“Sure,” I said. She stood up, offering me the chair at her desk. Then she set up the screen and clicked play.
I was watching myself. Even after viewing the film numerous times, I still wasn’t used to seeing myself on-screen.
But this, this was different. Far more unsettling. There I was, standingin the driveway of my mother’s house in Woodstock, dressed in my black down jacket, shouldering the old tote bag we’d once used to carry towels and beach toys but that I’d filled with the things I needed to bind the demon.
I blinked in disbelief.
Izzy had been there? How was that possible?
I remembered the feeling I’d had that day, of being watched. But I’d thought it was just the memories of the old house, the ghosts of my childhood.
It looked like Izzy had been filming from the edge of the property, using a telephoto lens to get a close-up from far away.
“You followed me?”
She nodded.
“How?”
“Theo drove,” Izzy said.
I remembered seeing Theo’s car in the driveway that morning, beside mine, covered in a thin layer of snow. They must have heard me and woken up, followed me all the way to Woodstock. I hadn’t even noticed.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
She smiled, but there was something unsettling about the smile. It was too big, too broad. Her eyes were strangely dark.
A lump formed in my throat. I tried, unsuccessfully, to swallow it back down.
“Keep watching,” she said.
She stood behind me at her desk as I watched, a strange shadow looming over me. She was humming softly, a familiar song I couldn’t name.
There I was on the screen of her MacBook Pro, going into the house, then leaving through the back door, crossing the yard, walking into the woods, my tote bag slung over my shoulder.
The camera followed at a distance.
“Where’s she going?” Theo whispered.
Izzy didn’t respond. Her camera lens just kept following me.
There was no music, as there had been in Izzy’s final version of the documentary. There was only the sound of feet crunching through the dead leaves and sticks, the patches of snow. Her shaky camera—no tripod—was focused on my back.
Izzy kept humming behind me now. The tune bothered me; I wanted to ask her to stop.
Downstairs, Olivia laughed loudly.
Outside, the insects hummed and chirped and buzzed.
On-screen, I watched myself approaching the well, taking the things I’d brought out of the bag. The camera zoomed in as I spoke the words, completely inaudible from far away, wrapped the stone in cloth, cut my finger and dripped blood onto the parchment, then dropped the stone into the well, watching it fall.
I stared at myself on Izzy’s laptop. Saw a frazzled and desperate woman. A woman who would do anything to protect her family, who would have thrown herself down into that well if it would have helped.
And now there she was, turning away from the circle of stone, a glint of a smile on her face because she thought she’d won. That it was over. That it could possibly be that easy.
The camera followed me as I walked away, moving through the shadowy forest.
Then, all of a sudden, Izzy was in the frame.
