The Cost of Living (ARC)

by Emilie Lucadamo

  Beck considers this, and wonders if it’s been the same way for his friends. He doesn’t think he’s been behaving any differently. Maybe he’s been a bit sullen, more thoughtful, but he’s had reasons. Adjusting has been a challenge, and it’s disorienting to think he used to be dead—

  His mind flashes back to his breakdown in Adam’s room. Is it possible that was just this afternoon? If he hadn’t snapped back to normal—if Adam hadn’t pulled him out of the current intent on sweeping him out to sea—would he have wound up like Alyssa?

  Eventually, they manage to coerce Alyssa out of Adam’s bed, only for her to plant herself in the middle of Adam’s couch. James—sitting at the end of the couch and staring at Alyssa like he’s witnessing the zombie apocalypse—not-at-all-subtly inches away.

  Adam coaxes her into accepting one of his sleeping potions, but while it sedates her it does little to endear her to talk. Even Beck’s appeal, out of earshot of the other two, that he “can hear them too,” gets him nothing more than a sideways glance and a sniffle.

  When the rest of the group finally arrives, Dana dragging a reluctant-looking Dylan behind her, they all convene in Adam’s living room. Instead of centering around Alyssa, they focus on Beck and Adam as they take turns telling the story of Sophie’s possession.

  “There was…no way to save her,” Adam admits, after Beck recounts Sophie’s last moments. “I had the stuff for an exorcism, but I wasn’t fast enough… That demon had its claws in her and was out to kill. If it didn’t kill her, it wouldn’t have stopped till we were both dead.”

  Beck remembers those two hollow pits of blackness in place of familiar eyes—James’s, and then Sophie’s. A shiver courses down his spine; the pulse in his head grows a bit more intense. He grits his teeth to block it out, focusing instead on the horrified reaction of his friends.

  “It’s not safe,” Dana says, frowning down at her clenched fists. “This is all a goddamn nightmare.”

  “What can we do?” James asks. “You’ve gotta give us somethin’, man. If the world’s going nuts, I need to know how to fight back.”

  “Adam doesn’t do exorcisms,” Beck says immediately. He knows how uncomfortable Adam is with magic and isn’t about to force him to teach his friends. “Cassandra said she’d help us, so if we call her—”

  “I’ll do it.”

  Beck cuts himself off, turning towards Adam in surprise. The other man’s jaw is set. His eyes are downcast, but there isn’t a flicker of uncertainty on his face. He looks dead-set on his decision, and when he lifts his head to regard the group once more, his assurance is clear. “I can teach you a bit of demonology and go over the basics of an exorcism. I’ll give you the stuff you’ll need.”

  As Beck gapes at him, Adam’s eyes flicker towards him. It only lasts for a second, but it is enough for Beck to realize that he knows what he’s doing—or, at least, he’s sure he does. Whether Adam will regret breaking his own rules or not, nothing is going to sway him now.

  “It’s the least I can do,” he adds. “I made a promise, and I’m gonna carry it through.”

  Beck’s friends look visibly relieved at that. The stiff set of Dylan’s shoulders relax, while Dana’s fingernails stop digging into her knees. James runs a hand over his face before his attention is drawn back to Alyssa, curled up in a ball at the other end of the couch.

  “And, uhh—what about her?” he asks, pointing with his thumb. Adam’s attention flickers back to Alyssa as well, a deep frown settling on his face.

  She still hasn’t said anything. Now she’s looking at them all with wary eyes, her face drawn with exhaustion. When everyone’s attention turns to her, she shrinks back, curling further into the arm of the couch.

  “Alyssa?” Adam asks quietly. “I know… I know it’s tough, but can you tell us what happened to Sophie?”

  Alyssa’s lips part, and for a moment it looks like she’s ready to speak. Then, just as suddenly, she shuts down again. It’s like a door slamming in their faces. Adam deflates, while Beck presses a hand to his forehead. For a moment, he was sure they were getting somewhere.

  Then Alyssa raises a hand, her finger extended—in Beck’s direction.

  “He knows,” she accuses, voice a tear-roughened rasp. “He hears them too.”

