by Casey Hays
“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” he whispers.
I feel my insides caving in on themselves at the hopelessness in his voice. And I am more mindful than ever of the seriousness of this situation. Ian could die. I waver on my feet, leaning to press all ten fingertips against the wooden tabletop to steady myself.
I’m not sure where my mind should be. I don’t know if it’s fair—or appropriate—to wish for Ian’s life. Again. Not after we’ve both been spared so many times. How many chances should we get? And the real question: why? Am I so much better than Tabitha—than Meg or Layla or the countless others who’ve been torn out of the world? No. I’m simply a helpless girl, stubborn and prideful . . . and bitter.
And Ian? I love him, but he, too, is full of pride. He chooses to believe in nothing as stubbornly as I hope for something to believe in. Anything that will make this miserable life worth living. I turn, cast my eyes over the shadow of his shivering body in the next room.
Do we really deserve another chance?
I focus on Justin. “Do you pray?”
Surprised by my question, he raises his head, his dark eyes coming into view. He blinks.
“No.” The water has begun to bubble ever so slightly. “I mean, I’ve prayed before—with Aaron and Penelope. They’ve prayed, I should say. I just listened.”
“But . . . you know how to pray?” I prod.
Justin’s expression reveals the uneasiness my questioning invokes. He shrugs. “Not really.”
“Oh.” My disappointment echoes through the word, and I study my feet. “Because, I was hoping you could pray to Yeshua for Ian . . . if you knew how. Or perhaps you could teach me.”
He turns his attention back to the boiling water. It bubbles furiously now.
“I don’t think he’d listen to me, Kate. Even if he existed.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not totally sure I believe in him. Or maybe . . . it’s that I don’t think he’ll want to hear from me. ”
He licks his lips. His sleeves are rolled up, revealing his tattoo: the infinity symbol in the form of a double-edged sword entwined with barbed-wire. Truth, he’d said when I’d asked him about its meaning. I’d failed to ask him what his truth was.
“You don’t believe he exists?”
“That’s just it,” he shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
I nod. It’s an honest answer.
“I’ve been reading a book. The Holy Scriptures.” I shake my head, look away. “Some of it? It . . . speaks to me, I suppose. Almost as if it’s alive on the pages.”
“Yeah, that’s what Penelope says,” he affirms. He raises up a bit, and his voice changes as he quotes her. “Yeshua is the Word who became flesh—the perfect Son of God who came to earth to show us how imperfect we are. And then he saved us.”
He shakes his head with a half-smile, but then his face turns serious.
“There’s a part of me deep inside that wants to believe it,” he shrugs. “And then there’s reality.”
“And what is your reality?”
“It all sounds crazy.” He laughs softly. His fingers flex and then grip the handle of the saucepan. “But mostly, I don’t like the idea of facing the ugliness in myself.”
I raise a brow. “Is that required for believing?”
“It’s the only way to believing.”
I purse my lips. That doesn’t sound a bit pleasant, but neither does wrestling with your demons, letting them stew in the recesses of your soul until they drive you mad.
“There’s no ugliness in you,” I tell him.
He smiles again, turns away to watch the bubbles race each other in the boiling water. “Your memory’s not very good then.”
“Why?”
“I was horrible when we first met.” His eyes lock on mine. “Joking about the Pit like that. If you recall, you had to put me in my place.”
“Oh,” I nod, remembering. “Well, I wasn’t very nice, either. I didn’t like you very much that first day.”
“Understandable.” He nods once. “And—”
I lift my head. “What?”
“Well, you know—” He hesitates again, closes his eyes. “Remember when we talked? About how I felt . . . about you?”
I swallow, nod rapidly.
He holds his breath, his eyes crinkling with a pained expression, before he exhales deeply and runs his free hand up the side of his face.
“I’m full of ugly.”
He doesn’t elaborate, but the memory of Mona suddenly clouds all my thinking, and I wrestle with my own ugliness. I remember admiring her—loving her even. Her face, her bright-green eyes, they streak through my memories—real and vivid—and my breath catches.
