“We’ll never have a normal life, but we’ve decided to pretend,” Howard said to no one. As far as he was concerned, he couldn't be tormented enough.
◆◆◆
From her desk at the front of her classroom, Isabel stared blankly, with dark circles under her eyes. She wore Grip’s necklace.
The classroom door opened, and the school headmistress stood in the doorway. She beckoned. “I heard the happy news.” Becky smiled smugly, crossing her arms. “Congratulations. You'll be having it here in the chapel, I trust.”
“Of course.”
“Don't look so enthusiastic.”
“I'm not feeling well.”
“I know how stressful it can be, but please put on a happy face. You have a future husband to think about. Men don’t like a woman who doesn’t smile.”
Isabel nodded, not finding the strength to speak.
“Well, I'll let you get back to it then.”
Isabel grabbed Becky's wrist, not wanting to be left alone with the children.
“Isabel!” The headmistress pulled back her arm. “What's gotten into you?” Isabel had no response. The headmistress looked down her nose and narrowed her eyes. “Just make sure I get an invitation soon. Invitations should be sent out no later than three months in advance.” She let the door close.
Isabel turned back to her classroom. Her students drew pictures for their parents. Most depicted happy families. Did she expect something else? Demons perhaps? Occult symbols?
Alex raised his hand.
That's better. Maybe Alex had something more fitting.
“Miss Torres?” he said. “I have another picture for you.” He held out a drawing.
She walked to him. Her whole body felt weighted and lethargic. There was no anxiety. She took the picture and looked at it: A snake with wings.
“My mommy—I mean, my mother—she says everyone is forgiven. Because of what you and Mr. Jacobi done. Even the Devil.”
“Your mother is wrong.”
“But—”
“I’m going to hell.”
“She said—”
“And because your mommy was part of the Cross, she’ll burn too.”
Isabel crumpled the paper. Alex started to cry. She dropped the balled-up picture into the wastebasket and sat at her desk. Her joints ached like she was a hundred years old.
In every desk sat a pale and wide-eyed Taylor. At least eighteen of him, blue-skinned, silent, and expressionless. He stared, always stared.
Isabel just sat there, behind her desk, and stared back, as if without a thought in her head.
◆◆◆
In Portland’s Old Town Chinatown, Isabel Stark wandered the streets, clutching Grip's three-bead necklace, searching for where he had purchased it. Deep under her feet was the Old Portland Underground. The elaborate tunnel system was supposedly used to shanghai sailors and kidnap women for prostitution, but that was likely just a myth, invented in the 1970s to entertain tourists. There were basements and tunnels used to transport goods underground to and from the harbor, but the horror stories attached to them were grossly exaggerated.
She could have Googled “Portland spiritualist shops” but wanted to find the origin of the necklace on her own, without the aid of technology. These days, if given two choices, she often picked the more difficult option.
She had already been searching for a few hours, and her anxiety had grown. She was on antianxiety medication and antidepressants, but she wasn’t sure they were helping. Talking to strangers was difficult. Darkness terrified her, and she wasn’t sleeping. With her thumb, she kept spinning her wedding ring. It still felt alien on her finger. She had lost so much weight that it was loose, and she constantly worried it would fall off without her noticing and that Howard would hate her for it.
The ceremony had been uneventful. She had feared the Stoneciphers would show, but they hadn't. Howard's old life with the cult had been severed. As long as he never had another child, the Jacobi bloodline and the Cross of the Lamb were finished. Howard had a vasectomy. Isabel had her tubes tied just in case.
Though they went through the motions of sex from time to time out of habit, they didn't touch each other on their wedding night. Howard cried on his side of the bed, while Isabel pretended to sleep. Grip’s death had created a hole that had left her numb. She hoped she would never feel again, but pain had started to creep in around the edges. She had lost her job. She just wasn’t good with kids anymore. Howard was all she had left.
A Chinese man in a filthy wife-beater worked a flower stand, using a knife to remove thorns from a heap of roses. Was this where Grip had purchased his three red roses the last day of his life? Probably not. His roses had thorns. The man smiled at her, many of his teeth missing. She wanted to ask him if he'd seen Grip but hesitated to show him a picture on her phone. Her heart started to hammer. She noticed the man was also missing both his pinky fingers. Unpaid gambling debts, she assumed and experienced déjà vu. Had she had that thought before? It seemed unlikely.
Behind the flower stand was a spiritualist shop. Perhaps this was the place after all.
Inside, a Taiwanese shopkeeper dressed in a pantsuit watched a ghost show. Asian statues crowded the shop. Isabel experienced another odd moment of déjà vu and decided this had to be it. Ratty hemp necklaces hung from a rack, the same kind of hemp necklaces as the one she had around her neck.
“I've come to return something.” She untied the necklace as she spoke.
The shopkeeper turned off the TV. “And what's the reason for the return?”