  Just like that, Beck is the one in the spotlight, and he gapes under the sudden weight of the room’s attention. Inquiring eyes fix on him. He falters, not sure what to say, before swallowing hard and clearing his throat.

  Adam has one eyebrow raised in silent question. It churns Beck’s stomach; he does know what Alyssa is talking about, but he doesn’t know how to explain his awful revelation.

  What if he loses what he has? Once they realize the truth—how horribly wrong he is—they won’t trust him. They’ll realize he isn’t whole, isn’t the Beck who left them, and they’ll be terrified of him. Adam will turn his back. They’ll all desert him, and they should, because something dangerous is inside him.

  Beck can’t let that happen. He can take the risk. He can’t be abandoned by the only people he has.

  “I don’t know,” he says, giving a quick shrug. “I have no clue what she’s talking about.”

  For the most part, this answer is accepted. Alyssa isn’t making a great case as the paragon of mental stability. It’s easy to write off her feverish ramblings as just that, and even though Beck knows it’s wrong, relief surges through him when the attention turns off of him.

  The only one who doesn’t stop staring is Adam. His eyes still pierce Beck, inquisitive, and with a hint of suspicion that Beck can’t ignore. Desperate to soothe Adam, he gives a small smile. Adam’s shoulders relax just slightly, his eyes turning away, and Beck exhales in relief.

  He just can’t afford to lose what little he has right now. If he has to keep this darkness to himself—and maybe that’s the safest thing for everyone—then so be it.

  He can live with that, for a little while.

  THE BASIC ANATOMY of an exorcism is simple. There are two steps: to subdue, and to expel.

  Many different tactics are associated with exorcisms, across various religions and societies. None of these are less effective than any other, but Adam teaches the group the most commonly used practices—not to mention, the most simple. He goes over the necessity of getting a demon immobilized, then shows them the sigils used to expel them. Each one is a complicated twist of lines and shapes, nice to look at but frustrating to draw.

  Afterwards, Adam passes out sheets filled with a basic exorcism incantation (in Latin—Beck’s brain feels ready to explode) and explains that this should cast the demon out and banish them back to Hell. There is no known way of killing a demon.

  He also passes out various supplies that he explains might prove useful—from bottles filled with cleansing water, to pure rock salt. Sage is handed out, and Adam shows the group how to smudge it.

  Everyone takes to the instruction with different degrees of skill, but they all match each other in enthusiasm. James and Dana are a bit too enthusiastic—they nearly knock over a bookshelf while shouting incantations at each other. When he drops his sage, Beck comes close to setting the room on fire (no one is surprised). Most unexpected is Dylan, who attends to the instructions with frightening focus. When he reads off the Latin, Adam praises his diction. His sigils are scribbled, but precise.

  Really, Beck isn’t sure why he’s surprised. Dylan has always been a whizz kid, and a quick learner. He’s a scholarship student; ever since high school, he’s worked his tail off to keep up his grades. Beck just never expected his brother would be such a natural demon hunter.

  “You all should be set,” Adam announces a few hours later, once everyone has tucked their borrowed supplies away. “You ever run into a demon, they won’t know what hit ’em.”

  Clapping each other on the back, the group files up to Adam’s apartment once more. Adam is the only one who trails behind, hesitating in the doorway and closing his eyes like he’s thinking hard about somet
hing. Beck watches his brows furrow, shoulders slumping, and wonders if he should say anything.

  He’s never been good at keeping his mouth shut. “Adam?” he ventures, voice low beneath the herd of footsteps stomping up the stairs. “Are you okay?”

  “I just…” Adam trails off, worrying at his lip, before heaving a sigh that shakes his entire body. “I feel like there’s a piece missing. There’s gotta be something I’m not seeing, a reason why this is happening… I just don’t know what it is.” Beck tenses. Adam, busy running a hand through his hair, doesn’t notice. “I know there’s something causing all this. I’ve just gotta find out what.”

  If anyone can figure it out, Beck thinks, it would be Adam. The thought makes him feel sick.

  IT’S CONVENIENCE THAT finds everyone crashing at Adam’s house that night. Alyssa won’t leave Adam’s house; Adam won’t leave Alyssa; Beck doesn’t want to leave Adam; and James refuses to let anyone leave, seeing as it’s past midnight and “if demonic shit is running around, something’s gonna happen at night. Something always happens at night.”

