Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Beth didn't understand what they were talking about—the two people in her head. Of course, she was crushing on Larry, she told them. He was the best-looking teacher that she'd ever had. Too bad that Mark was hanging around, too, she thought. The man was messing with her love life, and that was pissing her off. She didn't know why he cared if the two of them were together. It wasn't like he was older than Mark or anything.

Looking at the newspaper in front of her, Beth looked around the room, wondering why she was reading the paper. Did she have a report to do or something? Wadding up the paper, she continued to look around the room she was in. Right now, afraid to say anything, she couldn't remember where she was. Think, she told herself. Just think.

Beth knew that there were times when she would just black out big portions of her day. But lately, it was getting harder and harder for her to stay focused on her daily life. As it was right now, she not only didn't know where she was, but she couldn't remember if she had done something that would get her into trouble again. Closing her eyes and getting a grip on her memories, she opened them and felt better. For now, anyway.

It was a beautiful room, and she tried to remember when it was the last time things were updated. Her mom would know. The pain in her head caused the voices to start to speak to her again, and she stood up and decided that she wasn't going to listen to them. She didn't know anyone called Mary Beth but that girl from school who was in one of her classes. And there was no way that she was going to do what they told her to do. It wasn't right.

"Mom?" Turning, not bothering to close the refrigerator door when she did, Beth told the young girl that she didn't know who she was looking for. "Ok. Right. I'll play along. What are you doing in the fridge right now? You said no snacking before dinner. Come over here, and I'll get you something to drink. You like sweet tea, right? I think I remember that."

The girl took two glasses from the cabinet like she knew the—Something occurred to her. Smiling, she put her hand on the other girl's arm. Touching her seemed to be wrong, so snatching her hand back, she cleared her throat before speaking.

"Am I at your home? Is that why I've never seen this room before?" The girl asked her what she thought of the room as she poured them both a glass of tea. "I was just sitting there reading the paper when I realized I didn't know where I was. No biggie. It has happened to me a lot lately. Did you want me to fix your hair today?"

"No. I have it the—can you tell me your name? I remember it, but I want to make sure that I say it right." She told her. "Okay. My name is Mary Beth Prichard. I'm glad to meet you, Bethy James. I don't think I remember you telling me your last name before. Gosh, you're beautiful. Do you look like your mom or dad?"

They talked for a little while. Mary Beth kept asking her questions like there was going to be some kind of test later, and she wanted to have all the correct answers. Stupid questions. Like how old she was. Did she have any brothers and sisters. So Bethy started writing down the answers that she got from the girl as Mary Beth was doing.

"You have really pretty hair." Mary Beth told her that it was the same color as hers was. "Oh yeah. I never knew that." She looked at her reflection in the microwave that was just across from them. It was too dark for her to compare her hair to the girl, but she had no reason to disbelieve her. She put her hands to her face when she felt it heat up like someone was frying her face. "Do you think it would be all right if you gave me something for my headache? It's so painful right now. It has my belly messed up." Mary Beth said that she'd get some from her mother's bathroom. "Can I come too? I'd love to see if she has a pink room. I don't know why, but I think it'll be bright pink."

It wasn't anything close to pink. In fact, it was a dark brown color with some kind of greens in it. However, when she saw the bed, all she could think about was lying down on it. Covering herself up with the pretty afghan at the bottom and taking a nap. Not asking for permission, Bethy not only laid down but didn't want to get up to even take anything that Mary Beth had gotten for her.

Beth knew that, on some level, that she was in trouble right now. What she'd done or what she was going to do seemed just out of her reach. But Mary Beth was being so nice to her. No one had ever been this nice to her in all her life, she knew that she had to keep on her toes so that she'd not figure out what a bad person she was. Beth wanted a friend to talk to in the worst sort of way.

"I have such a terrible headache, Mary Beth. I feel like my head is going to explode." Bethy paused just long enough to hear one of the voices speak to her. "You should know that I'm supposed to kill you. That I'm to take the gun out of the safe in that closet and kill you all. Do you have sisters and brothers?"

"I do. I have two sisters and three brothers. I'm the oldest. The others aren't supposed to be home for another hour. Dad will pick them up and bring them home. Do you know where you live, Bethy? Someplace grand, I'm betting." Nodding made her physically ill, and she'd only just gotten to the trashcan on her side of the bed before puking all over the nice, comfy bed. "You don't look so good, Mom, I mean Bethy. How about I call someone to come here and see to you? I have my own cell phone. I think you might be sick with something. Can I make the call to get you some help?"

