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Teresa awoke with a start. The alarm clock flashed midnight. Did the power go out? Derrick’s side of the bed was vacant, the covers thrown back. Faint light seeped through the blinds. She lay back against her pillow.
He must have let her sleep in. She didn’t smile, though. She couldn’t assume last night would fix everything. He, himself, had told her that.
What had he called it? An attempted roll in the hay?
Well, maybe that was all he needed.
Teresa dragged herself out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom, took care of the necessary, and applied some makeup.
“Hello? Anyone home?” she called.
Her voice sounded strange, echo-y and muffled at the same time. A disquieting stillness filled the house. She shivered and tugged her robe tighter around her body. The microwave clock also flashed midnight.
Teresa went into the front room where an old, hand-wound Victorian clock sat on top of the piano with the silver-framed pictures. The clock had also stopped at midnight.
This couldn’t be right. She held it to her ear and listened for the second hand to tick tick tick around the face. She set the clock down and backed away from it.
The room flickered. Teresa squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. For a second, she thought she saw—
She ran to the front door and opened it.
A creek trickled in the early morning quiet. Glowing lost souls danced among the lodge pole pines, illuminating their trunks and the crooked tombstones. The sun hadn’t even started to peek above the mountains.
In a daze, Teresa stepped onto the sagging front porch and down the three stairs. Her footsteps crunched on pine needles. She tried to pull her robe around her, but she no longer wore it. Instead, the same blood-stained clothes from the previous night covered her body. Not the previous night. This same night. How much time had really passed?
A few feet from the front porch, she turned around. Though she already knew what she would find, the sight of the abandoned funeral home brought dread and grief.
It hadn’t been Derrick.
It was him.
She’d fucked Yaldabaoth.
“No.” The sound moaned from her throat. She doubled over, covering her face with her hands.
This is a dream. A nightmare. You went home.
The night didn’t dissolve around her. She didn’t wake up.
“Mommy,” Tiffany’s voice whispered. The sight of her daughter made her stomach twist.
“What have I done?” Her voice gasped the words. A tear let loose from her blurry eyes and journeyed down her cheek. “What happened? I went home—” Her breath hitched in.
Tiffany came closer. So pale in the moonlight. Teresa only hoped she wasn’t here to present another syringe.
“You did come home,” Tiffany said, indicating the house behind her. “Yaldabaoth fixed the inside. He thought you would like it. Do you like it?”
Something in Tiffany’s tone told Teresa she should say yes. She nodded, instead, afraid her voice would betray her.
Tiffany placed her cold fingers on Teresa’s cheek and wiped away the tear.
“Good.” Tiffany smiled. She pulled away and pirouetted with the lost souls. “It’s a glorious night.”
“I need to go home,” Teresa said. “I have to go home.”
Tiffany stopped. “You are home.”
“This is not my home.” Teresa stood and staggered toward the creek.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Tiffany sang from the trees.
Teresa didn’t listen. She jumped across. Instead of standing on the dirt road, she faced the abandoned house again. She turned and leaped over it again with the same result. And again. And again. Every time she tried to cross the creek onto the dirt road, she was back on the same side, facing the house.
I’m trapped.
“Let me out of here. Now,” she yelled. Tiffany giggled from the darkness of the pines. The front door opened, and Yaldabaoth stepped into the moonlight.
“It is quite a glorious night, is it not?” His silky voice both terrified and delighted Teresa. It made her dizzy, distorted her thoughts. She wanted to run away from him. She wanted to run toward him. Teresa gripped the sides of her head and closed her eyes.
“Please, leave me alone,” she whispered, covering her face with her hands.
Yaldabaoth’s hands touched her arms, slid up to her shoulders. One cupped the back of her head. The other tilted her face up to his.
“You have work to do, my dear.” He dropped the hand at her neck and produced a syringe.
“I can’t,” Teresa whispered.
“You can,” Yaldabaoth said, his lips inches from hers. “And you will.”
