The Defiance

by Laura Gallier

  “Wait!” I scrambled to my feet, feeling strangely lighter now.

  He charged deeper through the woods in the direction he’d pointed.

  I tried to follow him but couldn’t begin to keep up. Still, I kept running, even as the rain poured harder. Eventually, I recognized the path. Sure enough, minutes later, I spotted the old wooden pavilion. I stopped and gulped for air, looking up at the roof. It was covered entirely by witches, those astral-projecting people, draped in their sloppy white dresses. They were on their knees, as if praying to their god.

  But that was nothing compared to the ground around the pavilion. It was gone—as in, completely open to the underworld.

  I stepped as close to the edge as I could stomach and stared down.

  Same as before, the powers of heaven and hell collided in heated conflict in that cavernous space, so wide and deep it appeared endless. In the center, directly under the pavilion, a huge mass of bones—the Rulers’ throne—rose slowly from the turmoil. Mother Punishment was still perched on top, the other Rulers tussling inside her so that I got brief glimpses of their deranged faces.

  The throne rocked and teetered, unstable and unbalanced like all things evil. With every tilt, I caught peeks of Molek’s empty throne dangling below, attached to the Rulers’ throne by a chain that whipped his empty chair around like it was made of flimsy black plastic.

  The sound of countless people’s pleading voices filled the atmosphere, as loud as a crowded stadium—a clashing mix of prayers and hexes. I’d come to cherish a certain voice so much, it stood out to me above the masses.

  “Protect Owen and show him what to do. Don’t let the students die, Lord.”

  “Ray Anne!”

  She was nowhere near, yet by my side, fighting for me and with me in a dimension that transcends time and space.

  My phone rang, and it was like an alarm clock waking me from a wild dream, only this was really happening. “Hello?” I said. “Ethan?” The signal in the woods was too weak, and our voices kept cutting out. I finally hung up, pinned my GPS location, and sent it to him, but there was no time to stand there staring at the screen to see if it went through. I had to get inside that pavilion.

  I was standing some twenty feet back from it, and the rain pouring off the roof formed walls on every side, blocking me from seeing in. Normally, I’d sprint over there. But normally there wasn’t an open war zone where the ground should have been.

  How was I supposed to get there?

  I looked around, searching for a solution, and spotted a teenaged girl emerging from the woods, headed toward the pavilion. Her short purple hair was soaked and plastered to her head, her tight jeans so waterlogged she struggled to walk.

  As she approached the ledge—the underworld drop-off—I cried out, “Presley!”

  She didn’t hear me. And she didn’t fall. She made it all the way to the wall of water, ducked her head, and slipped inside.

  Of course. Just because the spirit world was open didn’t mean the material ground had caved in. The two realms were overlapping. But that didn’t make my next step any easier.

  I held my foot out, hovering it over the bottomless gulf, debating which would be more terrifying: to look down or close my eyes. I settled on looking straight ahead. The witches on the roof had spotted me and were pointing and cursing, but I tuned them out.

  It took longer than I wanted, but I managed to put my foot down far enough to feel the ground beneath my shoe. When it was time to step out with both feet and stand entirely on the invisible, I couldn’t help but look down. Sure enough, I remained secure at ground level, but I still felt like I was falling. Totally disorienting.

  I took short, quick steps, wondering if this was what Jesus felt like walking on water, trying to get to the pavilion as fast as I could. I was almost there when a fanged Creeper came racing up from the depths beneath me, its arm outstretched like it was reaching for my ankles. But the instant its clawed hand touched my aura, the beast howled and recoiled, thank God.

  Finally, I made it to the rain wall. A deep breath, then I passed through, into the pavilion.

  THIRTY-SIX

  TO MY EYES, the pavilion floor was as transparent as the surrounding land, but it was what I beheld in the physical realm that freaked me out. Like in decades past, thick ropes hung from the antique beams in a makeshift circle, each dangling in front of a student as they balanced on tree stumps, facing one another with their eyes closed.

