Mr. Tinbergen entered the room about noon. "They're still in there?" he asked, nodding his head toward the cloakroom.

"Yes."

Nearing the table, he sat down. We didn't speak. We just sat.

When they emerged from the cloakroom, it was 12:35. Jadie, pale but fairly erect, came out first. She looked exhausted, as if what she needed most was sleep, but there was a weary calm about her.

"Would you like some lunch, Jadie?" Mr. Tinbergen asked. "I think they've saved you some." Rising from his chair, he extended a hand to her.

Lindy, appearing even paler than Jadie, pulled out Mr. Tinbergen's vacated chair across the table from me and fell into it. She watched as the door closed quietly behind Mr. Tinbergen and Jadie.

"I think I'm going to be sick," she murmured, her eyes still on the closed door.

"Jadie talked?"

"I'm not joking," Lindy replied. "I think I'm going to throw up."

Perhaps she wasn't joking. Her face had gone gray; she clutched the edge of the table with one hand, her fingertips going white from the pressure. I glanced around quickly for some way to be of help. "I'll get you a glass of water."

"I've been in this business six years now," Lindy said, as I returned from the sink, "and I have never in all my born days heard anything like that." Taking the water from me, she sipped it. "Did she tell you about that little girl? About what ... those people ... are supposed to have done to her? How they killed her?"

I nodded.

"I've come across plenty of blood and gore in my day. You get it in this job. You get used to it. But when a child, a little child starts to tell you these things ... That knife. The blood. Tasting the blood." Lindy shuddered. Then she looked over. "I feel unclean. Know what I mean? I want to go home and have a shower. Scrub myself. Throw away my clothes. Burn them. I feel dirty just from having been in there, talking about those things."

A small pause came as Lindy and I sat. The lights were out in the room, casting it in daylight gray. From beyond the closed windows came the muted laughter on the playground.

"That, about the cat, was the worst," Lindy said. "She was telling how they laid the cat on her chest and then they pulled it apart ... literally took its legs and pulled it to pieces on top of her." Lindy grimaced. "... And the blood ... smearing their hands in the blood of the cat, rubbing it all over Jadie's face and body ..." She paused and pressed her fingers against her mouth. "And then she was saying how ... how they licked it off ... how they performed ... subjected Jadie to cunnilingus with the blood of the cat still on her body."

Lindy's face suddenly went white. She looked over, her eyes wide. "Cat," she murmured. "Cat skeleton. That's it, isn't it?"

"I think we ought to have Christmas music," Jeremiah said.

"I think you ought to get your work done," I replied. "You still have half a sheet of math and all your reading left from this morning."

"Shit, man, you never let us have any fun."

"Work, Jeremiah."

"Gotta sharpen this here pencil first."

"Use mine," and I quickly slapped one down in front of him.

Peace reigned for about two minutes before Jeremiah raised his head again.

"Listen," I said before he had a chance to open his mouth, "we've had a difficult, disruptive morning. People have been coming in and out, things have been out of the ordinary today. Now, no one has managed to finish what's in their folders and we've only got forty minutes until going-home time. If everyone knuckles down, we can probably get done in half an hour. That'd leave enough time for me to read you another chapter from our book. How about that?"

"Aw, come on, lady, whatcha streaky blusher. I'd always say we have just a little bit of Christmas music? It's Christmastime, for Pete's sake. Let's get ourselves in the mood."

"If I put a record on, will you actually work?"

"Yeah, sure, man," he answered graciously. "What kind of boog you take me for?"

So I rose and selected a record of Christmas carols. Gentle, familiar music filled the room, soothing all of us. At last, everyone worked.

The record was still playing when the knock came. Jeremiah jerked up, startled, and was on his feet instantly. I looked over.

Mr. Tinbergen was visible through the window in the door. He beckoned me out into the hallway. When I opened the door, I found Delores there, as well.

"I've come to take Jadie," she said. "Like Lindy promised her."

I looked questioningly.

