Mother Callie

Cerise Brighton and Benson Highcastle were partners. They had both been recruited by the Broadsword organization for their specific skills and talents. As field agents their mission was to hunt. Once the target was acquired the objective varied from elimination, to capture, to observation, etc; it depended on who, or what, was being hunted. Earlier that morning they had met with Horme for the details of their latest assignment; elimination of a Mother.

“We call them Mothers, but it is not a mother you or I would want,” Horme quipped. “Always female, immortal, feed off of children, nothing too exciting there, but they are so intelligent they’re nearly impossible to catch. That’s why Godfrey insisted I give this case to the two of you. Mother Callie, our particular target, has a unique method we’ve never seen in a Mother. Traditionally, a Mother will abduct a young child and consume it’s body and soul to sustain it’s own. Mother Callie is abducting children at a young age, but instead of consuming them outright she is raising them!” The glee with which he spoke caused Cerise and Benson to raise their eyebrows and exchange a look. “ I know, I know, it is terrible, but equally fascinating.”

“You admire this creature so much, shall we bring her back alive for you, Bob?” Benson interjected. Horme turned his large furry head to regard Benson with a glare.

“Godfrey won’t give his permission for that with this one.” He sounded briefly like a petulant child. “Anyway, we have reason to believe this Mother is abducting children around age 5 and she is raising them, keeping them alive, maintaining their low mental capacity, and feeding off of them for years and years. A young woman was picked up somewhere in Ireland, estimated to be 20 years old, but a mental age of 7 or 8. She was a ward of this Mother for an, as of yet, undetermined amount of time. Wait til you listen to the tapes, she is fascinating.” Horme continued to lead the small group through the wide stone halls of Broadsword Headquarters. To an outsider his words would seem callous, but Horme had a good heart. His quest for knowledge and understanding of the world and its creations merely outweighed it. Broadsword had picked him up around the fall of Ancient Greece and he had proven himself a very valuable asset time and time again. Previously an acolyte of the Greek goddess Aergia, Horme resembled a sloth, but was gifted with intelligence that exceeded any human.

Passing through the double doors into the medical department, Horme grew solemn. “You two can’t speak to the girl. There are copies of her sessions to assist you in your investigation, but she is too fragile to introduce to any more people. I want you to see her though.” They entered a small observation room adjacent to a barren padded cell. Even with all of the terrible things Cerise had seen as a trauma surgeon, and Benson had witnessed on the front lines, neither could stop the pit from opening in their stomachs at the sight of the small girl lying on the white cot.

“You said she was 20 years old, Horme. That looks like a 12 year old girl,” Cerise spoke clinically, no hint of her anger and disgust coloring her voice, a skill she had acquired working in a hospital for 10 years.

“I’ve seen victims of famine and drought with more meat on their bones,” Benson’s observation was flat and cold. Images flashed through his mind, young children lifted from the rubble of a desert town where they had been abandoned to starve and die.

The woman was small, jagged bones sticking forth where they shouldn’t, skin so white and stretched it was nearly translucent. Her eyes were deep sunken and darkly shadowed, cheekbones prominent, her mouth a tight thin line over a sharp chin. The bones of her throat and collar protruded from the top of her small gown, and limbs like petrified wood poked out from her small trunk, looking just as hollow, like you could snap them between your fingers. As they looked on, her eyes opened, blank green orbs without focus, without emotion, without thought. They rolled around once, not seeming to see what was before them, before shutting again. Her body never moved.

“Don’t go to the third floor.

That was our only rule. The only rule, and Demi couldn’t follow it, so Callie killed Demi. We tried to tell her, tried to stop her, but she just wouldn’t listen. What could we do then? We couldn’t wrestle her down, tie her to the bed. No, we couldn’t do that because Callie would see. Callie couldn’t see that, no, she would be very upset. We didn’t like Callie when she was upset.

But you know who Callie is. It hurts us to talk about Callie...

