TheHellmaid was created by Doctor MarkStein, using an undead heart that came into his possession when he was a mediacal student at Providence university.
MarkStein found that the heart appeared perfectly fresh, and continued beating, even though seperated from the body. He found that any dead organs or tissue that he attached to it, regained the appearance of life - but this only lasted for a time, before the part once again died, and needed to be replaced. The fresher the part when first attached, the longer it lasted.
The heart appeared to exert a strange fascination over MarkStein, and he began murdering young girls to obtain the parts needed to build a complete person. When his crimes were discovered he fled to Unity, and began again.
TheHellmaid was constructed from parts from girls from Providence, Lloyd McDonall's original housemaid, and Unity prostitutes that Lloyd had pressured into submitting to him, with Stein's assistance, and then passed to Stein to have quietly 'disposed of'. The murders were covered up as deaths of drug overdoses in the Police cells. Stein seemed to need new parts to keep TheHellmaid going only irregularly, once every few months.
For several years TheHellmaid served as Lloyd McDonall's maid. It is not clear whether Lloyd was aware of the maid's true nature, or what his wife thought. TheHellmaid appears human, with no sign of scarring, and bears a resemblance to all the girls use to create it. Its skin is not noticably cold to the touch. The Hellmaid has a markedly odd manner of speaking, and its presence causes distress to nearby animals.
The final body to be used for parts for TheHellmaid was Elisa (Lissa) Farley, nee Short, FrankShort's niece. At the end of DeadInTheWater, TheHellmaid rode a pony and trap towards Lloyd McDonall's house, and has not been seen since.
MarkStein stored all of the parts that had 'failed' and needed to be replaced in a larder in his house, stored in formaldehyde jars. The group took one of these jars, containing a hand, in DeadInTheWater, and the rest were either used by LieutenantNeiss to make GrimHealingPaste, or destroyed by the group in AndTheRockCriedOut. The hand in a jar was been seen to make small independent movements.