Branded

         Deep within the walls of Ambrose Sanitarium, in the blindingly lit common activity room, in the far corner, she sat alone. Images flashed through her mind. Images she had seen numerous times before, that never failed to make her uneasy. Her eyes darted around the room, desperately trying to get the images out of her head, looking for something - anything - to replace them.
         Sometimes she spoke out loud to no one. It was an ever-failed attempt to make herself think of anything else. She was speaking to herself now. Muttering about kittens - how small, cute, and fluffy they are. How innocent, playful, and loving.
         She spoke quickly, and as she entertained herself with these much more pleasant visions, she noticed someone take the seat across the table from her. Her eyes did not stop racing around the room, but she did understand that her companion was a man - a young man. She had never seen him before. He was new to the sanitarium.
         She could feel his intense gaze on her face; she could almost feel exactly where on her face he was staring. His eyes did not move. Nervously, she ran her fingers over the jagged keloid scar on her forearm.
After a moment, her companion said, "My name is Eric Stanton."
         She gasped at the sound of his voice. None of the other patients had spoken to her in years. Even her nurses only spoke to her if they absolutely must. Maybe it was that she couldn't keep her eyes focused on one thing for too long, or that she was always comforting herself with random thoughts that she spoke aloud. Perhaps it was her unruly mane of frizzy brown hair, or the wildness of her dark brown eyes. Either way, the sound of his voice speaking to her sent a pang of nervousness through her stomach.
         For a brief moment, the restless eyes stopped darting around the room. She focused her eyes on her visitor, his young but hardened face. He almost looked familiar to her, as if he was the spitting image of someone she knew long ago.
         "It is polite to introduce yourself in return, when someone tells you his name."
         "Loretta." She spoke quickly, a nervous twinge to her voice.
         "That is a beautiful name."
         He noticed her fingers working over her forearm.
         "That is a terrible looking scar," he observed. "How did you get it?"
         Instead of answering, she asked, "What year is it out there, Eric?"
         "It is 1984."
         She let out an exasperated sigh as her eyes began to dart around the room yet again.
         "You look to young to be here," she observed, her voice wispy and breathless. "How old are you?"
         "I am eighteen," he answered. "I came here from the boys' group home."
         He pronounced every syllable of his words precisely. His voice was even and calm, almost intimidating.
         Her eyes continued to dart around the room. She was aware of him staring at her expectantly. He wanted a conversation, something she hadn't experienced in what felt like forever, and she wasn't prepared for. She raked her mind for the next appropriate thing to say-.
         "How long were you there?" she asked. Immediately, she winced, thinking that she must have said the wrong thing.
         "Since I was twelve."
         The answer startled her. She met his eyes long enough to see that he was not lying, then began to look around the room again.
         "How old are you?" he asked.
         The question made her uncomfortable. She didn't like talking about herself, or talking at all. The conversation had already been too long for her comfort.
         "Forty-seven," she answered quickly, now wanting him to go away.
         "How long have you been in here, Loretta?"
         More questions. She shook her head as her eyes continued wildly about the room.
         "Twenty-five years," she answered, now directing her gaze over the floor in front of her, finding patterns that created small pictures in the rug.
         "Why are you here?" he calmly asked.
         "Why are you here?" she snapped before he had completed his sentence.
         He didn't seem surprised, or caught off guard. Instead, he calmly answered, "They allege that I murdered a few people at the hospital where my mother worked."
         Again, a pang of fear. She was speaking with a murderer. She brought her eyes back to meet his face, but she never let her eyes focus on one area of his features to too long.
         "And, did you?"
         "I suppose I did. That is what they always tell me."
         "What does your mother say?"
         "She died at the hospital. They say I killed her by accident."
         "You killed your mother?"
         "Yes."
         "Why?"
         "I do not know. I do not remember doing this."
         "Then how do you know you did it?"
         "I do not know that I did it. It is the police and psychiatrists who insist I did."
         She had no answer for this, in fact she was losing interest in the conversation as the images that usually flashed through her head came back despite her attempts to find something else to fill her mind with.
