part0023

Sully’s golem had dug a steep incline from the surface down toward the basement wall. With Gram using Roni as a crutch, the two managed to muddle their way to the top. Sully and his golem came out next. Elliot emerged last with his cane held chest-high and pointed at the wall — keeping the remnants of his protective dome together.

“It’s okay,” Sully said. “They won’t come out.”

Though clearly skeptical, Elliot let the head of his cane fall to the ground. Several of the rifters drifted outside, but they merely floated up the wall to enter the church again through a stained-glass window. Like dogs reacting to an invisible fence, they refused to cross further out.

As Elliot climbed up the dirt and rocks, he said, “How did you know they can’t follow us?”

“They can, but they won’t. When I was scavenging stones to build the golem, I noticed that nothing was coming outside. And I never saw the one creature that left Sister Susan’s body roaming the grounds. I assumed it came back in here.”

“Assumed? So you didn’t really know?”

Sully shrugged. “I made an educated guess. ”

With gravelly impatience, Gram said, “The two of you can bicker later. We need to find some place to regroup. And my leg is killing me.”

“Agreed,” Sully said. “We can take the cars and drive off, but I don’t like the idea of leaving this rift unattended. Especially now.”

“You’re right. The time it would take us to drive to a nearby town might be the time it takes for this rift to decimate all of Ireland.”

Roni gestured with her chin. “What about the dorm?”

Sully stepped forward, turned around, and eyed the various buildings. “Presumably, at some point, those creatures will come out of that church. Since they appear to have some type of telepathy between each other, we have to assume all the new creatures will have learned what the older ones know — I would not want to go to the dorm or the library. They would be too familiar with those areas already.”

“Where then?” Elliot said, resting against the bumper of the car.

Roni said, “If you follow the path beyond the dorms, there’s a barn on the hill. Can all of Ireland survive long enough for that?”

“It’ll have to.” Sully headed off with the others following behind. “We can rest up and figure out our next move.”

Raising her voice, Gram said, “And somebody can tell me, by all that’s holy, what is going on around here.”

The barn turned out to be smaller than expected but still serviceable. A tractor that could not have been used in nearly five years took up much of the center aisle. Old stalls with rotting wood had been filled with rusted tools, weathered boxes, and whatever else the nuns wanted to discard. A hayloft overlooked them, and Roni’s quick search up there suggested they had a good view of the church, if they didn’t mind stepping on rat droppings.

As Elliot ran his healing across Gram’s leg, Sully found a stack of folding chairs and formed a small circle with them. “I know there’s a lot going on between you two ladies,” Sully said. “We’re out of time. That rift is spewing out living relics. We’ve got to find a way to put them back in. So, set aside your differences and start talking with each other.”

“Roni and I are fine.” Gram crossed her arms over her chest.

“Yeah,” Roni said. “You didn’t see but we hugged it all out.”

Sully raised an eyebrow. “One hug and all is well? That must’ve been one powerful hug.”

“It’s enough for now,” Gram said.

Roni added, “We know how to put our disagreement on hold. Besides, we did have a hug. It happened right before your golem broke down the wall.”

Sully had set the golem on sentry duty outside. “Fine. Sister Rachel is tied up underneath the library. I fear what might happen when she gets out and joins the others in the church.”

“You left her down there?”

“You’d rather I carry her around or bring her up here?”

“I wasn’t going to kill her. We’re not that kind of people.”

“I only meant —”

“This is what I’m talking about. Stop criticizing each other, stop questioning each other, and start dealing with the situation as it is. We’re running out of time.”

Rubbing his forehead, Elliot said, “Perhaps the two of you could explain to Gram and I what is going on, what happened to Sister Rachel, or even Sister Susan, everything. I went to get Gram in the church and found Sister Mary had taken her down to the rift. When I got down there, everything went bad. I barely had enough time to create that protection field.”

Pushing his glasses up his nose, Sully said, “It’s a bit complicated.”

“No, it’s not,” Roni said. She stood and stretched her arms. After a deep breath, she said, “This is all my fault. It’s mine to explain.”

“Roni,” Sully said, the warning unmistakable.

“Just because you’re the leader, doesn’t give you the right to withhold from the group.”

Gram snickered. “Not so easy, huh?”

Suddenly taking interest in the barn’s wood framing, Sully declined to answer.

Before the Old Gang could launch into another bout of bickering, Roni delved in and covered all the details from the moment she and Gram had arrived at the Abbey. Much of it Gram and Elliot had already heard, but Roni wanted to make sure that all members of the team had the same information. When she got to the point where she woke up after releasing Maria, she had the thirst for a strong whiskey. Pressing on, she described the sensations she felt and the voices she heard. And she watched Gram closely. The old woman’s face shifted from one emotion to another as if someone controlled her muscles by remote and kept randomly pressing buttons. Roni worried Gram might have a stroke.

Once she finished, Roni perched on the edge of the chair next to Gram. “I don’t know if you can believe me, but I didn’t do any of this to hurt you. I’m trying to do the right thing. I guess I blew it. I’m sorry.”

