The Defiance

by Laura Gallier

  Mrs. Greiner saw me and stopped. I approached her open window. Her aura illuminated the floorboard and pedals.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Greiner.”

  “Hey, Owen. Ray Anne has a lot of schoolwork today, so I’m taking Jackson to the zoo.” She peeked at Jackson in the rearview mirror and spoke in baby talk, naming the animals they’d see.

  I’d never seen Mrs. Greiner’s shoulder-length hair tied back in a ponytail before, which wouldn’t be worth mentioning except that for the first time ever, it gave me a clear view of the back of her neck. I tried not to cringe. An eyeless serpent was coiled at the top of her spine, in the same spot as Ray Anne’s.

  Maybe I’d been right, and Ray’s fear really was a generational curse?

  “I trust you’re not staying long?” Mrs. Greiner didn’t like me being alone with Ray in her garage apartment, and ever since I’d proposed, I got the feeling she didn’t like me coming around as much. She still liked me; I just think in her mind, I’d become the person who might one day take her daughter away. Her only child, since Lucas died.

  “I’m here to cheer her up,” I said.

  Oops. I would have hit a rewind button if only life came with one.

  “Is something wrong with Ray Anne?” Mrs. Greiner plunged her head out the window, her cheeks instantly red. “Please, Owen, if something has got my girl down, I need you to tell me right now. Is she upset because we’ve had a difficult time paying her college tuition?” She lowered her voice so Jackson couldn’t hear. “Or because caring for a child is too much? She doesn’t tell me anything anymore.”

  Because you’re an overbearing worrywart, I thought. Not that I completely blamed her. Mrs. Greiner’s fifteen-year-old son had committed suicide, despite her best efforts to rescue him out of his depression. But from day one, the way I’d witnessed her hover over Ray Anne seemed to me like more than devoted motherly concern. The wide-eyed, panicked look on Mrs. Greiner’s face right now was full-on fear, like a child eyeing a closed closet door, convinced there’s a flesh-eating monster behind it. And it was hardly the first time I’d seen her like that.

  It was the identical expression Ray Anne had lately, especially while rehearsing the ways Jackson might come to harm. The exact same curse coiled around her neck.

  “Ray Anne just has a lot on her mind,” I told her mom. The truth minus specifics.

  Unfortunately, Mrs. Greiner only kept interrogating me, probing for details.

  “She’ll be fine,” I said repeatedly, watching in revulsion as the snake embedded in Mrs. Greiner’s skin started twisting, roused to action by her fearful fretting.

  I tried to assure her all was well, but nothing I said relaxed her. Or the serpent.

  Mrs. Greiner put her SUV in park and took her foot off the brake. “Maybe I should stay home with Ray Anne today.”

  “No,” I said. “I’ll help her get her homework done, then I’ll get her out of the house for some fresh air.”

  It wasn’t easy, but I finally talked Ray’s mom into backing out of the driveway and leaving.

  I had my fist up, ready to knock on Ray Anne’s door, when I saw that diaper box behind the shrubs again, farther from the door this time. I sidestepped over to it and folded the lid back.

  “Sick!”

  There were two pale-pink Creepers in there now, their arms and legs wrapped around each other and their faces crammed together—not like hatchling creatures snuggled in a nest, but more like a pair of villains with their hands all over each other.

  To make matters worse, a bath towel lined the bottom of the box—the same shade of light blue as I’d seen folded in laundry baskets at Ray Anne’s.

  She put it in there.

  To make the monsters comfortable.

  They saw me and started squealing, clinging even tighter to one another’s emaciated bodies.

  I heard the door fly open, and Ray Anne hollered, “Hey, what’s going—”

  It was super awkward when she realized it was me messing with the box. We stared at each other, both aware she’d just set out to defend demons.

  “Ray Anne, you’d seriously run out here and use your light to protect them from other Creepers?” I picked up the weighted box and turned it upside down, but all that fell out was her towel. “You’re acting like they’re your pets.”

