Anneliese, help me ...
God, if demons are real, maybe you’re real, too, even though you were never there when I was a child—when I needed you most. Help me now ...
An eerie sense of calm descends over me. The sound of the crowd fades to silence. A vision plays out behind my eyes. It’s Anneliese, writing in the grimoire by candlelight. Her quill flies over the paper. Her childlike voice chimes in my head:
His name. You already know his true name, Gracie. Speak it. Drive him out. Banish him. You will know when the time is right. I will do the rest.
I remember now. The night before I had the awful vision of Bellflower at the lighthouse, I’d pleaded with the grimoire for help. At first, I thought the fancy letters in Anneliese’s journal entries had spelled a nonsense word. Could it have been a name instead? Could it behisname?
I open my eyes. Bellflower is staring at me, his hands raised to the sky and his eyes flickering with an eerie silver light. Shadows snake out from his body and move up mine, trailing an ice-cold path across my skin.
“Mezrith,” I whisper, testing the word on my tongue. No, that’s not right. “Merthoz.”
“Mezroth ...,” I whisper. That’s it. “Mezroth.”
The air stills. Bellflower’s eyes go wide. His glamour flickers and the truth beneath his beauty shows itself for a hairsbreadth of time. A few people up front gasp. They see it, too.
“Shut up,” he growls, low and menacing. “Shut up, you stupid girl.”
“Mezroth!” I say again, louder. I could almost laugh, I’m so giddy. Maybe I’ve gone mad.
Lightning dances overhead. Suddenly, it’s like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the atmosphere. And then I see it.
Anneliese’s reckoning.
The hail has stopped. The rain has stopped. Everything has stopped, except for the clouds, churning above. And for once, it’s not Bellflower—Mezroth—who’s responsible for the stillness. A strange, high-pitched scream like a train whistle comes from the southwest. The townspeopleturn as one, no longer interested in my hanging. “Cyclone!” Hosea Ray yells. His hat lifts from his head and blows away.
I work my hands free, just as the wall of the wind hits, full-on. Everyone scatters. The storm sends down a rippling rope of wind, chewing up everything in its path. I claw the noose from around my neck, pull in a wheezing breath, then scramble beneath the scaffolding. I wrap my arms and legs around one of the posts.
Everything is chaos. The roar is deafening as the tornado passes overhead. Crashing wood. Shattering glass. Groaning metal. My ears pop and my head pounds with pressure. I scream along with the wind. I scream until I don’t have any breath left.
And then, almost as quickly as it started, the storm stills, bringing with it an eerie calm.
I crawl out from beneath the scaffolding and see a wasteland where the town once stood. Wreckage is everywhere. Cars and trucks are tossed about like children’s playthings. The church steeple is on its side in the middle of the square, its century-old bell cracked. A single cow moos forlornly in front of what’s left of the mercantile. There are people lying everywhere. I work my way through the wreckage. The first person I come to is Nadine Clark, her right ankle bent backward at an unnatural angle. I kneel at her side. She looks up at me. One of her eyes is swollen and red.
“Gracie ...”
“It’s okay, Nadine. You just stay still. I’ll get help.”
“I think it’s broken. My ankle. I got hit in the head real hard, too.”
“I can see that. Other folks have things a lot worse, though, so I need to check on them. I’ll come back to you, I promise.”
She grips my arm. “Please ...”
I gently pry her fingers from my arm. “It’s all right. You just stay here. I’ll try to find Doc Gallagher.”
All around, people cry out for help. I can’t do much with a broken wrist and no medical supplies, but I tend to the injured as best I can. Afew townsfolk stumble out of what’s left of their houses to help. I want to leave, go back up the mountain, but I dread what I might find. Our cabin has survived many a hard storm, but this is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
All of a sudden, a single truck comes rumbling down the street, painted with Norse sigils. Goats bleat from the back. It’s Ebba.
She slams on the brakes and jumps out, spry as a jackrabbit. “Help me, Gracie. Help.”
I rush forward, still not quite believing I’m alive. Everything feels like a dream.
Ebba opens the passenger door, and Granny nearly falls out into my arms. She blinks up at me, and smiles. “Gracie.”
I almost start crying. “Good to see you awake.”
