by Ted Dekker
Alex didn’t respond.
“A sacrificial lamb to pay for her own guilt,” the priest said. “Every new moon. Now you’re doing the same, taking young women who at least loosely represent innocence, and offering them up to pay for your own sin. Like Alice did with you and Jessica.”
Alex stood quiet. Hearing the theory now in this dungeon, Heather knew it was true. The fear pressed against her, unrelenting. She kept looking up at Daniel, but he didn’t move.
“You’re wasting your time,” Alex finally said. But he said it in a voice filled with regret. And Heather knew then that Alex was as much a victim as Daniel. Looking at them both now, she wasn’t sure who was worse off.
The priest picked up the crucifix and stepped toward Alex. “You know that I hold a bigger stick, Alex. That the light dispels darkness easily if it is embraced. You’ve been in this world of darkness long enough to know that it is terrified of the light. Have you asked yourself why?”
Alex’s eyes dropped to the ornate religious symbol. “I’m not the one moved by trinkets.”
“But Eve is.”
“She’s not with me now. She’s on the ceiling.”
Daniel still hadn’t budged.
“And what does move you, Alex?”
“Nothing anymore. I’ve made my peace.”
“You’ve done all this for a good night’s sleep?”
Alex’s face twitched.
“I learned only yesterday that you’d been taken from your parents and brought here for Alice’s sick purposes,” Father Seymour said. “When Heather told me, my heart broke for you. I can’t imagine the horrors that pulled you kicking and screaming into hell itself.”
“We don’t have time for this.”
“You’ve never experienced true love, have you? Alice beat you to a pulp, and now you’re doing the same to other women. This is about mocking the firstborn among women, Eve. And all the daughters of God whom you believe cannot love you. After all, Alice didn’t love you.”
“Love does not exist.”
“Your sister loved you.”
Alex’s lips flattened. “My sister left me.”
Father Seymour took a breath. “The first time I met you at the shelter in Pasadena, I knew that you were special.”
“You don’t know Eve,” Alex said quietly. It was a warning. “She needs her home.”
“I just didn’t know how deep your torment ran. Even then my heart was breaking for you.”
“If you’re trying to stall me to give the FBI time to arrive, you’re only consigning Daniel to an early death. Make no mistake, Eve will kill him. There is no way for the FBI to stop her.”
“Not the FBI, no. But another . . .”
“No one can save him unless he believes.”
Father Seymour continued, undeterred. “Everyone is entitled to believe. Even me. I went to France two years after you disappeared, and it was there that my eyes were opened up to your world, Alex. To hell.”
A long beat.
“You have no idea what hell is.” Alex’s breathing had deepened.
Father Seymour shook his head. “You’ve been tortured all your life, but torturing others doesn’t absolve you. It only spares you from a little pain now.”
“Spoken like the perfect priest. Who doesn’t realize how close Eve is to shredding much more than the meninges of the corpse over your head.”
“What nightmares drove you, Alex? Were they the same as Daniel’s? Did the same little boy visit you in the box?”
The noticeable anger that had changed Alex’s demeanor swelled, reddening his face. “You lost your right to pry into my world when you threw me out of yours,” he snapped.
“You never entered my world,” the priest said.
Alex took two long steps toward the root cellar’s dimly lit door, then spun back, both hands gripped into fists. “Have you been whipped by a cat-o’-nine-tails?” he thundered. “Have you awakened every night screaming into tape?”
He gripped his shirt and ripped it off his shoulder, revealing thick, ugly scars. “Do you walk around with mangled skin?”
Alex trembled.
“Then walk away from Eve!” Father Seymour shouted.
Heather instinctively moved back.
Daniel hung on the ceiling.
The scene shifted from raw horror to surrealistic terror. This battle of wills on the ground while Daniel hung in the air, crucified by unseen hands.
FORTY
CONFUSION SWELLED IN Daniel’s mind like a black ocean tide, swirling, smothering the rocks of reason anchored deep in his psyche. And above the thundering black waves, a scream of rage. Not his.
