The Harrowing

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Logs burned in the hearth, rolling orange flame.

In the center of the lounge, the round table was set up with five chairs. Candles flickered at the points of a pentagram chalked on the surface.

Martin’s limp body was propped up in one of the five chairs. Lisa and Robin were winding clothesline around and around his torso, tying him to the chair. They wrapped him over and over, a thick coat of ropes, threaded through the slats of the chair—but they had no idea of the strength of the thing inside him or whether the ropes would hold at all.

They had thrown blankets over the arched windows to block the firelight, and they’d rolled back the cabbage-rose carpet. Cain was on his knees, shoulder wrapped, drawing a large pentagram with chalk on the bare floor around the table while keeping a wary eye on Martin; the ax, wiped clean of Patrick’s blood, was close by his side. A Coleman lantern beamed a star of yellow light from a side table. Rain fell in a steady curtain outside. It all had a sense of unreality.

Robin tried to focus entirely on the rope in her hands. With Patrick lying dead two floors above them, any kind of thought was unbearable.

Cain finished the last line of the pentagram and stood up, brushing chalk from his jeans.

Robin bent over Martin to tie another knot—Lisa suddenly cried out behind her, “Robin!”

Robin glanced down. Martin’s eyes were open beneath her. She gasped and pulled back, her heart pounding madly.

Martin looked up at her, his eyes hurt, dazed. The side of his face was bruised, pulpy from the blow of the bat. He muttered weakly, “Robin? What’s…happening?”

The others gathered warily, Cain brandishing the bat Martin looked around at them all shakily. “I was in the attic. You left. Then…what? I don’t…remember.”

He gasped, seeing his own blood-soaked shirt. “Oh my God. Robin…” He looked up at her, trembling, terrified.

Robin hesitated. “Martin?” She stepped carefully forward. Cain said sharply, “No—”

Robin leaned in toward Martin and slapped him hard across the face.

Martin’s eyes popped open wide, flaming black. Quick as a snake, he lunged up at Robin’s throat, mouth wide, teeth bared, cords straining in his neck.

Robin jumped away just as Martin’s teeth closed on air with a sickening crunch. Lisa jolted back, freaked.

The Qlippah writhed in Martin’s body, sliding in the chair, hissing and spitting. “You dare? YOU DARE? Let me go.“ All pretense of humanity was gone. It strained at the rope, chest bulging, eyes popping, bellowing like a bull.

Cain raised the bat high, ready to strike. Martin bucked, the ropes scraping at his skin, opening flesh. But the Qlippah seemed to be contained by Martin’s physical form—the smallish body unable to break free of the layers of rope.

The table began to shake, rattling on its legs. Lisa and Robin froze in disbelief.

Cain shouted, “You’re going all right. Back to the Abyss.”

The table stopped. The Martin-thing grinned up at him, a chilling sight. “No precedent, counselor. You’ve lost your fifth. The star is broken.”

Cain’s face hardened. He turned, shot Robin a look through the flickering yellow light.

Robin nodded, took Lisa’s hand, pulled her toward the doorway. “Come on.”

As they passed Cain, she whispered to him, “Be careful.” Their eyes met and he brushed her fingers with his before turning back to the thing that had been Martin.

Robin pulled Lisa out through the arched door, into the hollow darkness of the main hall.

Lisa was sobbing through clenched teeth as she and Robin climbed the shadowy main stairs. “I can’t stand it. I can’t.”

Robin stared upward into the dark. “Just a little bit more,” she said, hoping her voice was steady.

On the second floor, Robin and Lisa stepped into the blue light of the laundry room.

Patrick’s body lay on the floor in a pool of blood, his eyes wide and staring.

Lisa crumpled into sobs again. Robin’s eyes filled with tears, her heart twisting in her chest.

They both knelt beside him on the warped linoleum. Lisa cradled the blond head in her lap. She passed her hands tenderly over his eyelids, shutting his eyes, then stroked his face and hair.

Robin held his hand in hers and thought fiercely, You saved us. I’ll never forget what you did I’ll never forget you. Never. You ‘re part of me forever.

They were both silent for a time, holding him. Lisa seemed almost calm, dreamily stroking his hair. Then Robin met Lisa’s eyes.

“He would want us to, you know.”