"I just need a few minutes, then I'll do what the voices are telling me. You won't run off, will you? If I were to close my eyes for a little bit, you'll stay with me, won't you?" Mary Beth assured her that she'd not leave her side. But she thought that calling someone would help. "All right. But don't run off. I have to do this, or I get a nosebleed. Sometimes for hours. You call, I know, you call Larry Turner. I think that he's so dreamy. He's going to be my husband soon. Then I can keep house for him and have lots of babies."

"That's a wonderful idea." She opened one eye and watched Mary Beth pull out her phone. "I'm just calling to have Larry picked up and brought here. That'll be all right, don't you think? Also, I need to let my dad know that we have company. Would you like to stay for dinner? We usually have pizza on Sunday nights. Is that all right?"

Bethy listened to Mary Beth telling the person on the other end of the line that her BFF was really sick with a headache and that her name was Bethy James. Some of her words seemed messed up. Like at one point, Mary Beth told the person that there were people talking in her head or something like that. Then she told the person that she'd be right here on the bed with her. That she was keeping an eye on her friend.

"I don't know that we're friends, are we?" Mary Beth pointed out that she was in her house. "I guess so. But the man in my head, he keeps telling me that I need to kill you all. I don't know who the all might be unless it's your brothers and sisters, but I have to do it, or I can't let my head rest. There is a woman there, too. She keeps calling me nasty names. All the time. Also, that my time is running out. I'm only thirteen years old. How could time be running out for me?"

"Does this man know the answers? Did you ask him that? I think I'd like to have that answer too." Bethy noticed that the other girl was crying and that her face was blotchy with her tears. She asked her if she was all right. "Of course I am. I'd be better if you didn't tell me all the time that you have to kill me, but I'm all right. You have a mission, right? To kill me? I just want to say that I don't want you to kill my brothers and sisters. I suppose if you have to kill someone, then I'd rather it be me. They're so little that…I love them dearly, Bethy, and I don't want anything to happen to them. I think Dad would be so depressed."

"Yes, that's right. It's a mission. And I don't want to kill anyone. It's messy. Blood gets everywhere, and it takes me a long time to get it out of my clothing. Sometimes I just want to burn them, but the woman in my head, she says that I've wasted enough money being a…she calls me a whore." Bethy tried to listen to the man more, but he was jabbering about how time was running out. "I don't know what to do with him. He's been bothering me for days now. I finally had to kill a person so that he'd shut his mouth."

"You did kill someone? Maybe it was just a dream. I have them sometimes, too. Where did you do that at?" Bethy couldn't remember, but it was in a house, she told the other girl. The house had a big red door in the front of it. "That's the Winchester's house. Thomas and Caroline live there with their little boy, Ethan. Are any of those the names that you might have heard that you were to kill?"

When her head suddenly stopped hurting, Bethy smiled at MB, what she decided to call the other girl. They were BFFs, right? And they needed to have cool nicknames. MB asked again who she had killed. She really didn't want to talk about it, but she nodded, thinking that if she were to tell her, then she'd stop talking about it, and they could talk about Larry. Or was it Jeremiah? She didn't care.

"Tommy. He was the one that stood me up at the prom. I think. He told me that his family wouldn't allow him to hang around with a spoiled woman. That's another thing that my mom called me. Spoiled for everyone, she told me. Like I was nothing more than a gallon of milk that had been left too long. I'm not spoiled, am I, MB?"

While her head was still silent, she got up and used the bathroom. Coming out, she didn't know where she was at first but decided to get things organized for the killings. It was that, or the voices in her head, were going to keep at her until she did what she was told. She had been brought up that you always had to listen to your…she didn't know who they were. Going to the closet, she opened the big doors to it and saw the safe. Instead of opening it, like she thought that she needed to, Bethy sat on the floor in front of it.

"I feel like things are messing up. Did you do that? Did you make it so that I'm messed up?" MB told her that they'd only been talking and she didn't know her plans other than that she was going to be killed. "I have to do that, MB. If I don't, then I will go insane." Some part of her thought that she was insane but let that flitter away with the other things in her head.

"No. I'd not do that to you. I was…there is blood on the safe there. Have you been in it before?" There were noises going on in the living room, and she reached for the safe door before standing. "Please don't kill anyone else? Please? The police are here. They want to—"

"Mary Beth, come to me." She grabbed the other girl's leg before her best friend could leave her. Bethy didn't know the voice behind, but she knew that if she lost contact with MB, things would end badly for her. "Beth, let her go. You don't want to hurt your daughter, do you? Just let her come to me."