Eve’s.
The boy was upset.
And with every fiber in his own mind and body, Daniel could feel Eve’s frustration, his anger, his outrage. Because he, too, resented the suggestion that those distant words spoken by Father Seymour, the foolish priest, could be true.
And yet every time the priest spoke, the boy grunted and groveled in his own stew of self-pity and rage.
Why do you hate the priest, Daniel?
Because he’s talking in these simple terms, as if his garbage has any real power in the real world.
And are you in the real world, Daniel?
I am. I always have been.
Why are you on the ceiling?
Am I?
Why do you feel so much pain? And fear? Are you afraid of that name?
Daniel had no words for this. Only a boiling fury at all that was wrapped up in that name, that symbolism, that ancient relic called the cross.
What if it’s more than just a name? More than symbolism?
The waves of darkness seemed to pause for a moment. That was the dreadful question. What if it were all true? What if he really had been wrong?
Daniel felt a new fear, born of desperation rather than the boy’s nightmare, grip his nerves. His flesh began to quiver spastically.
He knew then for the first time what he had to do. He had to look to the priest. However foolish, however offensive, however naive his words, the priest knew something that made the boy cringe.
Daniel had to know what the priest knew.
The boy’s face was suddenly inches from his own, black eyes pulsating, teeth bared, snarling.
“You pig, you pathetic pile of excrement!” Its putrid, steaming breath smothered Daniel. “You’re mine, my friend. And I’m going to kill you.”
Daniel closed his eyes and sobbed in horror.
“Say it! Tell me what you are, pig.”
He said it, panting, wishing for death.
“You’re a pathetic pile of excrement . . .”
HEATHER HAD TRIED TO SPEAK a dozen times, but every time she glanced up and saw Daniel’s black eyes staring straight down, her thoughts fled.
He spoke now, unmoving except for his mouth. “You’re a pile of excrement. A filthy, filthy sow.”
Saliva slipped past his stretched lips, forming a long string. Mixed with blood.
Fear shoved words past Heather’s throat.
“Stop it!”
None of them seemed to have heard her. Father Seymour was still coaxing Alex with words of truth. Alex stood unmoving, fists clenched, resilient.
Daniel just stared at her with black eyes. Drooling spittle and blood.
“Walk away from Eve,” Father Seymour said again.
“I’ve tried, a thousand times I’ve tried,” Alex said in a tremulous voice. He walked to the priest, grabbed the crucifix from his hand, and kissed it. Then tossed it aside. “You think that will help me? You think I don’t hate every minute of my life?”
“No, Alex. It’s this demon, Eve, you should hate.”
“She can hear you.” Alex breathed the warning again. “She has her needs.”
But the priest didn’t seem to care. “Alice introduced you to Eve’s world, and you tried to flee that world. You made it to Los Angeles, to the mission, to me, to the seminary. But she dragged you back and you went.
Hate her! Hate Eve!” He shoved a finger up at the ceiling. “Hate this genderless killer who’s left so many dead!”
A soft chuckle rolled through the chamber, swallowing all other sound. Heather jerked her eyes up. Saw that Daniel’s body had changed.
Where smooth pale flesh had covered his torso, now dark bruises and pronounced veins grew before her eyes. She’d seen the images of Eve’s other victims a thousand times, and Heather knew that whatever had killed them was wracking Daniel’s body now.
His face was shifting, skin stretching so tight over blackened teeth that she was sure it would split.
The chuckle became a soft hissing sound, but in the far distance behind that rush of air, she could hear a soft, echoing giggle. For the first time since he had risen to the ceiling, his head turned.
Slowly. Unblinking. Daniel’s gaze locked on her. Eyeing her with those black, lifeless eyes.
“Hello, Heather.” His voice growled more than spoke. “Do you want to be friends?”
Heather bumped into the wall at her back and began to slide down. She could hardly breathe, much less stand.
“I warned you,” Alex said.
