Previous instalment here: https://redd.it/1786bgt
History has a habit of repeating itself. You’ve all heard the story of the time Maura sold her own sister to a deranged former psychologist who was keeping “wayward girls” captive in order to “treat” them. Well, today you get to read the story about the equally fucked-up thing she did to said sister’s own son. Now, this happened long before I met Amy, so I obviously wasn’t there, but I have been able to piece together what happened from what she and her family have told me. Strap yourselves in, folks; this is a wild one.
Jane, Maura’s sister, had one child with her husband Colin: a boy named Stephen. Growing up, he saw his cousins almost daily (they all attended the same elementary school, and often got together for play dates), but had very little direct contact with his aunt and uncle. Unsurprising, given how much Jane hated her sister. She knew better than anyone else how dangerous Maura could be, and she didn’t want her evil poisoning her son.
Now, when Stephen was nineteen, he came out to his family as gay. Most of them had long suspected as much, so the announcement wasn’t exactly a big surprise… to most of them, anyway. It was a surprise to Maura, however, and a rather unpleasant one at that. You see, Maura is intensely homophobic. Really, LGBTQ individuals of any kind repulse her. She especially hates gay men, being a firm believer in that gay men are pedophiles bullshit.
In fact, it was this very belief that led her to try and have Stephen registered as a sex offender. The crazy bitch actually walked into the local police station and told the officer at the front desk that her gay nephew “posed a threat to the young boys in the area” and thus needed to be put on a list to “ensure their safety.” Clearly, she had no idea how a sex offender registry actually works. The cop explained to her that Stephen could not be registered as a sex offender unless he was actually charged with a sex crime, and sent Maura on her way.
The man’s words planted a seed in Maura’s head, and she hatched a new plan. She paid a visit to Jane and Colin’s next-door neighbours (a thirty-something couple with a nine-year-old son) and honest-to-God asked the kid’s mother if she would be so kind as to coach her son to tell the police that Stephen had molested him. That way, law enforcement would have no choice but to put Stephen on the sex offender list.
Well, the kid’s mother wasn’t too keen on helping Maura have an innocent man branded a pedophile, and told Maura to leave. Maura was incensed! First the police had turned her away, and now this! She began screeching about how she was just trying to look out for the well-being of the young boys in the neighbourhood, that this woman’s own son could easily fall victim to Stephen and his “sexual deviancy.” Did she want that on her conscience? She must not care about her son! She was a terrible mother!
The woman calmly turned, went back inside her house, and fetched her husband’s hunting rifle. She pointed it at Maura and told her to get the fuck off her front porch. And if she ever showed up there again, she’d be eating some hot lead.
I can’t say for sure if she was bluffing or not, but it worked. Maura fled. The neighbour later told Jane what had happened, and Jane was understandably furious. She called Maura and threatened to kill her if she ever fucked with her son.
Several days passed. Maura didn’t call, nor did she show up at Jane’s, or at the neighbours’ house. Jane hoped that her sister had taken her threat seriously. But if things ended there, I wouldn’t have much of a story for you, now would I?
One afternoon, Stephen was walking to the bus stop after wrapping up his shift at the bookstore where he worked part-time. As he pulled his coat tighter around his body and ducked his head against the frigid wind, he heard a voice say, “Hello there, son.”
Stephen stopped mid-stride. Turned around. Standing on the sidewalk not far from him was a man in a priest’s robes; against the dark fabric, his white clerical collar stood out as bright as a fresh fall of undisturbed snow.
“My name is Father Maurier,” said the priest. He appeared to be in his sixties, slim yet wiry-looking, and was taller than Stephen, himself no shrimp at 6’1”. The man was completely bald, but had a long, full silver beard, and wore thick glasses that magnified his blue eyes to twice the size of an average human’s. They gave him an almost childish appearance, despite his age. But even that wasn’t enough to counteract the sinister vibe Stephen was getting from him.
“We have never met before,” said Father Maurier, plowing into the uncomfortable silence that had settled over both men, “but I am a friend of your aunt Maura’s. She sent me to come get you.”
“Wh-what are you talking about?” Stephen stammered, beginning to back away slowly. Alarm bells were clanging inside his head. He knew that anything involving Maura could only lead to disaster.
“Come with me, son,” Father Maurier insisted. “You have nothing to be afraid of. I only want to help you.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” said Stephen. “My aunt is crazy. I don’t know what she told you, but I don’t need your help.”
“You do need my help,” Father Maurier insisted. “There is something wrong with you, Stephen. Something dark and unholy. But I can fix you. All you need to do is come from me.”
He began advancing on Stephen, who slid his hand into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around his keys, the only weapon he had on him. He didn’t want to get into a physical altercation with an elderly priest, but he knew he might not have much of a choice in the matter.
“G-get away from me,” he barked. “Don’t think I won’t fight you.”
Father Maurier paused. His face went cold and angry, his eyes glinting a hard, icy blue. Then his expression turned to one of sorrow, and when he spoke, his voice was sad and low.
“I was told you might resist. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but you have left me no choice.”
