Dead Angels by Tim O'Rourke Page B

murky glow of the naked light bulb.
    My throat made a shallow wheezing sound as I sucked in a mouthful of air in complete shock at what had just been revealed to me. The basement had been turned into a tiny chapel. The smell of melted candles and incense hung heavy in the air. There were two small pews in front of an altar which had been covered with a crimson cloth. There were rows of candles down the length of each wall, and at the end of the rows there was a large statue of Jesus. Positioned behind the altar was a huge cross which hung about four foot from the floor and protruded by about a foot from the wall.
    “This place is creepy,” I whispered.
    “It’s where my mum locks me away,” she said softly.
    “What?” I couldn’t understand what she had just said to me.
    “When I was a kid, if I was bad, she would bring me down here. I had to stay for hours, sometimes days, kneeling on that little box,” she said, pointing to a small crate at the foot of the cross.
    “Get out of here!” I breathed. 
    Melody stared at me without replying. I looked into her eyes and that brilliant blue had faded. My stomach lurched with a sickening feeling and I knew that she was telling the truth.
    “Why?” I tried to find the right words.
    Melody settled into one of the small pews, and in a hushed and broken voice, she told me everything.
    “Mum would drag me down here and make me strip to my underwear, and all the time she would be praying…almost chanting. She would rant over and over again. Her face would look as if in pain and I remember seeing spit form like foam around her mouth. She would keep me locked down here for days at a time.” Melody looked in the direction of the cross on the wall and I followed her gaze.
    “Sometimes I would have to kneel on the crate for so long that my knees would bleed.”
    “Why would she do that to you?” I asked, stunned at what she was telling me.
    “Because she said I had an evil demon living within me. She would make me fast, too. My mum said she was starving the demon out of me.”
    “How long would she make you go without food?” I gasped.
    “Until I could take no more,” Melody explained. “My stomach would start to cramp and all I would be able to think about was food and water. My thirst was so bad sometimes, the pain was unbearable.”
    “Where would your mum go while you were left starving down here in the dark?”
    “She would sit right here and pray for my forgiveness. Sometimes, I could hear her sobbing hysterically.”
    “When would she let you eat?”
    “When I was near unconsciousness,” Melody said, looking up at the cross, her face haunted as she remembered the torture her mum had put her through. “I used to hallucinate due to the pain in my stomach and throat. I could hear water rushing past me, then drowning me. But it didn’t bring me any closer to God, like my mum hoped it would. It just made me believe there was no such thing. If there were a God, he wouldn’t have let me suffer like that.I would finally rock forward on the crate, my knees red and raw, close to exhaustion. It was like I was falling into a well of blackness, but before I hit the bottom, my mum would catch me in her arms.”
    I put my arm around Melody’s shoulder and hugged her as we sat on the pew and she stared up at that cross. 
    “Melody, I’ve never heard anything like that before. I don’t know what to say. You’ve got to report this, she can’t do this to you,” I whispered.
    “Who would believe me? I’m not sure that even you do.”
    “I believe you; it’s just that I can’t believe that any mum could do that to their kid.” But then I thought of what I had seen through Ray’s window and wasn’t quite so sure.
    “Well, believe it or not, she does treat me like that and has always done so!” she insisted.
    “Haven’t you got anyone else, family that you could go and live with?” I asked.
    “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Anyway, she hasn’t