“It doesn't work.” She placed the necklace on the counter.
The shopkeeper studied Isabel, obviously puzzling something out.
Isabel scolded herself. What did she expect to get from this transaction besides a refund? Retracing Grip's last day wouldn't bring her closure. There was no closure to be had.
Idols lined a table, along with piles of fake money and bowls of crescent-shaped bamboo blocks. Why had Grip even come here?
“Was there a man here a year ago?” She realized how unhelpful that was. “He was about this tall. Tattoos.” It was pointless. There was no way this woman would remember.
“You're Isabel!” The shopkeeper pressed her hands on the counter and got off the stool. “I knew you'd come. I knew it!”
“Did Grip talk about me?” She found that hard to believe.
“In a fashion.” The woman spread papers on the counter as if revealing a secret passion, but the paper was blank. “I spirit write. I communicate.” She set out a long, black pen. “I’m so sorry for your loss. He gave me a message to give to you.” She took out an envelope from under the counter with “Isabel” written on the front. “Read it. Please.” Her hand was trembling. “Maybe then he’ll leave me alone.” The shopkeeper glanced around as though she feared she was being watched. “I haven't read it yet. It's for you.”
“What do you mean?” Isabel took the envelope.
“I channeled him. It was like a bolt of lightning. I didn't have the courage to read it myself. I've never been moved so strongly.”
Isabel ripped it open and pulled out a piece of paper. In scrawled writing, it read: “Visit me. You promised. I'm lost without you.”
Isabel laughed despite the agony she felt. She remembered making love on the floor of her apartment. “Visit me in Hell,” he had said. Oh God! His boyish grin! She hadn't known it at the time, but the happiest moment in her life had happened right before she had gone to Jacobi House. For a moment, she had let go and loved two men, really loved them without reservation, and had wanted nothing more than to make a life with them. Evil had ended it all, but for a brilliant moment, love had existed. It tore her apart to remember. That memory was the only joy she had left.
“What? What does it say?”
“It doesn't matter. It's just a trick. It's not him.”
“It happened just like I said. Like lightning.”
“I believe you. But you have to understan
d, I've been fooled before.” The fire of God. Even now it left her gasping in awe to remember the blooming flame. “I wanted to believe God guided me. So desperately. I won't be fooled again.”
“But he . . . I felt him.”
“Grip's good. He's beautiful. And he's gone. I have to live with that.”
“He's trying to contact you. He loves you. I felt it.”
The shopkeeper teared up. Isabel found the woman's frustration disconcerting. She took the shopkeeper's hands. “I know you felt it. I don’t think you’re a fraud. It’s not that.” She looked around at the piles of fake money and bowls of bamboo blocks, and the statues of gods and demons, and the long, black pen, not knowing what else to say.
“You have to believe me! He's here! Right now! He wants to talk to you. He needs to talk to you!”
The shopkeeper tried to grab the pen, but Isabel pinned down the woman's hands, not letting her move.
“Stop!” Isabel took a moment to calm herself. “You know a tree by its fruit. If these things, these gods and goddesses, make your life better, make the world better, then fine. But this.” She let go of the shopkeeper's hands and held up the piece of paper with the scrawled spirit writing. “This fruit that you say is Grip is rotten to the core. Grip wasn't rotten, and so this isn't Grip. Do you understand? Something else is here. Something else made you write this.”
The shopkeeper nodded as if scolded by an elder.
“Even if he only wrote loving things through you, it would only hurt me deeper. The only thing I can do is suffer the memory of our love and live with it until I die.”
The shopkeeper didn't say anything; instead, she walked around the counter in silence, tears on her cheeks. She pulled a white lighter from her pocket and, from a high shelf, took down what looked like a brightly painted coffee can. She pulled off the lid and lit something inside, and a fire grew.
“What are you doing?”
The flame flickered and grew some more, and the shopkeeper put the can on a low table. She held out her hand. “Come. Bring the paper. We'll burn it together and be done with it.”
Isabel handed over Grip's message. The paper burned slowly, the fire starting at a corner and moving across the shaky letters until the only thing left was ash.
Acknowledgments
This book has been many years in the making, first as a screenplay, then as a novel, and now as this revised edition you hold in your hands. Many people have read many different versions. I would like to thank every one of you and give a very special thanks to Andrea Bloom for sticking with me through it all.
I would also like to thank you, dear reader. I can only write in the woods. You are who finds me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born, raised, and currently living in the Northwest of the United States, Wesley McCraw writes speculative fiction. He graduated from the University of Oregon, where he completed the much-acclaimed Kidd Tutorial, a one-year intensive writing clinic. During his time at the university, he was also a member of Write Club, where he trained under screenwriter Omar Naim (The Final Cut, Dead Awake, Becoming).
You can find Wes on Twitter at @wesleymccraw.
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