She closed her lids, squeezing tears out. His touch vanished. Teresa opened her eyes. He was gone.
One throbbing zoe line lay at her feet. She willed herself to follow it, but her legs wouldn’t obey. Tiffany danced into her sight. She approached Teresa with wide, innocent eyes. The girl took Teresa’s hand.
“Come on, Mommy. You can do it. I’m here to help you.” Tiffany pulled Teresa down the length of the line. When they left the forest, Ruthie’s mountain-lion-like shriek tore through the silent night.
“Oh, I forgot,” Tiffany said. “Run.”
Teresa wanted to lie on the ground. She could hardly walk, her legs trembled so hard. She didn’t know what would happen if Ruthie caught up, but the sight of the mummified woman lurching after her was enough to pump adrenaline through her system and get her moving.
They ran toward town, then into the residential district. They followed the line and ended up on the front steps of Betty and Roger Berg’s house.
She wondered which Berg would get it tonight.
“Open the door,” Tiffany said.
Teresa jiggled the knob. It was locked.
Ruthie screamed—closer now.
Panic set in. Not knowing where Ruthie was made things that much worse.
Tiffany led Teresa around the house. Teresa peeked in the windows trying to see the continued zoe line inside, see where it led.
At the back of the house, Tiffany stood on her tiptoes and peered inside. Teresa looked. The red line crept under the blankets on a bed where Marcie Berg slept.
Teresa pressed her palms against the glass, praying the window was unlocked. It slid. She boosted Tiffany up and inside, then launched herself, kicking her legs for leverage.
She dropped to the floor. Marcie tossed over in her bed and tugged the covers over her ear.
“Be careful,” Tiffany said from the foot of the bed. “Her parents might wake up.”
Teresa slid the window shut just as Ruthie appeared at the glass. She took a moment to catch her breath. Then she pulled back Marcie’s blankets.
The zoe line ended in Marcie’s young, flat stomach. Teresa plunged the needle into the young woman’s belly.
Unlike Ruthie or Sheriff or Brent, Marcie didn’t move a muscle.
Teresa pulled the plunger, sucking the milky red zoe into the barrel. Marcie’s eyes flew open and turned black. The irises, the sclera, everything. But she didn’t shrink or bloat or disintegrate.
When Teresa withdrew the needle, the young woman’s eyes returned to normal. She moved her hand to her stomach where Teresa had stuck her and curled into a ball around it. A pained moan poured from between her lips.
Then the bleeding started.
Not bleeding like Teresa had seen in miscarriage or in birthing. Blood gushed from between Marcie’s legs, soaking the girl’s nightgown and sheets. Marcie gasped. Her mouth opened, and her face turned red. The cords in her neck went taut as if she was straining, pushing, giving birth. Tears trickled from her eyes. No sound came out, no sound went in.
Still, the blood poured. A broken dam.
Teresa looked at the syringe. What had she done? She hadn’t thought twice about where the zoe line ended. Was Marcie pregnant?
Ruthie screamed at the window and clawed the glass, beat it with her bony fists. Teresa jumped.
“Goddammit!” A man’s voice shouted from somewhere in the house. “George Riley, if that’s you making all that racket, I swear to Jesus I’ll have your hide.”
The knob rattled.
“Marcia Victoria Berg, you open this door right this minute,” Roger Berg hollered. Teresa looked at the window where the not-crushed side of Ruthie’s face pressed against the glass, her thin lips pulled back in a vicious sneer.
Roger pounded on the door again. The whole thing shook in its frame.
Teresa cast about for a place to hide. She knelt and peeked under the bed. There was too much stuff under there.
“Psst,” Tiffany motioned Teresa over to a closet with slatted, accordion doors. They stepped inside, trampling on piles of shoes.
The door to the bedroom burst open just as Teresa eased the closet shut.