  Unbelievable. It wasn’t the first time I’d marveled at history repeating itself on my land, deliberately provoked by age-old evil.

  No one moved or uttered a word. Behind each guy and girl, a spirit-world grave was positioned like an open mouth.

  The chains attached to their shackled necks stretched down with no slack in them as Creepers yanked on the links from the under-earth cavern. It looked like they were working to pull the students’ souls out, into eternal suffering, even though the people were still alive.

  Everyone had on a rain-soaked T-shirt marked with words they’d apparently handwritten themselves in black permanent marker. It reminded me of Creeper graffiti.

  Goodbye.

  Don’t cry for me.

  No more pain.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m free.

  In all caps across a young man’s chest: NEVER FORGET ME MOM. I LOVE YOU.

  As the lightning-fast chaos raged beneath my feet, I spotted Gentry. His rope hung in the center of the circle, his back to me. I wasn’t surprised to see Zella among the ring of students—an active participant, not some whistleblower.

  Gentry tilted his head back, gazing into the rafters. “Eva” peered down at him, crouched among the wooden beams, barefoot and draped in the same flimsy dress as the rest of the witches. She gave a single nod.

  “It’s time.” Gentry grabbed his rope with both hands. “Here’s how to tie it.”

  The other twelve opened their eyes. That’s when his girlfriend spotted me. “Owen!”

  Gentry whipped his head around at me. “What’s he doing here, Zella?”

  “I told him midnight, I swear! And I never mentioned this place!”

  Eva rushed toward me in the rafters, crawling on her belly like a spider.

  “Please Lord, keep him safe.” Ray Anne’s voice, still fighting for me.

  An armored Watchman’s hand reached up from beneath the pavilion and launched blinding orbs of radiance at Eva. She covered her eyes, and when the shimmering dots slammed her, she fell from the rafters. The Watchman caught her—her rebellious roaming spirit—cradling her just below ground level in his sculpted arm. “You don’t belong here.”

  “I’ll go back!” she pled, her hands up. He gently released her, and she ran up and out of the pavilion—back to her incarcerated body, I presumed.

  “Where are you going?” Gentry watched Eva flee. He and I had to be the only two who could see her—me because of my supernatural senses, and Gentry because he’d ignorantly dabbled in the paranormal.

  He rushed at me, his possessed eyes browner than normal. “You can’t stop us, so unless you want to stand there and watch, you’d better leave.”

  The Rulers’ throne continued to rise beneath us. If only he could see that.

  “I did come here to stop you, Gentry.” I looked past him. “All of you. You can’t go through with this.”

  “Why not?” Zella asked, her voice emotionless.

  “Because . . .”

  How could I make them understand?

  Gentry got in my face, same as his brother once had in these woods. “You gonna tell us our souls are in danger of hell’s flames?” He had Lance’s sarcastic smile, too.

  “Yes, they are. But it’s not just that.”

  Molek’s bats flew up from below, flapping around the ring of students. I knew their presence was enough to incite evil thoughts.

  “We can’t back out now,” Presley said.

  “There’s nothing to go home to,” Zella piled on.
r />   Gentry left me and returned to the center of the circle, resuming instructing the others on how to tie and knot a noose.

  Then, suddenly, I saw it, plain as day. My next move.

  “You guys!” I ran to them. “Please, give me a minute—just one minute to explain.”

  Gentry mumbled something about hell again—I think telling me to go there—and all six bats swarmed me, morphing into a multitude of smaller bats that looked like an actual earthly species but still reeked of spoiled meat. Within seconds, there were untold thousands of them—a blur of so many wings, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. They hissed at me.

  I covered my head and stumbled backward, losing all sense of direction, including up versus down. Pounding rain hit my head, and I realized I’d staggered out of the pavilion.

  I commanded the bats to back off, keeping my head covered and falling to my knees, at the mercy of God’s intervention.

  “Owen!”

  It sounded like Ethan, but I couldn’t see past the dizzying blur of brown.