Lisa nodded. Robin looked down on Patrick’s body, swallowed through the ache in her throat. “We need you, cowboy.”

In the long, shadowed space of the lounge, Cain gritted his teeth against the throbbing in his shoulder and bent to light candles at each of the five points of the chalk pentagram on the floor.

The Qlippah watched from Martin’s body, its head lolling grotesquely against the chair back. “Don’t forget the fairy dust,” it gibbered. “You have to sprinkle it on me and knock your heels together three times.”

Cain stood, fought a wave of dizziness at the pain. He breathed in shallowly, slid his left hand into the front pocket of his jeans for his lighter, stepped to the fireplace to light the candles on the mantel.

The Qlippah watched greedily with Martin’s eyes. “You know you don’t believe this bullshit. Can’t do kike rituals if you don’t believe. Better men have tried.”

Cain ignored the leering thing. He stooped to one of the duffels, pulled out the printout of the ritual they’d lifted off the Web. The title at the top read, “The Greater Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.”

The Qlippah looked straight into the fire. The flames suddenly leapt up, blazing, showering sparks into the room. Cain jumped back from the burning pinpoints.

The Qlippah smiled loftily with Martin’s mouth. “Are you a priest now? A rabbi? You, who believe in nothing! Son of a syphilitic whore, and not just in a manner of speaking…”

Cain stiffened, his hands clenching.

A smile twisted across Martin’s face. The Qlippah’s voice became cunning, crafty. “Want to know who your father is?” it crooned. “I can tell you. It’s not pretty, but at long last you would know.”

Cain turned on it. “Shut up,” he whispered. In his hand was a switchblade. He snicked it open. The blade gleamed silver in the firelight.

Martin’s face rippled and dimpled, as if snakes were moving under the skin. The Qlippah’s whisper was sibilant, inhuman. “You’ll fail. You’ll fail because you come from dirt. You come from scum. You are not worthy.”

Cain’s face was drained of color. The hand holding the knife dropped to his side.

Something thudded on the main stairway.

Cain came back to himself, spun toward the sound, brandishing the knife.

There was another thud, another, and then a soft dragging, coming toward the doorway of the lounge.

Robin and Lisa appeared in the doorway, pulling Patrick’s body between them on the polished floor, panting at the strain of the dead weight.

For a moment, an animal rage played across Martin’s face, then the Qlippah bared its teeth in a hideous grin.

“Ah. Company. Daddy’s best boy.”

Cain stepped forward to help the girls drag Patrick’s body to the table. The three of them stooped and, straining, lifted the corpse into a chair Cain had placed on one of the points of the chalk pentagram, across from Martin’s splayed form.

The corpse slumped heavily in the chair. Lisa wrapped her arms around Patrick’s torso and held him up from behind. Robin wound rope around him, tying him up into a sitting position, trying not to think too hard about what she was doing. She glanced at Lisa, saw her face was deathly pale but determined.

Across from them, the Qlippah squirmed and jeered in Martin’s body, the ropes chafing flesh. “Clever children. Extraordinary children. But doesn’t it say in your little do-it-yourself manual? It doesn’t count if he’s D E A D !”

The Qlippah bellowed the last word, an earsplitting shout. All the windows rattled, as if some huge force were shaking the Hall.

Robin recoiled. Beside her, Lisa sucked in her breath, eyes wide with terror. The rattling continued all around them, deafening.

Then it abruptly stopped. Nothing but the sound of their own tortured breathing.

The Qlippah grinned around at them ferally, tongue lolling from Martin’s mouth. “It doesn’t count if he’s dead,” it crooned again.

Cain stared down at it grimly. “It doesn’t say that. It says we all need to be here.” He looked at Robin and Lisa, flanking Patrick’s lifeless body. “We’re all here.”

He picked up the printout of the ritual, then hesitated, glancing at Robin, a stark, uncertain look. She met his eyes, mouthed Yes.

With an almost graceful formality, Robin, Cain, and Lisa all took their places at the points of the pentagram Cain had drawn—the Qlippah squirming in its chair on the fourth point, Patrick’s body tied to the chair on the fifth.

Robin stared down at the chalked pentagram, and despite her apprehension, she felt a rush of something like excitement. There was a palpable energy about the ancient symbol—a sense of power and infinity. It worked for someone, all those years ago. Maybe it can work for us.