  Alyssa retreated back into Adam’s room before the exorcism lesson, and they find her sound asleep in bed when they return. Adam just sighs, and with Beck’s help hauls a few extra pillows and blankets out of the closet. They’re given permission to sleep where they like. James and Dana wind up twined together on the couch, a mess of limbs, making it hard to tell where one body ends and the other begins. They murmur to each other in the darkness, every so often laughing softly. On the floor, Beck stares wide-eyed up at the ceiling, cringing anytime he hears what sounds like a kiss from above. It’s impossible to block them out. The only one who has any sort of luck is Dylan, who buries himself in a blanket cocoon and pulls a pillow over his head to protect himself from the inappropriate PDA.

  Adam is somewhere downstairs. Beck doesn’t know where, but he’s learned by now that Adam rarely sleeps when he’s supposed to (in fact, he’s not sure he sleeps at all). Unsure of where Adam might be, his mind runs rampant. He imagines Adam bent beside Sophie’s body, tending to her throughout the night. Or perhaps Adam is hunched at his counter, pouring over pages of notes on demons and possessions, trying to find the missing piece to tie the entire puzzle together (the knowledge that Beck has, and doesn’t dare say out loud).

  How can he tell Adam the truth? He doesn’t know; he doesn’t think he can. He focuses instead on sleep, and tries to force himself to get there, but the more he tries to ignore one thing, the harder it is to block out another.

  The whispering is getting louder. He can’t escape it. When he presses a pillow over his head, it is only amplified by the silence. When he tries thinking of something else, the spikes of pain in his head intensify until his brain is locked in a haze of pain.

  By the time he can’t take it anymore, he is grinding his teeth against the ache. It feels like drills being pushed into his head. The static is starting to overpower even the sound of James’s snoring, and he wants nothing more than to tear his hair out.

  Tossing and turning does nothing to help. Even sitting up and cradling his head in his hands brings him no relief. Beck needs the world’s biggest aspirin—that, or to open his skull and take out his brain.

  After a few minutes, it’s impossible for him to sit still anymore. He rises to his feet, careful not to disturb any of the sleeping bodies around him, and stumbles towards the door.

  He takes the staircase slowly, clutching to the railing in the dark. He does not know the stairs well enough to recognize the creaky spots in the wood. Each sound feels like a siren blaring through the building, announcing his break for freedom: The prisoner is escaping! Code red! Close cell block 23!

  Once he’s finally back on the ground floor, he breathes a sigh of relief. Then he realizes exactly where his feet have taken him. His heart seizes up in his chest. He’s standing right in the spot where Sophie died.

  When Beck looks down, he’s able to make out a dark spot staining the wood beneath his feet. His stomach lurches. He clamps a hand over his mouth to stifle a moan and reels away from the spot.

  He finds Adam exactly where he expected to. The door to the back room is ajar; candlelight still flickers across the walls and ceilings, and Sophie’s body lies in the center of the room in her makeshift altar, just as Beck remembers it. Adam, however, is hunched in a different area of the room, pouring over a spread of papers. His glasses are sliding off the bridge of his nose, but he does not seem to notice. His brows are deeply furrowed. His chest heaves with shallow, manic breaths, and his eyes dart back and forth across the page as if searching for a secret code hidden in the mass of notes.

  Every instinct in his body urges Beck against interrupting, but he cannot leave Adam—not like this.

  “Adam?” he says softly. “Are you…okay?”

  Adam looks up for a brief second, as if startled. Then his face clouds over again, and he returns to his work. It feels like a door slamming in Beck’s face. “I’m fine, Beck,” Adam mutters. “I’m okay. I have to work on this. I have… I have to understand.”

  Adam is anything but okay. Beck simply does not know a way to help. He is not sure if he should, or even can. The last thing he wants to do is leave Adam, but instinct tells him there is no way to help him like this, now.

  (Except telling him. He could tell Adam everything, the thoughts, the whispers—but that would tear down every bit of the tentative haven he has built. Beck cannot lose everything. He cannot lose himself.)

  “Okay,” he says. “Please get some rest soon.”

