My father’s house appeared from the fog, like a monster rising up out of the earth to swallow me whole. It took my breath away to see those old grimey windows, the gables, the porch crumbling with time and disrepair. A phantom house, full of ghostly memories, and festering pain. Of course they would be here. Where else would demons hide?
I stood in the dirt yard, shocked that I barely had to catch my breath. The longer I stayed here the more it felt like a dream, like nothing was real. I feared that if I stayed too long, my mind would drift forever, further and further, until I had gone so far that I could never return.
Even so, perhaps I never would return. My own survival paled in comparison to stopping the Four on their rampage. I had stopped them from killing Damian, but only just. If my very fragile control slipped in even the slightest, they could attack him again and countless others. They would be set free upon the world…
But I had to send them back to Hell.
I knew part of what it would require: their seals on my body would have to be broken. I had my cleaver, I had the means to do it if I could regain enough control over my limbs to cut into my own body. But once I did that, the blood loss would weaken me quickly. I didn’t know how long I would be able to hold on, if at all. So I would face them here first, weaken them if I could. Then cut them from my flesh.
The house seemed to echo with voices long gone. It screamed insults, muttered threats, echoed with the sounds of beatings. I could almost see my father’s face in the window, glaring out at me, crooking his finger at me to come inside.
The thought made me shudder. Demons I could face, but my own father? Or my mother’s weeping, her manipulative words, her disapproving looks? They made me want to curl up small and hide. But I couldn’t hide anymore.
They’re waiting for you. Will you still face them?
The Legion lingered close behind me, pacing like wolves in the grass. “Of course I’ll face them,” I whispered, but my determination wavered in fear. Krahia had once made me face Richard and my father, and though I had overcome them, some memories still had knives deep plunged deep within me, and they were being twisted now.
I ascended the porch steps. The last time I had been there the door had been locked, but now I found it slightly ajar. Strange scarpings in the dusty floor told me that something - someone - had crawled in not long ago. I imagined the Gray One’s scuttling body, dragging herself into the house to hide and lie in wait. I entered slowly, the silence almost claustrophobic. There lay the familiar hearth to my left, with a small threadbare couch and chair, and the dusty sad pinao. Beyond it was the tiny kitchen, the barewood table and three chairs. To my left, the narrow stairway that led to the bedrooms on the upper floor.
The kitchen drew me. It looked so much like I remembered it, though now covered in a fine layer of dust. The smooth wooden countertops, worn to a shine with age. The bread box, with its delicately painted little flowers. The stacks of chipped plates and my mother’s precious set of silverware tucked into its wooden box against the wall. I had my very few fond memories of childhood in that kitchen: standing on a teetering stool as I helped my mother knead bread or peel potatoes. In the days when I was still small enough for her to not care about my looks or fuss over what I ate…
“What did I ever do to be cursed with such a homely daughter?”
My stomach twisted, and a chill went up my spine. The voice was behind me, but not too close. A voice that echoed through the years, gripped the knives in my gut, and twisted wickedly.
My mother’s voice.
I turned, slowly. She stood with her back to me, long blonde hair braided, wearing the same pale gray dress she usually wore. She was an illusion, only an illusion - but still my eyes filled with tears. My mother...my sad, hateful, trapped, confused mother. The woman who would look at her own aging face in the mirror and weep, who bore the bruises father left her as if it were her duty, who would read me Bible verses on obedience after father whipped me.
I had always been torn between hate and love for her, full of longing for the years when she seemed to still want me.
“What man will ever marry such a skinny, boyish thing?” She still had not turned, and I had not moved any closer. I had heard these words before, when she used to mix lard and bread yeast into my milk in hopes it would give me a womanly figure - the better to have me married early and spare her and my father the expense of feeding me. The memory of that awful slop going down my throat made my stomach lurch. I gripped the countertop behind me. She was meant to make me weak, but I couldn’t allow her.
“You don’t have a place here anymore,” I said, as boldly as I could. “Leave! This is my house, my thoughts. You don’t get to intrude here.”
