It was another world in Abelaum.
The mist lingered in the streets longer than it should have, rebelling against the sun and blocking out its warmth. The brick buildings dripped with the damp, moss crept over the sidewalks and clung to the houses. The bay was still, its surface like glass, a mirror image of the trees that surrounded it cast upon its surface.
From the outside, Abelaum looked like a safe, peaceful place to live. But behind the facade of hip cafes and micro-breweries, there was an unease that had people scurrying inside after dark. Rumors of missing hikers were passed around over brunch. Elementary school students traded local legends like Pokémon cards.
The trees, too, were strange. It was the way their gnarled roots coiled up out of the earth, as if they were trying to escape. I knew what lurked beneath those trees. I knew the danger that waited for sundown, that hid in shadows. But danger didn’t only wait in darkness. It walked in daylight too, in expensive Italian suits, with a charming smile and a pristine family, always above suspicion.
This town was full of monsters.
Rain poured down during the funeral. The thunder that reverberated overhead and the flashes of lightning in the clouds felt like God was laughing: laughing at my fear, my pain, my useless struggling. Like a cat toying with a mouse. This was perhaps the greatest joke of all: no matter how far I’d run, It still made me come back here.
I kept my distance from the funeral. I’d scaled the iron fence that guarded Westchurch Cemetery, but stayed beneath the trees, the hood of my black raincoat pulled low over my head. From there, I could look down on the lines of plastic chairs sheltered beneath white canopies, overlooking the rectangular hole cut into the grass.
The tears that wanted to come were locked inside, behind a wall of fury so thick not even grief could slip through.
I watched as they closed the casket and lowered Marcus down. From a distance, his face looked normal. Like he was sleeping. It had been years since I’d seen him in person. I’d only seen his photos on Facebook, his pictures from prom, his wide smile when he got promoted to soccer captain. I should have known how much danger he was in. Jeremiah Hadleigh was on the team with him. I’d seen their group photos together. I’d seen them tag each other in Facebook posts.
I should have known. I should have warned him.
But he wouldn’t have believed me.
My mother was there, seated in the front row, her long brown hair streaked with gray. She was thinner than I remembered her, hunched in her seat, silent and still as she stared at the coffin. She’d done the same thing when Dad left: just sat at the kitchen table and stared, stared as if whatever life that had been inside her was gone.
I think when you lose someone, a little part of yourself goes with them, and never returns.
But where Marcus had gone — no life, no love, no peace could wait for him there.
Nearly all the kids in Abelaum knew the legends, but I knew they were true. A God in the mine had made a deal with three men: they could live, but in six generations, they had to pay back God’s mercy. Three lives spared must one day be three souls given.
The survivors lived on. They had their families. They had children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. On and on. Abelaum had been built on that old mine, so half the town could trace their ancestry to its workers. The survivors’ story became myth. But always, in the shadows, those who were devoted to the Deep One continued their work. They gathered new worshippers, they watched and waited. They waited for the day the sacrifices could be given.
And now, here we were: the sixth generation. The sacrificial lambs.
As the mourners got up from their chairs and began to disperse, my mother stood alone by the grave. She buried her face in her hands, and my stomach twisted as someone came to her side. Tall and slim, with slick silver hair and a fitted black suit, Kent Hadleigh put his arm around her shoulders and let her weep into his chest.
I was armed and I was confident I could make the shot. My hand wouldn’t shake as I took aim at his head, my finger wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. It wouldn’t end it, but it’d be a damn good start.
My fingers brushed against the pistol, strapped to my side, caressing its cold surface. God, the satisfaction I’d feel to see his blood and brains sprayed out on the ground. I couldn’t look at him and not see him as he had been that night: cloaked in white, fitting a stag skull mask over his head, merciless to my cries.
I was meant to be the sacrifice, but when they couldn’t have me, they’d taken Marcus.
I lowered my hand. I left the gun alone. Killing Kent now would start a war I wasn’t prepared for. At least not yet.
Around midnight, the clouds began to clear. The cold starry sky stared down at the little graveyard, the damp grass, the mist creeping in from the trees. I hated funerals: the sobbing, the ceremony, the empty words given by preachers, the choked-up speeches. But in the quiet night, watching my brother’s grave from afar, I felt like I could truly say goodbye.