"The police have decided to pursue the case further. Apparently there's been an order issued to dig up the Ekdahls' garden or something like that. Anyway, I've just been over to the house and collected the girls' belongings, because the police have sealed it. Looks like things are hotting up." She nodded toward the classroom. "Anyway, we thought it would be better if we took Jade and Amber now, from school, rather than have them ..." She didn't finish the sentence.

"Are they still going to be able to attend school here?" I asked.

Delores shook her head. "I know you and Jade have a good relationship, and we've tried to take that into account in placing her, but it didn't seem like a good idea for her to stay here. Lindy has told me a little bit about all this ... you know ... and we've decided to get them right out of the immediate area. God forbid the media should get wind of this, but you just can't be too careful. And with the house right across the street from the school ..."

I nodded.

Opening the door, I looked at my five, all still at the table, the strains of "Silent Night" filtering around them. Reuben, his eyes on us, was mouthing the words of the carol.

"Jadie?"

She rose and approached us.

"Mrs. Verney is here. She's come to take you and Amber to your new foster home."

Jadie looked at her, then me. Her posture, although not completely erect, was still upright. "Is it going to be in Red Circle?" she asked.

"No," I said, voicing Delores's shake of the head. "I think you'll be a little farther away, and I think this means you won't be coming back to our class, because it'll be too far."

"Never?" Jadie asked, her voice surprised. "Where am I going? Will I be in a real class? Will I be in third grade?"

"Well, we'll see," Delores replied with a smile. "Maybe you will."

"What?" shrieked Jeremiah, leaping up from his chair. "Where's our girlie going? Why you letting them take her away?"

"I'm going someplace you can't come," Jadie retorted, a note of pride in her voice I hadn't anticipated.

"How? Where? What d'ya mean?" Jeremiah protested. "What does she mean, lady? Is she going to be in a real class? How come? What she done to get outa here?"

Jadie had gone to her cubby to collect her few belongings.

"What'cha mean, a real class?" he cried, running after her. "We're real. This here class is real. Are you going?"

"Yeah," said Jadie.

He paused, stunned.

"I'm going to my new home, Jeremiah," she said and disappeared into the cloakroom to get her things.

Jadie was a long time in the cloakroom, and when she finally emerged, her arms were loaded with coat, boots, her pencil box, crayons, notebooks, and artwork. Coming over to us in the doorway, she paused and looked up at me. I gazed into her blue eyes, their clearness so sharp that they appeared faceted like crystals.

"Good-bye, lovey," I said. "I'm sure we'll see each other again soon."

"Here. This is for you." She inclined her head toward the armful of things, and I saw sticking out between her fingers a small piece of folded notebook paper. I took it from her.

"Is she really going?" Jeremiah asked. He peered through the door at Delores. "You really taking her somewhere?"

"I don't mind," Jadie said, then slipped by Mr. Tinbergen and out into the hallway. The three of them turned and headed away.

Jeremiah remained with me in the doorway, his shock at Jadie's sudden departure almost palpable. "Hey, lady!" he finally cried out, just as Delores, Jadie, and Mr. Tinbergen were reaching the stairs. "Hey, lady, stop! I wanna tell you something."

Delores paused and looked back.

"Did you notice, lady? Did you see our girlie can stand up?"

Back in the classroom a pall of silence descended. The record had ended. No one moved, no one spoke. Back and forth we looked, from one to another. It had all happened so quickly, so completely, that none of us knew what to do next.

Then Reuben, in a soft, breathy, schoolboy soprano, began to sing "Silent Night." Jeremiah, and then Philip, ran to the window. I crossed the room to join them.

Below us, the front door of the school opened and Delores emerged with Jadie and Amber. They started down the long walk toward Delores's car, parked at the curb.

"I want her to turn around and look at us," Jeremiah whispered, his breath fogging the glass. "Ain't she even going to turn around? Come on, girlie. Give us a wave."

Then, just as she reached the end of the walk, Jadie paused. Still holding Delores's hand, she turned and looked over her shoulder toward the classroom window.

