The Defiance

by Laura Gallier

  The duality of realms was an abstract concept to grasp, but all that really mattered was Gentry’s survival. “How can we get him out of there?”

  “Only he can.” The old man stomped the pile of dirt, now level with the earth’s surface, and the pavilion’s wood floor returned—a spiritual phenomenon as seemingly natural as the rustling of the leaves on the trees surrounding us. “It’s Gentry’s choice.”

  For once, I didn’t need the mysterious man to elaborate. I understood: if Gentry chose to believe and side with God’s voice of truth—take the loving hand God was reaching out to him and refuse to listen to the enemy’s lies any longer—his soul would escape that grave. And given my experience breaking free of chains and cords that, just months ago, had me bound, I was sure it would go a long way for Gentry to ask God’s forgiveness for having tried to murder himself, as the old man had phrased it. I knew better than anyone that forgiveness causes major chain reactions in the spirit-realm. The good kind.

  Most importantly, Gentry needed to be liberated from his shackle, and I knew the solution for that too. But I couldn’t share it with Gentry if he wasn’t willing to listen.

  “Owen.” The old man called to me, but I was lost in thought, staring at the lone rope dangling from the rafters. “Don’t try to intervene alone tomorrow. You need another’s help. Don’t be too proud to ask for it.”

  Naturally, I thought of Ray Anne, but she was out of commission.

  I turned to face the old man, eager to ask more, but he was gone.

  Abandoned again. It was such an intense thought, I scanned the dark pavilion and surrounding woods, questioning if it came from me or . . .

  An unmistakable sewage smell wafted my way. I knew who was there, stalking me and launching that depressing statement at my mind. An old nuisance, back again. “Demise, you have no permission to speak to me.”

  The sewage smell faded into the night air.

  I lingered under the pavilion, sickened by the thought of the horrific, unjust acts performed here, under this very roof. The pleas for mercy that had gone unanswered. The innocent lives lost at the hands of humanity, received by Molek as a reverent offering.

  Like the final pieces of a puzzle snapping into place, as I stood there pondering the pavilion’s gruesome history, the Rulers’ deadly plan for tomorrow night suddenly became clear to me—as obvious as the stench of death that engulfed Gentry’s spirit-world grave. It was an unthinkable maneuver, a tragedy the people of Masonville had yet to suffer. So atrocious, the whole nation would be stunned.

  I took off running as fast as I could in the dark woods back toward the Caldwell Cemetery so I could find my way from there to my motorcycle, praying the whole time. “Please, please, God, help me find Gentry.”

  It was 10:55 p.m. when I arrived at his house. Eleven o’clock by the time the door finally opened to my knocking. I was prepared to face his stepdad and insist I speak with Gentry. If Gentry wasn’t home, I’d plead for his stepdad to tell me where I might find him. But it wasn’t the stepdad at the door.

  “Lance.” I gulped. “You’re back.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, OWEN?”

  It didn’t matter how close of friends Lance and I had been when I first moved to Masonville, or that I’d run to his side when he’d been shot in the school hallway and was bleeding out on the floor. He apparently had nothing but contempt for me.

  He flipped on the porch light and stepped outside, dragging his chains over the door’s threshold. I resisted raising my brows at his sculpted biceps, even bigger now that he’d been through the police academy. And he’d grown nearly as tall as me since I’d last seen him—technically, the night he and the other masked guards at the human auction gagged and hogtied me, though I hadn’t realized Lance had been among them until after the fact.

  “I have to talk to Gentry,” I told him.

  “He ran away two days ago.”

  “Your stepdad kicked him out,” I clarified.

  “No, he didn’t. How would you know, anyway?”

  “I’ve been looking out for your brother lately. Trying to, at least. He’s on drugs—and dealing, I think. And Lance . . .”

