“Except you’re not Jesus, so in your case deprivation brings irritability, dizziness, fatigue, tension, and nausea.” We’re entering the hallway and I spot the phone at the end, like a blue beacon of hope. I keep talking in what I hope is a casual tone. “Eventually your metabolism will slow down, and you’ll have trouble regulating your body temperature. Your heart, lungs, and testicles will shrink—”
Mr. Dawson makes a choked sound.
“It’s true. I saw it in a documentary. After that you have to worry about organ damage, brain damage—”
“Enough.” Mr. Berg opens a green door plastered with images of animals, rainbows, and the Ark. “We’ll come get you after the meeting.”
I walk inside and flip on the light. The place looks like a storage room. There’s a stack of three small desks, their yellow surfaces covered in crayon scrawls. The shelves lining the walls are crowded with paper towels, jugs of finger paint, bottles of cleaning supplies, stacks of colored construction paper, and bins containing glue sticks and crayon boxes.
“Can I color while I wait?” I ask with a saucy smile.
But they’re already closing the door. Then a key scrapes andclicks.
Oh my god, there’s a lock. On theoutsideof the door.
Who puts locks on the doors in a children’s Sunday School wing? Maybe that’s why they put me in the storage room instead of a classroom—it has a lock on it. Fuck.
There goes my plan to use the phone.
Part of me wants to try smashing through the drywall into thenext room so I can escape that way. But they’d hear the noise and come down to investigate.
Another part of me wants to scream at the top of my lungs, over and over, to ruin their little Bible study. But I really don’t want to be tased again or tied up.
I sit down cross-legged and try to breathe slowly, to think.
They’re not actually hurting me. They just want me quiet so they can deal with the Cernunnos situation in whatever fucked-up way Edgar prescribes.
Is it really that fucked up, though? Maybe I’m the one not taking this situation seriously enough. Seven people died—nine counting the first couple of deaths. Maybe I should be supporting what Edgar is trying to do, instead of resenting their treatment of me. Maybe I’m the problem. Maybe I should apologize and confess…
No.Fuck!I’m gaslightingmyself, doubting everything I know and everything I want. There must be some kind of guilt-inducing aura about this place.
Somewhere above my head, the congregation joins together in a song. I hate to admit it, but the blended voices actually sound kind of pretty.
I’ve always beenotheredby these people. They’re just not hiding it anymore. They’ve put me in my place…confined me down below, while they, the Chosen, sing hymns up above. As if I’m the demon in Hell, longing for the mystical beauty of heaven.
Except I’m no demon. I’m a woman with an identity they fear, a power they don’t understand. Sometimes I confuse myself, and sometimes I wish my life were like theirs… It would be easier. Smoother sailing.
And yet Idon’twant to be like them. I don’t. I wouldn’t change places with a single one of them.
That realization soars through my heart, and I smile. They can humiliate me, lock me in, take away my connection to the world, but they can’t really touch me or change me.
With that settled, I pace the storage closet, scanning the shelves. The doorknob is smooth on the inside, no way to pick the lock even if I knew how. But if I can find a screwdriver, I can take off the whole doorknob. Or maybe I can take the door off its hinges.
I rifle through the bins and stacks of storage supplies. Not a single tool, nothing sturdy enough to give me leverage with the hinges or traction with the screws. Restlessness coils inside me, sending ripples of unease through my body. Right under my skin there’s a squirming sensation, and then I gasp and jerk, because it felt as if something slithered up my spine, coiling around the column of my vertebrae.
Oh god.
The name bursts into my mind—Annie-Mae Madden. She’s old, mideighties. Fragile. Lying in bed at home while her relatives are at the Bible study upstairs. They think she’s sleeping safely, but she’s going to get out of bed to use the bathroom in a few minutes—she’ll get confused and try to descend the steps alone. I can see it—her frail body bouncing down the stairs like a rag doll, bones snapping like twigs.
This isn’t like most of my other episodes. This death is preventable, if only someone gets there in time…within the next half hour. They can still make it; they can save her. Why,whydidn’t someone stay with her? They must have made the decision to leave her alone just ten minutes or so before the Bible study began, which is why this episode is coming on so suddenly, so powerfully.
I can’t stop it. I’m moaning aloud already, wracked by the pain of the visions in my head—snatches of her oncoming death.
The people upstairs are singing louder, stamping their feet. It’s a repetitive song, a militant song, meant to stir them into a frenzy, and they’re all susceptible right now, carried along on this tide of panic together. Little food, barely any sleep, plus the torment of loss, and they have to feel all that grief because I couldn’t carry any part of it for them. They’re going mad together above, while I go mad below—mad with grief, with the wretched injustice of it all.
As above, so below.
A wail breaks from my throat, blending with the thundering chorus above, with the drumbeat of their marching feet.Onward Christian soldiers… I scream, and I howl, a wild warning. “Your grandmother, your mother, she is going to die, and you can save her, you can stop it, hear me, hear me…”