         "Who did you kill?" he asked, as if he already knew that she had, in fact killed someone.
         She studied his face for a moment. His gaze was too intense, and she had to look away.
         Looking back to the floor she said, "It's not who I killed." Her voice was cracked and quiet. "It's who I saw killed. And who I saw kill him."
         "Who did you see killed, Loretta?"
         She hesitated for a moment before she answered, "My father."
         An intrigued smirk spread across his face. "I should like to hear this story."
         "No!" she exclaimed loud enough that other patients and staff were now staring at them. Quieting her voice, she continued, "I don't want to talk about it."
         "Do you not think it would do you some good to talk about it?" he asked. "Considering that it has put you in here for twenty-five years."
         Her eyes worked over the table in front of her. She grabbed a tuft of her uncombed hair in each hand.
         "My brother," she said. "Dylan."
         He smiled a nostalgic smile. "My father is named Dylan," he said, more to himself than to her. "Was your brother killed as well?"
         "I don't want to talk about it!" she exclaimed, and with that, she got up and marched out of the room.
         Inside the small, enclosed space of her shared sleeping quarter, she huddled on her bed. Her back was to the corner of the wall, her elbows propped onto her knees, her knotted hair gripped tightly in her fists. It was as though she thought that she could rip the horrific visions from her memory by pulling out her hair.
         It wasn't long before she was slouched on her bed, her vicious past playing over and over again in her memory.

         "Moira, can I sleep with you?"
         Moira stirred to her seven-year-old brother's tiny hands on her shoulder, gently shaking her awake. She breathed in as she turned to his pudgy little face, eyes wide, staring at her with intensity.
         She reached behind her and lifted up the sheet. "Get in, Boogers."
         He scrambled into bed and huddled close to her.
         "There's an alien in my room," he stated, devoid of emotion. He had this dream at least once a week, with much more frequency in the past month.
         She rolled over and put her put her arm around him, pulling him into a hug. "It was just a dream."
         She dropped her head onto her pillow and closed her eyes. She could feel his little body next to hers, lying awaking and busy minded - always thinking, constantly reliving his nightmare until he couldn't keep his heavy eyelids open any longer.
         As soon as she was almost asleep, she was awakened again, this time by a scratching noise on the wall that divided her room from Dylan's.
         "That's them," Dylan proclaimed.
         Moira sleepily sighed. "It's probably the rats," she reasoned. "There's no such thing as aliens."
         "They hide in my room," Dylan said bleakly. "They want something with me."
         "What do they want with you?" She sometimes entertained his fantasies because it meant she could get to sleep faster.
         "I think they want to study me."
         Moira giggled. "Out of all the people in the world, why would they study you?"
         He was silent. She rubbed his back for him to help soothe him to sleep. Soon she heard him breathing softly and deeply, sleeping soundly.


         The next morning, Moira busied herself in the kitchen, making breakfast for her little brother and her father, both of whom were outside tending the crops on their 40-acre farm. At sixteen years old, she was the matriarch of their little family.
         She had just come inside from feeding the livestock, milking the cows, and cutting a small bouquet of flowers. She was now tending to a breakfast of freshly laid eggs, freshly slaughtered bacon, and day-old homemade toast. As with every morning, she was finding it hard to keep her eyes off of the beautiful flowers she had set in the middle of the breakfast table.
         The flowers were a tradition. Moira cut them out of the garden every Sunday before church. After breakfast, she and Dylan would take two flowers to the family cemetery; one for their mother who had died giving birth to Dylan, and another for their brother Gary, who had fallen off his horse three years prior in 1951. It was a comforting ritual for Dylan. It made him feel closer to his family members whom had passed when he was too young to remember them.
         Moira watched out the window as Dylan diligently worked his way around the crops in their field. It wasn't an especially big crop field, just big enough to grow a year's supply of food for the family. Their father had lived through the depression and, although he made a good income, refused to rely on that to feed his children.
         As she finished cooking the last bits of bacon, she looked out the window to see her father and brother heading toward the house. They had finished in the field and were coming in for breakfast. The door slammed open and Dylan entered with a small basket of vegetables, and their father followed with a much bigger basket.