"Hey! She sees us! Jadie! Jadie! Bye! Bye-bye, Jadie!" Jeremiah shouted against the windowpane. Both he and Philip waved wildly. A smile touched Jadie's lips and she waved back.

Leaving the boys to clamor against the glass, I turned back to the classroom. In my hand, I still had the small piece of paper Jadie had given me. Carefully pulling it open, I found two words. Thank you.

Epilogue.

The drama of Jadie's case continued for several months after she left my class, during which time the police, who took Jadie's accusations very seriously indeed, conducted an intensive investigation, which included, among other things, excavating the Ekdahls' yard and dismantling their garden shed in search of Tashee's remains.

Throughout this time the question that divided us all continued to be discussed and occasionally argued: were the episodes Jadie had told me about real-life experiences? Or were they the creations of a seriously disturbed child?

There was a strong basis for believing Jadie's stories weren't real. First and foremost, she had a long history of bizarre psychological behavior, which, while it had never previously included hallucinations, did indicate quite serious pathology.

Additionally, many of the aspects of her stories are common to the phobias, obsessions, and hallucinations of disturbed children. A fear of being watched or spied on by insects, a fear of spiders in general, a fear of blood and visions of it dripping down or onto the body are all psychological experiences which I, myself, have encountered many times in my work with psychotic-type children, and in virtually all these cases I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt they were mental phenomena and had no basis in reality. Similarly, such acts as carving the symbol on Amber's stomach or even killing Jenny could conceivably have been done by Jadie herself. In fact, if she were as seriously disturbed as the nature of her stories would indicate, such mutilations and abuse would be within the realm of anticipated behavior.

Rejecting the face value of Jadie's stories did not rule out the possibility that Jadie was genuinely abused. Indeed, based on the circumstantial evidence in the case, the professional conclusion was that Jadie had probably been subjected to serious abuse, most likely sexual, at some point in her life and that this had contributed significantly to her mental state at age eight. Her mutism resulted perhaps from a fear that if she talked, she would tell about the abuse. Her deformed posture was an effort perhaps to physically keep the story in and/or protect the vulnerable genital area. Following this line of thinking, Tashee became comprehensible, not as a real little girl, but as a fragment of Jadie's own self, perhaps the genesis of a multiple personality disorder or as a depersonalization of what Jadie found good and whole in herself, separated out to be kept safe from the degraded self. Jadie's constant need to protect and care for Tashee and her frequent reports of "talking" to Tashee, as if Tashee were near at hand, were understandable acts in this context. Similarly, the characters of "Dallas" took on some meaning. If the abuse was committed by her father, that would be difficult enough to bear, but if her mother joined in, or perhaps simply knew and did nothing to stop it, Jadie may have found it necessary to create an evil persona in the form of Miss Ellie, which would leave the kind, loving person Jadie knew as her mom unsullied. If ethereal strangers, materializing out of the television, did all these things, then Jadie could still feel safe with her parents.

Throughout the many weeks of police investigation and the endless meetings with social workers and mental health personnel, this psychological explanation of Jadie's experiences became the increasingly accepted point of view. On numerous occasions, I found myself in accordance, feeling that yes, this was the only comprehensible conclusion that could be drawn. It provided answers for the most difficult questions; it made acceptable sense; and it brought Jadie's case into line with what we already know about the human mind. And yet ... The big questions were answered by this explanation, but the small things continued to niggle at me. For instance, why was Jadie so frightened of having her picture taken? Where had she gained knowledge of video recorders and video cameras in an era when they still weren't commonplace in people's homes? Why did she speak of Miss Ellie and the others "putting their faces on" and wearing "ghost clothes"? And what about Jadie's symbol, the cross within the circle, which she had made so many times for me in so many ways? In the end, speculation on this concurred with the psychiatric opinions voiced at the Sandry Clinic the previous summer, that the circle was representative of the vagina, and the cross ("X marks the spot") was a sort of "I was violated here" message. But why, then, would Jadie have made it on Amber's stomach? And on a more subtle level, why had Jadie been so curious about my work with other elective mutes? Why had her questions about my work always centered around whether they talked to me in the end and when they did, had I believed what they said? And had I helped them?