She went very still, almost as if my voice surprised her. Her arm twitched, her fingers curling up into a fist, as if she could not fully control them. Then her head ever-so-slightly turned, just enough for me to see one huge eye gazing at me. She was still twitching, the movements growing more rapid and violent.
“I will always have a place here, Samara,” she hissed. Her eye was widening, pupil swelling. “You can never erase your own mother. You can never erase how you disappointed me.”
“I didn’t do anything,” my voice trembled. It was just an illusion, just an illusion… “I never did anything except try to please you.” My eyes stung, welling with tears. I remembered her brushing my hair on my would-be wedding day, the cold shame in her eyes. The tears welled over. “Why do you hate me? Why?”
Her mouth curled up into a wicked smile. She lurched around, still twitching, eyes wide and teeth bared, her skin beginning to grow wrinkled and ever more pale. “You will never know, stupid girl. You will go to your grave not knowing why your own mother despised you.” She took one lurching steps toward me. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to run.
Don’t run, it’s what she wants.
Was it my thoughts? Or the Legion’s? Did it even matter anymore? My mother was mere inches away from me, smelling like rot, looking at me with that same disinterested disgust I had seen from her for so many years. Why? I wanted to plead with her again, I wanted to beg for an answer. Why hate your only daughter, your only child? What had she seen in me that so disgusted her, that made her turn away from my pain, that made her watch me grow up with shame instead of pride?
Tears were streaming down my face and dripping from my chin. She regarded my tears the same as she always had: coldly, unmoved. It was how father had always looked at her own tears. Perhaps it was how her own mother had looked at hers. I could never know, and the not knowing somehow hurt even worse.
“Get out,” I whispered. “Leave me alone.”
She reached out for me, and her trembling, twitching fingers gripped into my hair with more strength than I’d thought possible. “Oh, you are alone, Samara dear. You will always be alone. You will destroy all that which you love. I always saw it in you - a contrary, cursed child.”
My vision seemed to fracture. I saw myself bearing down on Damian again. I saw the resignation on his face as he looked at me and saw death. No, no, no, I’d stopped...I’d managed to stop...but the vision kept looping, flashing...I covered my eyes and still I could see it. Except it became worse. The cleaver hit home. It sunk into his flesh and ripped him apart. Again and again. An endless looping nightmare, and I could feel myself falling deeper and deeper into it, every detail becoming worse until I could smell the blood and feel the impact of his body at the cleaver’s edge, until I began to whimper uncontrollably, sobbing, until all I wanted to do was scream…
We’re with you, Samara…
The voice was so weak...distant.
We’re here, Samara.
I knew that voice. I knew Damian’s voice and although it was faint, it halted the horrific looping visions. Damian...Damian was alive...he was there...he…
Keep fighting, Samara.
Amma? Yes...yes of course...I’d felt her come, I’d felt her arrive, and Alex and Octavio with her! I wasn’t alone...that was a lie...a lie…
I lashed out, fists making contact and knocking my mother back from me. But she wasn’t my mother...she was a memory, an illusion, a lie. As I stared her down her body twitched and rippled unnaturally. Her position shifted, and suddenly she did not seem so very much like my mother any more at all. She seemed gray, and her blonde hair was growing darker and ragged.
“You’re a liar,” I snarled. My viciousness seemed to crumble her further. She had become haggard, stooped, skeletal. The Gray One emerging from the shell she had donned. But I did not merely push her away, no - I pursued her. I shoved her again, and the last semblance of my mother’s face melted away. Only the Gray One was left, snarling and snapping her teeth at me. I yelled at her, “You have nothing left! You have nothing left to torment me with! You’re weak!"
She cringed and growled, but she was weakening by the second, her form crumbling away like burnt paper in the wind. I had to keep pushing, I had to starve her utterly.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I said, standing over her before the hearth. “I’m not ashamed to have a mother who couldn’t love me. I don’t…” I struggled. It hurt, it did, it truly hurt, but how else could I survive if I didn’t let it go? “I don’t blame myself for how she treated me. There was nothing I could have done, I was a child!” The tears began to fall again, and yes, there was pain in them but there was power too. “I’ll never know why she hated me. I don’t need to. Maybe some pain of hers made her do it, but my mother’s pain will not be my pain!”
