Rosary girls

3

Dark.

A breeze brought exhaust fumes and something else. A paint smell. Kerosene, maybe. Beneath it, garbage and human sweat. A cat shrieked, then- Quiet.

He was carrying her down a deserted street.

She could not scream. She could not move. He had injected her with a drug that made her limbs feel leaden and frail; her mind, thick with a gauzy gray fog.

For Tessa Wells, the world passed by in a churning rush of muted colors and glimpsed geometric shapes.

Time stalled. Froze. She opened her eyes.

They were inside. Descending wooden steps. The smell of urine and rotting lunch meat. She hadn't eaten in a long time and the smell made her stomach lurch and a trickle of bile rise in her throat.

He placed her at the foot of a column, arranging her body and limbs as if she were some sort of doll.

He put something in her hands.

The rosary.

Time passed. Her mind swam away again. She opened her eyes once more as he touched her forehead. She could sense the cruciform shape he inscribed there.

My God, is he anointing me?

Suddenly, memories shimmered silver in her mind, a mercurial reflection of her childhood. She recalled-

– horseback riding in Chester County and the way the wind would sting my face and Christmas morning and the way Mom's crystal captured the colored lights from the enormous tree Dad bought every year and Bing Crosby and that silly song about Hawaiian Christmas and its-

He stood in front of her, now, threading a huge needle. He spoke in a slow monotone-

Latin?

– as he tied a knot in the thick black thread and pulled it tight.

She knew she would not leave this place.

Who would take care of her father?

Holy Mary, mother of God…

He had made her pray in that small room for a long time. He had whispered the most horrible words in her ear. She had prayed for it to end.

Pray for us sinners…

He pushed her skirt up her thighs, then all the way to her waist. He dropped to his knees, spread her legs. The lower half of her body was completely paralyzed.

Please God, make it stop.

Now…

Make it stop.

And at the hour of our death…

Then, in this damp and decaying place, this earthly hell, she saw the steel drill bit glimmer, heard the whir of the motor, and knew her prayers were finally answered.