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I think I blacked out, there on the side of the road, staring at the vast fields surrounding me but not seeing them at all. I think I forgot how to breathe. My lungs closed up, and my mind emptied, and all I could see was my little brother, standing there helplessly, telling me it was too late as those tentacles wrapped around him.
No.No.
My fingers numb with dread, I looked up Abelaum’s local news and saw him emblazoned across the headlines.
“Abelaum University’s Promising Soccer Captain Found Dead.”
“Murder on Abelaum University Campus, Investigation Ongoing.”
“No Suspects in Brutal Campus Stabbing.”
The scream of rage that came out of me felt like it was physically ripped from my chest. The sobs that followed took the air from my lungs. They smothered me. They weren’t enough to release the helpless rage inside me. I beat the steering wheel with my fist until my fingers ached, until purple bruises began to bloom on my skin.
No suspects. No fucking suspects. Such absolute bullshit. My brother had been stabbed multiple times, in the middle of a university building, and they dared to say they had no suspects.
The police didn’t need to be suspicious because theyknew. Marcus had always been good; he’d never gotten into trouble or gone running into dangerous situations like I had. But he was my brother, and when the God demanded blood, It would get blood.
The Hadleighs were behind this. Iknewthey were.
All these years I’d been running, I’d thought I’d outsmarted them. They’d never find me, they’d never track me down. As long as I kept moving, as long as I laid low, as long as I didn’t tell anyone my name, I’d survive.
But now...now I’d survived, and Marcus had died in my place.
The police would drop this investigation the moment they could. They were already in Kent Hadleigh’s back pocket. I knew how it went; I’d been through it. I’d told them my story again and again, until it was all mixed up in my head, and they told me it never fucking happened.
They told me the church never happened; there were no white cloaks and skull masks. They told me the mine never happened; the shaft had been boarded up for decades. They told me there were no monsters in the dark and no demons pursuing me; it was only the drugs, and I had a problem, and I needed help.
But they were wrong. It had been real. I had the scars to prove it.
It should have been me. As I dug my nails into my palms, sobs wracking my chest, that thought sunk its cruel claws deep into my head: it should have been me. It was supposed to be me.
I didn’t have to go back, but that was the direction I started driving. Dead was dead, and I didn’t want to see my mother. I didn’t want to cry at a funeral or see my brother’s waxen face in a casket.
I didn’t want to go back to Abelaum to mourn. I wanted to go back to do what everyone else refused to do. Accusations didn’t help. Authorities didn’t help. I’d been running for years thinking I’d gotten away, but God finds a way to take what It wants regardless.
It took my brother. The God, the Hadleighs, all their sick little followers — they operated without fear. They killed without hesitation. They hid in plain sight because they thought no one would dare defy them. After all, they had a God on their side. Who could dare defy a God?
Me. I could. I’d defied It before, and I’d do it again.
There would be no justice unless I took it myself.
6
It was another world in Abelaum.
The mist lingered in the streets longer than it should have, rebelling against the sun and blocking out its warmth. The brick buildings dripped with the damp, moss crept over the sidewalks and clung to the houses. The bay was still, its surface like glass, a mirror image of the trees that surrounded it cast upon its surface.
From the outside, Abelaum looked like a safe, peaceful place to live. But behind the facade of hip cafes and micro-breweries, there was an unease that had people scurrying inside after dark. Rumors of missing hikers were passed around over brunch. Elementary school students traded local legends like Pokémon cards.
The trees, too, were strange. It was the way their gnarled roots coiled up out of the earth, as if they were trying to escape. I knew what lurked beneath those trees. I knew the danger that waited for sundown, that hid in shadows. But danger didn’t only wait in darkness. It walked in daylight too, in expensive Italian suits, with a charming smile and a pristine family, always above suspicion.
This town was full of monsters.
Rain poured down during the funeral. The thunder that reverberated overhead and the flashes of lightning in the clouds felt like God was laughing: laughing at my fear, my pain, my useless struggling. Like a cat toying with a mouse. This was perhaps the greatest joke of all: no matter how far I’d run, It still made me come back here.
I kept my distance from the funeral. I’d scaled the iron fence that guarded Westchurch Cemetery, but stayed beneath the trees, the hood of my black raincoat pulled low over my head. From there, I could look down on the lines of plastic chairs sheltered beneath white canopies, overlooking the rectangular hole cut into the grass.
The tears that wanted to come were locked inside, behind a wall of fury so thick not even grief could slip through.