The only other alternative, of course, is to assume that the events Jadie told me about were true, that she was not a psychotic child in a sane world, but the other way around. In this explanation of her behavior, one realizes that her world would have to have taken on horror-film madness, and she was thus reacting with understandable terror to a situation she had no control over.

Taking Jadie's stories fully at face value brings us indisputably to ritual child abuse, meaning that she and her sisters and most probably other children were being abused in a predetermined ceremonial fashion by an organized group. Given the nature of many of the things she told us, the obvious conclusion is that it was related to practices of the occult, or more specifically, satanism.

Satanism is not the nonbelief in God, but rather the antithesis of standard Christianity, and the majority of satanic practices revolve around defamation of Christian practices. In reversing the credo of love toward others, it becomes a selfish cult, centered on what individuals can get for themselves. This emphasis on personal power is what gives satanism much of its appeal, particularly to weak and unsuccessful personalities. Its further appeal comes from its creative side. There are no rules and no restrictions governing the practice of satanism. One of black magic's most flamboyant exponents, Alistair Crowley, had great influence on the development of modern satanism, and his "'do what thou wilt' shall be the whole of the law" has provided the justification for fulfilling many abnormal sexual or violent urges.

Certainly, there was a strong satanic flavor to much of what Jadie referred to. The Black Mass is symbolized by an encircled cross, although the drawings of it I've seen in books do differ slightly from Jadie's. Jadie's was simply a quartered circle. The traditional Black Mass symbol is a cross with bars at each end, like two crossed capital I's, which then have a circle around them. However, Jadie did also make several other strange symbols, although less frequently than the circled cross. One of them, an inverted T with a small circle just above the crossbar, is remarkably similar to a satanic curse mark. The others we never found interpretations for.

The Black Mass itself is a perverted form of the Catholic Mass. Apparently, there is vast variation in the practice of this ritual, but the main components appear to include an altar and numerous altar artifacts, which usually include among them candles, inverted crosses, incense, daggers, bones, types of jewelry, bells, gongs, chalices, and bowls containing herbs or salts. Most of these items are black, white, or made of silver. The participants are generally cloaked in black, white, or red and/or wear face and body paint. In the Catholic Mass, according to dogma, the communion elements of bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The Black Mass is a travesty of the Catholic Mass, which uses bodily products, usually urine or semen and feces in place of bread and wine, to represent the carnal spirit of Satan. In further satisfying the carnal nature of this deity, sexual activity is often a major part of the religious ceremony. Pain is also an important factor and masochism is common. And as a further perversion of the Christian practices with their emphasis on life, death plays a significant role in satanic ceremonies. The presence of a coffin is common, with members lying in it or engaging in sexual activities in it.

Many satanists see themselves as simply practicing a chosen religion and no more, a right everyone is guaranteed under the American Constitution. They eschew the darker images of animal mutilations, bloodletting, and human sacrifice, and say that most of what is reported about them in the press is the work of practical jokers, horror-fiction writers, and propagandists from the fundamental religious groups. Others, among them many members of the police departments in major American cities, such as Chicago, San Francisco, and St. Louis, disagree. Animal sacrifice as a regular part of satanic rituals is well reported, as is blood drinking. Ritualized child abuse and human sacrifice still linger in the shadowy netherworld between fact and fiction, as police investigators have virtually never been able to turn up sufficient evidence that the rumored homicides occurred. On the other hand, a considerable number of children over the past ten years have reported startlingly similar experiences. Among these are being given drugs, either legal ones, such as muscle relaxants, or illegal ones, by means of drinks or injections; participating in chanting to call up the devil or demons and to put themselves into an altered state of consciousness; being urinated upon or having excrement wiped over them; being made to eat insects or being told that the insects were messengers of Satan and would report back everything the child did when not with the group; engaging in a wide variety of perverted sexual acts; being placed in coffins and having the lid shut; being tortured by snakes; and being tied to or suspended from upside-down crosses. Several of the children claim to have witnessed other children being sacrificed, in all instances by stabbing through the heart, slitting the throat, or being tied to an upside-down cross and set alight. Reported instances of animal sacrifice have included members of the group physically pulling the animal apart. These reports are not only quite consistent among even very young children, but they are widespread, occurring in vastly separated parts of the United States, as well as Canada, Great Britain, and continental Europe. Because much of what is reported is of a criminal nature, it has been the police departments who have accrued the largest number of these cases. However, the medical community, particularly from the children's hospitals, such as Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital in St. Louis, have also contributed their knowledge to the understanding of these reports, as have such groups as the National Child Assault Prevention Project. Indeed, both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Department of Justice have received detailed summaries of these findings during the course of the 1980s, Consequently, despite the elusive nature of "concrete evidence," a large body of people have chosen to believe these children.