“Where is he?” Roger shouted. Teresa peeked through the slats and saw him approach Marcie’s bed. “Jesus Christ! Marcie!” He held her, then turned to the hallway. “Betty. Call 911,” he yelled. “Something’s wrong with Marcie. I think George must’ve done something to her. Oh, my baby. Please—what happened?”
Marcie’s face had gone white. Her eyes stared at nothing in particular.
Check her pulse.
Teresa willed the words. She couldn’t just stand by and watch someone bleed out, but she couldn’t burst out of the closet to save the day either. There was nothing she could do except crawl back to Yaldabaoth and deliver the fourth soul.
With Roger’s face buried in Marcie’s hair, Teresa slipped out of the closet and scurried into the dark hallway. The hall light came on, blinding her. She dove sideways into the bathroom as Betty ran by with a phone pressed to her ear. Her shouts of Marcie’s name joined Roger’s wails.
“There’s no answer! Doctor Hart isn’t answering.”
Teresa paused. Where was he, drinking with Ann?
“Dammit, Betty. I said 911, not Doctor Hart!”
Tiffany pulled Teresa into the hallway and toward the front door.
“I can help them,” Teresa said, looking over her shoulder toward their cries.
“No, Mommy. You can’t.”
Outside, they ran back to the old house. Ruthie shrieked behind them, gained on them. Tiffany led the way. Her pale form glowed in the moonlight. Teresa’s lungs burned. Her legs burned. Her head swam with the flashing shock of instant regret. She could have helped them. She could go back now and help. Besides, she didn’t want to go back to Yaldabaoth.
Ruthie’s footsteps thumped behind her. Teresa glanced over her shoulder just as Sheriff McMichael, still bloated, crashed through the fence surrounding the neighbor’s back yard.
Teresa had never run so fast in her life. Ruthie shrieked. It seemed like she was inside Teresa’s head.
On the dirt road, Teresa turned and leapt over the creek. The lost souls bounced and bobbed among the tombstones. She fell against a marble epitaph to some long-lost ancestor of the town and caught her breath.
Inside the abandoned funeral home, Yaldabaoth stood by the pool, gazing into its still depths.
“Here, it’s done.” Teresa pushed the hypo into his hand. She turned to leave, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her against him.
“You’re upset with me,” he said, his breath—laced with lavender and honey and something unsavory—washed over her.
She pulled away from him. “You deceived me.” She started for the door but turned back. “You made me . . . unfaithful.” She reached for her throat, but he caught her hand.
“You knew the whole time,” he said. “It was what you wanted.”
Teresa backed away, shaking her head. “No. I didn’t—I didn’t know and I didn’t want it. I just want to be happy. With my husband and our daughter.” She cast around for Tiffany. “Where is my baby?”
Yaldabaoth laughed again. “She is in her room.” He indicated a white door that had appeared on the cave wall. “Take a look.” He was suddenly behind her, whispering the words into her ear, holding her arms in a gentle grip. A grip full of tethered power. She resisted the urge to lean back and press against him. He let go of her.
Inside was the nursery again. She knew it wasn’t real. She stormed to the door, opened it, and stepped out into the hallway in her own house.
No, not her house. Still the cave. The cave of illusions. Yaldabaoth was toying with her. She went downstairs to the front door, and when she opened it, she was on her front porch, looking out onto the residential street.
Teresa’s breath came in panicked gasps.
Where are you, really? Home? The cave? Mountain View?
She went back inside, and the stone walls reappeared.
“Stop this!” she screamed. Yaldabaoth’s chuckle echoed, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“I have so much power over you, my dear,” he said, suddenly behind her, stroking her arms again, breathing on her neck. “You are mine.”
“Please,” she said. “Please let me go home.” Derrick would be worried. Or furious. She had to let him know she was okay. “I need to go home.”
The room melted into the moldy interior of the abandoned house. She let out a sobbing gasp and ran to the door, into the forest, across the creek, onto the dirt road.
She glanced back at the house. It glared down at her. How had she ever thought the front steps looked like an inviting smile?