         "Breakfast is ready!" she called.
         Dylan dropped his basket by the door and ran to the table to take his seat. Annoyed, his father picked up the dropped basket and placed it with his own on top of the counter for Moira to take care of later.
         "Smells delicious," he said as he took his place next to Dylan.
         "Moira, guess what?" Dylan said excitedly.
         "What's that?" Moira asked, playing along with his excitement.
         "We found one of the cows dead way off in the field!"
         Moira, who had been bending over the counter top dividing food onto plates immediately stood upright. Concerned, she asked, "A cow?"
         "Damned wolves," her father said, taking his seat at the table with Dylan. "Cow ain't no good for eatin' no more. Who knows what that wolf's got."
         Moira said nothing. She had suggested to her father before that it couldn't possibly be wolves killing the livestock around the farm over the past few weeks. Three animals had been found dead, their bodies mangled and completely drained of blood, but the meat hadn't been eaten. It had always been an animal from the farm, but never one as big as a cow.
         Her father, of course, refused to listen to her. He was the sort of man who always insisted that he was correct, and other people were always wrong, even when they weren't. As so, she pressed her lips between her teeth and fought the urge to argue with him.
         Instead, she said, "They're getting bolder."
         "Sure are," he agreed. "I oughtta sit outside with my rifle and git 'em tonight."
         Moira set their breakfast plates in front of them before grabbing her own and joining them.
         "Father," she said cautiously. "I've read in the papers that two other families had their livestock slaughtered, and then-"
         "Moira!" her father snapped. "Not in front of the boy."
         "It's the aliens!" Dylan exclaimed.
         "What are you on about?" their father asked, almost seeming angered.
         "They visit my room sometimes," Dylan admitted. Moira could see her father's face reddening. She knew that he wished Dylan would grow up much quicker than possible. "They want me to do things for them."
         "Dylan that's enough," Moira said gently, knowing that her father would be much more strict in his scolding.
         "But it's true!" he exclaimed.
         "Be that as it may be," Moira grabbed his hand for grace. "It's not breakfast talk."
         Their father nodded his agreement and took both of his children's hands and began their morning grace.
         Afterwards, Moira stood with her brother before the graves of their mother and brother.
         "Moira Marie Everly," Dylan read his mother's name out loud.
         "Gary Michael Everly the Second."
         Dylan read their names aloud every Sunday morning.
         "What did Gary look like?" he asked.
         "Like father," Moira answered. "If he was still alive he'd probably look just like father."
         "He was named after father."
         "Yes he was."
         "And you were named after mother."
         "Yes."
         "Why wasn't I named after our parents?"
         This was more or less the same conversation they had every time they visited the graves.
         "You were named after our grandfather."
         Quietly, Dylan kneeled down in front of his mother's grave and placed a flower on top of it.
         "I wish I could have known her," he said quietly.
         "She was a good lady."
         "Father blames me for killing her, doesn't he?"
         "He just misses her."
         "Were they in love?"
         "I think so, yes."
         "Would she still be alive if I wasn't born?"
         Moira's throat knotted. He had never asked her this question before, and she didn't know how to answer it.
         "I don't know Dylan. It's hard to tell."
         "I think she would have been. Father does, too. That's why he hates me."
         "Father doesn't hate you."
         He was quiet. He looked beyond the graves into the thin woods surrounding their farm. Then, he placed his flower on top of Gary's tombstone.
         "Why doesn't father come see them, too?"
         Moira shrugged her shoulders. "I think it's too painful for him. He misses them too much."
         They were silent for a moment, respectfully standing before the graves of their loved ones, heads bowed in prayer. Suddenly, Dylan turned and headed across the field toward the house. Alarmed at his abruptness, Moira followed.

         "Moira? Can I sleep with you?"
         Dylan grabbed his sister's shoulder and shook her body, but she did not wake up.
         "Moira, I'm scared." His voice was high pitched and shaking. His breathing was growing more erratic every second his sister did not answer.