  “What do you mean, they?”

  Ah. She didn’t know another one had joined the party. And by party, I mean the evil operation to gain access to her life through her misguided sympathy, no doubt to eventually harm her in some devastating way. Maybe even fatally—the very thing she feared. It was my worst fear too, though I tried to suppress it.

  I dropped the box on its open lid, and the fakers whined like it actually hurt them to fall.

  Ray Anne made her way over, inching behind the shrubs in denim shorts and sandals. She peeked beneath the overturned box. “Another one?”

  “What’d you expect? When you play around with evil, it grows bigger and stronger, Ray Anne. It’s only when you hate it and make it go away that it gets weaker and backs off.”

  “I’m not playing around with them.”

  I grabbed the towel and waved it in her face. “You made them a bed.” I kicked the box, but not nearly hard enough. It wedged sideways in the bushes. The Creepers scrambled to get back inside like frightened toddlers. “What’s next?” I asked her. “Bath time and bottles?”

  She crossed her arms airtight. “I can’t help that I have a heart.”

  That one made my blood boil, but I took a deep breath and forced myself to chill. “Babe, there’s never any form of evil that deserves the slightest bit of mercy, no matter the situation.”

  I waited for her to realize and admit how unreasonable she was being, but she just stood there, eyes going glossy. “I can’t deal with this right now.” She turned her back on me and headed toward the door.

  I could take the easy way out and blame what I said next on the effects of Strife’s presence in Masonville, but the anger surged from within and came bursting out of my mouth. “What can you deal with anymore, huh, Ray Anne?”

  She jerked to a stop, like I’d hurled a javelin into her back. And to my instant regret, I basically had. “Please,” I begged her, “ignore what I just said. I didn’t mean it.”

  She didn’t move a muscle at first, then finally stormed past her door and stomped into her front yard. She dropped to the grass and wrapped her arms around her bent knees, dropping her head onto them. I lowered beside her beneath the beaming-blue sky, as close to her as I could get. I rubbed gentle circles between her shoulder blades, not willing to let the thought—or icy feel—of that snake inside her stop me from consoling her. It ran the full length of her spine.

  “Please don’t.” She moved my hand away, then reached and cupped the back of her neck above her shirt collar, covering the reptile’s head. “Is there anything else in me or on me I need to know about?”

  “No, Ray Anne. I swear.”

  “You promise?”

  I’d just sworn, but I promised too, then assured her once again, “It’s okay, you don’t have to cover anything up.”

  I rubbed her fingers, but she refused to loosen her grip on her neck. “You were right, Owen. I can’t deal with anything anymore.”

  “That wasn’t fair of me.”

  “It’s true.” She looked up at me, more angry than sad, I think. Furious at herself. “I’ve never felt so defeated. So helpless to stop being afraid and suck it up and get my act together.”

  “Fear’s paralyzing,” I reminded her, trying to understand and encourage, not lecture.

  “And faith is liberating,” she said. “But for the life of me, I can’t seem to conquer this anxiety—this overwhelming fear that, any day now, the worst is going to happen. To me, yes, but to Jackson, too. He’s who I’m really worried about. And if something ever happened to you, Owen—”

  Even with her hand on the back of her neck, I could still see the snake’s body begin to twist.


  “You’re panicking over Jackson,” I said, “just like your mom panics over you.”

  “What?”

  I wanted to explain things, but not here, in her front yard, where deceiving Creepers were jumbled in a box. We needed to distance ourselves. Get as far away from all things oppressive as we possibly could.

  I stood and reached out to her. She grabbed my hand, and I led her to my motorcycle, then handed her a helmet.

  “Where are we going?”

  I gave a playful shrug and grinned, pretending not to know.

  She cracked a smile for what seemed like the first time in forever, then hopped on.

  She spotted the familiar lakeside gazebo before I did, nestled in its scenic spot two towns away from Masonville. It was the same lake we’d escaped to the night of our senior prom. I veered off the road and parked in the grass.

