?"
A haunted look came over her like a cloud and she reached up to fiddle with the silver cross pendant hanging from around her neck. "Two winters ago, Peter ran out of firewood. The cold isn't good for his chest, and I thought there might be some reserves left in the barn."
Faith stepped forwards, heart in her throat. "What happened?"
"Nothing happened," Daisy said quietly, shooting her an odd look that, roughly translated, meant What the hell are you on? "But – well, I don't think a clean-up crew was ever sent in after the main investigation was done with – probably just an oversight, but, um – the strange marks are still on the floor."
Faith and Toby glanced to one another in the same moment. "The blood was never washed off?"
Daisy shrugged. "I guess not – I didn't know blood could turn that dark, but it looks like the symbols were burned into the concrete with fire. It was…" she fiddled some more with her cross, looking disturbed, "…unsettling."
Faith swallowed around the lump in her throat. "Did Mr. Gilbert ever talk about a woman named Emily?"
"Not at first, but as the dementia began to get bad, he started calling out to someone named Emily, as if she were somewhere nearby. He doesn't have a relative named Emily, so I assumed maybe it was an old friend – or flame."
"So, you can't tell us anything else at all about the massacre of '82?" Faith asked, growing admittedly frustrated.
At her heated tone, Daisy shifted backwards on her feet, looking wary. Toby stepped in before things could devolve. "Thank you for your time, ma'am," he said, pulling a small card from his inside pocket. "If anything else comes to you, feel free to give us a call."
Daisy took it with a nod, and with that the two of them turned to go. "Agent Orwell?" she called before they'd even reached the bottom step. Faith and Toby turned to look at her, finding her chewing on her lip, brow furrowed in something like concern. "I don't know much, but someone who does… Have you spoken to Clive Gaines?"
"We spoke to Sheriff Gaines," Faith corrected.
Daisy shook her head. "That's Joseph Gaines – Clive is his uncle. He was sheriff back in the early '80s when the massacre happened. He became sort of, erm, obsessed with the case. He lost his job because of all the crazy theories he has about it."
"Theories such as…?"
She shrugged again. "You'd have to ask him. I just know he's the butt of every joke around town. Y'know, 'I'm a screw-up, but at least I'm not Clive Gaines' sort of a thing. Everyone thinks he's nuts, but you won't find anyone who knows more about the case than him." She paused, eyeing them with a hint of reproach. "And I'd much rather you went to bother him, rather than my mentally vulnerable geriatric patient."
Toby made a show of smiling. "Fair enough. We'll get out of your hair – after a quick look in the barn, if that's all right with you," he said with an extra dose of charming. Were Faith feeling more like herself, she might have rolled her eyes.
"Go for it," said Daisy with a sigh, turning to head back into the house.
"Thank you," Faith called after her. "For speaking with us, I mean."
Maybe it didn't sound very much like the way an FBI agent would speak, but Daisy seemed to appreciate it, smiling tightly and nodding in farewell. The door shut with a click of the lock and then Faith and Toby were left with nothing but a warm breeze and the singing of wind chimes.
"Come on," said Toby after a beat, nodding towards the barn that loomed over them like an unspeakable monument to death.
Despite the pit that had appeared in her gut, Faith followed Toby across the dry, crunchy grass towards the barn. The closer she drew, the more the red paint looked less farmyard-chic and more blood-of-the-fallen. Faith's legs felt heavier and heavier with every step she took in the barn's direction. But she kept walking; she didn't actually have a choice in the matter.
To stop would be childish. What was she so afraid of?
She knew the answer but didn't want to admit it.
Some irrational part of her thought that maybe they would open that barn door, and all the corpses from that day – including her mother's – would somehow still be there, fresh as the day they were killed. It was stupid and impossible, of course, but fears were rarely rational things.
They reached the barn, and clearly Toby had been expecting her to open the door, because he kept a step back and waited. But Faith stopped in front of the giant red door, staring at the handle like it itself was cursed, and to touch it would mean certain death.