  “Jesus!” Ethan’s voice again—not cursing Christ, calling to him.

  Instantly, the flying pestilence flew down, disappearing into the spirit world like water swirling out of a toilet bowl. There stood Ethan, soaking wet in his blue scrubs, wide-eyed, no doubt trying to make sense of what I was doing on my knees.

  He reached out to help me up, and I defied my pride and took his hand.

  The Rulers’ huge throne had risen within a few feet of ground level, Molek’s throne still dangling below. He was seated on it now, pulling on the chain, working with all his might to hoist his smaller seat of dominion as high as the Rulers’.

  “You’re just in time, Ethan.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Follow me.”

  Ethan trailed me through the deluge of water into the pavilion, then gasped. All thirteen students were tightening nooses around their necks. “Stop!” he yelled.

  They flinched but remained determined.

  Ethan snatched his cell from his pocket and started dialing 911.

  “It won’t work,” I said.

  He searched my face. “We have to call the authorities!”

  “Put the phone down,” I told him. “We’re the authorities here.”

  “Owen, are you—”

  “Trust me. I know what we have to do.”

  He hesitated a second longer, then put his phone away. “Tell me.”

  “I have something I have to communicate to them, but dark forces will keep interfering. Unless you fight them off—meaning, stand here and pray.”

  “That’s it?” He caught himself. “I mean, yeah, I can do that.”

  He didn’t waste time. He spoke softly, pacing the edge of the pavilion, striding on top of a cosmic clash he had no idea was there. He left behind glistening footprints I’d only seen one other prayerful person make—Betty. It was another mystery I couldn’t stop and try to figure out right now.

  Instantly, the Creepers pulling at the students’ chains began to thrash, covering their own ears for a change.

  Once more, I approached the group. Gentry scowled at me, his eyes even darker. “Leave us alone!”

  “That’s just it.” I stepped into the center of their circle and eyed each one of them. “You’re not alone.”

  I braced myself for those horrid black scales to overtake their eyes. Instead, a burden-easing warmth filled the pavilion as Custos and a platoon of armored Watchmen rose up into the space, positioning themselves above us, underneath us, and around the circle, encasing us inside a protective sphere. The graves vanished in their golden light.

  Without any cue that I detected, the Watchmen all extended their jaw-dropping wings, creating an impenetrable fortress of feathers—luminescent layers of interlocked metal, not wispy quills. There was so much heavenly light swirling on the students’ bodies and faces—so much peace in the air—several of them started tearing up, responding emotionally without explanation.

  “It’s not death you guys want.” I was loud and bold. “It’s life. A sense of hope and happiness and assurance that you matter and have a good purpose that’s worth existing for. And you’ve tried to find life in all kinds of ways, but nothing’s worked—I know, I’ve done it too. So, you think by ‘bravely’ escaping this world, you’ll finally find the life you’re looking for somewhere else. Or maybe just sleep forever.

  “But I’m here to tell you the God-honest truth.” I eyed their shackled necks. “You won’t.”

  Gentry tried to interrupt me, but I didn’t let him. “Life is something that comes to us here, while we’re alive on this earth. It pursues us, because, you guys, life is a presence and person who loves us—a Creator who really does care. It’s taken me a while to get that through my head, but I’m starting to.

  “It’s no coincidence that each of you is here, with a rope around your neck.” I kept turning, working to face all of them. “Evil has a plan to kill you today because God has a plan for your life—a vital plan that seriously threatens the kingdom of darkness. And I so wish I could explain this to you guys, but just please, please believe me when I say . . .” I eyed their arms as they clung to their nooses. “I can see that all of you are marked by God to defend others from the exact hopelessness that’s got a hold on you now. Every one of you. Whether you believe in God or not, you’re already sealed, just like me.” I turned and eyed Ethan’s red-glowing symbol. “And so are you.”

