“I’m not trying to push you,” Jennifer says, noticing my anger. “I just don’t want you to stay burdened by things you can let go of. You’ll be amazed at how freeing this work can be if you do the work. I know you are not Christian, but there is a Bible verse that always brings me peace when I have to face something big. ‘Come to me,’ it says, ‘all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’”

“Matthew Eleven.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“My mother used to quote the Bible to us all the time. She came back to that one a lot. She had a big load also.”

“For me, it means we don’t have to carry our troubles alone. Others can help us. And the only way we truly find rest is by assisting each other with these heavy loads. I know I’ve said this before, but you can lay your burdens down in this room. I am a friend of your soul.”

Something about her sincerity breaks me. A flood of tears. How could she know this is exactly what I needed, to be gently nudged into my own salvation?

Jennifer moves her finger back and forth while I tap the tops of my thighs. I take a deep breath and close my eyes. An open door inside. I walk through it with my eyes still shut.

“I just wonder why it happened to me,” I say with a quivering voice after a few moments of silence.

“I mean that kind of thing happened to all my friends who were girls and even some of the boys. Some people are truly monsters. Demons disguised as flesh… He told me he had books in his apartment. He knew I loved school and reading, those sorts of activities. I was hesitant initially to follow him, but I really wanted to see what books he had.”

I pause, crying quietly to myself.

“I was so young and confused, you know? I didn’t understand what was happening, but I still feel like it was my fault somehow. It felt so terrible. So, so, so bad. Like being slowly ripped apart. Eventually I stopped resisting. I stared at the ceiling and started saying some of my mother’s Bible verses aloud. ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’”

A winding down of time. A chill in the air. Then their voices, the Keepers, pouring forth from my own eyes, which suddenly fling open. I look over and see that Jennifer is frozen with her fingers in the air, preparing to administer the EMDR. They continue their channeling, sending electrical pulses through my entire body.

So you have reached us on your own through the words of your mother’s God.

Welcome.