The way she clung to terrible men – a repeating pattern of violence and horror. How she relied on Dante almost as much as I did – she would always ask him to fix things around our flat or walk her to clients’ homes at night. How she made up stories – she liked to stand in the treehouse in the rusting playground behind our apartment block and pretend she was a damsel captured by pirates or a princess trapped in a tower. Dante and I would have to rescue her.
Or maybe it was just Dante.
My fingers traced the spines. Once I read those diaries, my mother would be forever changed in my mind. Her story would become the one she wrote for herself as a desperate, abused young woman. I wasn’t ready for that story, not yet.
I turned away from the box, but that was worse because there was Deborah, tears streaming down her cheeks. She held out her hand again, but I still couldn’t take it. “Do you think I want you to read those diaries and understand my own part to play in your mother’s torment? I should have done more. I was too afraid. That is exactly why I’m giving them to you – I can’t undo the damage I’ve done, but I can help you however I can to save your classmates.”
Take her hand. Take her hand.
Or say something. Anything.
But I couldn’t. I just stared at her while my palms grew hotter and hotter.
“Thank you,” Trey said. I wasn’t sure the words conveyed what I needed to say.
“Please, it’s what you do for family.”
“I need to talk about something else.” I stood up, stepping over Leopold and Loeb to pace the length of the room. I dug my nails into my scar so hard that a ribbon of blood snaked over my wrist, trying to drive down the gnawing urge to raze the building to the ground.
Trey must’ve seen the look in my eyes. “We’ve been busy. Hazel had a very productive conversation with the god. If he’s to be believed, we can save all the students.”
While I struggled to regain control of myself, Trey explained what we’d discovered about the god and his children. Deborah’s eyes grew wider and wider until I swore they were going to slip off her face. “As a scientist, I’m struggling to believe all this talk about souls. But this is something the scientific community has considered for a long time – just because life on earth is carbon-based, does not mean there isn’t other intelligent life out there that functions on a completely different plane.”
“How do you know so much about genetics?” I asked, my interest piqued.
“I need to stay on top of the latest research for my job. Blood also carries genetic material that can help us understand more about human life. And death.”
“What about the god using the students to create children?” Trey asked. “Does that sound… logical?”
“It’s farfetched, but not impossible, especially if Ms. West intended the student population to remain a closed system. From a population the size of the Miskatonic Prep’s student body, it would be possible to create a bottleneck situation where rapid genetic changes would occur in each new generation of children. Those children could breed with each other, and this cycle repeated through the generations. Over time and with isolation a divergent genetic race could develop, especially if helped along by external forces. Perhaps the god has done this elsewhere, on other planets, seeded a new…” she paused. “Listen to me, I sound like I’m in an Arthur C. Clarke novel.”
“The important question is – if we give this power to the parents, how do we stop them or their offspring from using it?”
“I’m not sure we can, and that means they’re probably the worst candidates for the god’s progeny. I’m guessing, of course… things were different when I thought Hermia just rapidly slowed cellular decay somehow. This isn’t as simple as getting ahold of her lab notes.” Deborah shrugged. “Cosmic god-offspring is way outside of my field of expertise.”
My eyes flicked to Trey. He sat rigid, his back straight, his eyes forward. “It’s okay. We’re not doing it unless we can stop our parents from causing more damage to the world. I never expected to get out of this, anyway.”
The resignation in his voice chilled me more than anything Deborah had revealed tonight. “I’m not giving up. This whole thing happened because the Eldritch Club wanted power. I wonder if Ms. West had simply told them this in the first place, they would have volunteered to be the children themselves. But then Vincent would have got rid of her and she wouldn’t have access to the god.”
The god intended his children to colonize this planet. And I was woke enough to know that colonization was always disastrous to the first nations. In this case, the human race.
We’d be annihilated. The screams that made up the god’s voice would be inconsequential compared to the horror that would follow. It might take two-hundred years or two-thousand for the descendants of the Eldritch Club to evolve to a state where they require souls to sustain them, but it would happen, and they would gorge themselves on the entire human race.
I couldn’t be part of allowing that to happen. Nor could I condone the guys live with that on their conscience. I couldn’t let them wallow in the pain of being responsible for more horrors.
Trey’s fingers trailed over my cheek, bringing me back from my thoughts. He tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear, where it immediately flopped back – a reminder of one of the tortures the monarchs inflicted on me. Their bullying felt like a million years ago.
“What are you thinking, Hazy?”
I shook my head. These thoughts were for me alone.
“There’s something else,” Deborah said. “Imighthave followed Vincent Bloomberg and his friends into the woods.”
“You… you did?” I found it hard to imagine Deborah in her tailored suit and ballet flats sneaking around the pitch-black forest. But then, Trey had tried to walk down here in his blazer, so maybe it was just a thing people did – hike around in the forest wearing inappropriate clothing.
“I know you said not to, but I thought it might be the only opportunity we’d have to gather information about their next plans. I left the dogs in the bedroom with enough pig’s ears to keep them quiet for hours, pulled on my sneakers, and tailed them through the wood. I know it’s getting late, but do you want to know what I saw?”
“Fuck yes.”
