Cora Teague

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**Cora Teague** is the hidden overarching antagonist in the eighteenth Temperance Brennan novel Speaking in Bones. Cora is a missing and presumed murdered victim, which only becomes harder to prove delving into the rural, religiously paranoid communities she was strictly isolated in.

## Background

Cora suffered epileptic seizures, but as her communities held higher regard to Christianity and were paranoid to psychiatry, she was presumed to have been possessed. She had gone to stay with a family with a Hungarian matriarch, where she read texts on Hungary's longstanding history. The complete isolation, terror tied to paranoid zealots, and nervous problems from epilepsy resulted in the development of dissociative identity disorder, an affliction that caused Cora to develop an alternate personality that was just a consequence of "possession" hysteria instead of proper treatment. That personality, pulled straight from Hungarian historic documents, was Elizabeth Báthory, an executed Hungarian countess who was apprehended and put to death for hundreds of reported murders for occultist rituals. With her new personality also came a psychotic murderous rage. Cora, as the "Countess", killed one of her own siblings, then a baby of the family she was moved to. People around her locked her in a shed to completely bar her from the world, assuming they were doing it in her best interest, but was really exacerbating her ailments and instability, as well as increasing the dangers she posed without proper treatment. A local priest, who was defrocked for an unlicensed exorcism in a small cult that killed a child, would perform the same rituals on Cora, which everyone convinced themselves, although wasn't "exorcising" her, was still keeping the alter at bay and she should remain in captivity for the rest of her life. A dear friend of hers, Mason, was in love her and came to rescue her once he eventually found out what her life was like. Cora had an alter switch and, as the "Countess", killed Mason. When her family and the priest realized what she did, they cut up his remains and scattered them in the Blue Ridge Mountains. At least once were her seizures and alter switches recorded, as if there were two people in the room instead of one, as if also she was the victim of unspeakable torture instead of nightmarish health catastrophes.

## Speaking in Bones

One such audio recording ended up in the hands of Hazel Strike, a.k.a. "Lucky", a celebrated amateur sleuth who soon realized Cora was in the recording. She heard the "Countess" personality, but didn't consider for a second the were two states of mind from the same voice. She presented the recording to Dr. Temperance Brennan and insisted a skeleton she had in storage, who was really Mason, was Cora, as it fit the timeline of her disappearance. She herself eventually found Cora in the shack she was hidden in and tried to rescue her by driving her to safety. Cora switched to the "Countess" personality and killed Strike. Her family and their accomplices caught up and saw the carnage of her actions, imprisoning Cora once again and destroying the crime scene while taking Strike's remains. Brennan suspected the priest, and after a confrontation where she illegally checked his church and narrowly escaped being shot by him, she made it to Cora's family's motorcycle business. She crept into the shack and was completely startled to realize Cora was alive. She reassured Cora they were gonna get out and get some help for her, but Cora was merely afraid of her next alter switch. It came, and, grabbing a shotgun, the "Countess" personality, sometimes screaming in Hungarian, gave full confessions to the murders of Mason and Strike. Cora, in her alter state, then proceeded to smash Brennan's head into the floor repeatedly. As Brennan was in and out of consciousness, she saw the priest trying to stop Cora, only for her to stab his throat with his own rosary. The family arrived to again intervene in Cora's rampage, only for the authorities to barge in, arrest them all, and detain Cora. Her history of preceding murders and her health problems cane to light, and she was then after institutionalized due to her severely physically and mentally degraded body and mind.