"It's just a barn, Faith," said Toby quietly. The words themselves were patronising, but the way he said them wasn't. He was concerned for her, and she could only appreciate his worry.
"It's just a barn," she echoed, the words like a prayer for strength – were she the praying type. Before she could talk herself out of it, she grabbed the handle and heaved the door open. It slid hard to the left to reveal…a completely nondescript barn. There was nothing extraordinary about it, other than its extraordinary need for a good clean.
Dust coated every flat surface, and the hay had long since begun to mould, leaving the whole barn reeking of rotted plant matter and death. Faith coughed at the terrible smell, bracing an arm over her face. Despite the stench, it didn't look like the sort of place where such gruesome horrors had taken place, but Faith knew all too well how deceiving looks could be.
"Wow, she wasn't kidding," said Toby darkly, walking without hesitation into the depths of the barn. Faith wasn't as fearless, toeing at the threshold unsurely. She wondered – unwelcomely so – whether it was possible that something remained here of her mother. Could her spirit haunt this barn? Could she be watching Faith right now, trying to communicate but unable to push through the veil of death?
Faith swallowed back the sick feeling that churned in her gut.
"Look at this," Toby continued, seemingly oblivious to the minor panic attack Faith was having in the doorway. He grabbed the broom leaning idle against the far wall and began to sweep away the hay dusting the floor with smooth, methodical movements.
More tentative than she'd care to admit, Faith stepped into the barn. The air didn't turn cold and there were no prickles on her skin, no sense she was being watched by something she couldn't see. There was nothing to suggest a spirit remained inside the barn.
The realisation was somehow both a relief and a disappointment.
"Faith," said Toby, still sweeping away the gross, decades-old hay littering the floor like confetti. "Seriously, look at this."
She made her way towards him, eyes going wide when she realised what he was talking about. Daisy hadn't been kidding when she'd said Emily's mysterious symbols had been burned into the concrete with a blowtorch – only Faith doubted a blowtorch was in any way involved.
As if they'd been carved into the concrete by the hand of a wrathful god, the symbols were ashy and dark, like they were smeared with coal. It was easier to see them in person than it was in the photographs back at their motel room, but they still gave no clarity to the mystery. They were as untranslatable as in the pictures, nonsense shapes imprinted on this tiny piece of the world, their meaning lost to time.
"The report said these were drawn only in blood, correct?" Toby asked, already pulling out his phone to take pictures of the burned symbols for reference. Faith nodded once. "I've never heard of blood acting like an acid before. Either your mum was infected by something with the power to melt through solid concrete, or there's something going on here that we don't understand."
"I'd say it's the second one," said Faith, but her voice sounded far away to her own ears.
"Well, now that I can see them more clearly, I can read at least the Latin portion of this spell," said Toby, finishing up with his photoshoot and crouching down beside the closest of the markings.
"You can?"
"Well, not perfectly," he admitted. "The two languages weave together, it's almost impossible to derive meaning from the piece without knowing both. But as far as I can tell, this is a basic banishment spell."
"Banishment spell?" Faith echoed.
He looked up, brows raised. "Yeah, banishment – as in demons. Sending them back to Hell," he added helpfully because Faith was still staring at him blankly.
She frowned. "You mean like an exorcism?"
"Sure, it's basically a less efficient way to trap and exorcise a demon," he explained. "Most hunters these days use other means for their exorcisms – this one is basically just a more complicated devil's trap. It's very old. Dates back millennia."
None of it made any sense. "Why would Emily be using this banishment spell, specifically? Especially if it's so outdated?"
"I'd say the only way to answer that question will be to translate the remaining symbols," said Toby rationally. He looked up from the writing burned like charcoal into the cement. "You know, you can call her 'Mum'. Nothing's going to happen if you do."
Faith shot him her most deathly glower. "Thanks, Dr. Phil. Can we stay on topic?" He held his hands up in surrender. "You get all the pictures you need?"
