THIRTY-FIVE

I COULDN’T TELL if the face reflecting up at me was male or female or if it had skin or scales, but its eyes were completely gone—just two dark, empty sockets. It had a sunken nose and razor-thin lips pressed tightly together and sewn shut with thick thread in a messy crisscross pattern.

I tilted my neck to the left, and the bald head moved in sync with me, like a mirror image. Like it was me.

The ears were grossly malformed—clumps of flesh with no openings.

I extended my arm, the hysterical child still screaming in my brain. I reached out until my fingertips grazed the water’s surface. The reflection moved too, only its arm was broken off—nothing from the bicep down.

I reached with my other arm. Same thing. No elbow or forearm or hand. Just a shredded bicep.

I stayed fixated on the monstrosity but spoke to the infant, desperate for some silence. “Shh. Don’t cry.” Just like Ray would soothe Jackson.

Had the wailing actually eased a bit?

“It’s okay, I’m here. You’re alright.”

It was absurd and insane, but the more I coddled the infant, speaking words of comfort, the more settled it became. But nothing I said silenced it completely.

The hideous image in the water—the villain inside me—couldn’t move its lips, yet it managed to utter a single word. In my voice. In my head.

Orphan.

I rose to my hands and knees and shoved my face so close to the reflection, my nose touched the water. “I am not an orphan! My mother raised me. And my father walked out, but he’s in my life now.” I waited for a response, then shouted, “Do you hear me?”

The creature in the water shook its head, and I realized I was shaking my head too.

I lost it.

I punched the puddle. Drove my fist into the mud. Pulled my own hair.

“Stop torturing me!”

“Easy, Son.” The old man’s soothing voice. He placed his warm, dry hand on the back of my neck.

“Help me!”

“Calm down.” He let me catch my breath, then pressed down gently until I was face-to-face with the horrid reflection again. The baby was no longer sobbing, but sniffling.

“What do you see?” the old man asked me.

“Pure evil. With no eyes.”

“No eyes to see you. To look you in the face. To behold your expression. And the ears?”

“There aren’t any.”

“No ears to hear you. To listen to you. To understand.” He lowered to one knee behind me. “The mouth?”

“It’s sewn shut.”

“That’s right. No affirmation. No words of affection. No guidance or wisdom or prayers.”

I cupped my face, enduring an avalanche of emotions. The monster couldn’t mimic my gesture. “It has no arms.”

“No holding you,” the old man said. “No hugging. No pats on the back.”

I’d never felt such hatred. Or sadness. “Make this demon go!”

“Look at me, Owen.”

I turned my head and stared into his golden-brown eyes, my own pooling.

“It’s not a demon, Son.”

I searched his face. “Then what is it?”

He wrapped his strong arm around my shoulders, pulling me into a fatherly embrace. “It’s the wound you carry. In your soul.”

Slowly, reluctantly, I looked down at the monster again.

And for once, I let myself think it.

And feel it.

And finally say it: “I wasn’t raised in an orphanage. But all my life, I’ve felt like an orphan.”

“I know.” The old man rose and stood behind me. “God knows.”

My stomach dropped when the earth beneath my knees gave way, and I started sinking. I reached for the old man’s hand but couldn’t find it. I looked for him but didn’t see him. Within seconds, I was buried up to my waist.

“I’m falling!”

I grasped at every twig and rock within reach but kept sinking. The baby in my brain sobbed again.

I was up to my chest in mud when my worst enemy approached. Molek circled me, stalking me on his hands and knees like a prowling lioness. “You’re too late,” he raved in shrill whispers. “They’re as good as dead. All thirteen—and the little boy.”

“No.” I kept working to pull myself out but only became more entrenched. “You’re a liar!”

My shoulders sank, restraining my arms.

How had it come to this? My enemy, unearthed and free, while the ground swallowed me alive?

Molek hovered over my head, watching me fall with his hollow-white pupils in a sea of black. “My son . . .” It was the cruelest thing he could have called me, especially given our history. “You’re rejected.” That thick black concoction shot off his tongue and stuck to my face, stinging my skin.

“Abandoned.”

More pain.

As my head sank into the soggy soil, a final insult sliced my skin and soul: “Orphaned.”

Everything went black. I was freezing. My face was burning. I was no longer falling but stuck, unable to move—not a muscle. And I could barely breathe.

I knew then that this was how I would die. Trapped and alone. The infant wailing within was my own nagging pain, I understood now. A lifetime of neglect. The tormenting fear of abandonment.

God . . .

I couldn’t speak. My thoughts were all I had. Honest thoughts, finally.

It’s so unfair. My shattered family. Loss after loss my whole life. Ethan’s face surfaced in my mind. His self-confidence and success—my fears and failures.