"I don't have a daughter. Don't be stupid, mister. I'm just a kid. Kids aren't supposed to have kids. That's why my…something is wrong here. What have you done to me? Go away. All of you, go away." She turned and looked at the man, there was something about him that was familiar, but she couldn't figure it out as the voice in her head started up again. "I have to kill her. She's…the person said that she's draining the life out of me and my buds. Do I have buds?"

"You do, honey. A lot of them." MB was sobbing now, her hands were clawing at hers, and she didn't like it. When she saw the blood on her skirt, she pulled out the gun that wasn't in the safe anymore but in the waistband of her skirt and put it on the forehead of MB. "Bethy, if you don't drop the gun, the police are going to kill you. Do you understand me? No one has to die right now. We'll get you someone to talk to."

Some of the words she did understand, but they were all muddled up too. Looking at MB, she told her what had happened to her. Or the things that she had remembered. For some reason, she was able to ignore the voices and talk to the girl. It seemed imperative that she told her why her head was hurting. Not only that, but she wanted MB to forgive her. For what? Bethy had no idea, but it was as important as telling her the story.

"I was twelve when it happened to me. They were forever telling me that I was stupid, and they had to pay someone to keep me smart. I never got a bad grade, nor did I ever…they hated me, I guess. I didn't know what was happening, and they told me to shut my mouth when I tried to tell them what he'd done to me. What he was making me do at the afterschool meetings." Closing her eyes, she thought of the birthday party that she'd had then. "Twelve years old and upset with my parents. They got me all kinds of baby stuff for my birthday. Diapers and sleepers. I had a car seat thingy, too. Nothing for me but all for the baby. Did you know that I had a baby, MB?"

Someone told MB to play along. She didn't know what that meant and turned again to look at the man. He kept telling her that he was going to get her help but not to kill their daughter. Please. MB put her fingers on her face and turned her back to look at her. With a watery-looking smile, she spoke to her, ignoring the man behind her.

"No, I didn't know you had a baby when you were my age. Is that what you meant? That you had a baby when you were just a little girl?" Bethy nodded. "I'm so sorry that happened to you. Can you please move the gun? I won't run. Please, Mom. But it's scaring me. If you were to just move it a little, I promise you that I won't run. I'll stay right here with you."

She didn't want to remove the gun. It was security for her. Bethy didn't want to do anything but sit here and talk about how cruel her mom and dad had been to her when she'd had a baby. She needed this. It was her turn to be…it was all so unfair. It hadn't been her fault.

"He kept me after school all the time. Telling me that I needed to study harder if I was going to get into college. My dad said that it was all right and I did want to go to college. But I never got to go. I didn't get to do anything because I had a baby. She was so delicate. Not at all like the dollies that I had. They took those away from me, too. I wasn't allowed to have any toys anymore because I had become a terrible person." She tried to ignore the voice in her head as it told her to kill the girl. "I was studying hard. Doing all the extra homework and staying in while the other children went to play when I was home. They never allowed me to play with any of the children in the neighborhood. Not that any of them wanted to play with me, but it was so unfair, MB. You do believe me, don't you?"

"I do. With all my heart, I believe you. I'm so sorry. I ache for you. What was the baby's name? Can you tell me that?" Looking at the girl, she tried to think why she should know her too. Why needing to know her name was making her sick with worry. "Did you have a little girl or boy?"

She opened her mouth and wanted to spew out the words that had been beaten into her from the very beginning, even before she'd been made to study harder after school. Before, her teacher had talked to her about telling on him. Words that were as untrue as they were uncomfortable to say even today. You tell, you will suffer more.

"Girl. She was…I was confused and heartbroken when she was born. I didn't…I didn't know anything about babies and nothing at all about that one." She didn't move away from the girl but felt like if she didn't move soon, they'd both be hurt. "They made me keep her, but I hated her. I hated everything about her. My parents too."

"I'm sorry." Bethy looked hard at the girl and asked her what her name was. "Mary Beth Pritchard. I'm named after my mom. She's a wonderful person. And has always…she's always been there for me and my siblings. Would you tell me more about your baby, Beth? And maybe your parents? I never met them, I don't think. I don't believe I would have liked them anyway."

"My parents hated me. They called me names all the time. Said I was a whore. A prostitute. I didn't know what that meant, but it still hurt me. My mom said that my child was a sin that's why she was so handicapped. I know that now. She wasn't a sin but handicapped. She said that no good would come of her and I was going to go to hell because I had made Mr. Frazier have sex with me." Bethy started crying. "I didn't want him to touch me with that thing. But he made me. He made me do all kinds of things with him that made me sick. Why did he do that to me? I was just a little girl."