Cain looked down at the printout they had made of the Key of Solomon.

“First we mix our blood.”

Robin and Lisa blanched as he lifted the knife and cut his palm, then stepped forward and let the blood spill into the bowl he had placed in the pentagram on the center of the table.

“Why don’t we all hump instead?” The Martin-thing suggested, pumping its hips upward spastically. “That’ll bond us.”

This is what evil is, Robin realized. So close to human, but a perversion of all that is human. I understand now.

Cain passed the knife to Robin. The blade gleamed. She clenched the knife in one hand and

sliced into her palm. The sharp pain was almost surprising. She thought briefly, After all this, I wonder if I’ll ever feel again.

She held her palm over the bowl, felt her pulse throb in the wound. The blood flowed black into the metal bowl, mixing with Cain’s.

Robin looked to Lisa, unsure of how she’d handle it, but Lisa didn’t hesitate. She stepped forward and slashed her palm grimly, looking down at Martin with eyes like ice.

Then Cain took the knife from her and cut into Patrick’s stiffening palm, squeezed the dead flesh together to force blood into the bowl.

When he turned to Martin, the Qlippah started to thrash in the chair, ranting. “Nooo… stay away, scum….” Its voice turned to a deep, mindless bellow, like the lowing of an ox.

Cain grabbed one of the hands bound tightly to Martin’s chest and cut into it. Robin stepped quickly beside him to catch the dripping blood in the bowl.

The Qlippah’s bellows turned to crooning. “Ahhh…lovely…deeper…cutme….”

Cain turned with the bowl of blood and placed it on the table, then stepped back to stand at his point of the pentagram. Robin and Lisa moved into their points.

Cain lifted the book and read in a strong, clear voice.

“We come together in the name of the Unknowable Unknown to banish this unclean thing from the body of our friend Martin Seltzer.”

The candles flickered on the mantel as if on an altar. With fingers pressed together, Cain touched his forehead, the center of his chest, his right shoulder, and then his left shoulder as he recited from the book, his eyes intense as a priest’s:

“Ateh…Malkuth…ve Geburah…ve Gedulah…”

The Qlippah spat at them, writhing in its chair. “This little Jewish ritual didn’t help poor little Zachary and his poor little friends, though, did it?”

Robin and Lisa looked into each other’s eyes and followed Cain’s hand motions on their own bodies, speaking over the Qlippah in concert with Cain.

“Ateh…Malkuth…ve Geburah…ve Gedulah…”

The Qlippah convulsed in Martin’s body, screaming over them in a rage.

“They burned. They screamed as they burned .…”

Cain looked straight at the squirming creature, clasped his hand on his chest, speaking over it.

“Le-Olahm, Amen.”

Robin was struck by the power in his voice, even as she and Lisa clasped their hands on their chests, repeating firmly, “Le-Olahm, Amen.”

The rappings started again, a wave of knocking in the ceiling and walls. The chair underneath Martin rattled in tandem, bucking on the floor.

Lisa backed off her point of the pentagram, staring around at the walls, her eyes wide and glazed. The walls bulged with the pounding.

The Qlippah giggled horribly. “You’re next, Lisa. I’m coming for you. Coming all over you—”

Cain shouted, “Lisa!”

Lisa whirled to face them, unseeing. “No…” She bolted toward the arched door of the lounge. Robin lunged and grabbed her arms. Lisa struggled against her in sheer terror. “It can’t—we can’t—it can’t work.”

Robin shouted in Lisa’s face, her voice rising above the rappings, above the laughter. “Lisa. Think. None of this is possible at all, but it’s happening.” For a moment, Lisa’s eyes seemed to register.

Martin’s eyes grew crafty, the Qlippah shining through them, rippling on his face. “You’re going to die to save this pathetic Shell? He betrayed you. He knew what I am, and he used you to call me—”

Lisa flinched, looked toward Martin’s heaving body. He flung his words at Lisa. “He used you, and Cowboy died for it.”

Robin spoke fiercely, her voice raw. “Don’t listen. It lies.” She dug her fingers into Lisa’s arms. “We have to believe it. We have to do it. For Patrick. For Martin.”

