“Which room do you think is his?” Max whispered as they reached the landing.
Three doors were closed before them, while another was open to a shared bathroom. The hall was small, so much so he could stretch his arms and almost touch every knob.
“That one.” Vera pointed to the room adjacent to the bathroom.
Max didn’t doubt her. He inched closer, a cloud of dust dancing in the light of the bathroom window. Moisture hung in the air from someone having showered recently without running the fan. Max wrinkled his nose, reaching his fingers for the scratched brass knob.
He was entering the room of the devil, or at least the room of the man who summoned the devil.
Max turned the knob and pushed it open, the wooden door scratching against the gray-blue carpet fibers.
The space was small. The walls were painted a cement gray and the full bed sat dead center, no headboard. There was a navy-and-green-plaid comforter rumpled at the foot, its hunter-green sheets twisted and unmade. Two maple nightstands sat on either side of it, mismatching. Atop the one closest to the window, with a bright ray of sun beaming down, was a small marble statue of the Angel. It sat on an ivory place mat that looked hand-embroidered, and it was surrounded by a pack of menthol cigarettes, a set of car keys, a small crystal bowl of what appeared to be sea salt, a conch shell, and a tiny bud vase holding a single bloom—a tangerine lily.
Max reached for his throat. He’d been in the room only seconds, not long enough for the pollen to cause a reaction, but he swore his throat was closing. Choking.
“The staff of the torch,” Max croaked. “It’s pointing right at his bed. How can he sleep like that?”
A skeleton dripping black tears gazed longingly at the pillow, waiting for its inhabitant. Watching. Ready. Max couldn’t peel his eyes away, his pulse sprinting beneath his skin. That statue—all of the horror inflicted on his life was because of that twelve-inch trinket worthy of a novelty store. Max marched toward it, eyes reduced to slits. Someone blew up his father because of this. Something infected his mother because of this.
He lifted it from the makeshift shrine. It was so light and puny, a participation trophy from a Little League baseball team. His fingers tightened around it. It wasn’t even marble. It felt like a cheap stone you could carve your name into with a steak knife. He made no conscious choice to bend his right elbow, to strain his shoulder as far back as it would reach and then slam the cursed hunk against the opposite wall with a satisfying crack.
He’d forgotten Vera was there until she yelped, black wavy hair swishing with surprise as cracked pieces of statue landed in chunks at her sandaled feet. Too close.
“Are you okay?” Max gasped, rushing over.
“I’m fine,” she murmured, though her voice sounded strained. She didn’t look him in the eyes.
Max stretched for the largest piece of remaining statue—the torso and two severed wings that now rested like an offering at her feet. The toothy edges felt sharp against his fingers as he held it out to her. “Want to take a turn? It’s surprisingly satisfying.”
Vera shifted toward the object, her gaze unfocused, head tilted as if unsure what he was presenting. Tentatively, she extended a delicate hand, cautiously inching as if the stone piece might be combustible.
Her nail brushed the surface of the wing, the slightest graze with the tip of her finger.
Then Vera hit the floor.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Vera
“Death is a superior state of consciousness. All confines of this plane do not exist once you cross over. You will be one spirit with the loved ones who have gone before you, and those you leave behind will reap the glory of your sacrifice. I know. I am living proof,” insists the man, a healthy glow on his face, proving his righteousness. The spirit spared his life, and he has made it his mission to share his gift with the world.
Rows of tan metal folding chairs fill the cool cinder-block space, adding to the temporary feel of the group, of their existence. Around Vera, there are candles flickering high in glass jars perched on wall sconces, Walmart tabletops, and dirty garden pedestals. Sweaty bodies press together, too many for the seats. On the concrete floor sit children cross-legged, some only toddlers. Infants are cradled on laps.
Vera hovers above the worshippers in this basement that reeks of mold, cat urine, and Christmas potpourri. She watches their heads bow in reverence to the most average guy in the world. She is an ethereal observer. They can’t see her in this room with no windows, no air.