  Gentry had asked me not to tell his secret, but I was sure if Gentry knew how much his big brother really cared about him, he’d have told Lance himself. Still, this was the ultimate déjà vu, having to tell Lance yet again that someone close to him was suicidal. Last time it hadn’t gone well, to say the least. “Gentry’s attempted suicide before, and he’s going to do it again. Tomorrow night.”

  Lance crossed his hulking arms. “I can’t believe you’re pulling this again.”

  “There are twelve more students who are going to do it too, including his girlfriend, Zella. A group suicide, on my property.” A sacrifice of young lives hand chosen by Molek, the Lord of the Dead—so sadistic, it would grant him the spirit-world rights he needed to return to my land and join the Cosmic Rulers. Together, they’d wreak untold devastation on Masonville and beyond. But I couldn’t explain that part to Lance.

  He narrowed his eyes. “My brother told you this?”

  I hesitated. “Not exactly.”

  He rocked back and forth on his heels, smirking. “Let me guess. You saw some invisible monster at the school, chasing his friends and him with an axe?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  He thrust his face in mine, smirk gone. “It’s your morbid, psychotic stories that push people over the edge, Owen. If you hadn’t scared Meagan so bad and put thoughts of suicide in her head, she’d still be alive. Walt and Marshall too.”

  “That’s not true!” My temper spiked as hot as his. “I’ve only ever tried to help people and warn them. But you were too stubborn to listen to me before, and you still are.”

  I guess I should have seen it coming—he shoved me. “You stay away from my brother, you hear me?”

  I stumbled backwards but managed to stay on my feet. “Please, Lance, for once, hear me out. I could use your help!”

  Creepers rushed to the scene, lured by our conflict, but I kept my eyes on Lance, ready to cover my head if he started swinging. He kept his fists at his sides, but his shadowy soul lurched forward, leaning out from his torso and growling at me like a Rottweiler.

  He’d always been one to rage; maybe that was what made him susceptible to Strife’s influence.

  Truth be told, for as long as I could remember, I’d been raging too. No, I didn’t go around taking it out on people, throwing punches; I kept my fury bottled up, battering my own frustrated soul.

  Who was I kidding? Of course Strife had been able to sink his meat hooks in me.

  I squared my shoulders, determined to try to get through to Lance one last time. “You and I both know there are some horrible, dark things going on in this town, led by some seriously corrupt people. Even you got caught up in it, Lance. But I’m begging you—there are powers at work here more deadly than you can imagine, and they’re after your brother. I’m serious. I need you to trust me and help me stop this. Fight on the right team. With me.”

  His breathing quickened and his eyes became glossy—a major show of emotion for him. But he didn’t break. “Get off my property, or I’ll drag you off.”

  What could I do except turn around and leave?

  As I drove out of Lance’s neighborhood, it occurred to me to find Zella’s house and try reasoning with her, but it’s not like Detective Benny would let me anywhere near his daughter.

  I pulled up at my mom’s, and the black Suburban was idling out front in the street. At least I knew now the men in that SUV weren’t out to harm me.

  My mother and father stood by the passenger door, facing one another—two silhouettes on a dark night. I turned my engine off, but stayed seated on my motorcycle in the driveway, giving them space.

  My mom looked up at him. “Stephen, I . . .”

  I think she was trying to say the three most important words but wasn’t any better at it tha
n me. Like mother, like son.

  He embraced her. “My heart never left you, Susan.”

  My mother’s body went limp in his arms, like she’d waited a lifetime to hear that.

  “We can’t be seen together.” He held her, swaying side to side. “But I’ll be in touch. You have my word.”

  He looked my direction and motioned for me to approach. I did, and he wrapped an arm around my shoulders, still holding my mother in the other.

  None of us said anything.

  There was no need.

  Minutes later, my mom sobbed like a homesick child as she stood next to me, watching the Suburban’s red taillights move down the street. We wandered into the house, both of us keeping to ourselves, enduring the void of my father’s absence.

  I still felt the sting of his decision to distance himself from me nearly my entire life, but somehow the resentment was no match for the attachment I still had toward him.