Behind them, the Qlippah bellowed. “LISAAAA…”

Lisa twisted out of Robin’s grasp with a guttural cry, but she faced the Qlippah, eyes blazing. “Fuck you.” She stalked back to her point of the pentagram. Robin followed and the three of them took the same breath.

Cain stepped forward to the table, dipped his fingers in the bowl of blood.

He turned to the east and traced a pentagram in the air in front of him. Then he extended his hands in front of him, palms outward, clenched his hands, and pulled them suddenly open, as if pulling aside a set of curtains. He called out fiercely, “We open the portal of fire!”

Fire jumped in the hearth, blazing upward with a roar. Robin and Lisa gasped. All around the room, the candles flared up. Even the light in the Coleman lantern leapt, beating against the glass.

Martin started to spit and writhe in the chair, bellowing inhumanly. Lightning cracked in the sky outside, lighting up the corners of the blankets covering the windows.

Cain and Lisa stood still, stupefied. Robin stared around her at the rush of light, the live fire.

She realized Cain was looking at her, waiting for her to continue. She forced herself to unfreeze, to move. She stepped forward to dip her fingers into the bowl of blood.

She turned to the south, traced a pentagram in the air, and called out clearly, “We open the portal of air!”

She extended her hands in front of her, clasped them, and pulled them apart, as if ripping aside a set of curtains.

A wind rushed through the room, a roar in her ears…as if a huge door had opened to the elements. Robin had to brace her feet on the floor and lean forward against the wind. She saw Cain and Lisa doing the same. She was dizzy, almost deaf from the howling.

It’s working, she thought in wild disbelief. We’re doing something…

Martin twisted, convulsing, moaning in pain.

Cain called out over the howling of the wind. “Lisa!”

Lisa struggled forward through the wind, dipped her fingers in the bowl of blood, and turned to the west. She was shaking as she traced the pentagram, but her voice was strong.

“We open the portal of water!”

She extended her hands in front of her and pulled them apart.

Outside, thunder boomed, shaking the sky. Rain started to fall in a torrent, driving into the ground. The rapping started again, intensifying. The Qlippah bucked in its chair, howling with the wind.

Robin felt herself start to go numb with the unreality of it, her mind almost pleasantly detaching from the bizarreness around her. From far away, she caught a glimpse of Lisa’s face, white as a sheet but abstracted, puzzled….

It’s shock, she thought, We’re all going into shock.

Robin forced her mind back into consciousness, shouted, “Lisa! You guys!”

Lisa looked at her, startled, focusing.

Cain jolted back to awareness, shot Robin an admiring look. “Come on!” He stepped behind Patrick’s chair, and the two girls joined him. They turned Patrick’s chair around to the north, and all three dipped their fingers into the bowl of blood. They all put one hand on Patrick’s shoulder and used their other hand to trace the pentagram in the air. Simultaneously, they shouted to the air, “We open the portal of earth!”

All three made the gesture of pulling curtains open.

Beneath them, the ground started to shake, rumbling as if in an earthquake.

Lisa gasped, stumbled. Robin fought for her own balance, grabbed Lisa’s arm to steady her. The Qlippah shrieked with laughter.

Cain shouted at them through the chaos, “Help me. Get him around.”

He grabbed the back of Patrick’s chair with his good arm. The girls leapt forward and the three of them strained to turn Patrick back to the table. The earth rolled and shook beneath them.

Cain pulled back and shouted, “Back to your points!” They all stumbled to their places on the pentagram and faced Martin, teetering for balance on the shaking floor. Cain picked up the bowl of blood and hurled the contents at Martin, splashing him with blood. The Qlippah screamed with rage.

Through the wind and rumbling, the three of them started to chant. “We banish you with fire. We banish you with air. We banish you with water. We banish you with earth.”

The Qlippah shouted over them. “You can’t get rid of me. I came from you, Robin. You called me and I came.”

Robin flinched, but she kept chanting with Lisa and Cain, eyes locked on Martin in the firelight.

“We banish you with fire. We banish you with air. We banish you with water. We banish you with earth.”

Martin’s gaze burned into Robin, the Qlippah shining through them, rippling on his face. “You can’t get rid of me, because I’m you. Your envy. Your fury. Your hatred.”