When the girl wrapped her arms around her, she sobbed harder on her shoulder. Bethy knew that she was telling secrets that were supposed to be kept forever, but she was hurting, and it wasn't her fault. When she'd cried about as much as she ever had, she looked at the girl.

"You're Mary Beth." The little girl nodded and told her that she was her daughter. "Yes. I remember you now. You're my daughter. I have…I'm so glad that you turned out to be perfect, Mary Beth." Playing with her hair, she thought of the other daughter, the one she'd been forced to raise.

Standing up, Bethy said that she needed to freshen up and made her way to the bathroom. She needed a moment too. Just enough time that she could freshen up her heated face and to think about what had happened to her first child.

~*~

"The child was born to Beth when she was thirteen years old. After figuring out her true name, the one that she gave Mary Beth, it was easy to track down the information that was needed." Mark nodded but didn't look as if he was really paying attention. "With the help of Hanna and the other women in my family, we were able to track down not only what had happened to her parents but the child as well. Are you sure you want to hear this? It's a lot to take in."

"I don't know what I want right now." Mary Beth spoke up and said that she wanted to hear it all. "Honey, are you sure you're going to be all right? To have…are you sure?"

"No one noticed that she was hurting, did they? Not any of us. I used to call it flipping. She would flip out of herself and become this other person. I didn't know that it was really her. And today…Mom told me things that she'd never told me before." Mark told his daughter that it was his fault that it had gotten so bad. "No, Dad, you were there for her, but she'd been…I learned in my psychology class that when someone has been hiding or lying all their lives, they get good enough at it that even those closest to them can't see it. Mom was hurting long before you two married, I'm thinking."

Mark looked at him, and Jeremiah smiled. "My brilliant daughter. Did I tell you that she's in her second year of med school right now?" He had, but Jeremiah let him go on about it again. He didn't know how he'd feel if something like this were to have happened to him. "Go on, Jeremiah. Tell us the rest of the story. I might need a refresher later but I'm sure that Mary Beth can help me."

"All right. When she gave birth to the little girl, there were complications for both mother and child. For the child, she was born with a lot of bruises on her body due to Beth's parents trying to beat the child out of their daughter. Nurses made note of it in her records or we might well have never known that. As you can well imagine, it had sever effects on both of them. In addition to her being too young to have a child, she was constantly being stressed out by her parents. My heart hurts for what Beth had to endure."

"Mom would slip away at times. Mostly when she was stressed out. I'd sit with her, and we'd talk like we were just a couple of kids who liked to hang out. That's why I rarely said anything to you, Dad when she would act out." Mark hugged his child. "But today, as soon as I saw her with her head in the refrigerator, I knew that she was having a bad time. So I played along, just like I do every time that she's out of it. To be honest, I thought it was just her and that Dad knew about it. But this last thing. I knew that she was in trouble. I just didn't know that she was thinking of killing me."

"She killed her parents and her child." Mark sobbed and told him that he'd not known about the other child. He only knew that she'd been a child when her parents had died. "She spent twelve years in an asylum for the criminally insane. The doctors there, at that time, only did what they were told to do by some wealthy family. It had been in their will that Beth was a danger to all mankind and that she was a harlot. I think that she was justified in killing them, but that's just me. Beth was sedated all the time, it seems. And until she escaped, they thought that she was doing well. Turns out that she was not taking her medication."

"She got out how?" Jeremiah told Mary Beth that he was still looking into that. "So she escaped and made a new life for herself."

"Exactly." Jeremiah watched as Mark got up to pace. He watched him carefully. The doctor had given him something to relax, but it didn't seem to be working yet. Mary Beth, for only being fifteen years old, seemed to have a better grip on things than her father did.

For the rest of the evening, Jeremiah sat with the Turner family. The two youngest, five years old, had gone home with Caitlynn and Joel. He knew that they were in good hands. Lexy was with the faeries cleaning up the bedroom and bathroom that Beth had died in.

He couldn't believe that she had fooled them all. Before going into the bathroom, Beth had seemed fine. She spoke to Mark and hugged both him and Mary Beth. She even mentioned that she'd have a lot more to explain when she came out, and no one seemed inclined to see if she was armed still. As soon as the lock clicked on the door, the gunshot was immediate. Beth hadn't wasted any time in ending her miserable life keeping her secrets as best she could.