I know the exact moment my hatred for her was born, and I continually struggle with whether or not I regret what I did to her. I knew how close we were to the edge of the Pit, and I knew that a second shove would send her over. I felt my hatred mingled with my fear of her. The familiar bitterness crusting around the edges of my heart jabs at me still.
I let the feeling sink in, and for the first time, I admit to myself that I’m glad she’s dead. I would kill her again if I had to.
Hamartia.
I fix my eyes on Justin.
“I’m full of ugly, too.”
The candles beneath the pan lick at the metal, and a low hissing rises up as the heat begins its affect.
“Ian said Eden made him into a killer,” I continue. “That something in him wanted to kill those men.”
Without looking at me, he nods. “I think he’s right.”
“He woke up and stopped those soldiers from hurting us. And this may sound mad, but I think Yeshua woke him.”
Justin’s eyes snap up to meet mine. I inhale deeply before I spill the part of my story that will certainly establish how insane I must be.
“I think . . . I heard him speak . . . inside me. A quiet, small voice that was so . . . loud.”
Justin tilts his chin, a testing quality to his tone. “How much sleep have you had, Kate?”
I purse my lips, feeling slighted. “Justin. You know me. I wouldn’t tell you this if there were no merit in it. I may have hoped for fairy tales and magic, but I have never believed in them. Not with the life I’ve endured.” I bite my lip and lower myself into a chair. “The peace I felt was real. I knew I could trust it.”
His eyes change, and he doesn’t rebuff my answer this time. In fact, a smile plays at the corner of his mouth.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he shakes his head, concentrates on the boiling water. “It’s just I thought I was the only one.”
I lift my brows, my back straightening involuntarily. The smile takes over his face.
“You can’t be around my aunt or her family and not be affected.” He removes the pan from the fire and sets it aside. “They call him the Spirit and say he’s another part of God.
“I’ve heard Claudia speak of him,” I nod. “And?”
He douses his hands with antiseptic from the bottle. His tattoo draws my eyes as he snaps a rubber glove into place over one hand.
“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “Maybe that voice inside is the only real thing left.”
The sterilized pocket knife gleams from his grip—dripping with antiseptic. It’s daunting, and my heart quickens. I rise from my seat. The legs scratch dangerously against the wooden floor as my weight shoves the chair backwards.
“I need to bring Ian.”
He sets the knife on a clean towel. I remove the candles and unfurl the sheets across the table. Justin is careful with Ian, placing him as gently as possible on top. In the light, his skin looks sickly pale. I press my hand against his cheek and lean in.
“Ian? Justin’s here. He’s going to help you.”
As a precaution, Justin uses ripped strips of bedding to hold Ian down, fastening them beneath the table in tight knots. Ian barely hangs on, his bare chest slick with sweat, as if his very life is leak
ing out of him with each drop. His eyelids move rapidly, a frenzied fluttering. He moans, low and mournful, and it’s too much. I drop to my knees at the foot of the table, my heart too heavy to keep me on my feet. And the ugly fear rises up again. I can’t lose him. I can’t lose anyone else. I close my eyes, try to grasp how to pray for him. I don’t know where to begin.
Justin’s gloved hands shake as he pulls away the bandage from Ian’s chest. He stares at the wound, a flashlight in his other shaking hand. And then, the sterilized pocket knife, glistening in the beam of light, is poised, ready to make the first cut. But suddenly, Justin pulls away, resting his back against the counter. With a trembling sigh, he uses his forearm to push a strand of his black hair away from his eyes. His expression is just as shaky as his hands.
“I don’t think I can do this.”
He says nothing more, and I’m pummeled by the reality of my own weakness. And we both can’t be weak. If both of our hearts fail in this, we do Ian no good. I clamber to my feet and go to him, clamping my fingers securely around his wrist as panic nudges me.
“You can.”
He lowers the flashlight until its light splays across the floor. It searches out every hidden crevice. A round of thunder peels overhead.
