Death and the Girl Next Door

“But they got one out of Brooke. I don’t…” Then it hit me. The looks of despair. The air of hopelessness. I focused on what Brooke’s mom had said and stared at everyone aghast. “The man who opened the gates of Hell had the power to summon demons.” I swallowed hard. “It’s a demon. I was possessed by a demon.”

Again, no one argued.

I stumbled back, remembering the vision I’d had of Jared, the one in which he’d been fighting a demon. A huge beast with razorlike talons and sharp, shimmering teeth. “The man summoned Lucifer’s second in command to be taken by him, but he took me instead.”

“I’m so sorry, honey,” Grandpa said, his voice cracking with sorrow, “we tried everything.”

But I barely heard him. The idea of having something so heinous inside me, so incredibly evil, reminded me of the nightmares I used to have of being covered in bugs. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get them all off.

“And now you know all there is to know,” Jared said, regret thickening his voice. “You know my trespasses. If you had died, Lorelei, if you had gone to Heaven, you would have been freed. But I brought you back. I broke the law. And now you are the one who has to pay the price.”

I stood and tried to leave, suddenly unable to breathe in the cramped, crowded space, but Jared stood as well and placed a hand on the back of my chair, blocking my path.

“I told you she didn’t need to know,” Cameron said under his breath. “It’s not always better knowing the truth.”

I placed a hand on Jared’s chest. “I just need some air.”

“Lorelei,” Brooke said, her eyes saucers of shock and fear, “we can figure this out.”

Her concern crushed me. What could they do? What could any of them do?

I ducked under Jared’s arm. He didn’t stop me.

“Wait,” Glitch said. “You’re not alone, Lor. We’re in this together.”

I looked back at him. “Not this time.” When I got to the door leading to the store, it wouldn’t budge. I felt a surge of energy, as though Jared had released it, then slid it open.

“Lorelei,” Grandma said, but when I turned back to her, she wilted under my pleading stare. Clearly, she had no healing balm for demon possession.

“Don’t just let her go,” Glitch said, jumping to his feet. “Why did you release the door?”

“I didn’t,” I heard Jared say.

With hurt and despair pushing me forward, I strode through the store to the front door. As I shoved it open, I heard Cameron arguing with Jared. “Just let her be alone for a while,” he said to him.

For once we were on the same page.

THE DEVIL INSIDE

How could I not know? All this time, all these years, and I knew nothing of supernatural beings, of prophecies and secret meetings going on right under my nose. How could I not know that Brooke had been possessed? That I was still possessed? From what I’d gathered, if a dark spirit possessed someone, it could be exorcised. But if a demon possessed someone, the odds were apparently in its favor. Which sucked.

I’d planned to walk around the store and go into the woods to think, to breathe, but I made it as far as our dirt parking lot when I began replaying the past in my mind. I remembered seeing it, the gate, like a bolt of lightning that had been split down the center, hovering in the afternoon sky while night seeped out of it. Only it wasn’t night. The oily thick blackness that leaked into the bright sky was in fact hundreds of dark spirits escaping onto our plane.

I sank to my knees as the memory took hold, as I saw it from my six-year-old eyes. The bright edges of the gate, the rip in the fabric of reality. I didn’t know what it was. I remembered being utterly confused by what I was seeing and the look of panic on my parents’ faces when I described it. My father, so handsome and strong with his red hair and scraggly stubble. And my mother, so absolutely beautiful. She had long cinnamon hair. I would play with it for hours, brushing it, braiding it.

While Dad would grill his famous hot dogs or whistle a tune as he watered the grass, she would read fairy tales to me. Only they weren’t fairy tales. I realized now my parents were preparing me, telling me story after story of the legends that had been passed down for centuries, cultivated through the lineage of the prophet Arabeth. Stories of heroes and champions. And they believed I would join the ranks of such adventurers. As though it were that simple. As though I were capable.

I recoiled inside myself as my parents’ last day on earth materialized in my mind. With a burst of light, I saw us by the ruins of the ancient Pueblo missions outside Riley’s Switch. My father stood reading from a book as a gale-force wind tossed him to his knees, his strength minuscule in comparison.

“He’ll do it, pix,” Mom said as she held me tight behind a clump of bushes. “He’ll close the gates, don’t worry.”

But I was completely focused on the dark shadows that darted past us, each one nothing more than a blur before it disappeared over the hills, slithering along the ground like a vaporous snake.

Mom began chanting something, but I didn’t understand the words. She closed her eyes, clutching me to her as her hair whipped around her head in a frenzy. Then everything stopped. The wind. The noise. Mom lifted her head and looked back for a split second. An instant later, we ran. She stumbled to her feet, her hold like a vise around my waist, and headed for the car.

She spoke words of encouragement, but I knew they were just as much of a lie as the calm was. I’d looked over her shoulder. I saw what she’d seen. The splinter in the sky was now circular, the clouds around it swirling like an angry tornado. With a loud crack, the wind picked us up and threw us to the side.