  We walked hand in hand up the steps into the white wooden gazebo and stood in the center, looking out at the rippling water and surrounding trees. It felt like the shade was fanning my stressed soul. I hoped she was experiencing similar relief.

  It had been quiet for all of sixty soothing seconds when Ray Anne dug her nails into my hand. “How are we supposed to work with other Lights and carry out Arthur’s instructions when our meeting on Sunday was such a total disaster?”

  Her question was timely and important—vital, even—yet it totally clashed with the calming bird chirps and rustling leaves around us. I had a lot to tell her, and yes, we had some serious things to discuss. But I was nineteen years old and full of energy, desperate to let loose a little. She needed that even more than I did.

  I started untying and removing my shoes, then emptying the pockets of my basketball shorts.

  “What are you doing?” She crinkled her nose.

  I flashed her a flirtatious smile, then ran toward the lake, pulling my T-shirt off and tossing it to the grass. My feet sank into the mud as I charged into the water, trudging deeper until the tide had engulfed my shorts and water sloshed above my waist.

  I turned to wave Ray Anne on, but she was already barefoot and running toward the water—smiling, even. Having fun for a change. Shorts and T-shirt and all, she ran to me, and I spun her around, then dunked her completely under water with me. We came up for air at the same time, both cracking up and basking in the cool water mixed with the toasty feel of the sun on our heads.

  The water was all the way up to Ray Anne’s shoulders. She brushed her soaked hair away from her beautiful face, then interlocked her fingers around the back of my neck. I’ve got to say, it took me by surprise when she wrapped her legs around my waist. I didn’t recall ever being that physically close to her before. The feel of her body against mine, her soft skin touching me all over . . .

  Was there even a word in the human language to describe the feeling?

  Yes, I was insanely attracted to her, but coupled with all the emotion—the intense attachment I had toward her—it was like the perfect explosive combination.

  No, more like the perfect storm surge. She was saving herself for marriage, so there was nowhere to go from here except to stuff all that desire into a musty storm cellar known as restraint. It wasn’t gratifying or fun, but I’d come to understand by now: she wanted to be treasured, not targeted. And she wanted to honor and obey God.

  How could I not admire that?

  She rested her chin on my bare shoulder and stroked my hair above the back of my neck like she was filled with affection for me. She seemed determined to forget about spirit-world invaders for now. Minutes passed, and the water lapped against our skin, both of us content to be so close.

  “I know why I’ve never told you I love you, Owen.”

  I waited for her to explain, feeling like I’d forgotten how to breathe.

  “It’s because I’m terrified of losing you—of having no control and suddenly being separated from someone I can’t imagine living without. And I think somehow, if I guard my heart against saying those words, it helps silence the fear. At least most of the time.”

  “Maybe because of how you suddenly lost your brother?”

  It took her a second to confess. “Probably so.”

  I waded through the water, still holding her, feeling a sense of pride, as if I were bravely leading us somewhere important, even though I was only treading through a small hill country lake.

  “I want this thing out of me,” she said, snapping me back into reality—a world where curses coil inside of people.

  I told her all I’d learned about curses, reciting the verse out of Galatians and also describing how things had played out the night before with the snakes and cursed objects from the pond. “If you’d just stand up to the curse that’s got you,” I told her, “resist all the fear, and come at that snake with that verse, it would have no choice but to go.”

  “Seriously, Owen? I know that verse—you don’t think I’ve tried?”

  “You have to really believe it, Ray Anne.”

  “Stop it!” She was instantly irate. She let go of my neck and pointed in my face. “You have no idea what this is like. How overwhelming it feels. I’m trying not to fear, but I’ve never, in all my life, been hit this hard with something so terrifying.”

  “I’m sorry.” I hugged her. “I’m sure it’s much harder than I understand.”

