The plan was to keep things normal (if that was even possible), so Susie kept up with the kids’ home schooling routine.  Becca and Grace sat at their table completing their simple math worksheets while Brendan worked on his Algebra.  When he was finished, he turned in two papers to Susie.  He anxiously nibbled on his fingertips as Susie reviewed his work.

     “What’s this?” she asked, perplexed.  “Where is your Algebra?”

     “I did my addition,” he replied.

     “Brendan, this is two plus two stuff.  Where is your Algebra?”

     “I wrote a story, too!”

     Susie found the story and scanned through it, only to become even more confused.

     She read aloud from the essay, “’I like cookies.  I like to play Go Fish!’  I don’t understand, Brendan.  What is this?  You were supposed to write an essay, incorporating adverbs from our lesson.”

     “What’s an ab-verb?” he asked.

     “Huh?  We just spent the whole morning learning about adverbs.  I….”

     Then Susie noticed Brendan’s changed mannerisms.  He had his fingers in his mouth and was very fidgety.  It finally clicked.  Now, she knew.  Now, this made sense to her.

     “Tommy?  Is that you?”

     Brendan shook his head back and forth and continued to nibble his fingertips.  Becca and Grace looked up from their work to see what was going on.

     “It is Tommy, isn’t it?” Susie concluded.

     This time, Brendan smiled and nodded his head up and down, up and down, exuberantly, and giggled as if he had pulled one over on Susie, played a very clever trick on her.  The girls also laughed at ruse pulled on their mom.

     “Mommy, it’s Tommy, you silly-silly!” said Grace.

     In his seven-year old voice, Tommy announced, “I want to play dolls with Gracie now.”  He skipped to Grace and gave her a big bear hug.  He took her hand and led her down to the floor to play, away from her school assignments.  She was a kindred soul to him, a friend and a playmate.

     Susie watched, feeling ineffective, as if there should be something she could do to help or to bring Brendan back.  But, she just watched, at a loss, and mostly with pity.

     Regularly, Susie found herself having to re-teach Brendan school lessons because, unaware to her, he was not always present.  Often, it had been one of the multiples who she had been instructing.  Lord only knows how a public school teacher would have reacted or dealt with a student like Brendan.  Susie thought, at least, she was saving some poor teacher a great deal of frustration.  It was a light burden that she was willing to bear.  Her only focus was to make Brendan’s life easier, to replace the pain of his past with love and acceptance, to give him a mother’s affection and care that had been so absent in his life.

*

Sean spent Saturday afternoon in the backyard.  He fired up the lawnmower and rolled it across the grass in wavy rows.  He enjoyed the springtime weather and effortlessly fell in to a daydream that took him away from his stress at the store and from his constant worry about Brendan.  He was transported to his dream boat on a mountain lake, soaking up the sunshine and in no hurry to get a bite on his fishing line.

     Suddenly, a loud metal crunching noise yanked Sean from his faraway thoughts.  He quickly turned off the mower and rolled it over on its side.  He kneeled down to examine the problem.  Caught up in the blades was a mangled steak knife.  He jimmied it out, frustrated that now he was going to have to prolong his yard work to repair the equipment.

     “How in the world did this get out here?”

     Sean yelled in the direction of the house, “Brendan!” 

     He fussed with the mower for a while, trying to fix the twisted blades, and shouted again towards the house.

     “Brendan!”

     Annoyed, Sean abandoned the machine and went inside to find Brendan and have him help with the mower repair.  At least there was an opportunity here to teach his son some basic mechanical repair, guy stuff, something he could use later in his life, a father and son moment, and all of that.

     Sean went up the stairs to Brendan’s bedroom.  He pushed the door open with his forearm so as not to dirty the white door with grass or grease.  Susie would spot that in a hot second, and he preferred to avoid a cleaning lecture from his better half.

     The room was vacant, so Sean headed to the girls’ bedroom where he heard their giggles emanating.  He looked in to the room from the doorway and stopped cold.  He saw Becca and Grace on the floor playing baby dolls with Brendan who was wearing Becca’s too-small clothes and a polka-dot bow in his hair.  Sean just stared at Brendan, absolutely perplexed by his appearance and behavior.