“Join hands with your neighbors now, because you are not going alone. The sun that lights our days is also a star, just like those that light our nights. We are the same. Life and death are stages of the same existence, and soon we will embrace this next phase together.”
Everyone nods, humming with a drugged cadence as his words burrow into them, digging so deep that all prior thoughts and beliefs collapse. Vera spies Samantha sitting in the front row, eyes glistening, mouth hanging open in adoration. A girl no older than five squirms on the ground in front of her, and Samantha’s mother pats the child’s curly red hair. Collectively the group leans forward. Toward him. It is all about him.
Lining the walls are boxes piled high like moving day, brown paper sides bulging. Vera floats toward them, gazing inside. Yellow hats with a stupid logo. Ceramic magnets. Piles of hardback books self-published with a Comic Sans font. Caches upon caches of shrines to the Angel of Tears.
“We are all sharing an insignificant, temporary experience on Earth. This life is merely a bus stop, a brief discomfort to be gotten through before journeying on to our true destination,” the young man preaches, pacing before his worshippers. “The afterlife is endless harmony. Your loved ones yearn for you to join them. So I ask you, Why are we waiting? Why not ascend to that higher plane now? We are the chosen believers. Are you not ready?”
Eyes shoot up in unison, heads bobbing loosely, palms raised.
“Yes!”
“We’re with you!”
“I’m ready!”
A baby wails, then there is a glint of starburst. Vera can’t detect its source, but it draws her attention, pulling her near. Vera floats to the altar, fashioned from a cheap dining table and holding a supersized statue of the Angel of Tears. Beside it is another cardboard box.
Even here, even in a space outside of herself, Vera is chilled with icy particles of dread.
She hovers above the carton, peering inside.
Chalices.
Dozens upon dozens are stacked in bubble wrap, their gold trim gleaming through the rippling plastic.
They are waiting to be distributed.
They are waiting to be drunk from.
Together.
In unison.
One last drink.
Forever.
* * *
“No!” Vera shouted, eyes blinking rapidly as the bedroom came back into focus. She was on her back, goose bumps covering her arms, staring at a burnt-orange water stain on an unfamiliar ceiling. Had she fallen?
“Vera? Talk to me. You’re freezing.” Max’s hands gripped her shoulders, shaking her slightly as she returned to her senses.
God, this room. Her eyes danced around at the plaid bedspread, the dated furniture, the bland wall color. It was exactly as it had been when the boy lay there on the brink of death, his mother sobbing and clutching his hand while his father placed the statue by his side. The shrine wasn’t just on that nightstand, it was the entire room, a devotion not just to the Angel of Tears but to his father, Seth Durand, to the man who blew up Roaring Creek. This was a time capsule to his sacrifice, his destruction.
“Are you okay?” Max’s words were slow and deliberate, as though she might not understand.
“Yes. I mean, no.” Vera sat up abruptly, the room spinning on a merry-go-round. She wobbled, a
nd Max steadied her shoulders once more. “It’s evil. He’s evil.”
“No kidding,” Max quipped. “What happened? You passed out.”
“A vision.” She raised her hand to her pounding head, her fingers icicles. “It’s mass suicide. That’s what it wants. That’s what they’re planning—full Kool-Aid. I saw Anatole trying to convince them. There are little kids.” Her voice broke.
The rally, the carnival events. Anatole Durand was oozing through the town square right now recruiting more offerings to the Angel of Tears. That was the endgame—to consume Roaring Creek with enough grief that its weakened citizens would obey whispered commands to blow up buildings and down cups of poison. Once the monster overtook their small town, its empowered shadow would spread across the rest of the world, one mass tragedy at a time.
“Are you sure?” Max asked, sounding shocked.