In spite of this official involvement, it still takes an unusually open mind to encounter such information and not dismiss it immediately. Even to me, now, much of what Jadie said and of what the children above reported seems too farfetched, like a nasty mix of Stephen King and National Enquirer. This made this particular explanation of Jadie's stories the most difficult for all of us to deal with. I, myself, knew nothing of the darker side of occultism when all this began, other than the usual lurid media accounts of the Manson Family and of a particularly nasty murder which had taken place near my hometown in the seventies. My firsthand experience was limited to the Ouija board and tarot cards as part of a fairly standard rites of passage through adolescence. As a consequence, it was pure coincidence that we made the first connection between Jadie's behavior and satanism, because if Hugh hadn't been waiting near that occult bookshop during his lunch hours, I doubt I would have ever related the encircled cross to satanism. In fact, if I'm honest, I don't think I would necessarily have made the connection when Jadie started talking about the cat and the blood. Part of this was due to innocence. I simply didn't know and it is hard to see things one is ignorant of. Part of this was due to a certain amount of blindness. I was accustomed to seeing all disturbed behavior in psychological or psychiatric terms, and it was thus easy not to see other alternatives. And part was undoubtedly resistance. I didn't want to see it. Like UFO's, abominable snowmen, and the Loch Ness monster, the lighter sides of occultism are a part of modern folklore, real in the way that they speak consistently to a secret side in every one of us. They are the trolls and fairies of urban society. However, it takes a brave soul to admit to believing in such things. Even when matters became fairly advanced between Jadie and me, I was reluctant in the extreme to acknowledge something so far outside the ordinary could account for her experiences. I was fairly young, not long established in my career, and terribly vulnerable to the pressures of "being professional." Consequently, I found it difficult to jeopardize my status by espousing ideas usually reserved for the lunatic fringe.

None of this was helped by the fact that at the time it was virtually impossible to find any concrete information on occultism in acceptable, mainstream sources. Brenda and her bookstore were my only outlets during the course of my time with Jadie, and I found myself wholly suspect in seeking out information in such a location. As the years have gone by, I have acquired considerably more knowledge from considerably more respectable sources, but even today the basic knowledge has to come from the fringe.

With added knowledge, I must admit that, incredible as it all sounds, there is no way to deny the similarities of some of Jadie's stories to those of other reported cases of occult abuse. Jadie often talked about Miss Ellie and the others "having their faces on" or wearing "ghost clothes," which may have referred to face paint or masks and robes. It may also account for her not recognizing any members of the group. Perhaps the omnipresent soft drinks that she reported Miss Ellie always administered at the beginning of these sessions contained drugs, which may have further enhanced her inability to recall precise details. Her fear of spiders may have been a psychological scare tactic to keep her from revealing what was going on. Perhaps "the stick" Jadie referred to her sisters and herself "going upside down on" was an inverted cross. And her talk of eating feces, the sacrifice of Jenny, and, of course, the voodoo doll are all in close concurrence with very well documented Satanic practices. Perhaps most convincing of all for this theory, however, is that much of her distress and the reported abuse coordinated quite closely with important dates on the pagan calendar, with, most notably, Jenny's death occurring near April 30th, or Beltane, the second most important sabbat, or celebration date, and Tashee's reported murder and Sapphire's first molestation occurring near or on Halloween, the most important sabbat.