"Yeah, I've got enough," he stood smoothly to his feet. He cast the room a fleeting glance, eyes lingering on the largest area of burnt concrete – as if a large pool of acid had been poured into one concentrated spot, allowing it to sear and char the stone. So far, Faith had been doing a brilliant job of ignoring it. "Do you…want a moment?"
"Why would I want a moment?"
"To say goodbye?"
She scoffed. "In my experience, 'goodbyes' only come after 'hellos'. And I never got my hello."
"Faith-"
She whirled on him with a wild look in her eye. "Are you ready to talk about Oliver, and the way just the mention of his name is enough to have you near tears?" she demanded hotly. Toby flinched like he'd been struck, and it was answer enough. "That's what I thought. Leave it alone, Toby."
She didn't so much as glance at the pile of charred concrete that had been the exact spot her mother had died, standing to her feet and dusting her hands off on her pants. She turned to leave, and though it felt wrong – unceremonious, disrespectful, and flat – she didn't stop.
"He was killed by a witch," said Toby suddenly. Faith froze halfway to the door. "It was just a routine hunt. Nothing special or extraordinary about it. One day he was there, and the next he was just, just gone… And we hunted together for so long, it feels…wrong…that I'm here, and he isn't."
Slowly, Faith turned to look at him. He was staring at the spot her mother had perished, but she knew he wasn't thinking about Emily Jett; knew she wasn't the one he was seeing on that floor.
"Ironic thing is – he died from blood loss, too," he added with a wry smirk. "Guess you and I have something in common, after all."
Faith didn't react, and the forced smirk died on his lips.
"But that's the gig," he said, voice deep and ringing with pain. "He knew that, and so do I. It's something you have to know, too, if you really want to do this. Something you'll need to accept."
"What?"
"That every hunt – hell, every breath – could be your last. There's no warning, no bad feeling, nothing that distinguishes one hunt from the next and the one that'll kill you. Hunting is a suicide mission; it just takes a little longer than most."
Faith watched him with a renewed sense of understanding. "Why do you do it, then?"
Toby shrugged. "It's what I was made for. Nothing else to say for it."
Faith stared at the giant patch of burned cement, but unlike Toby, she was seeing Emily. It was impossible to look at it and not imagine her mother there, using her dying breath to write a spell in her own blood. Had she cried? Had tears mingled with the blood coating the concrete? Had her last thoughts been of the daughter she would be leaving behind?
The worst part was the not-knowing.
"Are you going to try to talk me out of it?" she wondered aloud, inching ever closer to that giant patch of burned cement that served as a headstone for her mother. "Being a hunter, I mean?"
"No," he said matter-of-factly. "It's what you were made for, too. And, if you were wondering, I think your mum knew that."
And that was that. He turned to leave, not looking back as he made his way to the car. Faith stared down at her mother's sad deathbed. She'd wondered before if her mom had thought about her as she'd died, and suddenly – impossibly – she knew the answer.
Toby was out of sight, meaning he couldn't see her, either. So slowly that she barely moved at all, Faith began to kneel. After a short eternity she was on the floor next to the pool of her mom's blood that would stain this floor until the day they finally pulled down this godforsaken monument to her sacrifice.
She'd been honest before, but suddenly all her arguments felt weak. She had known this woman. She'd spent nine months becoming a human in her belly, then another eight or so months as her baby daughter. She might not have had any of those memories, but Emily had.
And it was that thought that had Faith gently kissing her fingertips, then extending her arm. With a heavy heart, she pressed her fingertips against the mark, the one place she could say with certainty her mother had once stood.
"Bye," she whispered to the wind and the shadows and the nothing.
Then, before she could do anything else stupidly sentimental, Faith climbed to her feet and left the barn. She didn't look back.
They went to see Clive Gaines later that afternoon, after a brief lunch in the diner around the corner from their motel. He lived just as you'd expect a disgraced former sheriff to live – in isolation, surrounded by towering piles of hoarded clutter.