  Mom started up the stairs, and I asked to borrow her cell phone. She handed it to me, then locked herself in her bedroom. I could only hope she wouldn’t start drinking again.

  I texted Ray Anne and called her multiple times, but there was no answer. Was she ignoring my calls, or had her parents taken away her phone? Hearing Ray’s voice on her voicemail greeting made my insides ache.

  Minutes later, just after midnight, there was a knock at the door—so soft, I barely heard it.

  I glanced out the peephole.

  Zella. A black line above her shackle, across her throat. And a hulking Creeper behind her, attached at the wrist to one of her chains, with one of the cords hanging from the back of her head burrowed into its palm. I opened the door, and the Creeper’s stench of festering mold accosted my nose. Tears streamed down Zella’s cheeks, and she wrapped both arms around her waist like she was trying to console herself. For a moment I feared my theory about tomorrow’s group suicide was wrong and her boyfriend was already gone.

  “Did something happen to Gentry?” I asked.

  “No.” She wiped her nose on the long sleeve of her maroon hoodie. “Not yet.”

  Had she not been escorting that towering Creeper, I’d have invited her inside. I went out to her instead, closing the door behind me, ignoring the ice-cold intruder.

  “I snuck out and walked here,” she said. “Gentry made me swear not to tell, but I have to. I don’t know who else to go to.”

  I didn’t waste time asking how she’d known which house was my mom’s or that she could find me here.

  “Me and Gentry are in a support group with people who’ve tried to kill themselves before. Now Gentry’s telling us we need to do it again, for real this time. Together. Tomorrow night. No backing out.”

  “I know, Zella.”

  She looked up at me, her teary eyes wide. “How?”

  She was shackled, so not likely to believe me, but I was still willing to tell her the facts—how she and Gentry and the others were targeted to die. But I had to navigate the conversation carefully. The Creeper behind her already had its hands out, poised to cover her ears. “I know you think the group suicide is Gentry’s idea, but it’s not. An evil influence put the plan in his head.”

  “I know who.”

  “You do?” Now I was surprised. Did she actually believe in the existence of demonic beings?

  I waited impatiently for her to get a tearful sob under control. “It was Eva. Gentry said she came to him last week and told him we have to do it—including where, what time, and how.”

  “Eva,” evil’s puppet. I should have known.

  I popped my knuckles, struggling to make sense of Veronica’s motives and methods. And the stupid two-name thing.

  “And Gentry wants to go through with it?”

  “Yes.” Zella cleared her throat. “Eva said lots of innocent people have been murdered in those woods behind the school, and their spirits still roam the land, angry and unable to rest. They haunt Masonville High and make people do bad things, like when Dan Bradford shot up the school.

  “And they’re going to keep forcing people to do bad things unless a group of us sacrifice our own lives—you know, to show the spirits that we care and we’re sorry for what happened to them. Then they’ll move on and leave that land and our school alone forever. No more violence.

  “And since we’re the suicidal ones—the ones willing and brave enough—it should be us.”

  My jaw could not have dropped any lower. Yes, countless people had been murdered on that land—my land—but the rest was outright lies. There were demons all over my property and the school, not vengeful ghosts, and demons don’t force people to do violent stuff. They manipulate people by taunting them with cruel lies—the very thing “Eva” was doing to Gentry. And the remedy was citywide prayer on the land, not more senseless deaths.

  I was practically choking on the putrid smell of mold wafting from the Creeper behind Zella, but it was too dark outside to see the word etched into its forehead. I clutched her thin shoulders. “What’s the plan? The location and time?”

  “Tomorrow at midnight. We’re supposed to meet up at that Mary statue in the old graveyard and take some pills Gentry is bringing. He swears it’ll be painless.”

  I thought for sure the moldy Creeper would react as Zella revealed evil’s top-secret plot. Gnash its jagged teeth or something. But it just stood there, threatened by my aura, I supposed.

