by Simon Cantan
Jaden was waiting in the corridor outside, wearing the American flag t-shirt she’d told him not to. It made him look like some kind of crazy super-patriot. However, she could tell by his grin he was wearing it to irritate her. His smile faded when he saw her frown. “No good?”
“Is it ever?” Katie said. “Let’s go somewhere quiet.”
Jaden put his arm around her as they walked through the school, his way of being friendly. She treasured it, despite knowing there was nothing more than friendship behind it.
He’d grown so tall, he had to reach down to squeeze her shoulder reassuringly. She glanced up at him, his black locks falling in front of his face when he smiled back. With his free hand, Jaden pushed them aside. When she looked into his blue eyes, she felt as if she were floating in space already, drifting away with no way to stop herself.
He let go of her shoulder to push the door open for both of them, leading the way to their favourite tree at the back of the school. Some other kids used it as a make-out spot, but not in the winter. Now everyone hung out inside. Only crazy people like them would brave the cold to talk in private.
“So,” Jaden said, leaning against the tree. “How bad was it?”
“A three,” Katie said.
“That’s not terrible. I have plenty of threes.”
“You barely speak the language,” Katie said. “And even then, you use that American accent of yours to charm the teachers.”
“I can’t help it if I sound like Matthew McConaughey.”
“More like Elmer Fudd.”
Jaden grinned. “Be vewy quiet.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Katie said. “You think NASA take people who flunk science?”
Jaden shrugged. “You could always switch to sports, like me.”
She shook her head at him. Sometimes he seemed not to realise what he was saying. She was short and clumsy; the last thing she should be doing was sports. Although, if her grades kept plummeting, she wasn’t cut out for anything brain related either.
“You should talk to your father,” Jaden said. “Get him to help you study. He must see how important your grades are to you.”
He didn’t offer to talk to Aidan, not anymore. Katie had warned him often enough that he knew not to mention it. Her home was off limits.
“Maybe,” she said, knowing she couldn’t.
“Or I can help you study,” Jaden said.
Katie nodded, but that was out of the question too. The school closed after hours. “Where? Your house?”
He shook his head and turned away for a moment. She regretted bringing it up. She’d never seen his house, just as he’d never seen hers.
A part of her suspected his father was abusive. Jaden had bruises sometimes that he claimed were from walking into a door. However, from the way he moved on the basketball court, Katie doubted he’d ever be as clumsy as that.
Sometimes she dreamt they both revealed their secrets and were both Godchosen. As soon as they said it, they fell into each other’s arms. As if that was the only thing holding them apart, instead of how different they were. He was tall and handsome, where she was short and mousy.
It wasn’t just her curse that kept her from telling Jaden how she felt, though. It was the risk of losing the only friend she had at the school. Jaden was friends with almost everyone he’d ever met, but chose to spend time with her instead. She suspected it was just out of loyalty. She’d spoken to him on his first day of school, five years ago, before anyone else felt comfortable talking in English. And he’d stuck by her side ever since.
“Speaking of home,” Jaden said. “I should get back. It’s getting late.”
She knew it wasn’t late, but the sun was sinking and he never seemed to want to be out after dark. Maybe he was a werewolf, and he’d turn into slavering beast? The bruises could be from his victims, trying to fight him off. She dismissed the thought. Jaden wasn’t the monster, his father was.
“Meet me before school tomorrow?” Katie asked. “We can talk then?”
“Sure,” Jaden said. “And don’t forget about my game on Saturday.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Katie said. She was Jaden’s moral support. His father wouldn’t be there. Just as her own wouldn’t.
Leaving him, she walked through the school to her locker, leaving any books she could there. Her bag was still heavy as she hurried for the bus that would take her home. She needed a lot of books with her. She had to try to study, at least.
There were other teenagers on the bus, but they ignored her. Instead, she found a seat on her own, put on her seatbelt, and sat with her bag clasped across her stomach.
The sun dropped quickly as the bus drove into town. By the time it rolled over the bridge to Kråkerøy, the island she lived on, it was dark enough for all the streetlights to have come on. She didn’t remember too much from Ireland, but she knew it didn’t get dark at four in the afternoon. If she missed anything, it was a few extra rays of daylight.
The bus had a lot of adults coming home from work. They all looked tired, staring at their phones. One had a newspaper, which seemed out of place. She recognised all of them, though. They took the same bus every day. Just like she’d see the same faces the next day on the bus to school. Fredrikstad wasn’t a big place; after a while, you recognised almost everyone you saw.
The bus stopped and Katie unstrapped, hurrying to the door to disembark. As soon as she stepped onto the pavement, however, her feet didn’t seem to want to move any further. Her father had been bad in the last few weeks, getting worse every day. She didn’t know what would be waiting for her at home. Part of her wanted to turn around and walk the other way.
Forcing herself, she moved, back to the blue house with the peeling paint and muddy garden, far away from any other houses. She heard a shout as she walked up the driveway, a guttural cry that let her know her father’s demon was plaguing him again.
