I agreed to meet up with Inaya and Victoria for lunch over the weekend. Leon was still sleeping like the dead, and it felt odd to leave him alone at home. I wasn’t sure if it was normal for a demon to sleep for so long, but I wasn’t going to try waking him up. Victoria was running late, so Inaya and I got a table at a little cafe serving Sunday brunch, a corner seat near the window where we could watch the rain.
“We should watch Midsommar,” Inaya said, as we sipped mimosas and planned our next movie night. “Or maybe we should start with some classics and go for The Exorcist.”
“You know I’m always down for Friedkin’s genius,” I said. The mimosas here were bottomless: lucky for me, because I’d already entirely downed one. I was restless, and a little desperate, and I’d hoped getting out of the house would help, but it hadn’t done much yet. “We could get wine drunk and watch Hocus Pocus after.”
“Oooh, yes, girl, I’ll bring this new Pinot I tried. It’s so good. It’s honestly a crime I haven’t come over for a visit yet. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t you dare apologize,” I laughed. “The place has been a mess anyway.” A mess…besieged by monsters, currently hosting a sleeping demon…yeah, it wasn’t fit for visitors. I was still contemplating if I should insist on having the movie night at her apartment — considering I had no idea when Leon would wake up. Or leave. Or…
If I even wanted him to leave.
She was scrolling through a list of horror films on her phone, trying to come up with one that I hadn’t already seen. I let my eyes relax, staring off into the hazy rain outside. I envied Leon for being able to sleep for days straight; I needed to sleep for that long. People ran by, hoods up, shoes sloshing in the growing puddles. I loved watching the rain, but the grey day made me sleepier than ever.
The clouds above were thick and dark, as if a thunderstorm was brewing. They were moving rapidly, swirling and coiling like steam pouring off dry ice.
Inaya was speaking again, but her voice was fading in and out. There was something strange about the clouds. I’d never seen clouds move like that. They were so dark, almost black. The pale glow of lighting flashed behind them, but in the illumination, I realized those dark gray coils weren’t clouds at all.
They were tentacles: massive, thick tentacles moving through the clouds.
Suddenly, it was as if my head was being squeezed. Every beat of my heart felt too hard, too slow. I wanted to look away. I wanted to close my eyes. The sensation of drowning was burning through my lungs, as if my dream from last night was trying to yank me back in. The smell of damp earth, salty brine, rot — panic tightened in my chest.
Beyond the clouds, beyond the dark tentacles, the vague silhouette of something truly, incomprehensibly massive was moving.
“Hey! Raelynn!”
I gasped, and Inaya jerked back in surprise. She’d grabbed my arm across the table, and it had snapped me out of my weird hallucinations. The sky looked normal. No tentacles. No silhouette. Nothing but the sound of the rain and dark, thick cloud cover.
Inaya was staring at me with a wide, worried gaze.
“What the hell just happened?” She reached across the table for my forehead, her hand cool against my skin. “Are you sick? You were shaking and your eyes were twitching.”
“I’m fine,” I said softly, pulling off my glasses and rubbing my eyes as if I could somehow push the memory from my head. That massive shape…it made me feel sick to remember, as if my body was rejecting the idea of something so wrong existing on earth. “I just, uhm…”
“Helloooo, ladies!” Victoria walked up to the table. “Sorry I was so late, ugh, more family drama.” She sat next to me, giving me a quick hug. She tucked her pink Coach bag onto the seat between us, and slid a Tupperware container onto the table. “Did you order yet? Oooh my God, mimosas, yes! I need a whole tub of that shit.” She began to wave her hand for the waiter, snapping her fingers as she urged him over.
I’d never hallucinated before. I’d never experienced terror that felt so consuming. Perhaps it had been a panic attack, or a waking nightmare. Maybe the stress of all this was getting to me more than I thought.
Or maybe Leon hadn’t been lying. Maybe there really was a god in the mine. Because that horror, that thing I’d seen in the clouds, was the closest thing to a god I could imagine.
“Rae,” Inaya was still staring at me, her voice seemingly the only solid lifeline I had to reality.
Victoria looked between us curiously. “What’s wrong? What did I miss?”
“It’s nothing,” I said softly. “Hungry, I think. I zoned out. I’m fine.”
The expression on Inaya’s face made it obvious she didn’t believe me.
“Well, let’s get some food in you then, girl! Here, you two can be my critics.” Victoria pulled the lid off her Tupperware, revealing chocolate cupcakes within. Each one was beautifully decorated, with sparkles of purple edible glitter and little candy ghosts. “I’m going to make a bunch for the Halloween party, but I wanted to try out the recipe first. Are they boozy enough? They’re bourbon chocolate maple.”