  “You’re not planning to be a part of this, right, Zella? You know it’s all a deception?”

  That did it. The Creeper snarled at me like a prehistoric beast.

  She started to sob again, silently at first. Then through gasps, she confessed. “Part of me doesn’t want to die, but . . . part of me does.”

  Oh yeah. Zella’s soul was trapped in one of those spirit-world graves where evil advice and hope-filled assurances were yanking back and forth on her mind and emotions in a ceaseless tug-of-war. And with her father being entrenched in the occult, and her mother likely active too, who knew what her life was like?

  “Zella—”

  Before I could attempt to sway her, she threw her arms around me, squeezing my ribs, burying her damp face in my T-shirt. “I’m not gonna do it, Owen—I’m not! I want to live and move out and get away from this town. From my parents. But someone has to go to the cemetery tomorrow night and stop Gentry and talk the others out of it too. They won’t listen to me. I know they won’t!”

  “Shh.” I rubbed circles on her back, trying to calm her the way I’d seen Ray Anne ease Jackson during his crying spells. “Don’t worry, Zella. I won’t let this happen.”

  She finally released me, and I asked if she knew where Gentry was.

  “He won’t tell me. And, Owen, if you go to Principal Harding, or word gets out at all that someone’s trying to stop the plan—if our group doesn’t follow through—Eva told Gentry someone else would die in our place. She mentioned something about a special child worth more than all of us.”

  It felt like I’d been hit by a torpedo.

  Hadn’t Veronica told me Mother Punishment was coming for Jackson? He was evil’s fallback plan.

  For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why they were so obsessed with that little boy. What made him such a coveted prize to enemy forces?

  Zella started fanning her face like she was burning up, not surprising given that she was wearing a hoodie in August. I knew there had to be something to it. “How come Gentry and you always dress like that?”

  She sniffled while pushing her sleeve up past her elbow, then held her forearm in my face. Even in the moonlight, I could see the scabby streaks.

  “You guys cut yourselves?”

  She nodded, then started to pull her sleeve down, but I reached and stopped her. “Wait!”

  “What are you doing?” She tried to tug her arm away, but I held on.

  “Zella . . .” I couldn’t make sense of it. “You have a defender seal.”

  “A what?”

  “You—you’re shackled, yet marked
for the mission. How’s that possible?”

  The Creeper tugged on her chain, and she stepped back.

  I knew the moldy monster was going to freak, but I had to say it. “You’ve been set apart, Zella. By God.”

  Sure enough, her tormentor roared, then pressed its rotten mouth against her ear. “Go,” it hissed.

  Zella pulled her sleeve down. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Hold on.” I pulled my mom’s phone out of my pocket and aimed the screen light at the Creeper’s face. A scarred assignment ran the length of its forehead and wrapped around the side of its bald head.

  I’d commanded Creepers to go from places before, but never from a person tethered to one. There’s a first time for everything, right?

  “In the name of Jesus, Deception, let go of Zella.”

  The thing instantly foamed at the mouth and started convulsing.

  “What’s going on?” Zella asked.

  I stayed focused, repeating the command.

  The Creeper ripped Zella’s cord out of its hand as if it was suddenly scalding hot, then scrambled to pull its wrist out of the chain cuff.

  “I was gonna ask you for a ride home,” she said, “but seriously, never mind.” She started down the driveway.

  Unlinked to Zella, Deception rushed into the street, where two more Creepers came climbing out from a covered sewer hole. The three of them eyed her like snakes tracking a mouse.

  “Zella, please.” I caught up to her. “Let me give you a ride.”

  She threw her hands in the air. “You just went psycho on me.”

  “I’m sorry. There are things you don’t understand. Things you don’t see.”

  Like a dimmer light switch steadily rising to max power, the gruesome mask of addiction came into view, covering her entire face. The sharp barbed wire dangling at her chin. The dagger in her gut.

  “Zella, I know you’re really stressed out and scared, but don’t go use. It’s not what you need.”