There was little left of the Gray One now. Ashen dust and wide eyes tangled in black hair. I leaned over her, shaking my head. “You can’t hurt me anymore. I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of my mother. She has no place here anymore.”
The eyes were gone. Nothing remained but dust. The Gray One was still locked inside me, somewhere, but she was weak. She couldn’t come for me anymore. Like Krahia, she would lay silent when I cut her out.
I let the tears keep falling, but only for a few moments more. My emotions were in havoc, my thoughts in chaos. I felt exhausted, drained beyond anything my physical body had ever experienced. I held my head in my hands and forced myself to focus. I measured my breathing, slowly, in and out until I calmed.
Somewhere...somewhere out there on some earthly plane, Damian, Alexander, and Amma were fighting for me. Risking their life for me. I couldn’t stop now. I had no doubt that their strength was aiding me, weakening the Four. I would fight, as long as I was able, until I had seen this through to its end.
Two of Four remained. The White One: silent, beautiful and horrific all at once, so rarely seen. And the last, that pale-faced one...I did not know who that one was, or what game they would play. But I would find them. Regardless of fear and doubt and whatever horrors and illusions they could throw at me, I would find them.
This was my house, my body. They weren’t welcome.
There was a creak on the stairs, the groan of the old wood. I whipped my head about, eyes wide, readying myself for the sight of something horrible. There was nothing there…
At first.
My eyes scanned up the stairway once, then twice - then I saw it. Ghostly pale feet standing at the very top of the stairway. As if they could sense the weight of my eyes on them, the moment I began to stare the feet turned and proceeded slowly out of sight. I ran to the base of the stairs, but caught only a glimpse of the feminine white figure as it disappeared around the corner.
Before fear could freeze me, I followed. I reached the top of the stairway just in time to catch a glimpse of the figure disappearing again, this time into the little room at the farthest end of the house - my childhood bedroom. I moved slowly, cautiously, expecting something to leap out at me at any moment. I desperately wished I had a weapon, but what good was a weapon within my own mind?
I had to be my own weapon.
My bedroom door was partially closed when I reached it. I could hear a peculiar sound from within, like the humming of a somber tune. I reached out a trembling hand and shoved the door slowly back on it's creaking hinges. The White One stood beside the bed, with her back to me, running slender fingers through her translucent white hair. She paused when she heard the door creak. I remembered how she appeared before: beautiful in body but with a face of gore, blood and bone.
But as she turned, her face was altogether different.
Her features were delicate and soft, painfully beautiful and ageless. She smiled when she saw me, with teeth that were miraculously straight and as white as the rest of her.
“Samara,” she said, and her gentle voice was like a breeze across my skin. “So you have joined us here at last. Welcome.”
She spread her arms, as if to embrace me. I did not cross the threshold of the room.
“I'm not here willingly,” I said. “You know that.”
A worried frown fluttered across her face. “Not willingly...yes, you are ever so determined to fight us at every turn. But why? Have we not only sought to protect you?”
I stumbled over my words in my fury. “Protect me? Protect me? By forcing me to harm those I love? By whispering cruel thoughts in head? By haunting my dreams and even my waking moments? Get out! Get out! Your lies don't-”
“Frighten you?” the White One smiled wistfully. “My intent is not to frighten you, Samara. Unlike those brutes Krahia and Peina…” She shook her head. “But war and famine are brutal things, so brutality is all they know. Even so, you've overcome them! You've put them in their place, and there they shall stay.”
“I don't want them to stay in me!” My thoughts fluttered, grasping the name: Peina, the Gray One. “I want them gone, I want all of you gone!”
The White One shook her head, smiling at me as if I were a childhood spouting some dreamy idea. “Oh, Samara. But you know it is not so simple. Our Seals bind us to you forever-”
“I will cut them out.”