"Can I get you some tea?" Clive asked, adjusting the glasses on his nose, attention so focused on them that he nearly tripped over the nearest tower of junk. "Coffee? I think I've got some cranberry juice around here somewhere…"
"We're fine, thank you," said Faith quickly, because the last thing she was going to do was drink out of a mug this guy owned.
"It's not often I get visitors – especially not from the FBI," he said, gesturing apologetically at the couch, which was covered in clutter.
He tossed the miscellaneous junk over the back, where it landed with a disconcerting crash. Once the couch was free, he gestured for them to sit. On one of the cushions was a large, suspicious stain. Faith quickly took the unstained one and left Toby to sit in the questionable splatter.
"What – uh – what brings you here, Agents?" Clive asked, taking a seat in the armchair across from them, fidgeting nervously. "Can I just say," he barrelled on before either of them could answer, "if this is about that website I visited the night before last – it was an accident. I clicked on the wrong ad and, well, you know what a menace pop-ups are these days…" he trailed off with anxious laughter.
"We're not here about that," Toby assured him, managing to look only mildly repulsed. "We're here about a cold case we believe you're rather familiar with – the Gilbert Barn Massacre of 1982?"
Clive lit up like a fucking Christmas tree, and Faith was genuinely concerned he was going to have a heart attack from the excitement alone. "I knew it!" he cried, throwing his body upwards so quickly that his glasses fell off his face and clattered to the floor. Clive didn't appear to notice. "I knew this day would come! Do you have any idea how long I've waited for this? I was starting to think the FBI didn't even read their emails!"
Faith glanced to Toby, biting back a smirk. Toby only nodded seriously, and Faith had to respect the commitment to his role. "The case has recently come to the front of the Bureau's attention. My partner and I are from the cold case unit. We're here following up on the investigation conducted some twenty years ago."
"Twenty-two years, seven months and three days."
Faith did her best to look like she wasn't staring at a guy who had completely lost his marbles. "Exactly," she said with her best attempt at an impressed smile. "We've been poking around town, and we've heard you're the one to come to with this."
Without a word, Clive was out of the room like a rocket, leaving Toby and Faith staring after him in varying degrees of disbelief.
"I'm starting to regret this," she muttered under her breath. "The guy's batshit, Toby."
"At this point, we need every scrap of information we can get our hands on," he whispered back. "And just because he looks like he hasn't had a conversation with a human person in years, it doesn't mean he doesn't know something useful."
Clive reappeared, this time with a precariously stacked tower of paper files cradled against his body, his free arm dragging a corkboard on wheels into the room. It was like something out of a bad buddy-cop movie, pictures and newspaper clippings and pieces of photocopied police reports stuck to the board, connected together by little lines of red and blue yarn.
Faith watched as Toby lost all faith in this being a good idea, shutting his eyes and muttering a curse under his breath. She nearly smirked but was able to bite it back before Clive saw. He stopped in the centre of the room, turning the board so they had a good view then dropping the tower of paperwork onto the coffee table, sending several takeout cartons and an empty beer bottle crashing to the floor.
The mess was ignored.
"I've painstakingly compiled this information over every day of the last twenty-two years," he began, a wild look in his eye. Any hope Faith had of this actually being a good lead evaporated, and she opened her mouth to politely thank him and leave, but he barrelled on before she had a chance. "None of the elements of this case line up – from the lack of evidence of a chemical weapon, to the identities of the heart attack victims, to the baby Emily Jett left behind that nobody will even acknowledge-"
All thoughts of leaving left Faith's head as her heart gave a loud and heavy thump. "Baby?" she snapped, Toby's attention a heat on the side of her face. "What baby?"
Clive looked confused. "Well, uh – didn't you read my emails?"
"We'd like you to go through everything with us, in your own words, from the very beginning – if you please," said Toby politely, pulling out his notepad and holding it at the ready. "Just to make sure we have everything we need. Begin with this baby. What evidence is there that she existed?"
"How d'you know it was a she?" Clive asked with the kind of suspicion that came from years and years of unearned paranoia.
