The Lamb’s Lost Angel

I. The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hurt a Fly

Reilly Chong was the kind of boy whose teachers used words like tenderhearted and gentle soul. His mother would catch him setting out little bowls of sugar water for bees on the back porch, or scooping worms off hot sidewalks after a rainstorm. At fifteen, his biggest concerns were passing algebra and saving up for a secondhand guitar.

Then the Lambs of Jesus came to town.

They called themselves a ministry. They wore white robes with a lamb stitched over the heart and wandered through neighborhoods handing out bread and tracts. Reilly first saw them outside the corner store. They were smiling, calm. Their leader, a man everyone called Shepherd Micah, spoke softly and said things that made Reilly’s stomach feel warm and full.

"Blessed are you, little brother. The world has lied to you. But the Lamb has room in His fold."

Reilly didn’t know, then, that his mother had been looking for him all night.

He didn’t go home.

II. The Fold

The farm where they lived was beautiful: rolling hills, wheat fields, a small river threading the land. Reilly slept in a bunkhouse with other boys who also couldn’t go home. They rose at dawn, milked goats, prayed, and sang hymns. At first it felt like camp. They told him his old life had been full of lies, full of wolves. Here he would become an Angel for the Lamb — a protector, a purifier.

The things that came next blurred into a strange dream. At night, Shepherd Micah would take him aside and speak low. Sometimes he would lay a hand on Reilly’s forehead and murmur prayers. Other times he would show him photographs of people — sad-eyed men in dark alleys, women outside clubs — and say:

"Lost sheep. Wolves in sheep’s clothing. They hurt the flock. You know what you must do."

When Reilly closed his eyes, he heard Micah’s voice echo inside him.

"You’re our Avenging Angel."

He doesn’t remember much else.

III. The Raid

Fifteen years later, Reilly was twenty-nine. The Lambs of Jesus were no longer a quiet countryside sect; they had become something darker. Federal agencies began connecting unsolved murders across states — victims shot or strangled, a lamb’s wool tied around their wrist. They linked everything to Micah’s farm.

The raid came before sunrise.

Helicopters thundered above the fields. Floodlights poured down on the wheat. Gunfire crackled. Reilly was in the barn when they dragged him out, hands zip-tied, cheek scraped where he’d fallen. His robe was torn and smeared with dirt. Around him, men and women screamed, others prayed, some didn’t move at all.

One agent swore later that Reilly didn’t fight, didn’t speak, just stood there blinking like someone who’d just woken from a dream.

IV. The Interrogation

They took him to a black-site detention center somewhere in Virginia. He sat alone for the first two days, handcuffed to a table. Then came the questions.

FBI. CIA. DOJ. Sometimes men in suits, sometimes women in plainclothes. All of them asking the same things:

"How many did you kill?"

"Where are the others hiding?"

"Why were you called the Avenging Angel?"

"Why did you target them?"

Reilly stared at them, wide-eyed.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Reilly, we have photographs. We have witnesses. You were seen at twenty-three different crime scenes."

"I don’t remember any of that."

One interrogator, Agent Weber, slammed the table hard enough to make the handcuffs rattle.

"Stop playing games!"

But Reilly didn’t flinch. His eyes welled up.

"I swear," he whispered, "I don’t remember."

V. The Evidence

The evidence against him was overwhelming.

— Security camera footage of him strangling a man outside a casino in Atlantic City.

— Hotel logs placing him in Cleveland the night a city councilman was found dead in his car.

— Witnesses in New Orleans swearing they saw him walk into a nightclub, follow a young woman out back, and come back alone.

The killings spanned fourteen years, across seven states.

His lawyers — a team of two overworked federal defenders — reviewed the evidence and shook their heads.

But when they met with Reilly, they began to notice something strange.

He didn’t deny the photographs or videos. He just… didn’t recognize them.

"That looks like me," he’d say softly, "but I don’t remember being there. I’ve never been to Cleveland. Or New Orleans. Or… anywhere."

One of his lawyers, a woman named Marissa Quinn, hired a psychologist.

VI. The Diagnosis

The psychologist’s name was Dr. Leon Patel. After a week of sessions, he testified under oath that Reilly Chong had “clear signs of severe dissociation, consistent with prolonged coercive persuasion — what laypeople call brainwashing.”

"In plain terms?" Marissa asked.

