He breathed heavily and at first Vince thought Frank was going to collapse emotionally again. But he regained his composure and continued. “I ended up obtaining copies of the mortgage records and deed to the property of the current owners. I did a background check on them. They turned out to be normal. I decided against going to the house and knocking on the door, introducing myself, telling them I grew up there and that I was just passing through the neighborhood. But God, did I want to see the inside of that place. Despite the fact that I lived nightmares in that house, I just had to go in there.
“I spent the next two weeks shadowing the owners,” Frank continued, leaning back in his seat casually, looking out at the park. “I learned their habits, their whereabouts. Then one day when they weren’t home, I broke in.”
“You broke in?”
“Yeah. Holdover from my days as an addict when I used to break into houses and steal shit I could sell for dope. I managed to slip through the back. I must’ve sat in the living room for thirty minutes, letting old memories wash over me the way waves lap on the sand of a beach. Then I hit all the rooms. I didn’t take anything. Didn’t touch anything. Just walked around, letting the memories come to me as I entered each room.” He paused, struggling with the next bit of memory that was coming to the surface. “And then when I got to a room that was an addition to the house—it was set in the back and was sunk down into the foundation by a few feet—the last memory hit me hard.” His voice lowered, his face grew stony as he remembered that long ago incident. “I saw my parents. Your parents. Opal and Paul—you remember them?”
Vince nodded. Opal and Paul had been a sweet older couple, very grandparent-like in appearance. Vince used to like being with them.
“There were others you’d probably remember as well. You remember the people our folks used to get together with?”
Vince nodded, his own memories now flooding to the surface. The people that used to come to the house—friends of his mom and dad, co-workers, people he referred to as “Aunts” and “Uncles,” people he thought until recently had been blood family—memories of their faces swam to the surface of his mind.
“Your folks were there, too,” Frank continued. He was gripping the steering wheel hard. “I don’t remember what I was doing at the time. Maybe I woke up in the middle of the night and heard a noise. I think my folks used to drug me on nights they had ceremonies. I remember my mother used to give me a pill with a glass of water before I went to bed on certain nights. I’d sleep all the way through. But one night I must have woken up and heard something and stumbled onto what they were doing in the den and later blacked it out of my mind.”
“What was it?” Vince asked, breathless with dread.
“They were in the middle of a ceremony,” Frank said. “They were dressed in black robes and cowls. The room was dark, illuminated by several burning candles. They were grouped around something lying on the floor. When I got there I remembered a frenzied chanting, and then I heard a wet thud and a cry, almost like a cry of passion. The group was huddled around whatever was on the floor and they parted briefly, allowing me a brief glimpse.” Frank gulped once, turned to Vince. His eyes were wide liquid pools of fear. “It was a body. A young man, kinda hippie looking. He was naked and they’d just killed him, stabbed him in the chest. One of them was cutting into his chest with a knife, and as I watched I saw somebody pull out his heart and hold it up. The heart was still beating, blood was running down the man’s hands. And they were all chanting something weird, like one long continuous voice.” He paused briefly, his voice deadpan. “And then the guy brought the heart to his mouth and bit into it.”
Vince winced.
“And it was passed around and everybody bit into it, everybody ate a piece of it. And then they all fell on him, tearing into him, rolling in his body like some insane orgy.” Frank paused for breath. “I don’t remember how I got back to my room, but the next thing I remember I was sitting up in bed. I was sweaty all over. I thought I’d dreamed the whole thing and then I heard a sound and realized what it was. It was them. Making sounds. Grunting, horrible sounds.”
Vince watched Frank grapple with the memories he’d witnessed. Vince still had a hard time believing that what Frank just related was true. How could it not be, he thought, if his conviction of the events seems so real? The only thing that kept him from believing in Frank’s story wholeheartedly was the absurdity of it. To think that the supposed satanic group was as powerful as Frank said they were, and had avoided detection by law enforcement agencies thus far, suggested they boasted an intelligence system that exceeded the CIA’s.
But if you consider the spiritual nature of the story—which Vince had a hard time doing since he didn’t even believe in God or the Devil—perhaps there was some sort of infernal doings here.
Frank regained his composure and continued. “When this memory hit me it was like being sucker punched between the eyes. It literally knocked me down. I sat on the steps that led down to the den and just reeled with the intensity of it. And then I guess I lost it there for a minute. I was bawling like a baby, but more out of fear. I was so utterly petrified, so scared for my life you wouldn’t believe it. Until then I had sort of been coasting through this whole ordeal, accepting the fact that I had been physically and psychologically abused as a child, but still not accepting the whole Satanic thing. I guess you’re feeling the same way.”
Vince nodded. It was hard to grasp.
“But when this memory came back, I was floored. I’d never told my therapist about any suspicions I had about my parents being in a Satanic cult. The memories that always came up before were those of basic dysfunction; my dad striking me, the neglect I used to suffer. Nothing like this. And I realized then that the room I was standing in when this flashback occurred was the same room it happened in. That’s what triggered it. So I got out of the house as quickly as I could and drove to Mike’s place. Told him everything.”
They were silent for a moment, Vince digesting everything Frank had just told him. He finished his Coke and set the empty down in the cup holder. Frank sat forward in his seat, looking out at the park, sipping his Dr. Pepper. The afternoon sun was burning high overhead, and a scratch baseball game had started in the diamond to their left.
“Okay,” Vince said, breaking the silence. He turned to Frank. “So you put two and two together and came after me. And you have no hard, physical proof that any of this happened.”
Frank nodded. “Just my memories.”
Vince thought this over. “How much do you know about this group?”
“Too much and not enough.” Frank shifted around in his seat. He turned to Vince again. “The present lineage has been in existence since the 1960s. They’re called The Children of the Night. The earliest mention of the cult comes from the early part of this century, but it’s believed their links go back much further. I don’t have the time to get into ancient Sumerian and Babylonian occult teachings, but elements of their belief system and rituals go back to them, especially in regards to the Sumerian devil Hanbi.”
“Hanbi?” Vince asked. “What’s that?” His mind flashed back on that jumble of words written in his mother’s blood. That word had been one of them.