Robin faltered, looked into Martin’s bottomless eyes. The Qlippah smiled.

“You hated her. You wanted her dead. I made her dead. I am you.”

Robin cried out in anguish.

And at that hesitation, all three were suddenly blown backward by some immense force. Robin felt her breath knocked out of her. She was lifted and hurled; there was a crash and blinding pain.

The three of them slammed into the wall and slid to the floor.

Robin lay against the baseboard, bright lights swirling in her head, her skull throbbing from the blow. Beside her, Lisa was holding her arm, staring down at it. It dangled at a sickening angle.

Martin started to laugh wildly, the hideous insect voice of the Qlippah. The rapping raced through the ceiling. The walls bulged out sickeningly, like flesh; the ceiling cracked. White flakes were falling; Robin stared at the powdery dusting on her arm, mesmerized. It’s snowing, she thought in vague disbelief. The roof must have…split open….

Cain pushed himself up to sitting and grabbed Robin’s arm, twisted her around to face him. “It’s not working,” he shouted over the chaos. “We have to bail.”

Outside, thunder boomed, shaking the building. The Hall groaned as if the entire structure was coming loose from its foundation. Something like rocks began to thud on the floor around them.

In a daze, Robin looked up and realized the ceiling was raining down in flakes and chunks around them.

Robin turned and stared across the pentagram at Martin, who was still tied to the chair. His bloody face was twisted with glee, the Qlippah rioting across his features. The spirit writhed inside his body, laughing at them through the chaos of elements. It shrieked at her. “I am you. I am you. I am you.”

Robin screamed out, “No.”

Cain staggered to his feet and lunged for the fire ax on the floor. He jerked it up, drew back his arm to swing the blade at Martin’s head.

Robin leaped to her feet and seized Cain’s arm, fingernails digging into his flesh. “No. Wait—”

Cain looked at her frenzied face and fell back. She advanced on the Qlippah, her voice raw.

“You lie. I have friends. I have love. I have life.”

Light.

Her mind flew through what she knew. The Qlippoth had broken because they could not hold the light. They couldn’t hold life.

Light.

Love.

Life.

She stared at the hideous thing in the chair. Martin was alive in there. If they could reach his being, fill him, love him…

She grabbed Cain’s hand. “The Qlippoth shattered because they couldn’t hold the light. They can’t bear light.” Cain looked back at her, questioning. Robin faced the Qlippah, braced herself against the wind ripping around them, and spoke aloud.

“Martin, I know you’re in there.”

The Qlippah cackled. “Martin’s dead! Cowboy’s dead! You’re all going to die!”

Robin took another step forward against the wind, forced herself to stare into the mad, demonic face. “I know you’re in there, Martin. Come back to us. We’re here for you…We’re here.”

Cain was suddenly beside her, looking at Martin’s face intently. “Come out, Martin. Come back.”

Robin spoke with him. “You’re not alone, Martin. You have us. We’re here. We love you. Come to us. Come back.”

Lisa pushed herself to her knees, wincing as she stood. She stepped beside Cain and Robin, holding her useless arm, and called against the wind.

“Please come back, Martin….”

Without realizing, without meaning to, the three of them spoke it at once.

“Martin.”

And for a fleeting second, Martin’s own face flickered through the mad visage of the Qlippah. His eyes, desperately unhappy, stared up into theirs.

Robin jolted, then called to him urgently. “Martin. It’s in your body, Martin. It’s your body. Send it out.”

Cain took up the call, overlapping her, “Send it out, Martin.”

Lisa’s eyes blazed and she ground out, “Send it the fuck out.”

All three of them shouted, “Send it out!”

The Hall shook to its foundations. In the chair in front of them, Martin spasmed, choking, flesh and mind rebelling against the cruel invasive spirit. And then Martin’s features emerged from the horrible slack formlessness of the Qlippah’s face. His own eyes met Robin’s in desperate appeal, and unfathomable courage, and Martin gasped out in his own voice, “Leave…me….”

A terrible struggle raged in the flesh of Martin’s face…human features racked with a rippling evil, nerves and muscles contorting with the battle.

