you.”
“Hey, I can watch movies,” Kurt said. “I didn’t realize till I read the file The Stepford Wives was based on a real event.”
“ The Exorcist,” Barb said. “ House on Haunted Hill…”
“Seriously?”
“ Gilligan’s Island,” Sharice muttered.
“You’re making that up,” Barb snapped.
“Check the secure files at the Foundation,” Sharice said. “There’s a reason they never got off the island. The Harlem Globetrotters story was an in-joke, though. Good night. Afternoon. Morning. Whenever it is…”
“Sharice?” Kurt said, pausing at the parlor door.
“What?!”
“Isn’t the problem with Miss Grisham that she had her ka…Pulled out? Sort of like…”
“Shit,” Sharice said, sitting bolt upright. “There is no fool like an old fool!”
“Let’s think about this,” Barb said, grabbing her head. They’d been going around in circles for nearly an hour.
“Sleep deprived,” Sharice said. “Exhausted. You think.”
“This isn’t possession,” Barb said.
“Wait, what isn’t possession?” Kurt replied. “Let’s get back to the point. We’re investigating the Madness cases. Not Stepfords. If they even are Stepfords.”
“They’re Stepfords,” Barb said. “Or something similar. And the Madness cases are related. Either that, or Janea’s a hell of a coincidence. Sharice, I know you’re tired, but just…tell me about Stepfords.”
“They’re seen as the perfect wives and mothers,” Sharice said, sipping tea. “Perfect homemakers, perfectly dressed, perfect hostesses. Honestly…” she said, then paused.
“They look sort of like me?” Barb said, grinning.
“That, yes,” Sharice said. “The truth is that they wrap their families in a web of control, both mundane and mystical, and slowly suck the life out of them. Husbands tend to get promoted, often well above their ability, because anyone who stands in their way gets run over. Generally personal tragedies, child dies, generally of some lingering fatal disease, often death, suicide. Murder-suicide is a favorite. ‘He was such a nice guy with a great future ahead of him. I don’t know why he killed his whole family and himself. I guess Ron with the bitch wife gets the promotion.’ And woe betide the husband who tries to escape. You do not divorce a Stepford. Death is a blessing when it finally comes. The same goes for their children. Who are almost invariably basket cases for life unless they drink the Kool-Aid themselves.”
“So they’re control freak wives and moms,” Kurt said. “What else is new?”
“And then there’s the secondary effects,” Sharice said. “Leukemia clusters around them. Accidents. The ‘nice guy’ down the street who turns out to be the serial killer who’s been kidnapping and raping girls or boys. Generally, if you find some nice mundane community that suddenly is experiencing tragedy after tragedy, look for a Stepford and you’ll find the source. Only the families of other Stepfords are immune. Specifically, they become cluster points for various malevolent entities.”
“Sounds swell,” Barb said.
“Oh, and they are very hard to kill,” Sharice said. “I’m not into the ‘whole kill them all, God will know his own.’ I prefer things like walking the Moon Paths. The Stepford clearance I would have enjoyed, were it not quite so…So. Turns out they’re pretty much immune to poisons; don’t bother trying tear gas as the seventies version of HRT did. Heal in the blink of an eye, too, which turned out to matter when the only thing that worked was head shots and sometimes not even that. You pretty much have to put a stake through their hearts or cut off their heads to kill the little bitches. And that perfect skin is as thick and tough as a rhino. And if you pull the stake out too soon…Don’t. Just…don’t. Leave it. They sort of wake up…really annoyed.”
“That doesn’t explain the Madness cases,” Kurt pointed out.
“Let me repeat,” Sharice said with a sigh. “ If you find some nice mundane community that suddenly is experiencing tragedy after tragedy, look for a Stepford. They, personally, are all about power and control.”
“Through men, though,” Barb said.
“Remember, the case was at the beginning of the feminist revolution, and up to that point, the power was always through men,” Sharice said. “I’m not sure what a feminist Stepford would be like. I’m a feminist, and the thought makes me sort of shudder. And I’ll repeat. Again. This isn’t Stepfords. This is something else.”
“They’re all about power and control,” Barb said. “More circumstantial. Kurt, the drug cases.”
“GPA alums and attendees are all through the power structure in this area,” Kurt said.
“Common in smaller cities and towns,” Sharice said.
“My point, but there’s something here,” Barb said. “I Looked at some of those girls, Sharice. They’re not possessed but they’re also not…normal. Kurt, known associates of the victims in the Madness cases?”
“No commonality,” Kurt said. “I mean, some overlap but no major common associates.”
“Can you find out how many of their girlfriends or female friends were GPA girls? Not the same girl, the same school?”
“There’s an app for that,” Kurt said, grinning. He pulled out his smart phone and started tapping. He paused, then grinned mirthlessly. “Every single one had dated a GPA girl.”
“Had?” Barb asked.
“If I’m reading this right, they were all ex -girlfriends. Reasoning in advance of data, I think if we poked into it, they’d have all dumped a GPA girl prior to going zomb.”
“You don’t divorce a Stepford,” Barb said. “You especially don’t dump one.”
“Stepfords can do a lot of harm,” Sharice said. “They could not strip a ba without an additional major ritual, which the victim had to be present for, nor could they then infill them. Both you’re talking heavy -duty hoodoo, and animating a corpse is such high necromancy, there’s only a few necromancers who have succeeded. At least succeeded and survived. Oh… crap. I hate to do this…” She pulled out her phone.
“Do what?” Barb asked.
“Phone a friend,” Sharice said. “Augustus, I’m putting you on speaker.”
“Very well,” Germaine said. “Go ahead.”
“We’re pursuing a theory that a local girls’ private school is the source of the Madness cases.”
“I take it you’re talking about GPA,” Germaine said.
“You know, it would help if we had a full briefing,” Kurt said.
“Agent Spornberger, a full briefing on the mystical underworld of Chattanooga would take several hours, which…I do not have. Be silent. Go on, Sharice. The last I checked, GPA was simply a dark power center. There are…four in Chattanooga and some seven in Hamilton county.”
“Barb believes they may be Stepfords,” Sharice said. “Or something similar.”
“On what basis?”
“Gut,” Barb said. “And some circumstantial evidence. Item A. Your friend suggested that I bark up the tree.”
“I would not describe her as a friend,” Germaine said. “More of a colleague. And GPA is…Paris to her London. Minas Morgul to Minas Tirith might be a more current referent. Go on.”
“Stepfords are addicted to wealth and power. GPA girls are addicted to wealth and power.”
“A common failing. Go on.”
“All of the victims in the Madness cases, the ba -ripped, were former boyfriends of GPA girls. You don’t dump a Stepford.”
“ All of the victims?”
“Yes, sir,” Kurt said then gulped.
“I see that the evidence builds. And Janea’s ka was functionally stripped, also a Stepford trait. Stepfords do not strip the ba nor infill. They do not create…zombies. Which is why you called me, Ms. Rickels.”
“Yes…sir,” Sharice said.
Barb looked at her quizzically. She had never heard the old witch use the “s” word before.
“My, we tread lightly, do we not,” Germaine replied.
“My after-action analysis was that the Stepford ritual originated somewhere in the Hellenistic region,” Sharice