Father Seymour stepped back and began to recite from the prayer book in a loud voice. “Word of God, Christ Jesus, God of all creation, empower me to do your bidding through Jesus Christ, who will come to judge the living and the dead.”
“It’s too late, Father,” the voice growled, slowly, stretching out each word. “His mind has been mine for a long time. He doesn’t believe. Even we believe.”
Seymour read on, louder. “I cast you out, Eve, most unclean spirit, invading power of darkness. In the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, be uprooted and expelled from this creature of God!”
Daniel’s whole body shook violently. In Daniel’s own voice now, “I told you not to say that! Torture me, you pathetic priest, and I’ll rip him meat from meat and then I’ll cut his pincushion to ribbons. Neither one of them is protected.”
“Stop it!” Heather screamed, cowering on the floor. “Please, stop it.”
But Eve did not stop. Two puncture wounds suddenly opened in the center of Daniel’s palms. Blood leaked out of the two holes, formed an unbroken stream that splashed on the ground and began to pool. Then the same from his overlapping bare feet. Three streams of blood to flesh out the crucifixion.
Heather turned from the gruesome sight and saw that Alex Price had lowered his head and closed his eyes. Even if he did have the power to stop it, he had no motivation.
The priest continued leveling the rites of exorcism, but his words seemed to do nothing more than torture Eve, and by extension, Daniel, whose condition was rapidly deteriorating.
“Release him. The love of Christ compels you.”
“I don’t have to, not alive.”
The skin on Daniel’s side suddenly split. A stigmata of the wound in Christ’s side. Blood drained in a thick cord.
Alex stood perfectly still, head bowed, eyes closed.
Heather wept, screaming now, unable to lower her eyes.
“Release him!” the priest cried. “Release him!”
Daniel started to giggle like a child.
“Alex?”
The voice came from behind them, speaking clearly, heard just above the din of horror. A woman’s voice.
And with that voice, the blood from Daniel’s wounds stopped flowing. As if the faucet had been turned off. Silence filled the root cellar.
Heather turned her head slowly. A woman was standing in the doorway, arms by her sides, staring at Alex’s back.
“Alex, it’s Jessica.”
But Heather didn’t know this woman as Jessica.
She knew her as Lori Ames.
FORTY-ONE
SOUND AND MOTION CAME to a standstill. Lori stared from the doorway, dressed in jeans and a white blouse, hair scattered by the wind. Heather didn’t know how long she’d been standing there—long enough to have taken in the room. She wasn’t looking at Daniel on the ceiling. Her eyes were fixed on Alex.
On her brother.
And the rest of them were staring at her. Except Alex, who had snapped his eyes wide at the sound of her voice, then frozen with his head still bowed and his back to her.
The last drops of blood from Daniel’s wounds splattered loudly in the spreading pool on the floor. Echoed. It was as if time had stopped in that moment, and with it, the cessation of all motion but the pumping and spilling and clotting of blood.
“Alex?”
Lori, who was Jessica, took a step and then stopped. Heather glanced up at Daniel and saw that his black eyes were fixed on Jessica. Curiosity or concern, she couldn’t tell. But the sudden entry of Alex’s sister had upset some kind of balance in the room.
Father Seymour stared at Jessica, mouth parted in a fascinated smile. His eyes darted to Alex.
“It’s her, Alex. It’s Jessica.”
Alex’s eyes still looked down, but they were spread wide.
“She’s behind you.”
“My sister is dead,” he whispered. “Eve killed her.”
“I warned you not to interfere, sow!” The gravelly voice had come from Daniel. “Now I kill them all.”
Jessica lifted her eyes and stared at him, bruised and bloodied, staring down at her. Tears were running down her cheeks.
“His blood is on your hands,” Daniel growled.
“I can’t run anymore,” she said softly. Then to Alex: “Listen to me, Alex. It’s Jessica. When I went back to the apartment, you were gone. I was sure you were dead.”
Her eyes flitted to Daniel. “I was afraid because of the threat . . . you know . . . But I never did stop caring and hoping.”