A whoosh of energy rose from Martin’s body, invisible but palpable. Robin froze, overwhelmed with the sheer force of it. She saw Cain and Lisa staring upward, paralyzed. The energy ripped through the air and cycloned around the room, gusting through the flames in the hearth, shaking the windows, blowing the curtains into a frenzy, overturning everything in its path.

Robin held tightly to Cain. He grabbed Lisa and they clung to one another as furniture rattled and jumped around them. Above them, the ceiling beams groaned.

Lisa was screaming. Robin couldn’t tell if she was, too.

The energy spiraled, raging around the room. The couch flipped over, and books exploded out of the shelves, pages flying. The mirror shattered above the hearth, raining glass.

In the midst of the tumult, Robin heard a small, frightened voice.

“What’s happening?”

She whipped around. In the chair, Martin sat with eyes wide open, staring in terror at the thundering chaos around him.

Robin gasped, fixed on his face. “Martin?”

He looked back at her, small and lost. “What’s happening? Where are we?”

His voice was hoarse, but the horrible alien sound was gone. Robin stared at him, hardly daring to hope. There was no sign of the mad gleam of the Qlippah.

Martin’s eyes fell on Patrick’s dead body tied across from him. He cried out, “Oh my God…what’s happening?”

A ceiling beam split and crashed down toward the floor. Cain barely leapt out of the way in time.

Robin ran to Martin, squeezed his shoulders. “Hold on. Don’t let it back in.”

The energy whooshed around the room, then blew straight against the table, flipping it, crashing it against the wall. The four of them struggled against the blast, screaming. Patrick’s dead body jumped with the force of it. Glass blasted inward as all the windows suddenly burst, showering them with shards of glass. Rain gusted in from the outside; lightning branched in the sky. A guttural, disembodied howl of rage tore through the room. The energy cycloned, shaking the windows, making the fire blaze up, shredding the curtains, spiraling papers and plaster and broken furniture up into a funnel of black wind and rage.

And then it was as if the cyclone had been sucked into space. Suddenly, everything was still.

The silence was deafening, like a ringing in Robin’s ears. The four of them looked around them, stunned.

The lounge was wrecked, broken furniture and glass everywhere. Curtains billowed inward as rain blew in from the smashed windows.

Lisa gulped out, her voice tiny. “Is it…over?”

Cain took a deep breath. “It’s gone…I think….”

Then Robin felt her heart leap wildly in her chest as Patrick’s eyes suddenly opened.

The corpse jerked up to a sitting position, grinning wolfishly. The dead voice grated. “Did…you…miss me…children?” The dead eyes were black, fathomless.

Lisa stared at him, her face white. He waggled his tongue at her and she bolted back.

Patrick’s voice was slow and thick, his face distorted, the muscles slack and grotesque as the Qlippah tried to speak through dead vocal cords. “Big…boy…woudn’…mind….”

Lisa and Robin backed away, shaking.

Behind them, Martin gasped out, “Burn him.”

Cain whipped around, staring at him. Martin looked up at Cain from where he was still tied in the chair. “Fire. We have to drive it out.”

Cain’s face tightened. “Cut Martin loose, quick.” With his good hand, he fumbled his pocketknife out of his pocket.

Robin leapt to take the knife, then sliced through Martin’s ropes with the blade. She helped Martin stand shakily and the four faced Patrick.

The corpse jerked spasmodically in the chair, the Qlippah trying to work the dead muscles. It strained against the ropes, bellowing, “NOOO. NOOOOOO….”

Martin spoke loudly over it. “Burn the body. Drive it out. Fire is pure light.”

“NNNNNNOOOOOO!”

Patrick’s body writhed grotesquely. The chair started to rattle on the floor. Darkness seemed to gather around it.

Beside Robin, Cain gasped in disbelief. “Oh shit.”

The three of them watched, stupefied, as the chair rose slowly into the air.

Martin shouted, “Burn him! Do it!”

Cain spun and grabbed the Coleman lantern, from where it lay overturned and dark in the debris on the floor. He twisted the lamp open and threw the fuel over Patrick, soaking the corpse’s clothes.

Robin spotted the matches on the mantel and grabbed for them, but then she hesitated, looking toward Lisa.

Lisa stepped forward, staring at the writhing corpse above them. Her voice was deadly and sure. “Kill it.”

Robin struck a match, ignited the matchbook, and threw it at Patrick.