Callie was our mother. She was beautiful, too. Her eyes were so big and black, like holes that open in the ground and swallow people up. She wore the prettiest black dress with its high collar and billowing skirt. Callie had the best hair, black as black and always pulled so tightly away from her face we thought her skin would split. It didn’t of course, it was always smooth and white like the snow we saw through our windows but never touched. Yes, Callie was beautiful and Callie was our mother. She took care of us. She fed us everyday, sometimes twice. Once a week she would bathe us and comb our hair. We liked those days the most. We knew Callie loved us.

Except Demi. We almost forgot Demi. Demi stopped loving Callie, but we didn’t. Did we ask Demi why? No, but Demi told us, oh she told us every night, but we don’t remember what she told us. Not then, and certainly not now. We knew it was nothing. We loved Callie and Callie loved us. Demi was just trouble.

One time Sara caught Demi trying to steal bread from Callie’s table. And Able saw Demi touching one of Callie’s books. Cici was the one who saw Demi on those forbidden stairs to the third floor. We don’t remember when, maybe we were ten, maybe thirteen. We aren’t that now. Besides, we talked to Cici much later, she didn’t tell when it happened. We didn’t talk about it when it happened.

You know, Callie kissed Demi once. Right on the top of the head while we were having our meal. We remember that very well. We were awestruck by Callie and her loving generosity, jealous, very jealous, that we weren’t the ones to receive it. Oh, we don’t remember when that happened, just that it did. No, Demi wasn’t Callie’s favorite. We were Callie’s favorite. Callie knew Demi was no good just like we did. Why did we mention the kiss? We don’t want to talk about that anymore.

This is how it happened.

Our room was on the second story of Callie’s big, pretty house. We each had a bed and a drawer. We couldn’t ask for anything more. Demi thought she was better than us, though. She wanted her own room, with her own set of drawers. We hated her. She told such fantastic tales and horrible lies about Callie. It doesn’t matter what they were, we told you, Demi was an ugly liar.

We liked to pick on her, and make her feel stupid. She really was stupid for not loving Callie. Carmen put glue all over her pillow once. And Iva cut her hair while she was sleeping. We guess these things made Demi unhappy, but that’s what we wanted. We didn’t know it would make her do something as crazy as go to the third floor.

We don’t really know how it happened, really. One day, Chrissy saw Demi standing at the foot of the stairs. Chrissy said she had the ugliest look on her face, she was smiling, but her eyes were all scrunched up and squinty. That’s when we knew something was wrong with Demi. She was probably just crazy. It’s her own fault that Callie killed her. Callie had no other choice.

So, Chrissy saw her in front of the stairs. The next day, Ada saw Demi standing on the first step. That’s how it went. Everyday we saw her take one more step up those stairs. We wanted to tell Callie, but we couldn’t speak to Callie unless she asked us a question.

‘You guys,’ Demi would say when it was time for bed. ‘You guys, we have to go up there. We have to. Callie is hiding something up there. Don’t you wanna know what it is?’ We just thought she sounded like a crazy person. And she was. That’s why she’s dead now.

Please don’t touch us. We only like for Callie to touch us. When you took Callie from us we cried. We still cry at night sometimes, hoping Callie will come quiet us like she did when we were hers. See Callie didn’t like crying because it was a weakness. If she caught us crying she would dry our tears with her little handkerchief and then send us to bed, no matter what time it was or if we had eaten, and that made us much stronger. We were only strong because of Callie. Without Callie we’ve let ourselves grow weaker and weaker.

The day Demi made it to the top step of that flight of stairs leading to that forbidden third floor, was the beginning of the end. Callie knew the whole time that Demi was breaking her rule. She watched Demi just like we watched Demi, waiting for her to finally go too far. On that day, Callie was waiting for Demi on the third floor.

No, we don’t know what’s on the third floor. We aren’t supposed to know, it’s forbidden. They tried to tell us once when they said we were old enough to hear it, but we covered our ears and screamed until they went away. We won’t upset Callie breaking her rules like Demi did.”