         "Moira!" he was trying to keep his voice quiet. Their father did not approve of his son sleeping in his daughter's bed, more because he wanted his son to be a man than because of how inappropriate it was.
         Dylan climbed onto the edge of the bed and, taking hold of sister's shoulder, he shook her violently."
         "Moira! The aliens are back!"
         He grabbed the sheets and pulled them back, only to find his sister dismembered, her torso ripped open and the contents spilled onto the bed. He pulled back, gasping and suppressing a scream.
         Floor boards creaked behind him. He slowly turned to see a man stepping from the shadows behind the open bedroom door. As the man made his way into the moonlight that shone through the bedroom window, Dylan could see his body was twisted and contorted, moving in ways a human body shouldn't be able to. His back was twisted, his legs bent, and it seemed as though the man couldn't keep his arms at his side, and so kept them across the front of his body instead, with his hands hanging loosely.
         Almost immediately, Dylan understood that the man had killed his sister, but meant him no harm. He wasn't scared of the man, and had the feeling that maybe, he wasn't really a man at all. He looked back to his sister's body, then back to the figure stepping toward him.
         Quietly, so as not to wake his father, he said, "I'll show you where to hide the body."

         Moira was startled awake by the terror of her own nightmare. Her body was covered in a cold sweat. She took deep breaths to calm her heart beat, but was startled again when she noticed a figure standing next to her bed.
         "Dylan!" she exclaimed.
         "The aliens are back."
         She sighed and rubbed her eyes.
         "Okay," she said. "Dylan, you're seven years old. You're too old to sleep in someone else's bed because you're scared."
         "I'm not scared," he said. "They told me not to be. They need my bedroom."
         "For what?"
         "Their rituals."
         "Dylan, that's ridiculous. Would it make you feel better if I went into your bedroom and had a look around? You could see that there's nothing to be afraid of."
         "We can't. They told me to keep you away."
         "Why's that?" Moira decided to play along as she got out of her bed and put her robe and slippers on.
         "I told them they couldn't hurt you. They wanted you and Father, but I told them they couldn't have you."
         "Why did they want us?" she asked, moving toward the door and into the small hallway.
         "Something about making sacks of rice."
         Moira stopped just short of Dylan's bedroom door, startled. Sacks of rice? Sacrifice. Where had he heard that?
         She decided to ignore her alarm. As she reached to push the door to his bedroom open she said, "Well that was nice of you to tell them they couldn't have us."
         As she pushed the door open, she saw that the bedroom window was open. A cool nighttime breeze drifted through the room.
         "I only told them that they couldn't have you," Dylan answered.
         Moira turned to face him. Still playing along, she said, "But they can have our father?"
         "He's mean to me," Dylan responded, his voice quivering.
         "He's just trying to teach you how to be a man," Moira reasoned.
         "He hates me because of Momma."
         Moira knelt down in front of her younger brother and looked into his eyes.
         "Father does not hate you," she said. "He just misses our mother. That's all. He loves you."
         A thump came from outside the bedroom window. Immediately, Moira stood and faced the window, standing protectively in front of her younger brother. Her heart raced and her hands were shaking.
"What was that?" she whispered, even though she could hear grunts as someone scaled a ladder outside the house.
         "It's the aliens!" Dylan said quietly.
         As she heard the person approaching the window, she turned and hurried Dylan out of the room. With her hands gently on his shoulders, she guided him through the hallway and into their father's room. She knew he kept a rifle in there.
         Without knocking, she entered their father's bedroom. She knew that he'd be upset at being woken, but that he'd protect them. Upon entering, however, she found the bed empty.
         "Where is father?" she asked, her heart beating hard in her chest.
         "He stayed outside to catch the wolves with the livestock," Dylan reminded her.
         "Oh no," she said. "He must have his rifle with him, too."
         She closed the door and checked under his bed, where he kept his rifle, but it was missing.