Her smile faltered, for a brief moment. “You'll die, Samara.”
I shrugged, as careless as I could. “Then I'll die. Better than giving you free reign to kill.”
She seemed to ponder a moment, her eyes narrowing as she regarded my face. “It is a shame you don't realize all you have is because of us. To throw all that away...a pity.”
“All I have I've earned on my own-”
She laughed, and it would have been a lovely sound were it not dripping with condescension. “On your own, dear girl? Who was it that gave you the strength to kill Carnickey and end his terrors? Who was it who made you bold enough to take Mary Jeffries’ hand and pursue your wanton desires? Hmm? What made you catch the exorcist’s eye? It was us, my dear. It was we who kept you alive, who protected you, who guided you!”
Her voice was so sweet, so reasonable. Lies, I told myself, but were they? Were they truly?
“You're lying,” I whispered, but even as the words passed my lips, how could I possibly back them up?
“Remember who you were before us.”
I whirled around, stumbling back into the bedroom in my haste to get away from the deep, unfamiliar voice. Standing in the doorway was a masculine figure taller than any man I'd ever laid eyes upon; he had to stoop to proceed through the doorway after me. He had a similar pallor to the White One, but there was a yellowish, deathly tone to his skin. His eyes were white, pupilless, but still somehow stared down at me.
The Pale One. The Fourth Rider, the final horseman.
I shook, my eyes darting between him and the ghostly demon near the bed. “Leave!” I shouted. “I don't want you here!”
The demons glanced at each other, unimpressed.
“We are not like the other two,” the woman said. “We do not need your fear or shame to be strong, and the absence of either does not cause us harm. Listen to us, Samara, for there is a reaper close by who seeks to end your life.”
“The exorcist cannot save you,” the Pale One said, his voice so deep and booming that it seemed to rumble through the floorboards. “He will try, now that his friends have come, but he will not succeed. When he fails, he cannot protect you. A reaper can only be brought down by demons.”
I remembered the reaper at the party, her cold face, her dire promise to put an end to me if the need arose. The need was now: if these demons could not be cast out I would be killed.
But...cutting their seals from my own flesh could very well be my own end as well.
I was stuck between two walls, slowly crushed with the urgency. And if these two demons were not harmed by my lack of fear, then how could I possibly hope to weaken them? I thought of Damian...and of Alex and Amma, their strength working in unison. But was that strength enough?
“No, it is not enough,” the White One said, and my heart plummeted into my stomach. “Oh yes, we know your thoughts: all of them. We share one mind. We're part of you.”
“Remember who you were without us,” the Pale One said again. The air in the room shuddered, rippling like water, and another figure suddenly appeared with us: thin, hunched over on the far edge of the bed with her back turned to me, and from her came the sound of gentle weeping.
I knew this figure. I knew her all too well.
It was me.
It was after I'd missed my blood cycle for the second month in a row, when my breasts had become tender, when I could hardly keep any food down from the ill feelings in my belly. It was the day I looked down at my abdomen and knew - just knew - that my rapist's seed had taken root in me.
I could hardly bear to look. I could still feel the pain of that moment, the agony and fear that ran through my head, the absolute terror of telling mama and papa -
“You were a weak, frightened child,” the Pale One's voice boomed. “Running from the horrors life had visited upon you…”
The other me straightened slightly and I saw what was clutched in her hands with a sudden pain through my heart: a kitchen knife, small and likely dull, but the only thing I'd managed to get my hands on that night without mother noticing.
I had contemplated how best to do it. Where it wouldn't hurt as badly, where it would be quick…
“But you weren't even able to follow through,” the Pale One said. “Cowardly, too cowardly even to face death.”
“I wasn't cowardly,” my voice was soft. I was too taken in by the sight of myself, the utter despair I could feel through the memory. No, I hadn't taken my own life that night; I had not even attempted. Instead I had wept, and wept so long that I somehow convinced myself that my parents would take my side: mama would be sympathetic and kind. She would tell me all would be well, she would hold me, she would share her wisdom as a woman to ease the child bearing. Papa would be vengeful, he would see Richard Morrison brought to justice! He would defend his daughter...