     What teenage boy would agree to being dolled up in a pink dress with a ruffle bow in his hair, no matter how much his little sisters pestered him?

     Becca saw her father in the doorway and greeted him affectionately.

     “Hi, Daddy!”

     Sean finally blinked and turned to Becca.

     “Hi, baby.  Um, what are you doing?”

     “We’re playing dolls with Allison,” Becca answered.

     “Allison?”

     “Uh-huh,” replied Becca, unfazed.

     Allison must be her doll’s name? thought Sean.

     Brendan looked up to Sean with a beaming smile and waved like a toddler, all floppy-handed.  He picked up a doll and pretended to feed it a bottle.  In a little girl voice, he continued his play with the girls.

     “My baby likes appoh juice,” he said, “but then I have to bohrp her.”

     Oh, Lord, help me, Sean prayed silently.  Brendan is Allison.

     Allison scooped up the plastic baby doll, put it over her shoulder and mimicked her best baby burp.

     “Blaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

     This was enough to send Becca and Grace in to fits of laughter that sent them rolling on the floor.  Sean turned around, stunned and disheartened at this new development.  He left the kids to their dolls and slogged down the stairs to the kitchen.

     Sean was not a big drinker, never was, even during his stint in the navy, but he grabbed a bottle of beer from the back of the fridge.  He sat down at the table, heavy with disappointment, and threw back a generous swig of the dark brew.

     Sean’s eyes fixed on the patterned striations of the wood in the table.  He struggled to produce a single, comprehensive, logical thought about what he saw upstairs.  His mind seemed a maze of mirrors, each thought slamming in to walls of false clarity, no completion, no end, no sense, only ricochets of frustration.

     Moments later, Susie came in from the laundry room with a basket of clean wash.

     “Oh, hi,” she said cheerfully.  “Look what I found on the washing machine.  It’s a picture that Tommy drew: ‘To Mrs. Nice Person.  A girl teddy bear for you!’  Isn’t that cute?”

     Susie showed Sean the drawing that had the writing and drawings of a seven-year old.  Sean glanced at the picture and became even more despondent.  He looked away from it.

     “I’ve been finding pictures all around the house,” proclaimed Susie.  “The girls are even drawing pictures for Tommy and Tony – kinda weird, huh?”

     Susie could now see that something was wrong or off with her husband.

     “Hey, what’s going on?  Are you all right?”

     Sean’s brow wrinkled with distress.  His eyes remained fixed on beer bottle label as he picked at the corner with his thumbnail.

     “There’s four.”

     “Four?” Susie repeated.

     “Four.”

     “There’s four what, dear?”

     “Four personalities.  That’s more than Eve.  The Three Faces of Eve, remember that one?” Sean rambled.

     Susie set her basket down and sat at the table next to her husband.

     “Sean, what are you talking about?”

Sean finally made eye contact with his wife.

     “My son is not here today.  Tommy and Tony aren’t even here today.  No, but there’s a little girl named Allison, who happens to have the body of a thirteen-year old boy, upstairs, in a dress, playing dolls with my daughters.”

     Susie, who usually went for the girly-girl, tiny umbrella drinks, grabbed the bottle of beer, tilted it way back and let the acrid river run down her throat.

     “Are you saying there’s another personality?”  She wanted to be absolutely clear about what she had just heard.

     “That is exactly what I’m saying,” reiterated Sean.

     They both stared at the air, as if they were waiting for an explanation for all of this to come to them out of the ether and make sense of it all.  There was a long silence as Susie processed the perplexity of this new information.  Then, just like that, she snapped out of her thought-racing daze.

     “All right, Sean.  Stop it.  You… we can sit here and feel sorry for ourselves, or we can focus on helping Brendan.”

     There was another pensive pause, and then Susie’s curiosity got the better of her.

     “Did you talk to, uh, what was the name?  Allison?”