Marcus, after all, had always been quiet. It hurt to think that I didn’t know if he’d stayed that way. But as a child, he’d always been careful with his words. He’d never been quick to anger. He’d been thoughtful; the kind of kid who’d pluck dandelions and give them to me on my birthday. I’d always believed that living with Mom would break him, enduring her anger and her sadness. I thought he’d get caught up in that same cycle of pain.
I’d never know if he was happy. I’d never know if he stayed kind. Part of me hoped he hadn’t changed, and maybe that was selfish of me. People never stayed how you found them. Over minutes, hours, months, years — the people you’ve met become strangers, and you have to meet them all over again.
It was strange honestly; the pain I felt was based on memories of a person I didn’t know anymore. He and I only had a past.
They’d taken everything. The Hadleigh family, and the cult they commanded, didn’t need to kill me to take my life. I was a dead woman walking. What was left? A mother who hated me, no future, no home, no hope. Just a fury so deep and dark and burning that it could rival a God.
I was getting tired, but I didn’t want to sleep. I planned to stay out under the trees all night, and in the morning, maybe I’d have some semblance of direction again. I’d never had a plan in life, because plans couldn’t account for Gods and monsters. But now, I felt like I needed one. I needed something solid, something to grasp, something to light up the dark.
The dark had been closing in for so long I couldn’t even see out of it anymore.
The mist had crept in across the grass, shrouding Marcus’s grave. It was late in the night, and the streets were empty. It was probably safe for me to go down and sit with him for a while, but it felt too intimate. I didn’t deserve to be so close to him.
Then, near the grave, something moved.
I went utterly still, every muscle tensing. Goose bumps prickled up my back as I watched a dark figure move across the lawn. Blond hair…tattooed skin…golden eyes.
Panic burst through me. My limbs twitched and every nerve tingled, demanding I run. My lungs felt like they were being squeezed between cold, rough hands. I didn’t dare move. If I even breathed too hard, he’d hear it.
What the hell was Kent Hadleigh’s pet demon doing here?
I kept every breath as slow and measured as possible, despite my initial instinct to hold it. I rested my hand against my gun, even knowing that a bullet wouldn’t kill him. My mind was racing: run…hide…fight…or wait.
I waited, keeping myself still in the shadows. He’d see me if he glanced my way. Wild paranoia that Kent had sent him after me made my heart pound painfully, but Kent couldn’t possibly know I was back in Abelaum; not even my mother knew.
The demon wandered, glancing at graves as he passed them, before he reached the freshly turned earth that was Marcus’s resting place. Anger made my skin burn as he stopped and read the headstone…and began to dig into the grave.
I bit my tongue in an effort not to yell. My nails gripped tight against the tree behind me, as if I could anchor myself there. If I ran at him, if I tried to fight him, he would make quick and careless work of me. Fantasies of shooting him, of managing to kill him, were abound in my mind but they were only that — fantasies.
I had to be patient. Now, more than ever, I had to bide my time.
The demon kept digging, his eyes like beacons in the night. I heard those wicked claws scratch into the wood when he reached the coffin, and I had to force myself not to look away as the demon pulled my brother from his grave and hauled him over his shoulder.
“Wakey, wakey,” he said, and crawled up from the hole to dump Marcus limply in the grass. “Just give me a minute here, buddy. Can’t have your mother knowing her son’s grave has been desecrated.”
God, it made me sick. I’d kill him for this, I’d blast his fucking head off. But even in my fury, I knew the demon was merely a tool. Kent Hadleigh commanded him.
But why steal his body?
The demon hauled Marcus over his shoulder, as if he were nothing more than a sack of meat to be thrown around. My stomach twisted, and rage burned in my throat, but I had to shut it out. I had to keep still, I had to wait and watch. Only when the demon was gone, long out of my sight, did I allow myself to slam my clenched fist against the tree trunk, choking down the screams that wanted to come out with it.
The Hadleighs had sealed their fate when they failed to kill me. They pounded the first nail into their own coffin when they killed Marcus. They hammered the second one home when they stole his body.
I was going to kill them all. No matter what it took. No matter what I had to give up.
No matter what deals had to be made.
