Chapter 82: The Missionary

Chapter 82: Chapter 82: The Missionary

Chapter 82: The Missionary

Margaret White’s eyes immediately became guarded when she heard Axel’s question. Axel Vance set his glass down and leaned back against the sofa, keeping his expression calm despite the suspicion already building in his mind. "I’ve met plenty of deeply religious people, Mrs. White, but some of the things happening in this house don’t look like faith to me."

Margaret’s face tightened. "I pray every day, I follow the Lord’s commandments, and I keep myself away from the corruption outside. What exactly is wrong with that?" Her voice carried the defensive certainty of someone who had repeated the same justification to herself for years.

"There’s a big difference between devotion and isolation," Axel replied. His gaze moved across the covered windows, severe paintings, candles, and crosses filling the room before returning to Margaret. "Most believers still attend church, speak with other people in their congregation, and live ordinary lives. You shut yourself inside this house, and worse, you shut Carrie inside with you."

Margaret rose halfway from her chair. "I’m trying to save her! There is something evil inside Carrie, and prayer and discipline are the only things keeping it under control." Carrie flinched behind her mother, but Axel’s expression only became colder.

"A devil?" Axel asked. "How exactly did you determine that?" He leaned forward slightly and continued, "Have you ever actually seen one around her, heard one speak through her, or had anyone qualified tell you she was possessed?"

Margaret froze.

Axel noticed immediately.

"Or did you read it somewhere?"

Margaret’s pupils contracted.

That was enough.

Axel slowly stood. "There’s a book, isn’t there?"

Margaret’s face lost what little color it had. "No."

"Bring it to me."

She stepped backward instead.

Axel did not argue further. He moved past her and headed toward the stairs while Carrie remained frozen beside the living room entrance. Margaret followed a few steps behind, visibly panicked but apparently too intimidated to physically stop him.

The second floor contained only three rooms. Axel opened the first and found Carrie’s bedroom, which consisted of little more than a bed, a small desk, and several crosses mounted on otherwise bare walls. There were almost none of the posters, photographs, cosmetics, records, or personal decorations he would have expected in an ordinary teenage girl’s room.

The next door led to a bathroom.

The final room belonged to Margaret.

Axel pushed it open and was immediately hit by the heavy smell of old candle wax. More severe religious artwork covered the walls, while several worn Bibles sat stacked on the bedside table. His attention, however, settled on the space beneath the bed.

He crouched down and pulled out a wooden box.

Margaret gasped behind him.

Axel broke the old latch and opened the lid.

Inside lay a leather-bound book without a title.

A dark red cross had been stamped into the cover.

Axel picked it up and began flipping through the pages. Margaret rushed forward with a terrified cry, but one look from him stopped her before she could reach the box. "Don’t."

She froze.

Axel lowered his gaze to the book again.

At first glance, it presented itself as a guide for resisting temptation and supposedly cleansing corrupted souls. The deeper he read, however, the clearer the real purpose became: it twisted religious language into justification for isolation, starvation, beatings, confinement, humiliation, and other forms of abuse aimed at anyone labeled spiritually impure.

Axel’s jaw tightened.

This was not scripture.

It was a coercive abuse manual wearing religious clothing.

He closed the book and turned toward Margaret. She had already collapsed against the side of the bed, tears streaking down her pale face while her hands trembled uncontrollably. "Where did you get this?"

Margaret covered her head with both arms.

Axel stepped closer. "Who gave it to you?"

"I..."

"Tell me."

Her shoulders shook for several seconds before the answer finally escaped. "Carrie’s father."

Carrie, who had followed them upstairs, went completely still.

Axel narrowed his eyes. "Her father?"

Margaret slowly raised her head. Her gaze looked distant now, as though she were staring through the room and back almost two decades. "He came to Greenville eighteen years ago. He said he was a missionary traveling through small towns to spread the Gospel."

Her breathing became uneven.

"I was young, poor, and stupid," Margaret continued. "He treated me better than anyone ever had. He told me I had a special gift for faith and that God had chosen me for something important."

Her expression became strangely wistful despite the tears.

"He was handsome, educated, and knew the Bible better than any minister I had ever met. He told me I had been chosen to bring a pure soul into the world." Margaret swallowed hard and whispered, "I believed him."

Carrie stared at her mother without moving.

Margaret continued, "We never joined a church together. He said organized churches had become corrupted and that true faith only existed between a person and God." Her hands tightened against her dress. "Then Carrie was born."

Something darker entered her expression.

