Donny guides me away from the front door, his hand light on my elbow as he tells me he’ll make me another cup of tea. What is it with this guy and tea? As if chamomile is going to fix the fact that I’m losing my mind, but I accept the tea.
Pro tip: chamomile doesnotmix well with whisky, so I take one sip, then push it as far away from my nose as possible while keeping my hands wrapped around it for warmth. I keep checking the clock on the microwave—five minutes, then eight. How long does it take to check a perimeter? What if something happened to Nico?
I jump when the back door opens. Nico enters, brushing leaves off his jacket. I scan his face for blood or any sign that he found something terrible out there, but he just looks cold and tired.
“Well?” Donny asks.
“Nothing,” Nico says, not sitting down at the table with us. “Checked the tree line, went about fifty yards deep into the woods. No sign anyone was there.”
Of course there was nothing. Of course I imagined the whole thing. Just Eden being dramatic again.
“That doesn’t mean what you saw wasn’t real,” Donny says quickly, like he can read the shame written all over my face.
Nico crosses his arms. I wonder if he’s thinking of killing me right now. Of grabbing a cooking pan and bashing me over the head because my dramatic ass made him go traipse around in the woods.
I mumble an apology and go out the back door, desperate for air that doesn’t smell like other people. The cool evening air hits my face like a blessing. I sink onto the narrow wooden steps, trying to slow my racing heart.
The yard stretches out in every direction. I fix my eyes on the spot in the tree line where I saw the figure. There’s no sign anyone was ever there. Because there wasn’t anyone there.
I should stop drinking. Should eat something. Should collect my quarter million dollars and get the hell out of here before I end up as another cautionary tale.
I close my hand into a fist and pound it into my forehead. Why is it that I can use logic when thinking about Marcus Walsh and Ed Mathis, but not with Nico?
I tilt my face up to the darkening sky, finding Dad’s dog tags and gripping them hard. The metal is warm from my body heat and worn smooth from years of me rubbing it.
“What am I supposed to do?” I whisper to the empty air. “Please, Dad, tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
The wind picks up, rattling the bare branches above me, but that’s the only answer I get.
I cover my mouth with my hand, my shoulders shaking with the effort of stifling the sobs. My family’s been gone for eight years, and I’m on my own, with nobody left alive who gives enough of a shit about me to tell me what to do.
CHAPTER 35
The salt line surrounding the house is buried in sealed plastic tubing, twelve inches deep, circling the entire property. We refill it weekly and replace the contents every six months. So far, no entity has crossed that line.
—Journal of Donald Dellman, November 2021
I stay up until one in the morning reading, cross-legged on my bed with books spread openallaround me. The Jim Beam should’ve put me to sleep by now, but the fear thrumming under my skin is enough to keep me awake until I find what I’m looking for:
One of the most consistent physiological markers of post-possession in a host involves changes to eye pigmentation. When subjected to prolonged periods of possession, the host invariably develops a distinctive white or gray ring at the edge of the iris, similar in appearance to corneal arcus senilis. This limbal ring inversion occurs when ectoplasm has caused cellular damage to melanin-producing cells in the iris. The degree of hypopigmentation correlates with possession duration: all subjects possessed longer than six months exhibited this characteristic, with hypopigmentation persisting indefinitely, even after successful entity extraction.
Unlike the conversational tone Donny uses in the field guide, Benji writes like a textbook. If I were worth anything in science, maybe I’d understand half of what he talks about, but Benji could say ghosts are made from vaporized crystals from the planet Prion, and I’d believe him.
This paper was at the bottom of my reading list. As soon as I reached this, I would’ve made the connection between the eye coloration and Nico, since his eyes are the most beautiful ones I’ve ever seen and have been imprinted in my brain. Donny wanted me to find out. Probably after I’d learnt enough to understand Nico’s situation. I would’ve reached it in a few weeks.
Believe me when I tell you who I am, or else you’ll find out when I’m killing you.
He was so convincing when he said it. There was nothing behind his eyes.
But.
But.
I chew on my thumbnail, staring at the diagrams in the article Nico might have drawn. A row of eyes with limbal ring inversions of increasing severity stares back at me. The very last one, the most extreme, matches Nico’s.
Billy may not be planning any great manipulation, but if he was telling the truth about their late-night chats, Nico isn’t always there just to interview him. I don’t understand why Donny would allow Nico to communicate unsupervised with his abuser. Even if I had the opportunity to do that with Stanley Daniels, it would destroy me.
A deafening alarm splits the air.