     “No, I was too much in shock.”

     “Well, we should find out if there’s a memory attached to this personality, like the others.  Then we’ll go forward from there.  Right?  Maybe, we can try a different therapist, or... something.”

     At this moment, Sean felt defeated and depleted of his strength, but he nodded.  Susie finished off the beer, picked up the laundry basket and resumed her Saturday chores.  Life had to go on, and they would get through this.

     Sean forgot about the broken mower and the yard work.  It was about the furthest thing from his mind.  He simply sank down into his chair, futilely attempting to understand what was happening and why it was happening.

     How?  Why?  Where was the logic in this?

     Questions were all that Sean was left with.

     Armed with more information about the multiples, Susie found a new psychiatrist and coerced a reluctant Brendan to attend a few appointments.  The results were disappointing.  Once again, the personalities refused to come out in the presence of the doctor.  Brendan’s memories of abuse were unable to be extracted by the therapist, and the whole attempt at professional help was merely exhaustive futility.

*

Sean and Susie had decided to start writing down every detail about the personalities: age, hair color, favorite food, favorite dessert, favorite tv show, and even their gender.  That one hurt Sean; it was painfully difficult to watch his son act like a girl.  Growing up, Sean had seen effeminate boys get a harsh thrashing by schoolyard bullies.  This was a fate he did not want for his son. 

     Susie recorded everything she could about each multiple and compiled all of her notes in a thick, plastic-coated, three-ring binder.  In Sean’s mind, this reference would serve as a key to catch Brendan in this strange charade.  Despite the overwhelming evidence, he still did not want to believe it was true.

     The boy can not continue this twisted game forever.  I will trip him up, thought Sean.

     That evening, Sean and Susie went in to Brendan’s bedroom.  He sat on his rumpled bed.  Although Susie had made this bed up in the morning, it looked as though Brendan had been jumping up and down on it, as the comforter was caved in like a crater and wrinkled around a center spot.  Brendan sat against the headboard playing with his electronic Gameboy that rested on his denim-covered knees.

     “Hey, Bren,” said Sean.  “We want to talk to you for a minute.”

     Brendan tossed his game aside and folded his legs Indian style.  He nervously flipped the hem of his pant leg back and forth between his thumb and fingers.  Susie sat down at the foot of the bed, and Sean pulled up a chair from the desk.

     “Did I do something wrong?” Brendan asked.

     “Not at all,” replied Sean.

     Well, that was reassuring to Brendan.  It was almost never a good sign when parents wanted to talk.

     Sean leaned forward and continued, “We met Allison today.”

     “Who?”

     “Allison.  She played with the girls all afternoon,” explained Sean.  “It’s okay.  We just want to talk to her.  Do you think we could talk to Allison?  Will she come out?  Now?”

     “I don’t know what you mean.”

     That statement seemed genuine as far as Sean could tell, but he pressed further.

     “Son, we’d like to talk to Allison.  It’s all right.  We just want to get to know her, like Tommy and Tony.”

     Brendan looked at Sean, unsure, and then at Susie who smiled warmly at him.  She was a safe haven for him, so sweet.  He always felt protected when he was around his step-mom; it was a different protection than his dad’s.   She was like a mama bear protecting her cub: loving and nurturing, but, whoa!, don’t even try to mess with her cub, or you’d have to deal with her vengeance. 

     Brendan closed his eyes.  He slumped down momentarily and then straightened back up and opened his eyes.  Sean studied his new facial expression – happy, he guessed.

     Brendan blinked with smiling squinty eyes.  He began to speak as a five-year old little girl.

     “I’m Al-li-son.”  She sang her words.  Her head danced around, back and forth, and she bounced in place like a squirmy child.  She hummed little made-up tunes during lulls in conversation.

     Susie made the first move.  “Hi, Allison.  Do you know who we are?”

     “Uh-huh,” Allison responded. “You’re Mrs. Nice Person.  Do you want to play dollies with me?”

     “Not right now, honey.  We just want to talk to you.  Will you talk with us?”