“I’m afraid, Kate,” he whispers. “This thing inside Ian . . . it’s aggressive.”
“How do you know?”
He raises the light, shines it over the spot on Ian’s chest.
“Take a look.” He points.
I take the light from him and study the wound. It looks like a scar now. It no longer leaks with yellow pus, but it bulges with a rough seam like a stitch down the middle. What causes the gasp that springs from my lungs is not this. Beneath the layer of scarred flesh, something moves, rippling back and forth under the skin, as if some burrowing animal is trapped and desperately searching for a way out. I fling my eyes toward Justin in shock.
“This is something new,” I whisper.
Justin squeezes the knife, but this does nothing to steady his hand.
“I could do some serious damage if I go forward with this without knowing more. This weapon they’ve designed is high-tech. Much more than I thought. I could—I could make it angry.”
“Make it angry?” I tilt my head puzzled. “You’re talking as if it’s alive.”
“Look at it!” His usually calm voice rises in uncharacteristic frustration. “What do you think?”
The wound ripples again, rising up on one end so severely I’m certain whatever it is will burst through the surface. But instead, it sinks below, seems to hover a moment before rising again at the other end. What might it do if he cuts into it?
“He needs a doctor, Kate. Not me.”
I peer at him, and I see it. Like Ian, something isn’t right with him. This fight has changed him.
“We only have you,” I say, and my fingers tighten around the flashlight. “You have to do this.”
“Kate—”
“Justin.” I cut him off. “He is dying if you do this, and he’s dying if you don’t.” I tug on his wrist. “He’s dying. You. Do. This.”
I choke on the last of my words, my eyes wide with fright, and aim the flashlight directly at Ian’s wound. Justin clenches his jaw in a final move of defiance. But then his eyes skitter over his friend—his best friend, shivering in a pool of his own sweat—and he relaxes.
He raises his eyes, pinning them on something behind me. I turn. Liza stands in the doorway, full of intensity.
“What are you waiting for?” she says. She crosses her arms over her chest.
He blinks, his gaze washing over Ian. And before he can talk himself out of it, he moves to the table and makes the first cut.
Chapter 25
T
he agonizing scream that pours from Ian’s lungs is a sound I never wish to hear again. His eyes snap open, the pupils so large that the blue hue vanishes into black. He writhes, his body slamming against the strips that hold him, and Justin fights to keep him still. The knifepoint is buried in Ian’s chest, and the white liquid oozes out all around it.
“Aaaggghhhh! Stop! Please . . . please stop!” Ian bellows his pleas, tears running down both sides of his face. He struggles against the restraints until Justin is forced to lean over him, pressing him down with his elbows. Liza moves to his other side to help.
I keep the light as steady as I can, aiming it straight at Ian’s wound. An aching for him consumes my lungs like water to a drowning person.
Justin’s mouth is fixed into a hard grimace as he works the knife, cutting along the entire center of the wound to open it. And the white pus leaks out, dripping downward toward Ian’s armpit. He screams again. Justin moves back.
“Oh no.”
“What is it?” Liza asks.
I lean forward, press the light closer. My mouth falls open the minute I see the tiny blisters dotting Ian’s skin. He jerks hard, and Liza bounces a step back from the table.
“Whoa.”
Justin looks at me.
“Get me something to clean this stuff. It’s burning his skin.”
I drop the flashlight on the table with a thunk, my eyes searching the kitchen. Frantically, I fumble through the cupboards, knocking items off the shelves as I do. Ian moans, gives off a gulping sob, and I search harder.
“Please,” he whispers.
Sophia, hearing Ian’s screams, hangs back in the kitchen doorway, her frightened eyes glued to his writhing body.
“Sophia!” I yell her name, my heart pounding. “I need clean towels, cloths. Do you have anything in this house?”
She’s numb, staring up at me, and the ferocious panic makes my voice sound angry. I to her, take her by the shoulders with a rough shake.
“Do you have anything we can use to clean Ian? Cloths? Towels?”