"I read your emails," lied Toby without missing a beat.
Clive's eyes clouded over with giddy vindication, and Faith knew he believed them. "Well, the fact of the matter – and the one thing everyone has no choice but to agree on – is that Emily Jett had a child roughly eight months before her death."
"Why is that not up for debate?" Faith demanded.
Clive didn't seem to think her rude, but he probably wasn't the type to notice such things. "Well, the autopsy. The forensic pathologist who conducted it said there was unequivocal proof she'd given birth within the last eight or so months – and that she was still breastfeeding at the time of her death."
"And what about the other evidence? The stuff nobody can agree on?" Faith asked keenly.
"Well, there were several abandoned motel rooms that week – most belonging to men found dead in the barn. But the interesting thing is, there was one room that hadn't been officially rented out that week, yet when a cleaner at the motel went to get it ready for guests, it was revealed to have been used – by somebody with a baby."
"No identification was found in the room?" Toby asked practically.
"None. Only enough supplies for a woman and a baby. There were prints found in the room, but they've never come up in any database I've tried them in."
"And what makes you think the room was being used by Emily?" Faith asked, utterly aware of how she was sitting forwards in her seat like an overeager student.
"I spoke to the manager of the motel at the time – Schmidt, a slimy guy, ran multiple under-the-table jobs out of the place, back in the day. He wouldn't admit to ever seeing Emily Jett before."
Toby and Faith exchanged a glance. "Then how do you…?"
A look of shame came over Clive's face. "I was under no illusions. I knew how guys like Schmidt worked. And the mystery was eating at me – I had to know. So, I looked the other way when he was busted running one of his side businesses out of the motel in return for the information I needed."
"He admitted to giving Emily the room?" Toby asked, eyes narrowed.
Clive nodded. "He said she paid double to be kept off the books."
"Why isn't that in the police report?" Faith demanded.
Toby leant towards her. "The information was obtained through means of a bribe. The testimony is inadmissible in a court of law," he murmured quickly.
A real FBI agent would have known that, so Faith made a show of nodding. "Of course," she said, thumping herself on the head like a forgetful klutz. "Sorry, I'm running on one cup of coffee today. So, what happened after that?"
Clive grimaced. "Looking the other way at Schmidt's crimes got people hurt – even got some people dead – and I lost my job as Sheriff because of it. Schmidt made sure the whole town knew what I'd done, in retaliation."
Faith wasn't sure what to say in response to that. "I'm sorry," she said, because it seemed like her best bet. "Your nephew seems like he's doing a really good job, though. It must be nice to know someone you trust took your place."
Clive gave the barest ghost of a smile. "It's a small comfort." He returned his attention immediately to the corkboard, almost like he couldn't bear to look away from it for longer than a minute. "So, we know Emily was using the motel room as a base while she was in town, a place to keep her daughter safe while she worked."
"Worked on what?" Faith asked warily.
Clive lunged for his teetering pile of files, and it came toppling down in an avalanche of crinkled papers. It took him a few minutes to sort through the mess enough to find what he was looking for, grabbing out two fat manilla folders and handing one to each of them.
"Back in the eighties, things were old school, so there was no facial recognition. But as soon as the technology became hackable, I…" he trailed off, seeming to realise he just admitted a very serious crime to two federal agents.
"Everything said here is strictly off-the-record," Toby was quick to assure him.
Clive breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, I ran Emily's face through the software, obviously keeping the focus to historical archives and the like. And I got a few hits."
Opening the folder he'd dropped in her lap, Faith found it to be full of newspaper clippings from the late '70s and early '80s. The one on top included a photograph. It was black and white, and a little bit grainy, but it was unmistakably her mother standing between a couple of older men, a large rifle hanging off one shoulder. Faith noticed she looked extremely unhappy to have her picture taken, and wondered if that was something they'd had in common.
"That's an article from 1980," Clive said, a wild look in his eyes, "about an unnamed woman who saved a group of hikers from some kind of – supposed – bear attack in the woods."