     Allison was easily distracted and kept looking around the room and bouncing on her fanny. 

     “Uh-huh,” she said.

     “Allison, how old are you?” asked Susie.

     “I’m this many.”  Allison held out her open hand to show five fingers.

     “Sweetie, can you tell me about your birthday, the night you were born, please?”

     “I don’t like to remember that.  It’s sca-a-a-ry.”

     “Please, honey.  It’ll be alright.  I promise,” assured Susie.

     “Mmm,” she groaned, “nuh-uh.  Can I play with that animoh?”

     Susie handed Allison a teddy bear that was on the bed.

     “Allison,” continued Susie, “you can tell us your memory, and we promise to help you.”

     “No-o-o-o.”

     “Allison,” said Sean, “I promise to keep you and Brendan safe.  Both of us will always protect you, but I need to know about the night you were born, honey.”

     “Nuh-uh.  I don’t wanna.”

     Allison was so completely different from Brendan that Sean spoke to her just as if she was a real, young girl.

     “Please, sweetheart.  I want to help you, but that’ll be difficult if I don’t know what happened.  Will you, please, let me help you, Allison?”

     Allison remained unfocused.  Sean was not getting anywhere with her.

     “Do you know Tommy or Tony?” interjected Susie.  “You can talk to them and ask them if it’s okay to share with us.  They know us, and we’ve helped them, too.”

     With her squinty eyes, Allison looked at Sean and then at Susie.

     “I know those boys!  We play together a lot.”

     Allison’s head fell limp for what seemed forever to Sean and Susie.  It was actually about twenty seconds until the head came back up and those blinking eyes were looking at them again.

     “Tommy said you are nice, and I can talk to you if I want to.  They both said that you helped them.  Tommy said I can trust you and that it is okay to talk to you, but it has to be up to me – and I’m scared to talk about that night I was born.  Can you help me, too?”

     “Yes,” said Susie, “I know we can.”

     Sean and Susie waited as Allison clutched the fuzzy bear and blinked her eyes as she thought about this.  Then, she unfolded her nascent tale.

     “Mommy took us to the park with the men.”

     “Did you know the men, honey?” asked Susie.

     “Mmm, hmm.  There was Policeman Dave, Teacher Mike, Dr. Monte, and Tall Man….”

*

Midnight, 1981

On a hot summer night, Sheila leads three-year old Brendan through a children’s theme park that was built in the 1960s.  Tall trees cast creepy shadows throughout the grounds that take on an ominous life of their own.  Four men accompany them: a local policeman still in uniform, a man called “Teach,” a man they call “Doc,” and a very tall man.  They all walk past various day-glo storybook attractions, and little Brendan looks at each one, his eyes wide with wonder.

     There is the giant shoe with the old woman and all her kids.  There are the homes of the three little pigs, and the large, colorful spinning tea cups – so big!  The group reaches the Witch’s cottage where the fiberglass hag with her crooked nose and warts stands guard.  One of the men cackles at the witch as he enters.

     Inside, the men spray paint a pentagram on the floor and light black candles.  The man called “Teach” turns heavy metal music on from his portable boom box.  The men sit on the tiny furniture and drink cheap liquor that they brought with them.

     The tall man stands on the tiny table and shouts, “Hail Satan!  Open wide the gates of hell and come forth from the abyss to greet me as your brother and friend.”

     Brendan lies on the floor, off to the side.  He clutches a stuffed animal and his blankie.  He observes through his innocent eyes the adults’ activities.  He sees the men tear off his mother’s clothes until she is naked.  They remove their own clothes until they, too, are nude.  In an orgy, they kiss, fondle and have sex with Sheila and with each other.  The sex gets progressively more and more violent.  The men slap Sheila and pull her hair.  She scratches the men’s bodies with her long fingernails and cries out as if she is in pain.

     Through the window, the fairytale witch watches the assault with her one cloudy eye.  Little Brendan is made to watch all of this, too, as candle light flickers eerily on the walls of the cottage.  He does not understand what the men are doing to his mother, but it makes him feel very bad for himself and for her.