  Gentry huffed. I faced him. “All of us are destined to work together and change this town, this planet, for good. And the next generation needs us too.” I got down on my hands and knees, desperate to convince them. “I’m begging you, don’t leave me to do this alone. Don’t leave each other. Don’t leave this world before your time.”

  I admit, I tensed with aggravation when their attention was drawn away from me because Ethan started singing some old hymn, hands raised and all. But man, when the Watchmen started harmonizing with him, I unclenched my fists. Absolutely incredible.

  I wished everyone there could hear it, but even without it, one by one, the students began removing the rope from their necks and stepping down from the tree stumps. They began to hug one another and cry—a change of heart that was no less supernatural than the war raging underground.

  “I’m here for you,” a young man told Presley.

  “Same,” she said.

  Zella removed Gentry’s noose and hugged him. “I love you so much.”

  Along the outer edges of the pavilion, the old wood floor began appearing, the spirit-world portal closing. Finally, the ordeal’s over. I held out hope Elle had rescued Jackson.

  What went down next happened shockingly fast.

  The Watchmen retreated, plunging down, giving me a full-on view of the action directly under us. The Rulers’ throne was nearly to our feet now—the chair back inches from the soles of our shoes. Mother Punishment still sat on it, but she was leaning side to side, frantically looking down. Molek’s throne was still attached, dangling at the bottom of the chain, having failed to ascend. He’d abandoned his throne and was racing to climb the chain links as if his immortal life depended on it.

  I let out a moan when that humongous black hand I’d seen before reached up from the deep and clutched both thrones. A booming voice spoke in a language I couldn’t understand, but the furious outrage was clear. This was it. The seven Rulers and Molek were about to be cast into outer darkness. The portal was closing, the pavilion floor steadily returning, but I still had a front row seat to their demise.

  “Get away from me!” Gentry said.

  My attention shifted above ground when Gentry pushed away from Zella’s embrace, his eyes completely unrecognizable now.

  “In Christ’s name,” I commanded, “come out of him!”

  Sure enough, a Creeper marred with Rejection came barreling out of Gentry’s chest—my first successful exorcism. The tormentor expanded to full size, only to be sucked down into the portal below like
a clump of dust in a vacuum.

  Gentry’s eyes were his own again, thank God.

  “It’s over now,” I told him, reaching to pat him on the back.

  He lowered his head, his bottom lip quivering.

  “I was ready to die today,” he uttered. “And you’d have gladly let me if you knew all the ways I’ve betrayed you.” A tear fell from his face. “I planted that curse under your bed the day you moved into the church. And I stole both your phones the night of the fire and dumped them in the pond so you wouldn’t be able to call for help. And I set the fire that was supposed to kill you. And the baby.”

  I felt the inner ache and shock of having been stabbed deep in the back. But I was willing to forgive and start over, to allow him to begin earning my trust all over again. Unfortunately, I wasn’t given the chance to say it. The underworld portal had been reduced to a round opening the size of a sewer manhole cover, and up came Molek, leaping from the clutches of that punishing black hand. He rushed like a bullet out of the pavilion into the woods.

  “I don’t deserve to live!” Gentry shoved his way through the group and ran out into the rain. Zella started to follow, but I grabbed her arm. “Don’t! Stay here—I’ll go find him.”

  “Let me go!” She broke free and chased after him.

  Ethan and I fled the pavilion, but Gentry and Zella had already sprinted away. We searched the nearby woods for them, calling their names. A half-hour later, there was still no sign of them—no evil spirits either, or witches. The remaining students were weepy and exhausted, their weary expressions pleading to leave the pavilion and dangling nooses behind. I led the way to the nearby road, desperate to get a strong enough cell signal to call Elle for an update.

  Sure enough, as we exited the woods, I spotted her—a microphone in one hand, an umbrella in the other—concluding an on-camera broadcast next to her news network van. She handed the mic to the cameraman, nodding to dismiss him.

  I ran to her. “Where’s Jackson?”

  “He’s safe. Back in the care of Ray Anne’s parents.”

  I let out a huge sigh. “How’d you pull that off?”