“But some things you can’t undo, you know?” Emily’s eyes found mine across the table. They were bright, fever-bright, and I felt something inside me twist in recognition.
I knew that feeling. I had that feeling. Some things you can’t undo.
“He helped her conjurespirits,” Emily continued, her words a breathless giggle. “He’d do anything for Carol Ann. They even met in that house—the lake cottage. Why do you think he couldn’t leave it?”
I leaned forward. “Why now, Emily? Six years in that house. Why did he kill himself now?”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t know.” She fluttered her eyelashes, then took another drink.
The rest of the night didn’t get any better. Max and I did the dishes in silence, then stepped out onto the back porch.
We were settled on the large wicker furniture in the next few minutes, and I looked out over the darkening expanse of the empty paddock. The breeze was gentle, taking the edge off the evening’s heat, and the entire place seemed…peaceful. I could almost imagine the snuffling of horses in the far distance, picture the sun coming up over the trees, announcing a new day. This must have been a really pretty place once, I thought. And by “once” I didn’t mean a hundred years ago, I meant something more like six years ago.
“So what happened, exactly?” I finally murmured. “With Carol Ann. And what did you actually see, versus hear about later?”
“Oh, I saw all of it.” Max sagged back a little in his own chair. “I was home from college for what I thought was going to be the last time for a while, what with law school on the horizon and then work at a firm. It was the summertime. Carol Ann was graduating high school, and everything was going her way. We weren’t close, not really—she was five years younger than me,and a girl. But we got along well enough, and she was smart and funny and a little badass—the perfect little sister. University of Chicago, Joe planning to follow her there, the whole future mapped out. Then she hit puberty and turned dark. Goth phase, scary movies, occult websites, you name it. We didn’t think much of it. What we didn’t know, though, was that Joe got her whatever she wanted—the Ouija Boards, black magic supplies, all of it.”
I figured as much. Again, darkness didn’t need much of an invitation, but it was always happy to accept one if offered. “And Joe helped?—”
“She had seizures?” How many times had I seen this, working with Mordechai? Stupid, stupid people and their stupid, stupid arrogance, thinking they could tap into the kind of power they didn’t have a prayer of understanding.
“Yeah. It started out with her shaking uncontrollably, saying the most horrible things. She screamed until she was hoarse before we could even get the doctor all the way out here. Then she lashed out when he arrived, so he got to see her at her worst. And when I say lashed out—she went at him like she was going to gouge his eyes out. We barely got her restrained when the seizures started. Full body, eyes rolling back, mouth foaming. She caught the room on fire just by standing there.”
I stared at him. So this was the missing piece—what he hadn’t told me. “Max. I thought you said she didn’t act possessed.”
“Well, I lied.” He sighed and hunched over, and it was like the entire family’s misery sat on his shoulders, weighing him down. “That’s why we had to send her away—far away. It was like nothing I’d ever seen. Sam was even worse off—he was in his bassinet the whole time, watching. He was practically in shock by the time it was done, shaking uncontrollably, not uttering a sound. We’d sort of forgotten he was there.”
“Did you sedate her?”
“We didn’t have to. She started speaking in a language we couldn’t even understand, but it sounded like curses in Latin or Greek or God only knew what. And then she just—went limp.”
I remembered this phrase from Mordechai’s reports. “Catatonic stupor.”
“Yeah. All the bones in her body seemed to melt, and she crumpled, her face slack, her mind totally gone. She’s been like that ever since. The next day, Joe showed us the entire carload of shit she’d been into, and then he had his own little breakdown.”
“I bet.”
“The Bells were horrified. Dad was shell-shocked. Mom cried a lot. But we all assumed Carol Ann would get better, eventually. We sent her to that hospital, and she was clean, comfortable, you know, cared-for. We thought she’d snap back.” Max shook his head. “She didn’t.”
“I don’t suppose you had an exorcist come in back then?”
“Not at first, no. Not even after they moved her to Nebraska and put her under twenty-four-hour-a-day care. Mom and Dad weren’t exactly religious, but it was bad enough to have a daughter who was mentally incapacitated. That somehow was better, though, than a daughter who was possessed. We just, well…dealt with things. It worked—here, anyway. For a while.”
I nodded. “And when did things change for the worse? The horses?”
“For me, it was this past spring. I’d been gone since Christmas and coming back—it was as if I hadn’t really seen everything for what it was until I’d escaped. Mom and Dad acting so weird, Sam looking like a hollow-eyed shell, and Emily—Jesus.” He gestured helplessly. “That stunt with the bath today, I’d like to say that was out of the ordinary. She’s lived at the house off and on since I was in college, whenever she’s between gigs, but she’s gone completely nuts with the sexual stuff in the last year or so. I swear to God, I half expected her tohit on me when I came home in April, but by then she’d seemed distracted. I just didn’t realize it was with Joe. And now…” He shook his head. “Now I don’t know what to think. I don’t want to imagine that she had anything to do with Joe’s death, but, well, it’s not like I can ask him.”
I thought of all the things I could tell him, all the things I knew. About infestation and compulsion, oppression and possession. About how to go about identifying and then removing the darkness from his home and his family.
Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow I’d say what I needed to say, begin doing what I needed to do.
The house didn’t give me that long to wait.
A scream jolted me awake,and I scrambled upright, my arms spasming around me. What was on me? It took me another twenty seconds to process the blanket, the porch. I’d fallen asleep on the porch in my chaise, Max lying five feet away from me, also huddled in his own blanket, like two kids on a sleepover at their grandma’s. Only Max’s eyes were open and big as saucers.
“You heard that too?” he asked. “I was hoping I imagined it.”
Another scream rent the night, and we were both on our feet. “Sam?”
