“DEAR LORD JESUS, I KNOW THAT I AM A SINNER, AND I ASK FOR YOUR forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior.”
Sibyl was on her sixth recitation of the Sinner’s Prayer, her father the Reverend’s favorite prayer, one he’d make the congregation recite with him, line by line, every Sunday service.
Her arms had gone numb, and her blindfold was sopped with tears.
“Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner—"
The man had returned. She heard his footsteps on the barn floor, the lever lifting on the outer stall door. She’d been praying, conjuring Twyla and her constant appeals to the goddess, for someone—anyone—to find her, but now that the man was back, a fresh terror gripped her. Maybe he’d come back to kill her. She remembered the bite of his knife against the back of her neck and bile rose in the back of her throat.
“Hey, Debbie, old gal, I’m back. As promised.”
She felt him kneel beside her, his hands busy near her shoulder. The strap around her arm went taut, then slack. He’d cut her loose from the stall door. She nearly thanked him.
“Hold still,” he said, gripping her taped wrists. “Got to use my knife now, I don’t wanna cut you. Not yet anyway.” Sibyl whimpered, and he barked a laugh. “Kidding, kidding.”
She held as still as she could, but she was shaking. From fear, from the cool night air. She felt the sharp metal blade slide between her wrists, and then a brief sawing sensation as the man worked the knife against the layers of tape.
He pulled off the tape roughly, the glue tugging at her skin. She sucked in a breath. And then her hands were free.
“Stand up,” he ordered, yanking her wrist upward. Slowly, Sibyl stood. Her knees ached and she couldn’t feel her feet. He tightened his grip on her wrist. “Don’t get excited. Just because the tape’s off doesn’t mean you’re home free. We’re going to go outside, and it’s going to look as though we’re just taking a nice late-night stroll together. You know, looking at the stars and shit. But the truth is, my wish is your command. You’re going to do exactly what I say, and if you don’t—”
The tip of the knife pricked her neck. Closer to her throat this time.
“Are we clear? No funny business, whatsoever?”
She tried to answer, but the tape still sealed her mouth.
“Oh, right,” he said. “I better take that off. And your blindfold. You can’t be walking around looking like a kidnapping victim, now, can you? Though that would really be a beautiful sight. Debbie the kidnapper getting kidnapped herself! Poetic justice if I’ve ever heard it.”
What? Sibyl longed to say but couldn’t. What are you talking about?
“It’s a damn shame I can’t just keep you like this,” he went on. “Taped and blindfolded. But it might cause me some trouble if one of those old hippies who own this shithole property happens to be looking out the window. Old people don’t sleep, I hear. But hey, at least you got a little taste of what it feels like to get kidnapped.”
Sibyl moaned. She wanted to tell him she knew what it felt like to be a prisoner. To take him back to the boxy white church in desperate need of fresh paint and a termite treatment, little Debbie watching her parents work themselves into frenzied states of—what? They claimed it was ecstasy, that they were inhabited directly by the Lord on those blazing-hot summer Sundays in Harmony Township, Pennsylvania, population 562, filling them with so much joy their bodies were overtaken with the sensation, causing them to jerk and leap and collapse on the mealy, half-rotted floor of the church.
For as long as she could remember, she’d dreamed of getting out, far from the farmlands of Pennsylvania, far from her father’s altar, to a place where she could finally begin to live.
All at once, the man who used to be Jax yanked the tape from her mouth, and the blindfold from her eyes.
She yelped and clamped her hands to her lips, struggling to focus in the faint light. Blurrily, she could see Jax’s face—though he was no longer Jax to her at all—peering scornfully down at her.
“Spare me the waterworks, Debbie,” he said. “Take my hand. Come on.”
Sibyl swallowed the urge to scream it this time: Don’t call me Debbie! Then she thought of her sessions with the guests earlier, how angry and defensive Graham and Summer and Joanie had become each time Sibyl had confronted them with even a vague suggestion that they were withholding the truth.
She would not become defensive now, she decided; it would only make her appear desperate and weak.
She took his hand and let him lead her through the door to the pen where Sibyl had shooed the goats that very afternoon. Poor Diurn and Nocturne. She hoped they were somewhere safe, maybe with Twyla at the house.
“Hurry up,” he said, tugging her hand and lengthening his stride. She obeyed.
The night was deep and still. The moon had moved high in the sky and the stars seemed to have dimmed. The man who had called himself Jax walked fast over the coarse earth, around the base of Hydra Hill, onto the faint trail leading through the trees. Even the leaves overhead did not move as Sibyl panted and struggled to keep pace. Was this the same world she had left behind when she entered the barn for her session with Jax, what she had hoped would be her last session of the night? It felt changed. Or maybe it was just she who had changed.
The trail ended at a clearing, and they continued up a long slope. It grew steeper, but he did not slow his stride or relax his iron grip on her hand. Pressed against his, Sibyl’s palm had turned cold and sweaty. Her lungs squeezed, and then she felt a familiar bloom of pain open behind her eyes.
She knew the feeling as well as her own face. When the pain started this way, there was no stopping it. The migraine was irreversible now, a sickening inevitability: a runaway train on a downslope, a foot stepped off the roof of a tall building.
In the same instant the pain announced itself, Sibyl recognized the man leading her through the night. The migraines worked this way: with the sentence of pain came the gift of knowledge.
Every time.
“Abel,” she said, her voice shaky but finally certain in her knowledge. “It’s you. My little brother.”
He stopped in his tracks, jerking Sibyl’s arm.
“Obviously,” he said. “For a psychic, you sure aren’t very perceptive. Now keep walking.”
She walked, her heart and head throbbing in sync, the pain possessing her completely. She closed her eyes and let him guide her, knowing she could trip on a root and break her ankle, or step on a rattlesnake. Knowing he could be escorting her to her death. Not caring. All that mattered was the pain, filling her, taking shape around her like a membrane.
Minutes passed. The baked ground crunched underfoot. Sibyl’s feet kept moving. Somewhere, an owl hooted; seconds later, another returned the call.
Sibyl understood they were bidding each other farewell. Through the burnt-orange glow of her pain, she felt a well of infinite sadness.
“We’re here,” he said. “Final destination.”
She forced her eyes open. Her vision swam, then cleared. She blinked and looked around her. The familiarity of what she saw was both a shock and a comfort.
She was standing in Twyla’s backyard, right next to the house, beside the triangular hatch that led to the basement. The slanted door was propped open with a brick, revealing a strip of light below.
“Sisters first,” Abel said, heaving open the door and placing his hand on the back of her neck, forcing her down.