  He closes the door behind him.

  He refuses to let Adam’s candlelit visage haunt him on his way up the stairs. There is nothing else he can do, he tells himself. Adam is mourning. He needs to find answers on his own.

  As for Beck, he just needs…sleep. Peace. Sanity. All things that seem impossibly elusive to him right now. (A wicked, half-human voice in the back of his mind whispers that they never existed at all.)

  He does not want to return to bed, he decides once he reaches the top of the stairs. He needs a glass of water first.

  The apartment is dark; Beck finds his way by shadow, hands held in front of him to keep him from walking into anything. By the time he reaches the kitchen, he feels dizzy from pain. He’s so distracted that he almost doesn’t notice the shadowed figure hunched at the counter until it suddenly shifts.

  “Geez!” he hisses, stumbling back and crashing into the wall. “What the hell?”

  The figure rises to his feet. “What are you doing?” demands a familiar voice.

  “Dylan? What are you sitting in the dark for?”

  “What are you walkin’ around here for?” Dylan counters, drawing himself up to his full height. It’s not impressive; even standing on his toes, he’s still shorter than Beck. (Conscious of his own unimpressive height, Beck pities his brother. Genetics are a cruel mistress.) When Beck starts fumbling along the wall for a light switch, Dylan snaps at him to knock it off. “You wanna wake everybody up?”

  “No. Sorry.” That’s the last thing Beck wants. Reluctantly, he shuffles around in the dark in search of the sink.

  For a few seconds, Dylan remains quiet. He allows Beck to walk into the fridge, trip over a chair, a throw rug, and his own feet before finally asking, “What are you looking for?”

  “The sink. I just want water.”

  “God, here. You’re useless.”

  “Thanks, Dyl,” Beck mutters as he feels a cold glass being pressed into his hands. It occurs to him that Dylan had this sitting on the counter, but the glass remains full. Whatever drew him from sleep, it wasn’t a need for water.

  He takes a sip of the cooling liquid and finds it does little to soothe the ache in his head. Only then does he dare to venture, “So, why’re you up?”

  Dylan’s at the counter again, back turned to him. “Can’t sleep. It isn’t weird for me.”

  It was before Beck died. Then again, it’s obvious by now that so much has changed th
at Beck doesn’t even know where to begin. Even so, he has a good idea what the cause of this particular change could be.

  There’s a large part of him that doesn’t want to say a thing. It’s not the time; it’s not the place. Dylan won’t want to talk about it even if Beck does broach the topic, and he knows there’s a strong chance of this ending in a shouting match. Still, he can’t remain silent, not with the memory of Dylan cradling his dying body still fresh in his mind.

  He understands why everyone was so eager to keep the truth from him; they didn’t want it to change him, the way it changed Dylan. It haunts him now, and he’s only just remembered it. Dylan’s been living with it for seven months.

  Beck cannot escape the burden of responsibility on his shoulders. Dylan’s suffering is his fault. He doesn’t regret saving his brother’s life for a second, but he regrets leaving him alone.

  So even though the words stick in his throat, Beck forces himself to push past it. “Dylan…look, I remember, okay? I didn’t, but…I do now. I know what happened.”

  Dylan’s shoulders go stiff. He doesn’t turn around. “What’s it matter, Beck?” he says after a moment.

  “It matters because I died in your arms!” It’s too early to lose his temper, and it’s not fair, but Dylan sounds so dismissive that he can’t help it. “It changed you. I can see it, and I can’t stand knowing I was the reason why. I’m back now, and you can’t forget what happened, but we can move on—”

  A glass slams down on the counter, nearly hard enough to break it. Dylan’s still form is wrought with tension; he’s almost trembling with it.

  “Move on,” he says.

  “We’ve gotta try. I’m back, and much as you don’t like it, if we don’t keep going with our li—”

  Dylan lurches around and forward, hands outstretched. The kitchen table rattles when he hits it, and he shoves the nearest chair out of the way. Suddenly he’s just inches from Beck’s face. “Move on?” he demands, voice a low growl. “You think I can move on just ’cause you’re back now? You think you being here makes things better instead of worse, huh?” His teeth bare in a humorless grin. “When did you become so damn selfish?”