Heart leaping up into her throat, Faith looked over at Toby the same moment he glanced at her. At once, she understood something with perfect clarity; Clive was getting uncomfortably close to the truth. Wiping her face of expression, Faith turned back to Clive. "I don't understand, what connects the two cases?"
Clive thumped himself on the head. "I'm getting ahead of myself," he said, leaping back into his pile of clippings while Faith leafed through the file in her lap. More news articles, all without photographic-or-otherwise evidence that Emily Jett had been in any way involved. All, however, connected by one crucial factor.
They were all stories that would make any hunter look up from their meal in suspicion.
A few restless spirits here, a couple wendigos there – it was a collection of hunting cases, most of them offhandedly mentioning a faceless, nameless saviour who swooped in at the last second to save the day. Faith traced her fingers down the length of the articles, thinking about how it was still possible to leave a footprint on this earth without even giving anybody your name.
"Aha!" said Clive, emerging from his avalanche victorious.
He handed her another file, this one older and thinner than the others, bound with a piece of frayed twine. Toby nodded for her to open it, so she obediently unwound the twine.
"This is everything I have on the Hades Cult," said Clive proudly.
"The Hades Cult?" echoed Toby, understandably sceptical.
"They date back hundreds of years," he explained. "I was tracking them for years, even before the Gilbert massacre. There's literature on them everywhere – if you know where to look. There's actually a group of us in town, we meet once a month to talk about it. We call ourselves Hades Minions – sort of an inside joke-"
"Okay, but what are they?" Toby asked.
"Well, uh, they're a cult."
Faith gritted her teeth. "Believe it or not, we'd gotten that far on our own," she said with what was genuinely saintlike patience. "What kind of a cult are we talking about? NSYNC or Don't Drink the Kool-Aid?"
"What – what's the difference?" Clive asked unsurely.
"Never mind," interjected Toby, shooting Faith a stern look for derailing the conversation. "Just, tell us about it, Clive. In your own words."
Clive grabbed the edge of the cork-board-on-wheels, whirling it around to expose the back. It was the same as the front side, an evidence board that looked like it had been put together by Sherlock Holmes, if Sherlock Holmes was pumped full of steroids. This one wasn't about Emily Jett and the Gilbert massacre, however. There were no newspaper clippings or crime-scene photos on this board.
Instead, it was photocopies of old textbook pages and handwritten lists on paper made from animal skin. It was black and white photographs from decades long since passed, of people she couldn't possibly name, and diagrams of tanks and rifles that seemed years ahead of their time. None of it made any sense, but when Clive looked at it, he read with perfect clarity.
"Okay, so they first appeared in the first of the Chinese Dynasties," he began enthusiastically.
Toby choked on nothing. "The first Chinese Dynasty began in 2070 BC."
"Yeah."
"You're telling us about a conspiracy that dates back to four thousand years?"
"Yeah?" he was beginning to seem offended. This time it was Faith who nudged Toby, kicking him hard in the shin in silent reprimand. If she wasn't allowed to make wisecracks, neither was he.
He made a face but just as quickly arranged his expression into something innocent. "Please continue," he said, and with a final frown Clive pressed on.
"They've done a good job of staying off the record, keeping out of the public eye – but history has an honest lens, and nothing escapes its keen eye," he said, a mad gleam in his own. Faith honestly wouldn't have been surprised if he spontaneously burst into song, he was that bonkers. "There are writings about them in every language. They live at the heart of history."
"But what are they?" Faith asked, because she didn't want the whole spiel. She just wanted the facts.
"Nobody knows," Clive shrugged. "Some say gods, some say trickster spirits – some say they're even just ordinary men, turned against their own kind."
Faith tilted her head, watching him babble. "And what do you think they are?"
Clive didn't even hesitate. "Chaos Demons."
Toby lifted his brow, face the picture of polite curiosity. "And what exactly is a…Chaos Demon?" he asked, and something about the way he said it – the words clunky and wrong on his tongue – made it seem like he'd never said such fanciful words in his life.