This brings us, of course, to the question of Tashee. Looking at Jadie's stories in this light, this means, of course, Tashee would have been a real child, and Jadie may have witnessed her murder as part of a ritual sacrifice. In fact, much of Jadie's account fits within the framework of occult ritual. Six, Tashee's age, was recognized as being important within the group and as giving power. Six is considered an important number within witchcraft and other magic-based groups, as it is a multiple of three and therefore more highly endowed with magical power. It is also highly regarded among satanists as part of the number 666 or the mark of the beast, generally taken to mean Satan. Jadie also reported Tashee's throat to have been slit with a crescent-shaped, elaborately carved dagger, which implies a weapon of ceremonial design. And, of course, there was the blood. Moreover, Jadie made frequent reference to "the power" the group would bring on themselves by sacrificing a six-year-old child.

The police in Pecking and Falls River took Jadie's allegations about Tashee's death seriously and did a very thorough job of searching the area in and around the Ekdahls' home and also in a wooded area not far from Pecking. However, nothing was found. They also tried to establish Tashee's possible identity, although no child of Tashee's age or description had been reported missing from the Pecking or Falls River area. As the investigation continued, they cast their nets wider to include the city, and, as the months passed, eventually the entire United States. They sifted through information on thousands of missing children, but Tashee was never identified. This does not, however, necessarily disprove her existence. A lot of corpses aren't found for many reasons and that may be sufficient answer. As to precisely who Tashee might have been, if she was a real child, that's harder to answer. Looking at it from the satanic perspective, perhaps she was the product of a "brood mare," young women in the group who have been made pregnant solely to provide a child for sacrifice and whose resulting baby is born at home and the birth not registered. If that assaults common sense too severely, perhaps it would be easier to find her among the thousands of faceless missing children, abducted maybe years earlier, perhaps even by a family member, and the police simply failed to identify her.

Like the psychological explanation for Jadie's stories, the occult explanation is fairly complete and, if one can cope with the incredibility factor, it makes acceptable sense of the information. Yet, like the former theory, I still find myself with unanswered questions. Once again, I find the issue of cameras and video recorders not satisfactorily explained. This is a fairly mundane matter in comparison to some of the others, but it figured with great frequency in Jadie's accounts. In no literature have I found reference to photography or video recording as an integral part of occult activity. Indeed, the stress on secrecy inherent in such counterculture behavior seems to rule out such a permanent and easily interpreted kind of record. Another hole in the satanic theory was the simple fact that Jadie never once, neither with me nor with the police, mentioned Satan, the devil, the master, or any of the other common references to the deity. It is possible, of course, particularly in light of the fact that the group appears to have been led by a woman, that this group was not purely satanic but a type of black magic coven, but even here Jadie did not attach significance to such things as pentagrams and other commonly used symbols of witchcraft.

This leaves us with only one other possible explanation for Jadie's accounts and that is that someone was using the girls for pedophilic purposes, most likely to make pornographic films, and the occult activities were used either as a pretext to frighten the children and keep them in line, or else as a part of the content of the films themselves. Or perhaps both.

The cameras and video recorders become self-explanatory in light of this possibility, as does Jadie's intense fear of having her picture taken. The soft drinks she spoke of in all likelihood would have contained drugs, in particular, muscle relaxants like Valium. This would be necessary, not only to ensure the child's cooperation, but also to make sexual intercourse and other, more perverted, acts appear easier and more naturally occurring. And if occult-inspired scare tactics were being used, a child under the influence of drugs would not be as alert to the sleight-of-hand activities used to provide the special effects.

If child pornography were the explanation for Jadie's experiences, it seems probable that at least one of her parents would have been directly involved, although not necessarily in committing the actual abuse. Their part may simply have been to allow the girls to be used, and this may account for Jadie's poor recollection of where her parents were during the sessions with Miss Ellie and the others. As an organized, working group intent on turning out a product, they would not necessarily have been structured in the way Jadie perceived them. Miss Ellie may have been an actress, possibly the star, and her behavior may have been in line with the film format, rather than anything directed personally toward the girls. Or perhaps it may have been. Perhaps her sadistic inclinations were enlisted to help keep the children in line while others got on with the business of making the film.

