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Palpable in my own heart.
Run.
I tripped and landed hard on the ground.
The Malevolent surrounded me, their faces pressed down against mine, just inches away, their open stares drilling deep into my bones. They crowded me, surrounded me, created a solid barrier around me.
The earth was cold, and my warm breaths bounced off the cobblestones beneath me and hit me in the face, the humidity disappearing into the sky like smoke. “Leave me alone!” I pushed off the cobblestones and got to my feet, shifting forward and almost losing my footing because I was weak and confused, the darkness and the shadows blending together into one.
It’s not real.
It will pass.
Just stay calm.
You got this.
I kept going, seeing the Malevolent right beside me every step of the way, following me in a herd like cattle.
Forneus’s voice came from the sky, the ground, my mind. “Let our angel guide us.”
I started to run harder, moving to the tree line and into the darkness, my bare feet slicing on the rocks and branches beneath me. The pain was distant, but I knew I was injured. There was no cobblestone pathway anymore. Now there were just stars between the branches of the trees, the moonlight giving the dark sky a slight glow. It turned quiet, and it felt like I was alone, alone in the middle of nowhere…with nowhere to go.
But I kept going.
Branches scratched my face as I passed through the trees. An owl screeched, and I tripped and fell to the ground once more. The monsters in the dark pressed around me, and they were worse than the Malevolent. Yellow eyes stared at me in the darkness, the wolves and the bears coming to see the intruder in their forest. “Help me…” I pushed my palms to the earth and raised my body, reminding myself that none of this was real, that I could conquer my mind.
I rose to my feet once more, but I stayed on the spot, seeing the woodland animals surrounding me, the Malevolent, and then I saw Forneus in his true form.
His demon form.
Like the statues spread throughout the camp, he had large, jagged teeth, horns on his head, several arms and several legs, and a long tail that had thorns as sharp as a knife at the end. His grin was there, grinning at my suffering, grinning at my demise.
But I closed my eyes and blocked it out.
“It’s not real.” If I told myself that enough times, I would believe it. I forced out the sounds of the grunts, of the screams, of the heavy footfalls that surrounded me, descended to capture me and drag me away. “It’s not real.” I focused, conquered the drug in my system, blocked out the sound.
And then it was silent.
All I could hear was my deep and uneven breathing.
All I could hear was the wind through the trees.
And then I heard…the sound of a river.
My eyes opened and focused ahead, drilling through the darkness to see a glimmer of the moonlight on water.
This was real.
My breathing suddenly slowed, my heart rate settled back to its steady beat, and I embraced the gift the forest had given me.
I stepped forward and moved across the ground, using the light of the moon to avoid the rocks and the branches. A clear night had given me the gift of the stars, and I looked ahead to study them, to remember what I was looking at and where I was.
I saw the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and the North Star.
Remember this.
Remember.
I kept walking until I reached the river. It was wide across, the water loud against the rocks on the edges. I couldn’t cross it, the stream was too strong, and it was too broad. But I kneeled at the edge and pressed my hand into the water.
It was ice-cold.
It was real.
I placed both of my hands into it and relished the coldness. I bent over and pressed my face to the earth, letting the water trickle past my cold hands, my lifeline out of there. I thanked God for guiding me here, for showing me the path out of this hellhole once he could touch me.
God didn’t exist in that place—but he existed in me.
8
Benton
My daughter was gone.
My life, my everything, my whole reason for existing…gone.
Just like that.
I couldn’t sleep because of the nightmares. I couldn’t stay awake because my thoughts were worse than the nightmares. What did they do to her? How did they kill her? Why would anyone do something like that…to a child?
To my little girl?
When Beatrice had told me she was pregnant, my reaction was despicable. Claire was an inconvenience, a destruction of the life I wanted, and I was furious that I had to walk away from everything I’d dedicated myself to…so I could dedicate myself to her instead. I didn’t want her, and as she grew in Beatrice’s stomach and became larger, I resented her.