With careful, quiet steps, she took her key from her pocket. When she got to the front door, she slipped it in and turned, wincing as the lock clicked. She cracked the door open and looked through the gap. The hallway was a mess, but there was no sign of her father. She could hear his shouts from the living room. Slipping inside, she closed the front door and locked it behind her.
As the lock turned over, the shouts stopped. The silence made her heart jump. She turned and ran for the stairs, hearing the living room door open behind her. Running feet pursued her as she lunged up the stairs for her room. She didn’t look back until her doorway. As she slammed it shut, she caught a glimpse of her father’s face at the top of the stairs, purple with rage and pain.
She drove the main bolt on her door home, just as it shuddered from her father’s charge. She pushed the other three bolts on the left of the door, then the three on the right. Finally, she put the key in the lock and turned it, adding the pathetic built-in lock to her defences.
Taking a deep breath to try to calm down, Katie took off her school bag and threw it on the bed, then went to her desk and sat. The door shuddered again and again as her father tried to break in. The locks rattled with each charge. She knew he’d feel the bruises in the morning, but the locks would hold. He starved himself to keep his weight low. Too low to get through the door, no matter how he ran at it.
She tried to ignore him and turned to her computer, switching it on. Taking her headphones from the desk, she took another deep breath. She couldn’t help but glance back at the door. Even when she turned her music on, she could still hear the impacts of her father’s body on the thick wood.
A few clicks brought up the document she’d been working on: her study of the moon. She had her space blog, with its three loyal followers, but she barely updated it anymore. Not since her father had gotten worse. She stared at the text for a while, but she couldn’t concentrate, so she closed the document and opened her browser in private mode instead.
Her fingers automatically typed in the long, complicated website address. An address she
’d long since memorised, at the insistence of her father: http://www.eMffpxfJfKrSW7MKAVGEAQ6.org
For some reason, the .org always threw her. The browser chugged for a moment, then displayed the one reassurance her family wasn’t alone. Godchosen Hub looked like a website from the 90s, but it had enough pages to reassure her—
The door slammed hard, something other than her father hitting it. Katie took off her headphones and looked over, but nothing else happened. Whatever it was had been heavy. She worried her father had found something to use as a battering ram. Her gaze went over to the rope ladder coiled in front of her window. If need be, she could escape for the night, but it was cold outside, and she didn’t have anywhere to go.
After a moment of quiet, she relaxed enough to put her headphones back on. She scrolled down the website until she found what she was looking for: Exorcisms. She’d read the page a dozen times, almost memorised the details of every church that specialised in it. There was only a list of addresses and opening hours, no real information. As usual, her gaze went to the pictures.
Church Street in Oslo, entirely made up of cathedrals and churches. The picture looked like it had been taken a decade before, from the clothes the people were wearing. On both sides of the street, incredible steeples reached toward the sky. They stretched back as far as she could see in both directions.
Katie left the Godchosen Hub website and went back to the normal Internet, trying to find Jaden on social media. He was offline. She wondered what he was up to. Her father had an excuse, with his demon. Jaden’s father must be truly evil to leave bruises like that on his son’s body. If Katie had been anyone else, she would have insisted her father take Jaden in. Maybe after the exorcism, they could.
Chapter 5
Birthday
Katie slid out the last bolt and turned the key. When she opened the door, a fire extinguisher tipped into her room. She realised it must have been what her father was using as a battering ram the night before. She took it and put it inside her room, then looked at the door itself. There was a dent in the surface where the extinguisher had hit, but the wood was deep enough not to have cracked.
She went to the top of the stairs and listened. The screams had stopped during the night, hopefully when her father had fallen asleep, rather than for any other reason. Going downstairs, she crept, ready to turn and run at the first sign of trouble.
At the living room door, she peeked through and saw her father bent over, picking up books. He was showered and dressed, his face calm.
With a sigh of relief, Katie walked through the door. “Good morning.”
“Morning, monkey,” Aidan said. He took the books and dumped them on a crooked shelf. It seemed like the wall it was leaning on was the only thing keeping the bookshelf upright.
“It was bad yesterday,” Katie said. “Are you okay?”
“I know, sorry. Did I scare you?”
“You didn’t,” Katie said. “Sonneillon did.”
Aidan stiffened at the name of his demon. She knew he hated what Sonneillon did to him.
“Sorry,” he said again. “Let me drive you to school to make up for it. We can buy breakfast on the way. Once I find my keys.”
Katie scanned the chaotic living room, filled with ripped pages and the remains of their smashed coffee table. She didn’t know how they’d find the keys in time for school. “Maybe I should just take the bus.”
“No,” Aidan said. “There’s something I have to talk to you about. Klondike, can you help me out?”
At the mention of his god’s name, the keys slid out from under the sofa. Aidan bent and picked them up. “Thanks.”
“I have to take a shower and get dressed,” Katie said. “Then we can go.”
“I’ll try to get this tidied in the meantime.”
After showering and emptying her chamber pot, Katie got dressed in the nicest clothes she could find. If Jaden was going to meet her before school, she wanted to wear something pretty for him.