She stood trembling now, a frail woman racked by terrible emotions she’d managed to bury beneath years of struggle.
“Then I heard about Eve. For a long time I refused to believe it could be you.” Her voice quivered. “But when Heather told me about the cellar, I knew what I already knew.”
Alex lifted his head slowly. “Jessica is dead.”
A single chuckle from Daniel.
“Turn around, Alex,” the priest said. He seemed resolved, as if somehow the reunion of Alex and Jessica meant something to all of them.
“She’s no better than the others,” Daniel said in his own voice. “They’re all hopelessly caught up in themselves. None of them is protected.”
But the confidence in his voice had slipped, Heather thought.
Alex’s eyes shifted, perhaps sensing the same.
Jessica stepped cautiously forward now, lips trembling, eyes streaming clear tears, tears of remorse and sorrow, nothing else, Heather thought.
“Alex . . .” She spoke his name as if it hung from a crystal thread. “Alex, what have you done?”
Alex was still frozen, but now staring ahead with shimmering eyes.
“She’s a whore, Alex,” Eve said. “You took her punishment, and Alice turned her back on you.”
Jessica walked toward her brother. “Alex . . .” She stopped three feet behind him. “Can I see your face?”
Heather pushed herself to her feet.
Jessica reached out and touched her brother’s skin where he’d ripped the shirt from his shoulder. She lightly traced one of his scars.
Alex turned then, unevenly, shifting his feet several times to manage the full turn. For the first time in seventeen years, brother and sister saw each other.
“Jessica’s a filthy sow, sow, sow,” Daniel said. “You should whip her, Alex. Whip her now or I’ll have to do it for you.”
DANIEL WAS FEAR ITSELF. And the pain of that fear had so overtaken his body that it couldn’t respond. He was above them, bleeding, but they couldn’t possibly know the torment raging through his mind. He would gladly offer his skin, his limbs, his blood, his face—anything for relief from the horror.
Daniel had all of these thoughts in a brief moment while the fears regrouped for another charge, as he had come to think of it.
; Then it was back. Racking his nerves as if they’d been stripped from his body and strapped to the electric chair to weather the hammering joules by themselves.
He began to scream. How his throat could continue to shred itself as he shrieked helplessly became apparent only minutes ago. He’d been screaming for hours like this, but they couldn’t hear him, because Eve had found a way to stop his vocal cords. In their eyes, he was just hanging there, staring at them quietly.
Or worse, laughing.
Still, he couldn’t stop himself from screaming. This was Eve’s world, and Eve was killing him.
It hadn’t always been like this. He’d actually felt like himself when he awoke on the table. Disoriented, but free from any pain or thoughts of evil. It made him wonder later, when he realized he was Eve’s captive, whether a person could be Eve’s friend for many years before feeling the black paste of fear overtake them.
Fear momentarily retreated whenever the priest began to speak, but when he spoke that name, the flood came crashing in worse than before.
Like the tide momentarily drawing out before a tsunami crashes into shore, Eve was taking her rage out on him, pummeling the shores of his mind with a tsunami of black paste.
There were two things that Eve feared: He feared not having someone to kill. He feared that the priest would stop him from killing someone.
He did not fear the priest, but the words he spoke . . . That name, that name that even now Daniel couldn’t remember. A name that made Eve secretly—and sometimes not so secretly—cringe. Nothing else in the room had a similar effect.
Then the girl came in. The room went quiet. Daniel felt his blood stop flowing. For a moment even his screaming stopped.
But it started again almost immediately. Eve was interested in the sister, but that wouldn’t interrupt Daniel’s suffering. So he screamed on through their silence, unheard.
“ALEX.” JESSICA SAID HIS name again, as if she herself couldn’t quite accept finding him after all these years.
Her face wrinkled with terrible sorrow. She reached her hand out ever so slowly. Touched his face.
He did not react.
“Tell her to lie down on the table,” Eve said.
