Unholy Shepherd by Robert Christian (rooftoppers txt) 📕

herself that it wasn’t her fault, seeing the things she saw in these terrible dreams and not being able to control them filled her with an enormous amount of shame. Catholic guilt, she thought to herself.

It was almost funny that she would use those words. The Catholic religion had never been anything but a source of unmitigated pain in her life. It was her mother’s fervor and superstitious beliefs that had driven her to entrust Maureen into the hands of zealots—first at the hospital mere days after her brother’s body was found, then for nearly eight years in that prison that masqueraded as a boarding school. In both places, the cross and rosary were front and center, and when simple prayer didn’t work to drive the evil out of her, the priests and nuns would turn to more medieval practices. Still, the nightmares would come, and she would see into the depraved minds of those that made these places their playground. She would put on their faces in her sleep and wear them like the masks they themselves wore in the light of day, and she would understand how piety and holiness were just a cover for them—a shield to hide behind—while they acted on their deeper desires and lusts. She learned early that when you go head-on against an institution, it is you who suffer while the perpetrators get no justice. To this day, she has never forgotten the sound that a toe makes when it’s broken.

And yet, even as Maureen stood alone on the sidewalk remembering all the lessons learned and the reasons that she tried to stay uninvolved, she felt her mind pull her feet in another direction. This unseen force, driven by the deep recesses of her subconsciousness, dragged her back toward Main Street. A desire to see the crime scene for herself took control of her body, and a subtle voice rang out in her head. What if you’re wrong? What if the nightmare didn’t show you the death of that kid from the news? She had to know. Biting her lip, Maureen looked up and down the dark street, searching for any movement, any set of eyes on her. She saw none. She closed her eyes, let out a deep breath, and began to briskly walk toward Main Street.

She mumbled to herself that this was a bad decision almost as soon as her feet hit the pavement of Main Street, and she moved more and more rapidly as she continued on her way toward the house with the red door. It wasn’t really a snap decision, though, if she was being honest with herself. She thought of it during her conversation with the detective at the bar. It was the reason for her asking if the family was still staying in the house. Breaking into a crime scene was going to be one thing. Breaking into a crime scene with a victimized family still inside was going to be something else.

The crunch of gravel under her feet told Maureen that she was getting closer to the once idyllic subdivision. A pair of headlights appeared in the distance. She moved a few feet off the shoulder into the grass, slowing down as the car passed in the hopes that she would avoid detection. She flinched as another vehicle passed from the rear, going in the opposite direction. She watched the taillights head off down the road, stop several hundred meters away, and disappear. Must have turned down a side street, she thought.

The stone monument that marked the entrance to the subdivision came into view, and in a few moments, she was walking up the same street as that morning. The sound of a car pulling into the subdivision made her head whip back behind her. She saw nothing, though, and chalked it up to nerves. She turned back toward the lights and continued at a slow pace, as if she were dragging a weight behind her.

She came to a stop on the sidewalk just in front of the two-story home. Her eyes were fixed on the red door as she recalled with vivid detail the brief moment of eye contact with the young detective. The buzzing crowd from earlier had given way to the silence of the night, and the only sign that they had been there was the trampled grass of the front lawn and the pile of bouquets and stuffed animals near the front stoop. Maureen stared at the memorial, remembering another she had only been allowed to go to once before she was taken away. These homemade tributes to a dead child hadn’t changed in a quarter of a century.

Out of the side of her eye, Maureen thought she saw a shadow blot out the light halfway down the block. Her head snapped around, trying to find the source of the movement. There was nothing to be seen. She silently cursed herself for allowing paranoia to get the better of her. She decided almost instantly that she was just making up phantoms to put in her path. It would be so easy to pretend she was being observed and to turn away at the last minute. She wanted to, of course, but she was determined to press on. She’d be damned if a shadow was going to be her undoing.

Creeping around the side of the house and heading into the backyard, Maureen had no idea what she would be looking for once she got into the house. Something that would ease her guilt or even prove the nightmare wrong, for sure, but she couldn’t fathom what sort of thing that would be. The lights from the street dimly illuminated the grass, and she could now make out a patch of burned earth surrounded by more yellow tape. Small flags dotted the surrounding ground. She closed her eyes and tried to wish away her recognition of the obvious hallmarks of the crime scene from her dream. She still desperately sought to find something