Page 8 of A Serpent in the Garden

Don’t dump the blame on my doorstep. Blame the bitch who put me here.

Five panicked seconds later, Serich flung the back door open, a dark beacon shining through the colorless fog. His lips parted when he spotted me, warm amber eyes growing wide. He didn’t wear a look of condemnation, fear. Cloistered in the bowels of the thick-stoned church, closest to the wood, he must not have heard the commotion at the Warren home.

“I need you,” I called. “Please.”

He gestured me forward. “Come inside.”

“I can’t.” I had to force myself not to shout and give away my position. From the street, bodiless voices bolted through the mists like javelins. “I need you to come with me.”

Serich hesitated on the back steps. I felt my pulse fluttering in my throat. But then he pulled the back door shut and closed the distance between us.

“We haven’t spoken in years.” His brow creased as he straightened his collar. “And now you urgently need to talk with me?”

I didn’t answer, just grabbed his hand and towed him through the brush behind the church.

Serich gaped at me in the naked parlor of the cottage he’d grown up in, rolling a prayer bead between his fingers. Most of the furniture seemed to have been carried off and redistributed to the needy since his father’s death, the only decorations a load of satchels piled up in a corner and a simple silver cross above the mantelpiece.

“You’re quite—quite sure that this is a possession?” Serich drew back against the empty hearth, subtly widening the gap between us. Giving himself space to run from me. Though I couldn’t help noticing his tone was inflected with the softest shade of doubt.

“Of course I am. Its murdered someone—”

“I only ask,” he said, a hand aloft to interrupt, “because most cases, I believe—as do a few others—are actually a disorder with the mind. Father Hull doesn’t think so, but I wonder if it might be a disturbance, a kind of emotional imbalance. If John Dale tried to harm you, it would make sense that you might lash out and forget what you’d done to protect your mind from the truth.”

“That’s not what it is. It speaks to me. Six years Its been with me.”

His new white collar soaked up the gray light seeping through the drapes as he adjusted it at his throat. “There are disorders where the sufferer can hear voices that aren’t their own—”

“Serich, this isn’t an issue with my brain,” I yelled, my voice echoing through the half-empty cottage. I sounded crazed, demonic.

“Have you ever lost time?”

“Pardon?” I asked, feeling my forehead crinkle.

“Do you ever wind up someplace and not know how you’ve got there? Do you ever experience extended periods of time where you’re not sure what you’ve been doing?”

“No, just…the fog in my head before I found John Dale dead and myself covered in his blood.”

His head ticked to the side as he gazed at me in silence. “Possessions almost always come with many episodes of lost time. I suppose, generally, you fit the victim type, but—”

“What, weak of mind and frail of body? A general lack of character?”

He cast me an apologetic look. “It’s just that most of the truly afflicted seem to be children or young women. In fact I’ve never heard a case in which a man was a victim.”

Odd, that, It said. It does make one wonder.

Wonder what? I asked irritably. I hadn’t the time to listen to It mindlessly opine.

Why are so few men afflicted and what racket are they trying to pull?

Serich drew closer, a furrow in his brow. “Are you all right?”

“It was speaking to me.” I belted my arms across my middle as he stopped a foot away, reaching out for me. His full lips pinched into a doubtful pucker, he lifted my chin with a fingertip and peered into my eyes.

And then jumped back with a gasp.

Serich called upon God, fumbling through his pocket as he tripped backward.

God is gone, It said, with a sort of disgusted boredom as Serich brandished an iron cross in my direction. He fucked off years ago. I doubt he’ll come back. He’s had his fun with humanity. You’re nothing but broken toys to Him now.