The barn grew quiet as the team digested Roni’s tale. At length, Gram lifted a shaking, wrinkled hand and placed it on Roni’s cheek. She looked over Roni’s face as if seeing her granddaughter for the first time. Her shallow eyes welled up and her jowls quivered.

In a shaking voice, Gram said, “My baby? Are you in there?”

The attack came stronger than ever before. All the hairs on Roni’s body stood as her skin prickled. The smell of molding hay and damp earth faded — replaced with enough sugar in the air to fill a candy factory. The high-pitched whine became a wolf’s howl next to Roni’s ear.

She doubled over to the ground, pressing the palms of her hands against her ears. Tears streamed from her eyes, and when she gazed up at Gram, her blurred vision knocked forty years off the woman. She saw a young mother reaching down towards her.

Her jaw acted involuntarily. It locked open as her throat convulsed out a voice that did not belong to her. “Mommy?”

“Baby? Maria? Is that really you?” The hope in Gram’s voice rose above the horror in her trembling tone.

“I love you, Mommy. Love you. Miss you.”

Gram dropped to her knees. Blubbering through her words, she said, “Oh, my sweet baby, I’m so sorry. I should never have brought you here. I was so cocky back then and look what it caused. The Lord has punished me.”

“Please. This time. Let me go.”

“I know, I know. I’m so sorry. I should never have let you go with me.”

“I have to go. You need me. Stop this.”

Roni’s throat burned as if she had spent the day throwing up acrid bile. Her jaw closed and she collapsed in a fetal position. She could feel Elliot’s large hands resting on her head as he performed his regular miracles — checking over for any internal injuries and healing her, if necessary. But she did not feel injured — mostly. Used. She felt used. As when she woke in a stranger’s bed, her body spent, her regret growing.

She did not regret bringing Maria out of that hell. Despite the pain it had caused them both, she knew she had done the right thing. She had to have.

With Elliot’s help, she sat up and eventually made it to one of the folding chairs. Sully returned from outside — checking on his golem and the church, no doubt.

“How long have I been out?” she asked.

“Only a few minutes,” Elliot said.

Gram paced the length of the barn, her fingers rolling over the beads of her rosary — she always had one in her pocket at hand — as she mouthed one prayer after another. Sully slouched on one of the folding chairs, leaned his head back, and stared at the ceiling. He looked like a younger man, though Roni worried he might have trouble getting out of that position.

Elliot shifted over to Sully and patted his forehead with a handkerchief. “You must be careful not to exhaust yourself. We cannot afford to lose you. Ever.”

Sully reached up and clasped Elliot’s hand between his own. “You are the best friend a man could ask for. But you worry too much. I’m not exhausted at all.”

“Lying to me will not help.”

Sully sat forward, took off his glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I said I’m okay.”

“I know that look on you. It’s not a good one.”

Feeling a little stronger, Roni said, “You said it yourself — we don’t have time for these kinds of things. Out with it.”

Sully’s head snapped up. “I think I have an idea for how we might close the rift. ”

“I thought it couldn’t be closed.”

“That was before you came along and pulled out Maria. That was before these nuns found a way to call all those creatures loose. Things are different now, more different than any time ever before when concerned with this rift. We can use that to our advantage.”

Gram rejoined the group, opting to stand behind her chair. “She has to go back. Doesn’t she?”

“I’m afraid so,” Sully said, gazing at his hands to avoid looking at anyone else. “I’ve been thinking about all that we’ve learned. I believe that back when you were young and Maria was split — back then, the creatures within the rift had found a way to reach out. We know Sister Mary had already been taken over, but the creature inside her had not been able to pull out any others.”

“You think they stole my Maria in a failed attempt to break free?”

“And then all these years since, the piece of her trapped in that rift acted like a stopper on a vial. Once Roni broke her free, the vial was open. The way for the others to come out became clearer. They merely needed a guide, and the nuns provided that.”

Roni stood too fast and fell back to her chair. “We can’t do this. We can’t send Maria back into that awful place.”

“We don’t have a choice. It’s our duty to protect this universe — no matter what.”

“But if she’s only a stopper, then all we’ll have succeeded in doing is preventing more of those creatures from coming in. The rift will still be open and there will still be hundreds of those creatures around.”

Gram shared a grim look with Elliot. “I’ll have to make a special book. One that can vacuum up all those things.”

Elliot said, “And I will have to build a dome around the entire church to contain them until your book is ready. ”

Lifting his head, Sully gazed at his team, and Roni could feel the regret seeping out of each one. “Then it is possible,” he said. “We don’t have time to do the proper research. Do you think this’ll work?”

“I won’t do it,” Roni said. “This is all that’s left of my mother. Of Gram’s daughter. We can’t just let her go. And after all I’ve done to get her back.”

“It won’t be so easy as letting her go.” Sully brushed his hands against his pants and stood. “You will have to go, too. As near to the rift as it takes for Maria to be pulled out of you.”