I backed slowly away from the doorway.
Mark was upstairs in his office grading papers. I took the baby monitor with me as I pulled on my coat and headed out to my studio, listening to my mother and Olivia chat as they rewatchedThe Nutcracker, its gorgeous Tchaikovsky score playing in the background.
“Don’t you think Clara is pretty?”
“Oh yes, but not as pretty as you, little mouse.”
I stiffened, thought of the magic mirror in “Snow White”:Who’s the fairest in the land?
As I approached the barn, I saw that the lights were blazing. I must have left them on last night.
I pulled open the barn door and blinked stupidly at what I saw there.
Mark was standing in front of my worktable, the color drained from his face. He turned, looked my way, then back at the table. “What the fuck is all of this, Alison?”
I’d heard him use what he referred to as “the f-bomb” only a handful of times since I’d known him. He always said there were plenty of colorful words in the English language and that swearing wasn’t necessary if you had a good vocabulary.
I took in a breath, ready to explain the demon books.
But then I saw the drawings. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds.
Terrifying drawings. Insects. Ants. Rats. Bees.
Intermixed with them, blended into the wings of the bees, the bodies of the rats, were symbols.
Symbols I recognized.
“I—I don’t know,” I stammered, puzzling over the drawings.
Mark’s eyes blazed with a disturbing mixture of worry and anger. “What do you mean, you don’t know?Youdid them. They’reyourdrawings.”
“I—”
What was worse?
Admitting I didn’t remember making them?
Denying they were mine? (Except that they obviously were—I’d recognize my own work anywhere.)
Claiming that I was just working out some new ideas?
I remembered my mother’s journal entry about her periods of missing time. Making a painting she didn’t recall. Was the demon already practicing with me, seeing how easy I would be to enter, like a run-down roadside motel with a flashingVACANCYsign?
“I was up late last night doodling,” I managed.
I scrambled through my memories of the previous evening. I’d been out here looking at the books. I’d dozed off. When I woke up, I was in our bed, with Mark beside me.
“Doodling?” He picked up a bee with angry black scribbles for eyes, strange symbols on its wings. He pointed at the wings. “These are like the marks you have on your back, Alison.”
I nodded.
And the marks Ben has. And Bobbi’s son.
Mark picked up one of the books. “Demons Among Us,” he read aloud. He picked up another. “The Dark History of Demons and Demonic Possession. What is all this?”
I didn’t dare tell him.
My husband was looking at me like he didn’t know me at all. I had to do something.