Cerise paused the tape recorder, looking across the metal table at the smirk on Benson’s handsome face. “Is there something you would like to add?” She asked, crossing her arms and leaning back into the cold metal frame of her chair. The pair was sitting at their usual table, one of only five at Artemis Grounds, the little bodega in the 5th Street subway station.

Expression unchanging, Benson merely shrugged, “That poor girl is not going to be of any use to the case.”

“I disagree,” Cerise immediately fired back. “That ‘poor girl’ you are referring to escaped from the lair of this Mother. Though her current mental state is not ideal, she knows more about the place and its surroundings than anyone else. Horme has been working closely with the doctors to unlock her mind, it’s only a matter of time.”

“As always your optimism is aggravating.” Benson grabbed his coffee cup and raised the dossier in front of his face, ending the brief exchange. Cerise couldn't help but smile, feeling complemented by his supposed insult. Unable to help herself, she probed forward with her mind, feeling his annoyance in the air around him, and perhaps just the slightest hint of admiration. Before she could be sure, his annoyance grew, his aura turning dark orange, she was suddenly aware of his eyes boring into hers like daggers. “Get out of my feelings Cerise.” Blushing, Cerise stared into her own coffee cup, avoiding Benson’s cold brown eyes. He was the only person she had ever met who could feel her presence like that, it was unnerving.

Several minutes passed as they read through the brief dossier together. “ I think we can agree that the best place to begin this investigation is the town where the girl was picked up,” Benson looked directly at Cerise for the first time since she had invaded his privacy.

“Killaloe, Clare. Ireland.”

Cerise and Benson stood on the Killaloe Bridge regarding the River Shannon. “The girl was found here? On this bridge, in the middle of the city?” Benson’s voice was dripping with skepticism, he turned slowly surveying the bustling town around him. “Tourists, locals, foot traffic, countless boats, even in the middle of the night the girl would never make it to this point unseen.”

“It does seem odd. In her tapes, the girl says the place she was staying had 3 stories. And she mentions seeing snow from the windows of her room. Surely locals would notice children in the window of a home that no children ever entered or exited.”

“The locals have not been forthcoming with any kind of information, Cerise. They’re lips seem more tightly sealed than a crypt. I don’t like it. My suspicion is aroused and my anger is bridling as well.” Benson placed his open palms flat against the cold stonewall of the bridge, muscles tensed, his trenchcoat stretched across his broad shoulders. Cerise always marveled at his carefully composed exterior, catching glimpses as she did, of the molten lava that ran beneath it. He had laughed at the recordings, claiming the girl was of no use, but he desperately wanted to catch the creature that had taken her life, twisting and breaking it until it was nearly unrecognizable. Failure was not an option for Benson.

Suddenly, Benson’s posture changed. They were near the Western end of the bridge, on the bank was a copse of trees through which the setting sun was shining. Cerise, feeling the change in his aura stepped up beside him and followed his eyeline. There was the sun, rays outlining the trees in a halo of golden light, and the steely blue water flowing beneath the bridge, lapping rhythmically against the bridge supports. “Where is the shadow from the trees?”

As if conjured by their suspicions, the house snapped into existence before them. Where before had been open water, now stood a large stone structure reaching three stories above the bridge. It appeared to be composed of the same limestone as the bridge itself. With narrow windows and ornate parapets lining the top, it bore great resemblance to St Mary’s Church of Ireland. As Cerise and Benson took in this building that had not been there moments ago, they both caught sight of the woman in the third story window, and they heard the girl on the tape as if it were playing for them again. "She was beautiful, too. Her eyes were so big and black, like holes that open in the ground and swallow people up. She wore the prettiest black dress with its high collar and billowing skirt. Callie had the best hair, black as black and always pulled so tightly away from her face we thought her skin would split."

Mother Callie smiled a blood chilling grin, raising a sharp finger to beckon them forward as she herself stepped from the window and faded into the shadows.