The Line

My brain had a hard time processing the scene before me. Oliver was lying on his back, tied to the tabletop. Each arm and leg had been tightly secured to one of the table’s legs. His clothing had been shredded, and what was left of it hung from him in blood-soaked tatters. Iris crouched in the shadows in the corner of the room, a straight razor dangling from her fingertips.

“Iris,” I said, my voice rough and shaky at the same time. “What have you done?” She bounded from the shadows and crossed the room in a furious leap. Her eyes glowed red, her lips curled back to reveal her canines, and she swiped at me with the razor. I jumped back. I knew then that Iris wasn’t acting of her own will. Her body twisted around on itself in a way no human body was meant to bend as she leaped onto Oliver, perching herself on his chest. The moan that escaped him told me that he was still alive.

Jackson pressed up next to me. I had almost forgotten that he was there. “What do we do?”

“You leave!” Iris raged. “He need to pay. He gonna pay. Pain for pain. Life for life.”

To say that we were dealing with an angry spirit—whether it was a ghost or demon or what—was an obvious understatement. So it was angry. It felt wronged. Maybe encouraging it to air its grievances would keep it from inflicting any more damage on Oliver. But I realized that I’d be taking away its role as a victim if I asked it why it was doing this to Oliver. Instead I asked, “What did he do to you?” My tone intimated that his crime must have surely matched the punishment she was meting out.

She looked at me, and although her eyes were still wild, the red glow toned down. I knew I had come up with the right incantation. “He murdered my baby is what he did,” she said with a flat intonation, as if she were trying the words on for the first time. She must have read the shock and disbelief on my face. “He made me”—she emphasized the pronoun—“murder my baby. And when I came to and knew what I done…”

“You walked into the river and didn’t come out,” I finished for her, the pieces coming together in my mind. Had Grace and her child come between Oliver and something he wanted? I had seen him trample over the will of others time and again and had often wondered how far he’d go to get what he wanted. I asked myself if I believed Oliver’s moral compass was damaged enough to allow him to commit murder. Possibly, under the right—or wrong—circumstances, was the answer that turned up. “You’re Grace, aren’t you?”

At the mention of her name, she halted. “Yes,” she said, but then a howl tore from her and she began swiping at Oliver with the blade, slicing him open with indiscriminate blows, some deeper than others.

“Help, help, help,” I pleaded in my mind, not even knowing whom I was addressing. Maybe it was a prayer. Maybe my mind was just trying to muster up its own courage. I rushed forward, reaching for the blade. She swiped at me and would have cut me, but Jackson swung the tongs at her hand with such force that I heard the radius in Iris’s forearm crack. The razor skidded across the floor, and Jackson dove at her. She struck him with her good arm, and he was knocked back across the room.

Before either of us could recover, she lifted her good arm and the razor flew back into her hand. “Fine then. I’ll let you watch,” she said, poising her hand over Oliver’s throat.

“No!” I said and was surprised to hear it come out as a command. “You will not do that. You will drop the razor.” I gave my words all the authority I could muster. Grace shot me a ferocious look over her shoulder. Iris’s face was twisted beyond recognition by the force of Grace’s fury. I turned the flashlight fully on her. Her skin was nearly purple, the veins bulging behind the skin. She labored and strained, growling and spitting, every ounce of the spirit’s power focused on forcing Iris to make the final cut. But Iris’s hand remained locked a mere inch or two above her brother’s jugular.

“The young lady told you to drop the knife,” the words were followed by a shimmer in the air that resolved into the golem. I dropped the flashlight in shock. “And you will vacate Mrs. Flynn’s body immediately.” Iris instantly fell limp on top of Oliver.

I heard the squeal of brakes and a slamming door, and within moments Ellen was by my side. She stopped dead at the sight of her siblings. Her eyes fixed on me for a moment, wide with confusion, but instead of waiting for answers, she rushed over to the table. “Get Iris off him,” she commanded, and Jackson obeyed, lifting Iris’s dead weight off Oliver. The blood that had bathed Iris now coated Jackson, and he shuddered at the sensation.

“He’s dying. Call an ambulance. I don’t think I can help him. He’s almost gone,” Ellen said, the words spilling out with no inflection. “He’s lost so much blood, and I don’t have it in me to heal him.” She placed her hands on Oliver and closed her eyes. “I said call an ambulance!” This time the words were an order. I turned and ran to the old landline that Connor had insisted we keep, slipping in the blood that had formed a puddle around the table. Emmet’s hand shot out and righted me before I toppled over.

“Stay,” he said to me. “You have the power, Ellen. We just need to reconnect you to it.” Emmet let go of me and laid his hand on Ellen’s head. She bolted off the ground an inch or so, suffused with a golden light. “The blockage has been removed. Another one of Ginny’s many follies.”

Ellen’s suspicions about Ginny had been right all along. Her face grew radiant as the power surged through her. “That bitch,” was all she said before turning her attention to Oliver. Light emanated from her fingers, from her hands, and then from her whole being. The bulbs in the overhead light began to glow as if electricity had been restored to them, and the room went from gloomy to intensely bright. Within seconds Oliver’s chest began to move up and down as his breathing returned to normal. The wounds closed and scarred over, and after a moment he opened his eyes. He looked around the room and started to say something, but then his eyes caught hold of mine. A look of shame washed over him, and he held his peace. The physical healing was miraculous, but I knew that the emotional healing was going to take much longer.

Iris had begun to stir, and she came to with a horrified look on her face. “What have I done? What have I done?” she wailed, staring down at her clothes, which were covered with her brother’s blood. She collapsed sobbing against Jackson, who recoiled from her, pushing her away. His blue eyes were wide as he looked from Ellen to Emmet to Iris to me, his face gray and sickly. I couldn’t tell if it was from the blood that covered him or the magic that was crackling in the air around us. He lowered his head and pushed past me. I heard his quick and heavy footsteps echo down the hall, the front door banged open, and he was gone.

Emmet walked over to Ellen and removed her hands from Oliver’s chest. “He’ll mend nicely now. You should turn your attention to your sister.”

Ellen was still on a high from the energies that had been restored to her, and her expression resembled Saint Theresa in her ecstasy. There was such beauty in the moment that I nearly forgot about the horrors that surrounded us. Carried by a wave of healing light, Ellen glided toward Iris. She took her sister into her arms and rocked her gently. “No harm done, no harm done,” she kept repeating in a singsong voice. In seconds Iris too was bathed in Ellen’s light.