         She heard footsteps moving slowly and awkwardly in the hallway, approaching her bedroom. She tried to reason with herself that maybe it was her father, but she knew her father would have no reason to use a ladder instead of the front door. She heard the creak of the floor boards as the person realized that she wasn't in her bedroom and made their way toward the room she and her brother stood helplessly inside of.
         The doorknob turned, and a man entered, his body was frail and small, his shoulders hunched so that his body almost seemed like it was caving in on itself. His eyes were red and his skin seemed dull and saggy.
         "It's time," he said. He was talking to Dylan. "What is she doing here?" he asked as if seeing Moira for the first time.
         "Dylan, who is this?" Moira asked. "Do you know him?"
         "He's one of the aliens," Dylan answered.
         A pang of fear hit Moira's stomach. For weeks, Dylan had been asking to sleep in her bed, claiming aliens were visiting him in his bedroom. She had written it off, told him he was having nightmares.
         "She's going to have to come with us," the man said.
         "You can't have her!" Dylan shouted. "I told you that you couldn't have her!"
         The man didn't speak. He stood in the doorway, appearing as though he couldn't process his thoughts.
         "It's time," he repeated. "Come with me."
         "You can't have her," Dylan said, not moving from his spot.
         "No harm will come to her," the man said. "But we need you."
         Dylan hesitated before taking a step forward. Moira grabbed him, pulled him back, and held him against her body.
         "We're not going anywhere with you, are you crazy?"
         The man looked alarmed, almost as if he really had expected the children to come with him with no arguments. He took a step toward them, and Moira screamed for her father. Immediately the man jumped at her and Dylan. She swung at him, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him. She was still screaming.
         Through the commotion, she saw Dylan jump at the man and attack him. He was screaming at the man to let go of Moira. She could hear her father's heavy boots falling on each step as he quickly made his way into the house. In her peripheral vision, she saw a glint of silver from the man's hand flash in the moonlight. His hand covered her face, and as her father burst into the room, her vision went black.

         "He wasn't right."
         "What was he on?"
         "Who knows? He screwed us all up."
         Moira stirred awake. Her consciousness was foggy, and she wasn't quite sure what was happening. Her eyes fluttered open and she realized that she was in the middle of the field outside of the barn. Her hands were tied in front of her body, and her vision was blurred.
         She couldn't find Dylan. She sat up and searched frantically from him as the men continued to argue. She saw the man who had been in the house earlier in the night. Two other men with sacks over their faces and hoods over their heads were berating him for being high, and for allowing the family to see his face.
         Looking around, she found Dylan sitting quietly by the men, but she could not find her father. Dylan saw that she was awake only seconds before the arguing men did.
         "She's awake!" One of them exclaimed. "Get her up!"
         "What are you doing?" She cried as the two men with the sacks on their heads came toward her and grabbed her.
         Dylan remained on the ground where he had been sitting with the men. He watched them grab his sister, but he did not move from his spot, or attempt to stop them from harming her. A cold sweat broke out on Moira's forehead, and her heart raced.
         They were leading her towards the house, where two more men were holding her father. Her heart raced even faster knowing that her father could not protect her, and was not coming to her rescue.
         Halfway to the house, the men stopped. Only then did she realize that Dylan had begun to follow them. The men forced Moira to kneel on the grass. She was still in her night clothes and robe, and the cool autumn air was cold against her skin. Even still, she felt her temperature rising as her heart beat against her chest.
         The two men with her father forced him into the field. He struggled against them, but the two of them together outmatched him. They forced him on the ground by Moira's side, then motioned toward Dylan.
         Dylan came to the front of his sister and father. He was so small, and carried a look of awe across his face.
Another man pulled a book out of a satchel and began reading from it in a language Moira could not identify. His voice was deep and intimidating. The experience was surreal for Moira, who kept wishing that she was going to wake up from an awful nightmare.
         As the man read, another man handed Dylan a knife. Moira knew that this was the end for her. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The men were going to make Dylan kill her and her father. Her stomach turned and she could feel her dinner coming back up.
         "Father," she said as the man continued reading. "What's happening?"
         "They're a cult," he said. "Some pagan cult."
         Moira felt warm tears flowing down her cold face. "Why are they doing this?"