*

“Oh, sweetie,” gasped Susie.  “I am so sorry you had to see that.  That was so wrong.”

     Sean looked down, shaking his head in disbelief, not at the truth of the story but of his ex-wife’s astonishingly irresponsible actions.

     “Allison,” said Sean, “we love you very much, and we would never, ever hurt you.  I want, always, to keep you safe.  Can you tell me; are there any others in the body besides you, Tommy and Tony?”

     Others?, thought Susie as she looked at her husband, confused.  Who could have expected four, let alone more?

     Allison held the teddy bear tightly.  She answered Sean’s query and nodded her head.  Sean felt a knot form in his throat.  This was not really the answer he was anticipating.  He took a deep breath, tried to remain calm, and continued.

     “Can you tell me how many others there are, sweetheart?”

     Allison looked up at the ceiling and swooshed her mouth from side to side as if searching for the right answer.  She tallied the number in her mind and finally blurted out, “Lots and lots.”

     “Honey,” prodded Sean, “how many is that?  Can you take a guess for me?”

     Allison crooked her head to the side and deducted, “I can’t count that many.”

     Sean and Susie were overwhelmed and overcome with a sense of heaviness and dread.  Where was this going to end?  Sean pushed further, foraging his way through to unknown psychological territory.

     “Will someone else come out and talk to us?” he asked.

     Just then, as if on cue, Allison’s head dropped down and then rose back up again.  Someone else came through.  This one seemed older.  Perhaps, it was Brendan again.  He mussed the front of his hair with his hands.  He looked around to check out the room and then at Sean and Susie.  He spoke like a teenage surfer guy in a lower voice than Allison or even Brendan.

     “Uh, hey.”

     He leaned forward and presented his hand to shake with Sean’s.  Sean offered his hand, but Brendan, or whoever it was, quickly pulled it away before making contact.

     “Psych!” he jabbed.

     This was not Brendan, Allison, Tommy, or Tony.  This personality had a wholly different demeanor than the others.  He was definitely more mature in nature than them.

     “Hi,” said Sean.  “What’s your name?”

     “Are you cool or what?  What do you want?”

     Stunned, once again, Sean tried to reach out to this personality.

     “We just want to get to know you and help you if we can.”

     “Well, Tommy and Tony like you.  I guess you’re okay.  It’s Lance.”

     “It’s good to meet you, Lance.  I want you to know that it’s safe here, and we’re here to help in any way we can.”

     “I just have to protect the kids, you know, dude, look out for them.  That’s what I do.”

     “Protect them from what?” asked Sean.

     “From Sheila and the Scorpions.”

     Susie interjected, “Can you tell us more about the Scorpions?”

     Lance’s jaw clenched and his body tensed.  He kicked the bed hard with his heel.

     “That’s the cult.  I hate them!  We all do!  They’re the ones who made us.  They hurt Brendan, and we protect him.”

     “Will you tell me,” asked Sean cautiously, “what they did to you?  To Brendan?”

     Lance had revulsion and rage in his eyes as he stared hard at Sean. 

     “We will keep whatever you share just between us, Lance.  It will go no further than here.  We only want to help you.”

     Lance stared for a long time, determining whether or not to trust this man.  After almost an hour of talking with Lance, he finally opened up.  It was risky to subject himself and the others to “outsiders,” but he soon felt assured that Sean and Susie could be trusted.

     Lance revealed that Brendan was mostly unaware of him and the others.  Brendan could hear muffled voices in his head, but he did not really comprehend what those voices were.

     Lance appeared stoic, though defensive, as he agreed to share his personal memory of the night he was created to become a protector for Brendan….

*

Midnight, 1981

The groves of the Valley give the farmers great pride, but on any given night, they turn into dumping grounds for abandoned cars and murdered bodies, labs for making methamphetamines, and unholy ground for Satanic rituals.