"How did she kill them?" Jeremiah didn't need to refer to his notes but looked down to give himself a moment. It was a gruesome death for the adults, but the child, a child with severe disabilities who was in the care of the mother-child herself, might well have felt at peace for the first time in her young life.

"Her father was killed when his brake lines were cut on his car. He had survived the accident that happened, but he didn't survive his daughter. Beth went to the wreckage, and while her father was still alive, she set fire to the car. He was found several days later. Her mother…Beth killed her mother by chaining her to the rafters in the basement and burnt her with anything that she could find to heat up. Cigarette burns were the most wounds that were found. And, this isn't from me, but the coroner said that it looked like she might well have gotten bored with her mother or she had died and cut her throat. She was found in the basement of the home when the fire department had been called in for the house being on fire." Mark asked about the child. "She had a single gunshot wound in her chest. It was an instant death as the heart was hit. As I was told, it was more than likely the first time that the child was at peace."

"What do you mean? How handicapped was this child?" Only hitting the highlights, Jeremiah told the other man the things that had been listed without going into too much detail. "My god, Jeremiah. No wonder she snapped. And they didn't have a nurse on duty to help her?"

"From what I was able to find out, it looks like even her parents wouldn't help her. They never once touched the child. Never bought it anything after it was born. Her entire life, for the eighteen months that the child lived, was spent with oxygen tubes, feeding tubes, as well as having to have her colostomy bag changed every few hours to keep her from dying of an infection. Harlot, what she was named by her grandparents was also born blind and deaf. Part of her brain hadn't developed, so she would have never spoken or done any of the things that a child would have been able to do. Had she lived, she would have needed constant care and a nurse on duty to cope with the things wrong with her for the rest of her life. Instead, a thirteen-year-old little girl was made to do it all on her own."

"Christ, I think I'd like to dig them up and—they got off too easily if you ask me. Poor Beth. It's amazing that she was able to function at all if you ask me." Jeremiah said that he felt like that as well.

Jeremiah answered their questions as best and as easily as he could. There were other things that Beth had had to endure not only while locked up but also at home. To him, it was a small wonder that she'd ever had any other children. There were other things that he'd thought of, too. From the information that Hudson, a very old vampire and dear friend of the family, was, with his magic, able to get more information than anyone would ever have. He'd told him that while living at home, her father had abused his daughter as well, and when he'd been tortured when he'd had the accident that his cock and balls had been cut off and shoved into his mouth. He wasn't going to tell them that, but it made him proud of her on some level.

When Lexy joined him, they headed home. The Prichard family was going to be staying at a hotel for a little while until they, as a family, decided what they wanted to do. None of them wanted to ever step foot in the house again. Not that he blamed them, but he was going to gather up some of the things that Beth had and make sure that pictures were given to them as well.

Mark wanted the house torn down. He told him that he'd never live there again, and no one blamed him. Even the youngest children seemed to understand that the house was tainted and didn't want to stay there either. Not even to go in and get some clothing to wear.

"They're going to need help." Jeremiah nodded, telling Lexy that they would need to see someone, too. "I thought of that myself. While Mary Beth has a handle on things, it's going to hit her sooner rather than later that her mother killed herself. And that she didn't need to die. I will forever blame that on her parents. Poor Beth."

"Poor everyone. Also, the teacher, no one asked, but the man was arrested about ten years ago for child porn. He was killed on his way to the prison where he'd been sentenced. Hudson told me that the man was known to keep little girls after school and what he was doing. But since he was doing such a good job at teaching children—I kid you not, they kept him on but kept a closer eye on him. Those mother fuckers need to die too." Lexy laughed at him, and he was glad. While he'd been serious, he knew that what he wanted to lighten her mood. His took a good turn too, he was happy to say to himself.

It was late when they got home. After checking the several messages that had been left for the two of them, Jeremiah headed to his office. He was only going to be in there for a few minutes, getting things set up for tomorrow, a school day. He ended up ignoring everything to go up to bed.

Jeremiah needed to hold onto Lexy. Not just for sex but to know that she was the real thing for him. Comfort as well as loved. Once he was in bed, she turned to him and wrapped her warm body around him. Tomorrow, he told himself he was going to ask to see her other half. Then he wanted to talk to her about other things. Like, did she want some children or not.

Closing his eyes, he felt his body relax. He was mentally exhausted but still had a bit of energy that was making his legs shake a bit. Lexy ran her feet up and down his legs, and it had the desired effect. He was asleep in no time.