She nods, her lip trembling, and disappears into the pantry. A second later, she hands me a stack of clean, folded towels. Without addressing her, I whirl.
The gooey substance slowly seeps out. Ian is still now, his mouth working silently, his face contorted with pain. To my thinking, he should be unconscious by now. I lay one of the towels against his chest just below the wound, and this time, when Justin digs, the towel is there for dabbing.
“Is he going to live?” Sophia asks, her voice small.
A sudden peal of thunder drowns her out.
“We’re working on it, Soph.” Justin doesn’t turn as he speaks.
I take the light so that both of his hands are free again.
“Be careful,” Liza warns. “Don’t get any of it on you.”
After a minute, I move in as close as I can to Justin and take over clean up for him. When a little bit touches my skin, nothing happens, and I understand. It was the bullets, the fragments of metal rather than the liquid that nearly killed me.
Justin falters a split second, pulls back slightly as if he regrets what he’s done. The liquid fizzes, bubbling up to leave a group of blisters trailing from the wound. I press the cloth, sopping up the liquid.
Suddenly and without warning, Ian manages to wiggle his left leg free from the restraint, and before I know what’s happened, he knees me, hard in the gut. Pain rips through me. I topple backwards with a cry, landing hard on the wood floor. I moan, clutching my side, squeezing my eyes tight to clear the fog in my head that accompanies the blow.
“You okay, Kate?” Justin’s voice comes from somewhere above me, I peer upward, see him struggling to keep Ian down.
“I’m all right,” I manage. I ease to a sitting position, scoop up the flashlight, and use the edge of the table to pull myself upright. I squeeze the towel in my fist.
“Let me up!” Ian wails. He shoves his shoulder into Justin, causing him to lose his footing briefly.
In that moment, a booming crack of thunder shudders the house. Ian jerks against Justin’s hold, but Liza bolts around Justin to the end of the table. Ian jerks again. Justin pins Ian’s arms up over his head, and Liza takes him by his wri
sts, angling them downward in a tight-locked grip. The room brightens with flashing light. Thunder again, and the rains outside suddenly pick up speed, beating against the side of the house. The kitchen grows loud. Ian squirms, yells above the fray.
“Kate!” Justin yells. He clambers up onto the table, straddles Ian, pinning him with the weight of his body. The table buckles dangerously under all the weight. “We started this, and we’re going to finish it. All I need you to do is hold that light steady.”
I don’t know what changed, but I suddenly see the Justin I know. The one who takes control and doesn’t let anything shake him. I aim the light with both hands and hold as still as I can. From the pantry, Sophia watches, her shoulders stiff, her eyes wide.
Liza holds Ian, Justin digs at the vicious infection that bubbles out of Ian’s flesh like a boiling vat of poison. Time creeps by as Ian alternates between screams and whimpering until I think I might crack apart with his pain. And the tinny sound of the rain thrums on.
Finally, it’s done. The harsh rains slow to a pattering. Ian’s body stills. He falls into an exhausted sleep. Justin takes the towels in his gloved hands and carries them to the sink. I stare at Liza across the table, my body tense. She winks.
“He’ll be okay, now.”
I stand deathly still. His breathing, deep and even after so much pain is almost blissful. I take a step, place the back of my fingers against his forearm.
It’s warm.
With a sigh, I take his hand in mine. The wound on his chest slowly closes, one inch at a time, and I watch it in awe until it fades into the bronze of his skin, and disappears completely. Gently, I press my hand into the area, and my tears appear at the edge of my lower lid to revel in this with me.
“So we can beat this thing.” Liza squeezes my arm. “We just have to run faster than speeding bullets . . . and keep Justin around.”
I laugh, and all the former tension fades into the sound.
“Let’s move him back to the room,” Justin says.
I strip the sweaty sheets from the bed. Liza flips the mattress, and we replace the linens. Justin brings Ian in, lowers him into bed, and steps back. We stand, all of us together, and watch him sleep.