The use of the "Dallas" character names becomes comprehensible as well in that major police departments have documented the use of cartoon character names in connection with both ritual abuse cases and pedophilic cases. Used as code names among the group, it deters discovery by making it likely that if any child involved attempts to tell an outsider, her story is more likely to be dismissed as a television-inspired fantasy. Certainly, this explanation would be a good fit in Jadie's instance.

Much of the content of Jadie's stories can be substantiated as typical of hard-core child pornography. Horror and occultism crop up regularly in films that combine sex and violence. The torture of children and small animals or both together is disconcertingly popular in this bleak underworld, particularly when it culminates in a sexual act. Jadie's account of Jenny's death and the subsequent sexual activity fulfill all these requirements. Other aberrations in sexual taste, including the use of bodily products, is also a fairly common feature of some seamier films.

As with the satanic explanation, in this theory Tashee would have to be regarded as a real child. "Snuff" films, where an individual is actually killed on camera, are mercifully uncommon, although they are regarded as the piece de resistence for many hard-core pornography viewers. Consequently, it seems less likely in this instance that Jadie witnessed an actual murder. More likely, the murder was staged for filming purposes, and Jadie was either made to believe it genuinely happened so that her own performance would be more real, or else, as a child of six and possibly under the influence of drugs, she was unable to discern it was only acted. This explanation would give better insight into why Jadie occasionally mentioned seeing or talking to Tashee after she was supposedly murdered, because if Tashee was still alive, this would be understandable. In a similar vein, it would obviously account for the lack of criminal evidence in the police search. As to who Tashee actually was, however, that still remains firmly within the realm of speculation. Again, as in the satanic theory, she may have been an abducted child or a runaway. More likely, she would have been, like Jadie, a child willingly provided to the group.

It must be acknowledged that if hard-core pornography was responsible for Jadie's horrific stories, those involved did have a fair insight into the darker aspects of occultism. Whether or not this contributed significantly to the content of the films is a moot point, but there is no doubt it was used to wield considerable psychological control and those using it understood the power of their subject matter. Young children, particularly those between about four and ten, are strong believers in magic. This is the age of Santa Claus, fairy tales and all the good luck/bad luck superstitions that rule childhood, and anyone who has spent much time with children of this age is only too aware of the intensity with which they believe. It is a normal developmental stage, but it is easily exploited. Adults can be terrifying enough on their own, but coupled with scary images and intimations of supernatural powers, this would be enough to ensure cooperation from the most stalwart child.

Over the course of the months that followed Jadie's revelations, all three of these theories-the psychological, the satanic, and the pedophilic-received a good deal of attention from the professionals. Interestingly, acceptance of one explanation or another seemed to follow professional groupings, with social workers and those from mental health almost uniformly sticking to a psychological explanation, while the police and medical community tended to prefer something more concrete. The police, in particular, stuck by the satanic theory and the possibility that Tashee was a genuine murder victim.

And me? What did I believe? I don't know. I wish I did. Some ten years on I still find this the single most harrowing case I've been involved with, in part because it still persistently controverts all efforts to close it. As I write the book, I so wish I could draw the kinds of satisfying conclusions that would elevate it from the inelegant real-life situation it is. Certainly, I realize a clear-cut climax and resolution would make it a much better book. Unfortunately, it would also make it fiction.

Having spent all those afternoons listening to Jadie talk in that quiet, matter-of-fact manner of hers, I find it impossible to discount all reality behind her stories. Intuitively, I feel those people must have been there in some form and must have committed at least some of those acts. However farfetched the accounts were, they felt real. On the other hand, all three theories assault my common sense on some level. The last, that Jadie was a victim of organized pedophiles, provides the most comprehensive answer for me. Even so, I cannot fully accept this nor fully discount the others.