"There's demon lore the world over, in every single culture on earth. They're all right, in some regards. For argument's sake, let's say we base our understanding on that of the Christian faith. There's a Heaven and there's a Hell, right? There are angels in one, and demons in the other."
"We're not in kindergarten, Clive," Faith drawled. "Smarten it up a little."
"In fact, sum it up," added Toby.
Clive grimaced but did as ordered. "In my humble opinion, the Hades' Cult is a group of demons who were sent out of Hell and onto the Earth purely to cause as much mayhem and chaos as possible, and to create a lack of faith in the God of … well, whatever your chosen religion."
Faith just stared at him, half wondering if he was kidding, or whether he really was as insane as everyone thought. Toby, on the other hand, didn't seem as out of his depth. Leaning forwards in his seat, he seemed more focused on the evidence board before them than anything she'd seen him focus on before.
"You think they're a faction of demonic power – like Crossroad Demons, or Acheri," he said in the keen voice of a total nerd – which he was when it came to the supernatural.
Clive had the look of a man who'd been living in a foreign country for years and only just found someone who speaks his language. "Exactly!" he exclaimed, slamming his hand down on the coffee table in…celebration? Elation? It made Faith jump either way. "You study the supernatural? I wouldn't have expected that from an FBI agent."
"…It's a hobby."
"I'm confused," said Faith plainly, interrupting whatever weird bonding moment she appeared to be witnessing. "What does this have to do with Emily Jett and the Gilbert massacre?"
"Don't you see, Agent Atwood?" Clive asked, going so far as to kneel down in front of her and rest his weathered hands on her knees. She tried not to flinch away from him and his rancid breath. "Emily Jett was hunting this cult. She was trying to stop them – and she succeeded."
Faith felt hollow. "How do you know?"
"The thirteen dead bodies, for starters," he said keenly. "Not to mention there's been no word of the Cult since that night. Nobody's seen hide nor hair of them since Emily Jett performed her ritual and sent them all back to Hell, where they belong."
By all rights, she and Toby should have been sprinting for the door. But they were perhaps some of the few people on Earth who had the ability to sit there with utterly straight faces – because, to them, this wasn't the farfetched conspiracy theory of a madman. Instead, this was the totally plausible theory of a man who had stumbled upon a whole world he couldn't yet understand.
Faith managed to make her mouth cooperate long enough to ask for a drink of water, and Clive patted her sympathetically on the knee. "It's a lot for any one person to take in," he said, then disappeared into the kitchen to get her some water.
The moment he was gone, Faith turned to Toby, who looked disconcertingly grave.
"Is there a gas leak or did that actually make sense?" she asked him in hushed tones.
"This is…troubling," Toby said quietly, scratching at his jaw, a faraway look in his eye.
"You've never heard of this … Hades' Cult … or whatever?"
"Well, not by that name," he said, then grimaced again. "Or by any other, to be honest. I've heard theories of Chaos Demons before, but I've always assumed they were just embellished stories of Tricksters, or other such beings."
"Could it be true?" she asked, suddenly finding it hard to breathe.
Before Toby could answer, though, Clive reappeared with two glasses of water in his hands and a smile on his face. If Faith's heart wasn't threatening to give out from sheer overwhelmingness alone, she'd have thought it was sad that he looked so happy to just be sitting in his living room with a pair of strangers, talking about fairy tales and folklore like they were real.
"Listen, Clive," began Toby while Faith just chugged her water like cheap beer at a house party. Her throat was dry and her head hurt – the water would help, and it probably wasn't drugged. "You said something about the ritual Emily performed that night. Do you know what it was? Or, better yet, exactly what the bloody drawings say? What language or culture they're from?"
"Well, some of it's Latin," said Clive, nothing they didn't already know. "That's as far as I ever got. I want the truth, but actually studying the dark arts? I don't want to tempt fate. That's how innocent people get themselves in over their heads and killed."
