Later

63

He was like a burned log with fire still inside. I don’t know any other way to put it. He had turned black, but his skin was cracked in dozens of places and that brilliant deadlight shone through. It was coming out of his nose, his eyes, even his ears. When he opened his mouth, it came out of there, too.

He grinned and lifted his arms. “Let’s try the ritual again and see who wins this time. I think you owe me that, since I saved you from her.”

He hurried down the stairs toward me, ready for the big reunion scene. Instinct told me to turn tail and run, but something deeper told me to stand pat no matter how much I wanted to flee that oncoming horror. If I did, it would grab me from behind, wrap its charred arms around me, and that would be the end. It would win, and I would become its slave, bound to come when it called. It would possess me alive as it had possessed Therriault dead, which would be worse.

“Stop,” I said, and the blackened husk of Therriault stopped at the foot of the stairs. Those outstretched arms were less than a foot from me.

“Go away. I’m done with you. Forever.”

“You’ll never be done with me.” And then it said one more word, one that made my skin pebble with goosebumps and the hair stand up on the nape of my neck. “Champ.”

“Wait and see,” I said. Brave words, but I couldn’t keep the tremble out of my voice.

Still the arms were outstretched, the blackened hands with their brilliant cracks inches from my neck. “If you really want to get rid of me for good, take hold. We’ll do the ritual again, and it will be fairer, because this time I’m ready for you.”

I was weirdly tempted, don’t ask me why, but a part of me that was far beyond ego and deeper than instinct prevailed. You may beat the devil once—through providence, bravery, dumbass luck, or a combination of all—but not twice. I don’t think anyone but saints beat the devil twice, and maybe not even them.

“Go.” It was my turn to point like Scrooge’s last ghost. I pointed at the door.

The thing raised Therriault’s charred and sooty lip in a sneer. “You can’t send me away, Jamie. Don’t you realize that by now? We’re bound to one another. You didn’t think of the consequences. But here we are.”

I repeated my one word. It was all I could squeeze out of a throat that suddenly felt like it was the width of a pin.

Therriault’s body seemed poised to close the distance between us, to leap at me and close me in its awful embrace, but it didn’t. Maybe it couldn’t.

Liz shrank away as it passed her by. I expected it to go right through the door—as I had passed through Marsden—but whatever that thing was, it was no ghost. Its hand grasped the knob and turned it, more skin splitting and more light shining through. The door swung open.

It turned back to me. “Oh whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad.”

Then it left.