         "Dammit Moira, don't you know anything about cults?"
         Of course she knew about cults. She knew what these men wanted and why they had disturbed their little family, but she was looking to her father for comfort.
         "They been watchin' us for days," he father continued. "I heard 'em talkin'. They killed the livestock. Need the blood for some ritual. Some pagan holiday."
         "Oh God, save us," Moira whispered.
         "They need human sacrifice," her father continued. "Been workin' with Dylan. Trickin' him into thinkin' theys aliens that needed to hide out here while they fixed their space ship. Knew I wan't teachin' him good enough."
         "He's only seven," Moira reasoned as her tears ran underneath her chin.
         The man finished reading and closed his book. The five men formed a circle around the family, with Dylan still standing before his father and sister, knife in hand.
         One of the men, whom Moira had assumed was the leader, knelt down and spoke into Dylan's ear. Moira closed her eyes and quietly prayed for the lives of her and her father. The man was telling Dylan that he needed to choose which of his family he would offer for sacrifice.
         "Cowards!" her father spat at them. "This is your sacrifice and you can't even be men enough to make the kill yourselves. Damn you, he's only a boy."
         The men ignored the taunts. Instead, the man speaking to Dylan said, "If you don't kill one, we'll have to sacrifice all of you."
         Moira looked into her brother's eyes and saw terror. She knew that Dylan wouldn't be able to commit murder, and that the three of them were about to die. Tears continued to spill from her eyes as she realized that this was the last time she would see her brother.
         Dylan didn't move. The man gently put his hand around the boy's throat. Moira could hear him tell Dylan that he would get his neck snapped if he didn't kill one of his family. She could hear her father warning the man to leave his son alone. It all blurred into one moment that she couldn't make sense of.
         "Just kill me," she heard her father beg. "Take me and leave my children. Don't make a murderer out of my son. Do it yourself, you coward."
         For the first time, the man addressed her father. "The ritual must be performed by an innocent soul."
         "You're not men!" Moira cried between her tears. "You hide behind an innocent child! You don't need an innocent soul, you're just not man enough to do it yourself! You pagans are nothing but craven little mice! "
         One of the men who had been standing behind her swiftly moved forward and grabbed her by her hair. "What makes you think we're pagans?" he asked, spittle flying through his mask and landing on Moira's face.
         "Leave her alone!" Dylan shrieked as he lunged at the man. The leader of the pack grabbed Dylan before he could make his way across the circle. Dylan kicked and screamed, and her father ordered the men to let go of his children. He tried to get up to help them, but two of the men held him down.
         The man who had been holding Moira's hair threw her to the ground, so she didn't see what happened next. She heard the man egging Dylan to sacrifice either his father or his sister. She heard the disgusting noise of skin breaking, and a guttural groan from her father. She looked up to see Dylan stepping away from his father, his eyes bewildered, the knife no longer in his hand. Looking to her father she saw the knife protruding from his neck, blood running down the front of his body.
         Moira's heart sank. She watched her father fall to the ground. She dared to move toward him and take his bound hands into her own. He felt his hand go limp and watched his eyes glaze over as the life slowly left his body.
         She looked to her brother with tears spilling over her eyes. "Dylan, what have you done?" she said, barely able to make noise come from her throat.
         Dylan looked at his sister and said, "I had to, Moira. The aliens need me. It's for the greater good."
         Moira's brow furrowed in confusion. "What are you talking about?" she shrieked. Then, addressing the men, "What have you done to my brother? You've brainwashed him! You've turned him into a murderer! He's only seven years old!"
         Instead of acknowledging her, one of the men grabbed her by the arm and forced her to her feet. She hurled threats at them, warning them against harming Dylan. She made sure to keep a close eye on the boy, who walked obediently next to the men as they moved toward the house. She realized that two of them were carrying her father's body. Time seemed to slow down as she began to accept that she was now an orphan. It didn't seem to matter. She knew that she herself would be dead soon, too.
         "Is it ready?" the leader asked.
         "It's soaked," answered the man without a mask, who had attacked her inside the house.