Vera nodded. “The basement, it’s full of chalices—boxes of them—just like the one that broke in my house during the hurricane. I’m not sure when, but he’s going to fill them with poison and distribute them—”
“Not if he can’t find them.” Max popped to his feet. “Maybe we can’t stop the devil ourselves, but we can slow it down a bit. Turns out I like breaking things.” He nodded to the remnants of a statue littering the carpet around her.
It was a start, something they could do.
Max extended a palm and helped Vera to her unstable feet, her body swaying and her stomach sloshing. She took a slow breath.
“Can you walk?” He looked concerned.
“Just a head rush.” She pressed her temples, hands still frozen. It was as if the chill of the room, the vision, stayed with her. This was new. Whatever was surging inside her was growing rapidly.
He clasped her hand. “I got you.”
She followed Max out of the room and down the six steps to the cookie-cutter living room. Off the kitchen was another small set of stairs that would lead them to a finished basement, and below that, a few steps that descended to a damp cellar. Max nudged her toward their destination, but Vera halted, feeling a sharp tug—not physically, not externally—something inside, deep in her bones. She was being pulled in another direction. Vera’s eyes shot toward the coat closet.
“Come on, let’s go. We don’t know how much time we have.” Max pulled, her shoulder straining in its socket.
She was unmoving. Didn’t he hear that? A buzzing. No, a whispering, a finger raised in a restaurant, gesturing Check, please; look over here. Vera turned toward the front door.
Something was in that closet.
“I’ll meet you down there.” Her voice was flat.
“What? I’m not leaving you. They could be back any second!” He yanked again, but she jerked her arm free, spinning his way.
“I have to do something. Give me a minute. Find the chalices. I’m right behind you!” She shoved his shoulders as confusion clouded his eyes.
“But—!”
“Do you trust me?” Her eyes were earnest.
“Of course.”
“Then I’ll meet you down there, sixty seconds.”
“You’ve got one minute, then I’m coming after you.”
“I’m counting on it.”
He held her gaze, and for an odd moment, she felt the urge to hug him, even kiss him, reassure him. She resisted the sensation and turned on her heel. Then she marched to the closet, Max’s feet barreling down the basement steps.
An instinct, that feeling you get when you know you’ve forgotten something but you’re not sure what, took over. She opened the closet door, a dormant part of her brain searching for what it needed to find. Then she dropped to her knees, and her jeans scraped against a raised nail in a floorboard, as her hands dug into the cluttered mess of rain boots and umbrellas. She stretched to the far back corner, and her fingertips brushed against the hard plastic she suddenly knew she was looking for. She grabbed the rim and pulled the object free.
A hard hat.
She clutched the molded cap, staring in wonderment. It was white, or it used to be. Now it was almost gray, a coating of soot baked into it. The brim was cracked, and the edge of one side was warped, maybe melted.
It was his hat. Vera saw it on the head of Seth Durand in her vision, the day he descended the steps into the basement of the community center, the day he lifted his wrench. It must have been given to his widow by the town after the case was closed. Only, the woman didn’t memorialize it; she didn’t place it with the shrine in her son’s room. Instead, she hid it in a closet.
Why?
Though down deep, Vera felt she knew. She just needed to remember.
Vera rose to her feet, flinging open the front door and sprinting across the lawn toward Maxwell’s truck. She tossed the hat inside, and it landed with a soft plop on the passenger seat. She wasn’t sure why she needed it, or how she even found it, but somewhere inside, she knew she had to have it.
Her body slid out, and as she slammed the door shut, another chill overtook her, more severe than what she’d felt in the vision.
Something was coming. A sound revved, a motor.
Vera turned toward the end of the street as a van swung around the corner, midnight green with a business emblem adorned on one side featuring pink, delicate, cursive script: Durand Flowers.
They were here.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Max
The chalices were easy to find. The concrete floor of the dank cellar was stacked high with boxes upon boxes overflowing with yellow hats, evil statues, and cursed crystal. Cheap, assembly-style folding chairs faced a makeshift shrine to the Angel of Tears assembled on a table worthy of beer pong. This is the base of Operation Destroy the World? This is what drew my mother?