Her father was waiting in the hall when she came down. Together, they got in their beat up old car and drove to the local fast-food restaurant. Aidan fetched the greasiest breakfast possible and brought it back to the car.
After sitting and eating for a while, Katie could tell he was working up the courage to talk to her about something important. “What is it?”
“Your eighteenth birthday,” Aidan said. “It’s coming up in a few weeks.”
She nodded. She’d been wondering what would happen about that.
“I’ve been saving for it,” Aidan said. “The reason we have a beat up old car and a rundown house is that I’ve been saving everything I earned for your birthday. You’re not going to get a new god like Klondike. We’re going to get you the oldest, most powerful god we can afford.”
Katie frowned, wondering what he was talking about. They’d barely been able to afford to eat for years. How much money could he have saved?
“Half a million kroner,” Aidan said. “That’s how much I’ve got in the bank. It’s not enough to afford one of the super-duper gods, but your god will be able to do more than find your keys… sorry, Klondike.”
“Half a million kroner.” Her eyes widened. With that much money, she could get her father an exorcism.
“It’s important,” Aidan said. “We need to get your god before your birthday, or you’ll end up with… well, let’s just say we don’t want that.”
“Okay,” Katie said.
“So this Saturday, we can go up to Oslo, to Church Street.”
Katie realised her father would never allow her to use the money on an exorcism. He’d sacrifice himself for her. Just as he’d been doing for years. Her father was forty the last time he’d had a steady job. Which meant he’d been hanging onto most of the money since then. He could have paid for a weak demon, but he’d gotten Sonneillon instead.
“I think I should go alone,” Katie said. “It feels like a personal thing, getting a god.”
Aidan frowned, but nodded. “I probably felt the same when I was your age. It should be okay. I can come to Oslo with you at least, to show you where it is.”
“That’s okay, I know where it is,” Katie said. “There’s a map online. Save the money for the ticket and we can use it to celebrate when I get back.”
“Okay, that should be fine. As long as you’re sure?”
“I am.” Katie checked her watch. “We should get to school or I’m going to be late.”
“And I’ll be late for work. Those annoying sales calls won’t make themselves.”
He drove Katie through the morning traffic to her school. As they pulled up, she spotted Jaden waiting for her near the front door, his breath steaming in the cold morning air.
She leaned over and kissed her father on the cheek. “Love you, Dad.”
“Love you too, monkey. Go talk to your friend.”
Katie got out and slammed the door, watching the car drive off and merge with the traffic. Her own personal god. But, more importantly, a chance to be rid of Sonneillon forever. She could barely remember her father before his demon; before he’d put the locks on her door and warned her not to come out at night.
Without the demon, anything was possible. She could get Jaden to move in with them, get him away from his father. She had to stop herself from skipping with joy.
“You’re in a good mood,” Jaden said. “What’s happened?”
“I found out what my father is getting me for my birthday.” Then she noticed the bruises on Jaden’s neck. Four on the left, one on the right, like fingers. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing,” Jaden said. “I bumped into something.”
She looked into his eyes, seeing the evasion there. “You need a better excuse when the teachers ask. Or tell them what’s really happening.”
He glanced away, off in the direction Aidan’s car had driven. “Was that your father?”
“Yeah. He drove me to school today.”
“He looks almost normal.”<
br />
Katie frowned. “He is normal.”
“Not normal enough for me to meet him.”
“You wanted to meet him?”
“Maybe,” Jaden said. “To find out what the mystery is.”
She knew that was the last thing she’d want to happen. If Jaden knew how weird they were, he’d want nothing to do with her ever again. Physical abuse was horrible, but it was understandable. Praying to a personal god, one that could reply, that was a type of weird no one would understand.
“You still coming tomorrow?” Jaden asked.
“Tomorrow?”
“To my game,” Jaden said. “You said you were yesterday.”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday. I can’t. That’s when dad is giving me the birthday surprise. I would if I could, but I have to do that.”
Jaden nodded. “Sure. I understand.”
She couldn’t help but be crushed by the disappointment in his eyes. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll be there next time.”
Jaden went stiff at her touch.
Withdrawing, Katie blushed. “Sorry.”
“I need to go,” Jaden said. “I have class.”
She watched him rush away and cursed herself inside. Why had she kissed him like that? He didn’t feel the same way about her as she did about him. Why would he? She was the strange girl no one wanted to talk to.
But in that moment, she’d just wanted to reach out to him. To let him know someone cared more deeply than the others did. It wasn’t all popularity and giggles to her. She cared about the real him, behind the facade he constructed for other people.
Would he ever talk to her again?
Chapter 6
A New God
The train rattled over the rails, speeding toward Oslo. Katie stared out the window, her thoughts tumbling between too many things at once. She kept having to feel the gold in her backpack, to make sure it was still there. A half a million kroner’s worth of gold weighed a kilogram, but felt like much more. She wondered if anyone in the carriage suspected what she had in her bag. If they did, would they take it from her?