         "You understand that you must go with him?"
         "What? Why?"
         "They saw your face, you imbecile. They can identify you and lead the police to us!"
         "So kill them!"
         "You are the one who messed this up, you are the one who gets punished."
         As the unmasked man opened his mouth to protest, the leader reached forward with a knife and slit his throat.
         "Get them inside the house," the leader ordered the other men.
         The men picked up the two bodies and brought them in the house, while the leader grabbed Moira to ensure that she didn't try to escape.
         "Why are you doing this?" she asked.
         He didn't answer.
         The other men exited the building, and they all gathered around Moira in prayer. Once again, they were speaking in a language Moira did not understand.
         As they finished their prayer, the leader reached within his satchel and pulled out a container filled with blood. It clicked in Moira's head that these men had been around the farm for weeks, murdering livestock and collecting blood, and it had all added up to this one sick, twisted night. As the facts began to click in her brain, she felt that she knew exactly what was happening.
         The men again began to pray, this time in English. They were asking an "overlord" to accept their sacrifice. None of it made any sense to Moira, but she was forced to watch helplessly. The leader opened the container of blood and took a sip. He handed it around the group, and one by one, the men drank the blood.
         Moira's stomach turned. She keeled over and got sick in the grass. The final man handed the container to Dylan.
         "Dylan," Moira begged. "Please, don't drink it."
         Dylan ignored her. He took the container from the man and drank from it. Moira couldn't believe her eyes. In her bewilderment, she tried to reason to herself that Dylan was just scared of what the men would do if he didn't obey them. Moira braced herself to run if they tried to offer the blood to her, but they didn't.
         Once again, Moira was seized by the arm and moved to the same spot in the field where her father had been murdered. She was forced into a pool of liquid, which she realized must be her father's blood. She felt herself getting sick again.
         "Do it," the leader ordered one of the men, who retreated back to the building.
         Moira found herself confused, cold, and frightened. She tried to work her hands out of the binds, but she couldn't. She looked to Dylan, hoping he could see the desperation in her eyes, and that he would help her break free.
         He didn't help her. As she struggled to free herself, a bright light cut into the darkness. She turned to see her home in flames. Her heart sank. Everything she had ever had or known was in that house. All of her memories of her mother, her brother, and her father.
         "Why are you doing this?" she asked through sobs.
         The men laughed.
         "Why not?" the leader asked.
         "Have you ever watched someone die?" another asked, but she couldn't tell which voice was coming from behind which mask.
         "It gives you adrenaline."
         "You drank blood," Moira said accusingly.
         The men laughed again.
         "Ever tasted blood?"
         She didn't answer.
         "You want to?"
         She stared up at them in disgust, and was startled when two of them grabbed her and held her down. The leader opened his container of blood and dumped it in Moira's face. The metallic taste trickled into her mouth. Desperately, she spit the blood into the grass, but the taste was something she'd never forget.
         The men were now laughing hysterically.
         "You're all insane!" she cried.
         The leader stopped laughing. "Watch what you say, young lady. You don't know who you're messing with."
         "I know exactly who you are!" she cried. "You killed that family last month. I read about it in the paper." Heavy tears were rolling down her cheeks now. "I tried to warn my father when the livestock began to die."
         The men laughed hysterically.
         "Why are you doing this?" she screamed.
         "For fun," one of the men answered as casually as if he had been asked why he played poker.
The answer was more terrifying than any that had been running through her imagination.
She noticed that the man who had put the house to flames now stood in front of the fire, poking it with something that she couldn't quite see. However, as he began to walk back toward the group in the field, she could make out what he was holding, and her stomach turned.
The leader knelt down next to Moira and grabbed her bound hands.
         "Don't move, sweetheart. This might hurt."
         "Don't hurt her!" Dylan cried.
         "It's okay, boy," the man said. "We promised you that we wouldn't kill her, and we won't, if you don't interfere."
         Dylan was quiet. He didn't dare to argue with the man for fear of losing his sister. Instead of protesting further, stepped back in defeat.