“But they didn't,” the White One said. “They blamed you, and you bowed your head and took it.”
“What else could I have done?” My tears fell silently as I watched my memory weep. The room rippled again and the weight of the world seemed to shift. Suddenly we were in that dusty chapel room, and there I stood in my wedding dress covered in gore, with the slaughtered remnants of Richard at my feet. My eyes looked distant - empty. They'd had to be. Chopping through a human had been easier than I'd thought, but looking at it was almost too much to bear.
“Still you ran,” the Pale One said, with small chuckle in his voice, mocking me. “You should have slaughtered them all for what they did to you.”
They deserved worse. You were frightened and ran away.
“No,” I tried to shut the voices out of my head, but I couldn't shut out the ones before me. But there was something I had to do, something important…
“So weak…” The White One mused, stalking nearer to me as the room began to shudder once more. “Always you ran. But who was it who finally saw justice done, who was it who gave you courage?”
Suddenly, we were in Carnickey’s dark cellar, and I was watching myself screaming, and the onlookers smiling. My stomach lurched, but in this world there was nothing I could have vomited up. I was aware, vaguely, of retching on the earthly plain and watching black bile spew from my mouth.
“We gave you strength.”
I rose from the dirt, bloody. I went at Carnickey with my bare hands and then the others after him. The same memory Margaux had shown me, but I watched now as if it were a play on stage. I destroyed, ripped and tore and bit through flesh and bone. I was beastly, unafraid. They fled from me, they wept, they begged for mercy…
Justice. Justice was served.
“Such is the power of Death,” the Pale One stood before me, and the White One beside him. "Death has no ruler and it conquers all. And you don't fear Death anymore, do you?”
I shook my head. I feared suffering. I feared the agony of those I loved. But Death? It should have come for me long ago.
“Good, very good,” the Pale One reached out, took my hand and kissed it. It was like the touch of a corpse, and his lips left a black mark on my hand, like charred skin. “Death does not need your fear. What I need is your acquiescence.”
“We will protect you,” the White One said. “We will kill the reaper and take you somewhere safe. Your days of fear will be over.”
“Death conquers all,” said the Pale One, and his breath was like a whisper from a freshly turned grave. “But when Death is on your side, none could touch you. That is what I offer. Take up a mantle of strength, claim the dignity you've been denied. Close your eyes. Let us work.”
My eyes felt heavy. To sleep, for just a moment, seemed heavenly. To let go of fear...of shame...be protected under the shroud of Death...Death Himself…
The earthly plain wavered in and out of my vision. I saw Damian...Amma...Alex...Damian clung to Alex to stay up but his voice was no less strong as he spoke commands in language beyond my comprehension. Amma looked so strong, fierce, her one white eye gone dark, her voice filled with a power that had carried through eons. Alex...Alex with fire in his eyes and the Bible in his hands, the Hand of God turned to my favor, an anomaly, a madman, fierce and unwavering. Faintly...behind them, Octavio...always frightened but he did not look so fearful in that moment. He was tearing his shirt into strips, preparing bandages, determination on his face.
Watching it all were the reapers: Kiiji in chains, a grim smile on his face, and Lijiali beside him, looking uncertain. Why did Kiiji smile? Or had he too simply given up his fear of death?
Close your eyes. Let us come. You need never be afraid again.
For a moment, I let myself consider it. I thought of the peace, of the quiet and the calm, if I were to just let go. I could drift into darkness, the Four could do as they pleased. I could sleep, where there was no pain, no suffering, no fear. I could give my body over to Death to use as he wanted.
I thought of it...but it was only for a moment.
Then I took up my cleaver, still clenched in my hand. I set it to the first seal, scarred into my flesh beneath my right collarbone.
Carnickey scarred deep; you’ll need to scar deeper.
Was it the voice of the Legion, on my side at last? Or was it merely my thoughts, my own mind so distant and foreign now that it was all merely voices in my head?
It didn’t matter.
I sliced deep.