     The Scorpions gather among the nectarine trees to mark one of their satanic holidays.  Sheila drapes herself over a man who teases her with cocaine which she greedily intakes.  Three-year old Brendan sits under a fruit tree clutching his blankie and a favorite stuffed animal.

     After snorting her fill of coke, Sheila joins the rest of the group who gather around a member of the cult, a very pregnant woman who lies naked on the ground.  Dio injects the woman with painkillers.  She had conceived specifically to give birth on this demon's day, but the child has not come, so they will take the baby prematurely, forcing the birth.

     Fulfilling his priestly duties, Dio, begins the iniquitous incantation, his deep voice sending vibrations out to the unseen spirit world:

     “In the name of Satan, ruler of the earth, king of the world, I command the forces of darkness to bestow their infernal power upon me!”

     Dio takes the ceremonial knife and cuts into the pregnant woman’s lower abdomen.  She tenses her body as Dio reaches into her womb and pulls the bloody infant from her belly.  The Scorpions chant invocations to their master as Dio slices into the baby’s chest and removes its heart.  He raises the tiny beating organ to the half-moon sky then brings it to his mouth and takes a bite out of it.  He passes it to Sheila who also bites into it.  She then presents the infant heart to Brendan.  She puts it to his small mouth and forces him to partake.  The remnants are passed along to the others for power-inducing consumption.

     Dio leaves the bleeding woman in the care of the others and goes to Brendan and grabs him by his tiny wrist.  They walk over to a pit that has been filled with live snakes and burning coals.  There is a grill over the pit that serves as another make-shift altar.  Dio places Brendan on top of it.

     Sheila is with a man flying high on cocaine, but she espies Dio with Brendan.  She half runs over to them, stumbling along the way.

     “Dio, wait!  Abuse him all you want.  Just don’t kill him,” and she staggers back to the group to indulge in more powder.

     Dio holds Brendan down on the altar and threatens to put him in the pit with the snakes.  Brendan can see the vipers and the fiery coals beneath him that seem so big to his little eyes.  He screams out, terrified, but who will save him?  Certainly not his mother.

*

That night, Sean paced the bedroom floor, crushing a violent pattern into the plush carpet.  Susie lay in bed, awake, quiet and bound by her thoughts and her heartache for Brendan.  Neither of them was sure of what it would take for the horror of what they heard from Lance to leave them, nor were they adequately able to express what it was that they felt.  They were trapped in silence until Sean’s emotion could no longer be contained.

     “I’m gonna kill her.  I’m gonna fucking kill her!”

     “Sean….”

     “How could she do that to a child?  To her own child?!”

     “Honey, I know, but…”

     “There is no ‘but,’ Susie.  Every one of those fuckers is going to die.  And I’ll have God’s blessing, too.”

     “Sean!  Will you please stop and think just for a minute?  We don’t even know, for sure, if these things happened.  I believe they did – what child could possibly make something like that up? – But we can’t prove it.  And, if they did happen, and these people are for real, and they find out that you know all of their secrets, they could come after us: you, me and the kids.  Please, just think this through before you do anything.  Think of the repercussions.”

     There was tense quiet as Sean mulled over Susie’s words.

     “Damn it!  You’re right.  If this cult has policemen and officials involved, where do we go?  The law is not even on our side.  There’s got to be some way to find out something – somebody to – Damn it!”

     Sean paced more furiously, as if this would expel some of his anger.  But, his rage and frustration only built to an uncontainable level.

     “Who is going to take responsibility for what was done to this child?!  Who?!  Who is going to make it right again for this boy?!  God!  I’m totally helpless here!”

     Sean’s composure broke.  He picked up the nearest object, a table lamp, and swung it hard against the wall like a baseball bat, shattering it into myriad fragments of ceramic and glass.  Outside, Pepperoni woke up and barked at the noise.  The crashing sound, the flying glass, and Sean’s fury scared Susie; she flinched and pulled her legs up close to her.  She had never seen her husband like this, didn’t know he was capable of this level of rage.  She screamed and then cried for Sean’s pain, for Brendan, and for their family.  What else was left to do?

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