Max reached into a carton and without a moment of hesitation, unfurled the bubble wrap from a delicate gold-trimmed chalice, and flung it against the butter-yellow cinder-block wall like he was a World Series relief pitcher. Glass sprayed out, the clatter sending a burst of exhilaration through him as glittering dust rained down. He grabbed another, smashing it at his feet, a stray shard ricocheting against his calf. Blood bubbled. He didn’t care.
He lifted another, then another, then another. Each throw harder than the last, his grip so tight one shattered in his hand, slicing his palm. He kept going, his brow slick from exertion. Eventually, he picked up an entire box, warm slimy blood dripping from his palms, spilling down his forearms, as he upended the objects onto the floor and stomped with his sneakered feet. The shattering sang with the pitch of a piccolo. He grabbed another carton, hurling it at the wall, a pool of burgundy blood forming below him.
He kept slamming, box after box, glass after glass.
The racket was deafening. Until he heard the car.
* * *
Max inched open the front door and spied a man glaring at Vera. He was only slightly older than them, tall and built, with blond hair in a style not far off from a bowl cut. Beside him was an older woman in a frumpy dress, mustard yellow with bright tropical flowers that mimicked exotic parrots. A van that read Durand Flowers was parked in the driveway.
Shit.
“If you’re interested in learning more about the Sunshine Crew, I wish you would’ve come to our rally,” said Anatole, stepping forward, his shadow cast on Vera. Max’s fists balled, blood dripping. “We’re expanding our reach in the hope that all souls, young and old, will learn to channel their inner wisdom and elevate their thinking to a higher state of authenticity.”
What? Max’s brow furrowed. Are those even words? He zeroed in on Vera, making sure she saw him. She did, but she didn’t give away his position. The Durands had their backs to him.
“That’s spectacular.” Vera kept a straight face. “I’m really looking for a life hack that offers a holistic approach to ideation that would brand me an influencer on
a hyperlocal scale.”
Max blinked. Two points for the loner girl with her nose in a book.
“What?” Anatole asked, looking confused.
“Sorry, I was trying to see how many buzzwords I could fit into one sentence. That’s what you do, right? Or are you more focused on the demon side of things? Tell me: what draws in more people, the Sunshine act or the Angel of Tears?” Vera’s voice didn’t waver.
Damn. Max grinned. Turned out her brand of badass wasn’t limited to demonic possession.
“You really want to do this?” Anatole’s words were clipped. Max stepped from the stoop, gently shutting the screen door without so much as a click.
“I’m not going to let you poison a bunch of people and their kids,” Vera blurted.
Max held his breath, the air buzzing with the vibe that this was about to get bad.
“You need to end this.” Vera’s voice was strong. “Let Maxwell’s mother go. Let them all go.”
“Oh, gee, since you asked so nicely.” Anatole puffed his chest, still oblivious to Max’s presence. So was his mother. “I’m actually kinda glad you’re here. Today’s a blessed day. Wanna come in? Have a drink?”
“Kool-Aid in a crystal chalice? I’ll pass,” Vera spat. “We’re going to stop you.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Anatole snorted, his face pressed toward her. Max edged closer. “From what I hear, your parents are out of town, and by the time they get back, it’ll all be over. Oh, and tell your priest that the Bible thumpers he sent to watch the house are adorable. Maybe try sending bunnies next time?”
Max stopped. His mom. Where was his mom? If the church group left, then who was watching her? Fear slithered up his spine, hissing in his ear. He pictured all those people at the rally. The kids. She wouldn’t hurt them. No, he had to believe she wouldn’t hurt them.
“It’s too late,” interjected the mother. Mary was her name—at least, that was what Max thought he remembered from the news. She swished forward in her floral dress. “Lilith is evolving, becoming.”
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