It was hands-down one of the best cupcakes I’d ever eaten. I knew it was a ridiculous judgment of character, but I didn’t feel like a death cult member would be baking delicious cupcakes for her friends. Was I really supposed to believe that Victoria worshipped some ancient God? Or Jeremiah? Or even Mr. Hadleigh?
My vision of an evil cult just didn’t mesh with this family.
“These are so good,” Inaya gushed. “And there will be plenty of booze at the party, girl; you don’t need to get anyone drunk off cupcakes too.”
“Rae, consider this your formal invitation if I haven’t invited you already.” Victoria smiled brightly. “I honestly can’t remember who I’ve invited and who I haven’t. Like, half the campus will be there.”
A Halloween party…that was perfect.
“Wouldn’t miss it!” I gave her a thumbs-up, just in case my words were too muffled by the cake in my mouth. Leon had mentioned Kent having artifacts, and some kind of protective charm — if I could use the cover of the party to do a little snooping, maybe I could find something to protect me. It was risky, but if anything Leon had told me about the Hadleighs was true, then asking them for help was out of the question.
We ate and chatted, and for a couple hours, I almost forgot about the monsters in the woods and the demon on my couch. But when we got up to leave, Victoria said suddenly, “Oh, by the way, if you could give me or Jeremiah a call if you see Everly, that would great.”
“If we see her?” I said. “Why? Is something wrong?”
Victoria rolled her eyes. “She…left. It’s been a while now and daddy is…concerned.” She smiled tightly. “She’s not right in the head, you know? Who knows what kind of trouble she could get into? Keep an eye out for her. We’re just worried sick.”
We parted ways, and as I walked back to my car, my food churned in my stomach. Something told me Victoria wasn’t worried about Everly.
Something told me that if Everly had left home, she had a damn good reason.
There was no sign that Leon had stirred at all while I’d been gone. I dared to nudge down his shirt for a peek at his injury, and was shocked to find that nothing remained of it but a splotchy scar gashed through his tattoos. Not even my touch woke him; he gave a little sigh at the brush of my fingers, but nothing more.
I wouldn’t have expected demons to be such deep sleepers, but I wasn’t complaining. If he was there, I was safe. My touch may not have woken him, but I had a feeling a monster would.
But once he woke up, I didn’t think he’d be sticking around. I hadn’t taken his deal, and he was still fixated on finding the grimoire. I planned to hunt for something to protect myself with at the Hadleighs’, but the party was weeks away. I needed just a little more time with him here.
A few minutes of intensely browsing the internet offered a solution.
The website I’d stumbled across looked sketchy, haphazardly thrown together by someone whose knowledge of coding had stopped in the late 90s, but the information was good. How to Bind and Command a Demon to your Will looked like something straight off the cover of The National Enquirer, but at this point I wasn’t going to turn up my nose at anything.
Speak clearly and boldly.
Make your commands as straight-forward and detailed as possible.
Keep the demon confined to a binding circle, whereby it can only leave at your explicit command.
A binding circle. I could remember reading about that in the grimoire. That was what I needed.
I’d somehow managed to conjure up enough magic with some old markings and strange words to make a demon appear at my command. So why couldn’t I make him do other things at my command? Like stay and protect me, for a start.
The sketchy website, luckily, provided instructions for drawing a binding circle. With my laptop in one hand and some white chalk in the other, I crept downstairs to confine my demon.
I wasn’t about to let myself consider how furious he’d be. This was a matter of life and death, and I had to survive. I nudged the rug out of the way, and painstakingly drew a circle on the floorboards around the couch. I marked down the runes, checking and rechecking every part until I was confident I’d replicated it perfectly.
All that was left to do now was wait. If he woke up and couldn’t leave, then the ball was back in my court. I could command him to protect me until I could either get away from Abelaum or until the monsters lost interest.
If the binding circle didn’t work, well, it would be fairly obvious what I’d tried to do. Leon’s prior threats to spank me would likely seem meek in comparison to whatever vengeance he’d think up for daring to try to trap him.
I had other problems to deal with until my captive demon awakened, namely, disguising the garish severed heads I had staked around my yard.
It was a fifteen-minute drive to the nearest Target. I headed straight for their Halloween section, snatching up strands of black lights, faux headstones, a couple plastic skeletons, and some boxes of fake cobwebs. I figured the best course of action would be to hide the monster heads in plain sight. No one would think twice that they weren’t just part of the decor.
It was this, or avoid having anyone come near my house for the indefinite future. I was still trying to live a normal life despite being hunted by deranged monsters, damn it.