  She hugged me back, and her voice softened. “I’m praying and trying, Owen. I really am. I don’t know why my faith is gone or how to get it back. I’m sorry too.”

  It was the kind of deflated, defeated apology that made me want to keep pleading—keep encouraging her—until it finally clicked and she realized the fight was already won. But this was her battle, not mine. Her spiritual crossroads to navigate and hopefully find her way back soon to the Ray Anne I’d always known and fallen in love with, even if I had yet to say it.

  She was still toying with my hair but had gotten really quiet. I sensed it was my turn to explain why I’d never told her I loved her, even though everything within me did. The problem was, I didn’t exactly understand why. Not entirely.

  “I guess for me . . .” I paused, soul-searching, hoping something authentic and mature would come to me. “I think I feel unworthy of being loved, so it’s like I don’t have the right to say it to you.”

  Whoa. Finally, some clarity. And unbearable humiliation.

  I couldn’t believe I’d just made a confession like that about myself, especially since I’d always considered myself a confident guy.

  Ray Anne leaned back and looked up at me, her brow furrowed in sympathy. “Of course you’re worthy of love.”

  I turned my head, loathing that I’d come off as needy. Eventually I asked her, “Why are there some things we can’t seem to believe, even though we know we should? Good things? True things?”

  She nestled her face into my neck, beneath my chin. “I wish I knew.”

  I kept holding her and walking, eventually circling back, content to be quiet awhile—my way of accepting there were some things I couldn’t fix, no matter how much I wanted to. And maybe I wasn’t supposed to try.

  We made it to shore, and as we approached the gazebo, traipsing through the tall grass in our waterlogged clothes, I thought of more things I needed to get her caught up on. Like what was feeding Molek, refueling his strength, and how the thirteen targets were the suicidal students in Gentry’s support group. I knew I should also tell her about the snake in her mom’s neck. Surely Ray Anne hadn’t seen it, or she would have told me. But when I opened my mouth to start talking, I got the feeling I shouldn’t bring up any of that heavy stuff.

  Not here.

  Not now.

  And thankfully I didn’t, because I’m sure it would have ruined what happened next.

  As we stood embracing one another in the center of the gazebo, soaking wet yet warm, Ray Anne stared out at the serene lake, then up at me. “If we get married someday, can we have the ceremony here?”

  Wow.

  I was so elated, so ove
r-the-top ecstatic that she would even think of that, I told her yes, like, four times.

  To this day, it was among our sweetest, most unforgettable moments.

  And we really needed it before heading back to the war zone awaiting us back home.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ON THE DRIVE BACK TO MASONVILLE, Ray Anne and I spotted a food truck and stopped to grab a bite. While seated side by side on a wobbly bench, I delivered the depressing news about her mom’s infested spine, identical to hers. “It’s a curse that runs in your family, I think.”

  Thankfully Ray Anne was almost done with her taco by then, because she completely lost her appetite. She changed the subject, too distraught to even discuss it, I think. Her new way of coping lately.

  “Sunday’s meeting was an epic fail,” she said. “How are we ever going to gather people onto your land when, from what I can tell, Ethan’s about the only one in Masonville who’s on board?”

  He was more than on board. He was an official spirit-world defender, like us. But I still couldn’t bring myself to tell her that.

  “Don’t you think we should get with Ethan soon and discuss things?” she asked. “Maybe he’ll have suggestions about what we should do next.”

  Of course we should. But as disgraceful as it is to admit, I was willing to compromise the fate of our town—and ultimately our nation and world—just to avoid having to endure seeing my girlfriend interact with him. Jealousy burns the soul that bad. “Let’s give it a few days and see what happens,” I said. “I have some ideas.” Never mind that we had no time to waste, and I didn’t have any strong suggestions about what to do. But I told myself I’d figure something out.

  I had to.

  This time, I changed the subject—to the suicidal students in Gentry’s support group.

  Ray Anne pointed out the obvious. “Warning them that Molek and Cosmic Rulers want them dead won’t work.”