Then Stephen was grabbed from behind, a pair of hands clamping down on his shoulders with bruising force. There was a sharp prick of pain in the back of his neck. He knew immediately that he’d been injected with something, but before he could even grasp the true horror of what was happening to him, darkness folded around him and swallowed him whole.
When Stephen came to, he was in a sallow room with no windows, the only decor being a large metal cross mounted on one of the off-white walls. He was bound to a wooden chair with what appeared to be clothesline, and a musty taste filled his mouth from the old rag that had been used to gag him.
He was not alone; four people stood around him in a tight circle. Father Maurier, clutching a leather-bound Bible; a looming mountain of a man with a straggly brown beard, matching straggly brown hair, and beady dark eyes, looking like he’d be more comfortable in a flannel shirt and hiking boots than the dark suit he had on; a second-dark suited man, this one much shorter and skinnier, with a blonde crew cut that only emphasized his big, protruding ears; and of course Maura, wearing a black dress and smiling sweetly, as if this entire scenario wasn’t completely fucked-up.
“Hello, Stephen, dear,” she said, and laughed nervously. “I am sure this is not how you expected to be spending your evening. But trust me when I say that this is for your own good.”
Stephen tried to squirm, to protest, but whatever he had been injected with was still in his system, and still working its evil drug magic. His head pounded ferociously, and his stomach lurched like a boat on a choppy sea. His vision kept swimming in and out of focus; the walls seemed to undulate, as if made of water.
Father Maurier’s eyes met Stephen’s, and he smiled.
“There is nothing to be afraid of, son. We are going to help you. We are going to cure you of your homosexuality.”
Stephen opened his mouth, but all that came out was drool. He couldn’t talk, couldn’t move, could barely even think. He was completely at the mercy of these lunatics.
What commenced was what can best be described as an exorcism. The men recited prayers, doused Stephen with holy water, and spoke to the demons that has supposedly possessed him, demanding that they leave. Maura got in on the action too. She would thrash around like she was the one who was possessed, and even spoke in tongues. At some point, she just devolved into reciting Psalm 23 over and over again. Why that particular psalm is unclear, but Stephen claims that, to this very day, he still cannot hear The Lord is my shepherd without his heart rate skyrocketing.
This continued for nearly two hours. The men seemed to be growing frustrated their little exorcism wasn’t working. Father Maurier whispered something to the big bearded guy, who nodded grimly. Then he stepped forward and punched Stephen in the mouth.
Stephen’s front tooth shattered; the fragments tumbled down his throat. The big man punched him again, this time in the nose. Blood gushed forth like water from a broken pipe. The beating continued, the man’s fists pummelling Stephen’s head and back. In his inebriated state, Stephen had no way of fighting back.
At that point, Maura snapped out of her frenzy and began screaming for the man to stop, although I’m sure it was less out of concern for her nephew’s well-being and more out of a desire to not be charged with murder if Stephen ended up dead. The man didn’t stop; instead, he just began beating Stephen harder while the other two men kept praying. Maura fled the church, running to a nearby house and having the people who lived there call 911.
Police and paramedics arrived within minutes. Stephen was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, while Maura and the men were taken down to the police station for questioning.
If you think that Maura got into some hot water for orchestrating the abduction and assault of her nephew, you have obviously underestimated Maura’s capacity for bullshitting her way out of trouble.
Maura told the police that yes, she had spoken to Father Maurier and requested his help in “curing” her gay nephew. But she had been under the impression that Father Maurier was only going to have a “talk” with Stephen. She had no idea that he was planning on drugging Stephen, taking him by force, and having one of his cronies beat him. She had been asked to wait upstairs, so had no clue what was happening until she heard strange sounds from the basement, went to investigate, and found Stephen tied to a chair and covered in blood. That was when she realized what was going on and called for help.
And the police believed her.
How and why, I do not know. Maura’s ability to escape the consequences of her behaviour bordered on the supernatural. Father Maurier and his goons faced legal repercussions, but Maura walked away a free woman.
Jane, as you can imagine, was apoplectic. Not only had Maura done something absolutely unforgivable to her son, she had also gotten away with it. History was repeating itself. And she had tried so hard to protect Stephen from his crazy aunt. The whole scenario was an utter nightmare for her, and I can only imagine the willpower it took for her not to follow through on her threat to kill Maura.
Stephen recovered, but he never forgave his aunt for what she had done, and I can’t say I blame him. He would see her at family gatherings, but always kept his distance, and he never spoke directly to his aunt ever again.
As for Maura, did she learn her lesson? Ha, ha, nope! She refused to see what she had done wrong, refused to apologize, insisting that she had only been trying to help Stephen… how was she supposed to have known that those men were crazy and violent?
Years later, Stephen and his husband would adopt a child. Not long after, they received a visit from CPS. Apparently an anonymous caller had made a claim that the two men were members of a cult that took part in violent orgies, sacrificed a virgin every full moon, and drank goat’s blood believing it would grant them “eternal youth”; therefore, they were not suited for raising a child.
This was total bullshit, of course, and CPS figured it out pretty quickly and the investigation was closed before it really began. We couldn’t prove it, of course. But we all knew that the anonymous caller had been Maura.