It was evening by the time I got home, and Leon was still asleep. But he’d changed position, so that at least told me he was beginning to move. Nervousness coiled in my stomach at the thought of him waking, and I rechecked my work on the circle for what was likely the dozenth time.
It would work. It had to work. He’d be trapped and he’d have no choice but to obey.
He’d be pissed.
I wasn’t pleased about doing it. But I was going to survive this.
While I still had daylight, I coiled the strands of blacklights around the stakes holding the severed heads to make them look a little more festive. I’d have to get some pumpkins and carve them, but that part could wait a few days. As I tested out posing my plastic skeletons around the yard in various provocative positions, I decided it was time to call the one person I knew besides the Hadleighs who might have the slightest inkling about all the weird shit happening in Abelaum.
My dad.
“Hey, sweet-pea,” he answered, using the nickname he’d given me as a baby. It occurred to me that it was probably a lot later in Spain than I had considered, but Dad had always been a night owl. “Decide to come join us yet?”
Dad hadn’t been particularly fond of me choosing to move back to the town he’d grown up in rather than go with them to Spain, and I was beginning to suspect he had a damn good reason for that. But I couldn’t exactly just blurt out to him that I was being hunted by monsters and was trying my hand at mastering a demon.
“The offer is tempting, but I think I’ve got it under control here,” I said, smiling despite the fact that it was an utter lie. I didn’t have it under control. Not in the least. “Just wanted to give you a call, see how it’s going. How’s the weather over there?”
Dad loved to talk once he got going; he told me all about their house, promising me that Mom would email me photos of the place soon. Their drives into town consisted of exploring the coastline, trying tiny cafes, and falling in love with Spanish coffee houses. I continued decorating as he talked, letting him ramble despite the growing anxiety in my stomach. His voice was a comfort — a tiny piece of home, of normalcy.
But nothing was normal anymore.
“Made any new friends up there?” I finally was given the space to get a word in, but I still stuttered for a moment before I answered.
“Uh…I, uhm…yeah. Yeah, everyone is really friendly up here.”
Dad chuckled. “Those small towns can either be real friendly, or real off-putting. Folks gotta welcome you in.”
“They’ve been really welcoming,” I stood back, surveying the skeletons’ newest position, with one bent over in front of the other over a log. It made me snicker, so I decided to keep it. “Actually, I met someone who says they went to high school with you. Kent. Kent Hadleigh? Sound familiar?”
There was a long pause. For a second, I thought the line had gotten disconnected.
“Hadleigh,” Dad said slowly. “Yes. Yes, I remember Kent. Wealthy family. Big house…up off of uh…” I heard him snapping his fingers in thought. “Off Water Crest Drive. How’d you run into him?”
“Art Festival in town. I went with his kids, they’ve been really cool to me.” Why did it make me so nervous to ask this? What was I so afraid of hearing? “Did you know Kent very well? Were you friends?”
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t say we were friends, no. We ran with different crowds. His family was, uh, well…bit of an odd bunch, the Hadleighs.”
“Really? How’s that?” Odd like, eccentric? Or odd, like, I-run-an-evil-death-cult?
“It’s just those small towns,” Dad muttered, and I could practically hear him shake his head. “Gossip goes around, people get all kinds of strange ideas. Superstitions and such, you know. The kind of stuff you like, I guess, but they really take it seriously. The Hadleighs have lived in Abelaum a long time. One of the founding families, as I recall.”
“Our family was up here a long time too, weren’t they?”
“Oh yes, your great-great grandfather, Titus Lawson, moved over there when it was still just the mining operation. There was always a Lawson in Abelaum, up until us and your grandmother moved.” He paused. “And, well, now there’s a Lawson there again. I suppose that place just draws us back, eh?”
“I guess so,” I felt a bizarre mixture of relief and disappointment. Relief, because my father hadn’t immediately reacted in horror to the Hadleigh name. But now I had even more questions than answers. “How is Grams, anyway? What is she —”
“RAELYNN!”
The voice boomed from the house like thunder, making me shriek and nearly drop my phone. Birds took flight from the trees, flocking away in terror. Something prickled up my back, like nails frantically grasping, trying and failing to get a hold on me.
“Rae? Raelynn? What in hell was that?” Dad sounded alarmed, and I hurriedly tried to calm him.
“Oh, uh, it’s nothing. Everything is fine, Dad. I turned on the TV and it was uh…really loud —”
“WHAT THE FUCK, RAELYNN!”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
“I’ve gotta go, Dad, sorry, my uh, my friend just got here.”
Hanging up the phone felt like setting the first nail in my own coffin. I tucked it into my pocket, my fingers suddenly painfully cold, and turned back toward the house.
Leon was awake.