For once, I let myself feel the full brunt of suffering. The ache of injustice. The crushing grief of unspoken disappointments. It felt like my pounding heart was fracturing into a thousand agonizing pieces. It was becoming impossible to breathe.

Finally, the infant inside me was silent.

Any minute now, I’d face my Creator—the one who had given me this life and was taking it now. All that was left for me was to choose.

Do I blame him . . . or trust him?

I was shivering uncontrollably. I could hear Molek pacing above me, no doubt counting down the seconds until I died. He couldn’t capture my eternal soul, but he was sure to revel in my failed earthly mission.

I inhaled, but there was no oxygen. No time left. Nothing but a last thought. The choice of a lifetime. My final decision . . .

Lord, even when my father and mother abandoned me, I trust you were there, holding me close.

A warm hand plunged down and gripped my arm, then tugged with massive force, pulling me up and out of the ground until I was lying in the dirt on my back.

I wiped mud from my eyes, working to pry them open . . . “It was you.”

The old man was on his knees, hovering over me.

I pushed up onto my elbows. “When I was four years old and trapped in that sewer pipe, you were the man who pulled me out. I remember now.”

He grinned and nodded, then his lips flattened with urgency. “Hurry.” He stood and pointed. “That way.” He turned to go.

“Wait!” I scrambled to my feet, feeling strangely lighter now.

He charged deeper through the woods in the direction he’d pointed.

I tried to follow him but couldn’t begin to keep up. Still, I kept running, even as the rain poured harder. Eventually, I recognized the path. Sure enough, minutes later, I spotted the old wooden pavilion. I stopped and gulped for air, looking up at the roof. It was covered entirely by witches, those astral-projecting people, draped in their sloppy white dresses. They were on their knees, as if praying to their god.

But that was nothing compared to the ground around the pavilion. It was gone—as in, completely open to the underworld.

I stepped as close to the edge as I could stomach and stared down.

Same as before, the powers of heaven and hell collided in heated conflict in that cavernous space, so wide and deep it appeared endless. In the center, directly under the pavilion, a huge mass of bones—the Rulers’ throne—rose slowly from the turmoil. Mother Punishment was still perched on top, the other Rulers tussling inside her so that I got brief glimpses of their deranged faces.

The throne rocked and teetered, unstable and unbalanced like all things evil. With every tilt, I caught peeks of Molek’s empty throne dangling below, attached to the Rulers’ throne by a chain that whipped his empty chair around like it was made of flimsy black plastic.

The sound of countless people’s pleading voices filled the atmosphere, as loud as a crowded stadium—a clashing mix of prayers and hexes. I’d come to cherish a certain voice so much, it stood out to me above the masses.

“Protect Owen and show him what to do. Don’t let the students die, Lord.”

“Ray Anne!”

She was nowhere near, yet by my side, fighting for me and with me in a dimension that transcends time and space.

My phone rang, and it was like an alarm clock waking me from a wild dream, only this was really happening. “Hello?” I said. “Ethan?” The signal in the woods was too weak, and our voices kept cutting out. I finally hung up, pinned my GPS location, and sent it to him, but there was no time to stand there staring at the screen to see if it went through. I had to get inside that pavilion.

I was standing some twenty feet back from it, and the rain pouring off the roof formed walls on every side, blocking me from seeing in. Normally, I’d sprint over there. But normally there wasn’t an open war zone where the ground should have been.

How was I supposed to get there?

I looked around, searching for a solution, and spotted a teenaged girl emerging from the woods, headed toward the pavilion. Her short purple hair was soaked and plastered to her head, her tight jeans so waterlogged she struggled to walk.

As she approached the ledge—the underworld drop-off—I cried out, “Presley!”

She didn’t hear me. And she didn’t fall. She made it all the way to the wall of water, ducked her head, and slipped inside.

Of course. Just because the spirit world was open didn’t mean the material ground had caved in. The two realms were overlapping. But that didn’t make my next step any easier.

I held my foot out, hovering it over the bottomless gulf, debating which would be more terrifying: to look down or close my eyes. I settled on looking straight ahead. The witches on the roof had spotted me and were pointing and cursing, but I tuned them out.

It took longer than I wanted, but I managed to put my foot down far enough to feel the ground beneath my shoe. When it was time to step out with both feet and stand entirely on the invisible, I couldn’t help but look down. Sure enough, I remained secure at ground level, but I still felt like I was falling. Totally disorienting.

I took short, quick steps, wondering if this was what Jesus felt like walking on water, trying to get to the pavilion as fast as I could. I was almost there when a fanged Creeper came racing up from the depths beneath me, its arm outstretched like it was reaching for my ankles. But the instant its clawed hand touched my aura, the beast howled and recoiled, thank God.

Finally, I made it to the rain wall. A deep breath, then I passed through, into the pavilion.