"In plain terms, someone stripped him of his self-will, suppressed his memories, and conditioned him to kill without conscious awareness. Think of it as hypnosis compounded with trauma."

The psychologist even used the myth of the River Lethe from Greek mythology to explain it.

"In the old stories, souls who drank from the River Lethe forgot everything. In Reilly’s case, the river was years of indoctrination and hypnotic suggestion."

Marissa said nothing at first. Then quietly: "Can he ever remember?"

Dr. Patel spread his hands. "Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on whether he wants to remember. And whether the mind can handle it."

VII. The Dream

On his seventy-eighth night in the detention center, Reilly had a dream.

He was back on the farm, barefoot, a lamb nuzzling his hand. Micah stood in front of him holding a long knife.

"We’re sending you out again, Angel. One more lost sheep. You know what to do."

Reilly shook his head in the dream.

"No," he said.

Micah smiled sadly. "Oh, little brother. You already did."

Then Micah handed him a mirror. In the glass, Reilly saw his own face — but his eyes were hard and empty. Blood splattered his robes.

He woke up screaming.

VIII. The Hearing

It took months to prepare for his competency hearing. The prosecution insisted he was a calculating killer hiding behind an act. The defense presented Dr. Patel’s findings, affidavits from cult experts, and Reilly’s own confused testimony.

"I don’t remember hurting anyone," Reilly said. "If I did… I’m sorry. I don’t even know how to say I’m sorry."

The judge listened in silence.

In the end, he was ruled incompetent to stand trial — at least for now — and remanded to a psychiatric facility for treatment.

The public called it a miscarriage of justice. A monster walking free. But in the quiet of his room, staring at the padded walls, Reilly still didn’t understand what he’d done.

IX. The Farm Revisited

Marissa made a trip to the farm herself. The FBI had long since cleared out, but the place still smelled of hay and gunpowder.

In the attic of the main house, she found boxes of videotapes — old VHS recordings of ceremonies and sermons.

On one tape dated December 2009, she watched a teenage Reilly kneel in front of Micah. The older man pressed his hand to Reilly’s forehead and began to chant in a low, rhythmic voice.

Reilly’s eyes fluttered. He repeated phrases in unison.

"I am the Lamb’s Angel."

"I purge the flock of wolves."

"My will is the Shepherd’s will."

Marissa stopped the tape, her hands shaking.

X. Lethe

Reilly remained at the facility under heavy supervision. Dr. Patel visited weekly, trying different therapies, hypnosis in reverse, medication. But even when flashes came back — a dark alley here, a riverbank there — Reilly recoiled.

"I don’t want to see it," he admitted once. "I’m afraid of who I was."

"That fear is normal," Dr. Patel said gently. "But remember, Reilly — what was done to you wasn’t your fault."

But guilt sat on him like a lead weight.

One night he asked the nurse for paper and pen. He wrote a note and slipped it under his door.

"To the families of the lost sheep: I don’t remember what I did to you. But if I hurt someone you loved, I’m sorry. If I could undo it, I would. I don’t know if God will ever forgive me. But I hope you can."

XI. The River

Years passed. The case faded from headlines. Micah was convicted and died in prison. Other cult members flipped and testified, though none had been so completely brainwashed as Reilly.

Marissa kept visiting him even after the case closed. On her last visit, she brought him outside to a small garden.

"Do you know what today is?" she asked.

Reilly squinted up at the sun. "No."

"Your thirty-fifth birthday."

He smiled faintly. "Feels like I missed a lot."

She didn’t argue.

As she stood to leave, he asked: "Do you think I’ll ever remember? Or is it… like the River Lethe forever?"

Marissa studied him for a long moment.

"Maybe that’s a mercy, Reilly."

He nodded slowly, watching the wind ripple through the trees.

And for the first time in many years, he let himself hope.

Epilogue

Somewhere far from Virginia, a mother sat on her porch, reading the note Reilly had written. She pressed it to her chest, staring out at the sunset.

Somewhere else, a brother of a victim watched an old tape of Reilly as a boy, his eyes blank, reciting the Shepherd’s will — and something in his own heart softened.

And Reilly himself, sitting in his quiet room, whispered a prayer to a God he wasn’t sure he believed in.

"If You’re there… bring me home. I want to come home."

And perhaps, in some unseen way, the River Lethe began to dry up.