         "See, we murdered that family you read about a month ago, next town over."
         "Murdered another family month before that, next county over."
         "Each time we tweak something, just enough to throw the police off. This time, we're gonna let there be a survivor, or two if you don't make us angry. Thing is, we can't leave any credible witnesses. Being that this here is a Christian town, they ain't gonna believe someone branded with the mark of a pagan is telling the truth."
         The man who had set the house ablaze approached with a metal brand in his hand - a small pentagram.
         "Don't you dare touch me with that!" Moira threatened. She fought as hard as she could, hearing Dylan yelling at the men to leave her alone. The leader grabbed her harder, threw her to the ground and put all of his weight on her body to keep her from struggling. Another man grabbed her by the wrists and stretched her arm out.
         "They gonna think this was one of your pagan rituals gone wrong. They'll never believe we was here."
         She cried out in pain as the searing hot metal burned into the skin of her forearm. She tried to fight against it, but the men were too strong. The man kept the brand on her skin for what seemed like an eternity. The pain was intense, and the weight on her body left her breathless. It was all too much, and she lost consciousness.
         
         Often times since that night, she dreamed that she was kneeling over her father's body, his hands in hers, watching him die. She would look to Dylan and ask him what he'd done. He'd lean into her and whisper, "Moira, I liked it."
         The men were right. The entire town believed that their father had perished in a pagan ritual gone awry. Dylan had been branded too while Moira was unconscious from her own pain. The signs proved to everyone that they were children of a pagan, and no one would help.
         The only person who believed them - even remotely - was their aunt Cherice, who lived a state over. Upon hearing the story, she immediately came to the aid of her niece and nephew, and took them to live with her and her husband.
         Not wanting to keep the brands on the children's arms, Cherice burned the children again, this time with a metal spatula to cover the pentagram scar. It was the only thing she could think of to help the children without anyone else passing their judgements.
         The children took their uncle's last name, Stanton in order to separate themselves from the events at the farm house, which by that time was national news. In addition, Moira discontinued the use her middle name as her identity, as much as it hurt her to feel like she was saying goodbye to her mother. Instead, she began using her given name, Loretta. These things made it harder for the media to find and harass them.
         As Dylan grew and turned into a young man, Loretta began to notice something wasn't right. The events of that fateful night had changed him. Small animals began to appear around the property, dead and mangled.
         Loretta always hid these things from her aunt and uncle for fear of losing her brother, but when the time came, she was the one who took the blame to save his life. At the age of twenty-two, she was admitted to Ambrose Sanitarium.
         She lost contact with everyone. Even Dylan stopped visiting her after some time. That pain cut the deepest. She had always been good to her brother, and she was being punished for his crimes. She found that she quite enjoyed the solidarity of being at Ambrose. In the months leading up to her admittance into the sanitarium, she had begun to doubt whether or not she could go on. She had been scarred not only physically, but mentally and emotionally by the night she lost her father.
         Later, she learned in a letter from her aunt Cherice that Dylan had stopped visiting because he had married. His wife had given birth to a son. A year later, she learned that he had been sentenced to life in prison after murdering a man under shaky circumstances. In her letter, which had no return address, Cherice told Loretta that the man Dylan had murdered had been one of the men who had killed their father. Cherice felt Dylan had been betrayed and wronged by the police. Loretta, however, knew that Dylan couldn't have known the men who killed his father, they were all wearing masks. Her brother was sick, and she was powerless to help him.
         
         Sitting in her room at Ambrose Sanitarium, Loretta was running her fingers over the scar on her forearm. Her eyes scanned the room continuously, as the events of her past began to play all over again in her mind.
         She made her way back to the common room and found her new acquaintance sitting where she'd left him, still staring where her face had been before him. She made her way across the room and took her seat again.
         Forcing herself to look into his eyes she said, "Your name is Eric Stanton."
         "Yes. I did tell you that."
         "Your father... is his name Dylan Stanton?"
         He hesitated a second or two before answering, "Yes."
         "What do you know about your father?"
         "Who are you?"
         "That doesn't matter. Let me tell you what your father did."