It was surprisingly sensible of him, but Faith didn't say that. Instead, she said, "Do you have any recommendations on who we can go to for a translation?"
Clive frowned. "Why would the FBI care about the ritual she used? Shouldn't you just be glad the demons are gone?"
"We are," said Toby quickly. "We just like to be thorough in all areas of our investigation."
Clive nodded seriously, believing the line fed to him, and Faith finished off the glass of water, putting the glass on a tiny corner of uncluttered coffee table space and looking out at the window. It had been blocked out with tinfoil – which was certainly a check in Clive's 'psycho' column – but the bottom section had come away from the glass, revealing the light of day.
It was a lot darker than it had been when they'd arrived, and Faith was keen to get back to the motel and take a long, therapeutic shower. "It's getting late," she said to Toby, then shot her best attempt of a smile at Clive. "Is there anything else important to the case you wanted to share with us before we go?"
He took a moment to think. "No, I don't think so – I have some secondary reading material you might find interesting, though," he said, turning his attention to Toby. "Do you have an email I could grab? Then I can send you through some links."
"That would be great," said Toby, to her surprise. He pulled one of those little fake business cards from his pocket and handed it over. No name – only his job title, contact number, and an email address he used for situations exactly like these. Clive took the card, examining both sides with a critical eye before seeming to deem it acceptable and sliding it into his pocket.
"I'll walk you out," he said, gesturing for them to follow him. "How long are you guys staying in town?" he asked, unmistakable hope in his voice.
"We're leaving first thing in the morning," said Toby as they reached the door. "We've got a long drive back to headquarters."
"You didn't fly?"
"Bureau wouldn't approve the expense."
"Bastards."
"You're telling me."
Toby shook Clive's hand, shooting him half a smile before stepping out into the disappearing warmth of the dying day. Faith shook his hand too, doing her best to muster a smile. "Thanks for your time," she said gratefully.
"Don't mention it," he said. "I'm just happy all of this … it can finally be of some use."
She smiled tightly and turned to leave, but his voice stopped her.
"You remind me of her."
There was no question who he was talking about, and she looked back at him with a furrow in her brow. "I thought you never met her."
"No, I didn't, but I've done my research in the years since she died," said Clive. "You have her eyes. And her smile." Faith froze where she stood, muscles turning rigid. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. What could she say? "I think she'd be real proud of you, joining the FBI," he continued confidently. "Fighting the good fight. It's what she'd've wanted."
So, he was smart enough to figure out she was Emily Jett's missing daughter, but not quite sharp enough to realise she wasn't actually with the FBI? The irony was almost too much, and she swallowed back the hysterical laughter that bubbled up from her abdomen.
"Thank you, Clive," she said graciously. "I look forwards to your email."
He smiled, and then he was gone, slipping back inside the house and shutting the door after him. Faith walked down the stairs, meeting Toby where he was stood against the car, blowing warmth into his cupped hands. "What was that about?" he asked curiously, not having heard the last few moments.
And maybe it was because it was simply too ridiculous to put into words, or maybe because she liked the thought of having one thing that was just hers, and hers alone – but Faith just shook her head. "Just saying goodnight," she lied, and didn't feel bad about it. "Come on. Let's just get back to the motel."
Toby agreed, and by silent agreement, neither spoke about what they'd just learned. Not in the ride back to the motel, not while they ate a dinner of lukewarm Pad Thai, and not as they climbed into their respective beds to go to sleep.
The conversation coming was one they'd have come morning, and Faith couldn't have been gladder as she lay in the dark, bundled under blankets and letting sleep claim her. Yes, reality would hit. But for now, the world let her rest.
A/N: SO sorry for skipping a week, you guys – but: big news – I got engaged! My partner proposed unexpectedly last week, so I've been kind of distracted by that. I'll try to return to our regularly scheduled programming now, even though I'm sure things are only going to get even more crazy from here. Thank goodness I pre-write almost everything!
I hope you enjoyed this one! Much more to come :)