"The hospital brought her to me, and he was gone."

Margaret’s voice began to crack. "The telephone number he gave me had been disconnected. The address wasn’t real, nobody knew where he had gone, and it was like he had never existed." Her eyes moved toward Carrie.

"He abandoned me with her."

Carrie’s face went pale.

Margaret’s resentment surged through the grief. "Everyone in town knew I had a baby without a husband. People whispered about me, I lost my job, and everything in my life fell apart." Her voice rose sharply as she pointed toward her daughter. "She brought that sin into my life, and her father disappeared because of her!"

Axel’s expression hardened completely. "So a man lied to you, used you, disappeared, and you blamed the infant he left behind?" He lifted the leather book and added, "Then you punished her for eighteen years because you were angry at him?"

"I didn’t!"

Margaret’s scream filled the bedroom.

Axel raised the book. "Then explain this."

Margaret fell silent.

"He gave you this too, didn’t he?" Axel asked. "He told you there was something wrong with Carrie before she was even old enough to speak, then conveniently left instructions telling you how to ’purify’ her?"

Margaret’s lips trembled.

No answer came.

Axel tossed the book onto the floor in front of her. "Look at me and answer one question. What kind of father abandons his child, disappears without a trace, and leaves behind a manual teaching the mother how to torment that child?"

Margaret stared at the book.

Then at Carrie.

The certainty that had held her together for nearly eighteen years finally began to crack.

Her face crumpled.

A broken sob escaped her throat.

Margaret covered her mouth, but the sound quickly became full, uncontrolled weeping. Years of anger, religious obsession, abandonment, and self-justification collapsed at once as she finally faced the possibility that the man she had trusted had deliberately deceived her.

Carrie stood trembling several feet away.

For the first time, she had heard the truth about how she was born and why her mother had treated her as though she were inherently evil. Her father had abandoned them, and Margaret had spent the years afterward turning her humiliation and resentment against the one person who had been completely innocent.

Carrie’s emotions twisted visibly across her face.

Anger.

Hatred.

Grief.

Yet when she looked at Margaret sobbing on the floor, what remained strongest was sadness.

Carrie hesitated before slowly walking forward.

She crouched beside her mother and gently placed one hand on her back. "Mom..."

Margaret’s crying faltered.

She slowly raised her head.

For perhaps the first time since Axel had entered the house, Margaret looked at Carrie without accusation or fear. She lifted one trembling hand toward her daughter’s face, only to stop halfway as though she suddenly believed she no longer had the right to touch her.

Axel watched the scene in silence.

He should have felt relieved.

Instead, the uneasiness inside him became stronger.

Axel bent down and picked up the leather book again. He flipped through several pages, studying the careful structure of the writing and the deliberate way it blended ordinary religious language with increasingly abusive instructions. Something about the entire situation was too calculated.

A wandering missionary.

A manipulated young woman.

A deliberately twisted book.

And a daughter born with extraordinary telekinetic power.

That was too much coincidence for Axel to ignore.

If Carrie’s father had simply been a selfish man looking to exploit Margaret, disappearing afterward would have been enough. Leaving behind a detailed book designed to shape how Margaret raised Carrie served no obvious purpose unless the way Carrie grew up mattered to him.

A darker possibility began forming in Axel’s mind.

What if the abandonment had been planned?

What if Carrie had been the point from the beginning?

Axel looked again at the red cross stamped into the leather cover.

Suppose the supposed missionary had searched for an isolated, vulnerable woman in a strongly religious small town. Margaret had been young, poor, deeply suggestible, and already inclined toward extreme beliefs, making her an ideal person to manipulate with claims that she had been divinely chosen.

Then he had given her the book.

He had taught her to distrust churches and outside authority.

He had made himself the only person whose interpretation of faith she trusted.

After Carrie was born, he vanished.

Margaret would naturally be left frightened, humiliated, and desperate for an explanation. The book provided one: her child was corrupted, her suffering had spiritual meaning, and punishment was supposedly the path to redemption.

For eighteen years, Margaret had followed those instructions.

Isolation.

Fear.

Shame.

Punishment.

Emotional pressure.

Axel slowly looked toward Carrie.

Her telekinetic power responded violently to precisely those emotions.

Years of repression had not destroyed the ability.

They had strengthened the conditions that made it erupt.

Axel’s grip tightened around the book.

If his suspicion was correct, then Margaret White had not merely been manipulated into abusing her daughter.

She had been turned into part of an experiment.

And Carrie White had been the subject from the day she was born.

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