The Qlippah bellowed. “NOOOO—LIFE—LIFE— NOOOO—”

Flames exploded around Patrick, licked up his clothing, eating at the rope. The corpse shrieked, straining and contorting its chest; the chair hobbled wildly in the air.

Then suddenly, the ropes binding Patrick burst. The chair fell to the floor.

Patrick’s corpse lurched grotesquely forward, dead limbs flailing like a puppet with its strings cut. Flames ignited his hair, searing the dead flesh.

All four of the others stood paralyzed, staring in horror and shock. Around them, reality seemed to ripple; what was left of the lounge was suddenly insubstantial, as if there was nothing but darkness around them, swirling forms in the wind. Robin groped for the Star of David in her pocket.

Cain grabbed Robin’s arm, shouted, “Everyone out—”

Lisa and Martin were already backing for the door. Robin clenched the metal piece in her hand, thinking mindlessly, Help… .

And at that moment, across the room, she saw him. Just a shade, incorporeal, very still in the swirling chaos of the room, standing at the top point of Cain’s chalked pentagram: the pale young man from the yearbook, from her dreams.

As Robin stood, transfixed, Zachary locked his bottomless eyes on hers and raised his fist to his chest: the gesture from the ritual.

Cain pulled violently at her arm, shouted in her ear above the maelstrom. “Robin! Now!”

“Zachary—” she gasped out. Cain stared at her, uncomprehending. Martin and Lisa hesitated by the arched doorway, glancing back blankly.

They don’t see, Robin realized.

She looked back toward Zachary, who again pressed his fist to his chest. Robin’s eyes widened in comprehension. She spun to the others, shouting, “Finish the ritual. The others didn’t finish.”

At the archway, Martin stopped in his tracks. He grabbed Lisa and spun back, shouting, “Yes.”

Robin faced the staggering, burning corpse and raised her arms before her, shouting, “We close the portal of earth!”

She pulled her hands together, shutting the curtain. The burning corpse started to howl.

“LIFE. WARM. BODY. BLOOD. LIFE.”

Robin’s eyes were streaming. She gagged on the stench of burning flesh, but she spun to Lisa. Terrified, Lisa faced the burning corpse and shouted.

“We close the portal of water!”

She raised her arms as far as she could, shut her hands together. The corpse staggered jerkily toward her, burning arms raised. As Lisa stumbled back, screaming, Robin and Cain surrounded the corpse on the other side. Martin raised his arms, shouted over the howling: “We close the portal of air!”

The corpse turned away from Lisa, jerked toward Martin spasmodically.

“BREATH LIFE BODY GOD BLOOD DAMN BLOOD.”

Cain raised his arms, shouted, “We close the portal of fire!”

The burning corpse flailed horribly, screaming.

“GOD DAMN DAMN GOD DAMN YOU.”

Cain and the others all pulled their hands together at once.

And Patrick’s screaming body exploded in flame.

The force of the explosion tumbled the four of them backward. Flames ripped through the room, searing the walls and furniture.

Cain, Robin, Martin, and Lisa staggered to their feet, beating sparks off their clothing.

Above them, the roof beams burst into flame. Fire raced over the walls, lapping at the dry old wood of the paneling and furniture.

“Run,” Cain shouted.

For a split second, Robin looked toward the specter of Zachary, still standing on the point of the pentagram. Time seemed to stop. Then Zachary raised his hand to Robin—a farewell, or a blessing. Tears pushed at Robin’s eyes; then she turned away and shouted to the others against the wind, “Go.”

She seized Martin’s arm and ran for the door. Cain grabbed Lisa and ran with her.

The four scrambled into the hallway, running full force for the front door. Behind them, there was a whoosh and a crackling roar as the lounge exploded into an inferno. Flames billowed into the hall behind them. Robin could feel the heat like breath on her back.

Cain lunged forward for the front door, shot the bolt, and jerked it open.

The four of them burst through the door onto the porch, slamming the door shut behind them, running down the steps, running as hard as they could from the burning building, into the grove, into the night.

Inside the dorm, windows began to burst from the heat, tongues of flame licking out. Firelight glowed and danced from the upper floors.

And inside, one last demonic howl of rage roared, rising to a crescendo, then was sucked away.

Into the Abyss.