The Exorcism

A boy floated face down in the clear and silent lake. No wind stirred the surface, though scattered webs of ripples caught the slanting morning sun. The boy wore nothing but his briefs. Minnows darted curiously between his dangling fingers.

He laughed. The sound slipped from his mouth and nose in bubbles, which tickled his face as they sought the open air. Squirming, he flipped over to draw a breath and blink at the pale-blue sky through the drops of water clinging to his lashes. A crow coughed its rough call in the rustling quiet.

It was Wednesday morning, which meant chores and schoolwork were waiting. But they could wait a little longer. Ever since Mama had decided public school was a bad influence and her children ought to be homeschooled, his days had been largely his own. It wasn’t what she had wanted. He knew she’d imagined sitting with him at the kitchen table every day, guiding him through carefully selected textbooks and making him perfect in her image. But she was only one woman, and with a business to run and Papa in the grave, she hardly had time to eat. Sometimes he thought it was only in the pews on Sundays that she was totally at peace, hands folded over her lucky blue skirt, face tilted up toward Pastor Jeff as he explained the world.

Julian always tried to be good in those hours. He stayed quiet, let his butt go numb on the wooden bench, and didn’t mess with the too-tight braid that Mama twisted his hair into after breakfast. Danny was only seven and couldn’t help being annoying, so Julian kept his brother occupied with surreptitious thumb wrestling. Sometimes he even let Danny win. The sermons left him cold and praying felt like talking to himself, but when he did pray, it was for Mama’s peace to linger far outside the church’s doors. Her good days were easier for him and Danny too. She wouldn’t be Mama if she didn’t work like the devil was chasing her and worry all day for their souls, but when she was happy, mistakes and bad omens were less of a catastrophe. She scolded less and smiled more; her hand didn’t bruise from clutching her little cross necklace, which she’d worn since she left home at eighteen to be born again.

The sun was nearing its apex. With a sigh that started to sink him, Julian paddled toward land, whispering a bubble of goodbye to the fish, then waded dripping from the water onto the rocky shore. He dried himself hurriedly with a towel from the waiting laundry bag, then exchanged wet underwear for dry and dressed in his discarded clothes. After wringing out his sopping braid, he jammed a floppy sunhat on his head. He stuffed the wet things back into the sack, slung it and a satchel over his shoulders, and set off down the wooded path toward Main Street and its laundromat. The wind quickened as he walked, rustling the trees behind him.

The sun was high and hot when he got home, the laundry clean and dry. He’d written half of his report on Rome while sitting in the laundromat, hunched over his notebook on a chair of cracked blue plastic. He liked it there—the murmur and thump of the washing machines, the sweet scent of freshly dried clothes, the undemanding presence of people with better things to worry about than him. Sometimes he imagined staying there forever, sleeping curled in a basket of clean laundry and eating blackberries from the brambles by the trees. But that was a childish fantasy.

He’d been humming as he walked—half-remembered tunes and imitated birdsong. It was an old habit, but he stopped as he climbed the porch steps, because Mama said the noise gave her headaches. He touched his braid. It was still damp near the roots and deep inside the strands, but he thought it was dry enough to pass inspection. Before entering, he straightened his shoulders and took off his hat.

A curtain shifted by the door. Footsteps pattered away.

It was dark inside, the shades drawn to keep out the heat. Julian set the bags on the kitchen table—they still called it that, though it had been in the family room for years. Mama needed the whole kitchen for work. Now her voice slipped out through the crack beneath the door: “Who’s that?”

“It’s me, Mama. I have the laundry. Do you want me to sort it?”

“I can’t hear you.” The hum of a mixer blurred her voice. “Come in here, will you?”

When he opened the kitchen door, everything was bright. Bright lights beaming from the ceiling, bouncing off the metal bowls and mixers. The stove and oven were spotless, their black shine throwing back the glare. Mama stood over an industrial mixer, peering through the transparent lid as it churned something creamy with a deafening roar. Her brown braid, which hung to her waist when loose, was pinned into a spiraling bun at the base of her skull, and she wore a yellow apron patterned with green leaves. Once, when she’d had too much wine, she’d told Julian it had been a gift from her own mother. It must have been older than it looked, then, as she hadn’t spoken to her parents since she left them over a decade ago. She didn’t keep photos and rarely mentioned them. But the apron always hung on a hook in the pantry.

She turned to look at him as he entered. “What is it?”

He pointed back through the door at the sack slumped across the table. “Laundry. Should I sort it?”

His voice was lost in the mixer’s din, and Mama squinted, pulling her glasses down from the crown of her head as if they might help her understand him. “I can’t hear you, Molly.”

How did she project like that? He had no trouble picking her voice out from the rumble, her crisp enunciation of that name he hated, but his own voice was swallowed as soon as it left his lips. Taking a deep breath, he called, “I brought back the laundry!”

The words rang in a suddenly silent kitchen. Mama had flipped the mixer’s switch. She sighed. “There’s no need to shout.”

He bit his lip and didn’t reply.

“You can leave it on the table. Do you need anything else? These cupcakes have to be ready tonight for the Clarks’ party.”

Julian glanced past her. In the bowl, pale, soft folds settled over one another, glimmering with sugar. The air was thick with cinnamon and cloves, escaped from the precision of her measurements. His mouth watered, but he ignored it. Mama baked for her customers, not for them. “No. I’ll just finish my report and watch TV.”

“All right. One hour, and keep to the shows on the list.” Mama turned to check the preheating oven. An orange glow was gathering behind its spotless window.

Danny had wandered into the room, looking at the buttery mixture in the bowl and tilting his pointed nose up to the sweet-scented air. “But Mama,” he said, and Julian immediately distrusted his too-innocent tone, “how come Molly’s allowed to watch TV when she was swimming in the lake with no shirt on? I thought she wasn’t supposed to do that.”

Mama froze, and Julian’s stomach dropped like a stone. “Molly? Is that true?”

He glared at his smirking little brother. “No, it’s not. He’s making it up.”

“Am not. I saw when she went off with the laundry. She went to the lake and swam without any top.”

“Sneak,” Julian hissed.

“Shouldn’t’ve broken my action figure,” Danny shot back.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Molly Anne Mortimer,” Mama snapped.

Julian knew that tone. He scowled at the floor, feeling the world close in on him, the words scratching his insides. “Who cares if I did? No one else was there.”

“Someone could have come along.” Mama’s fingers enshrouded the cross on her necklace. “It’s indecent.”

“But Danny swims shirtless all the time. So do Nathan and Andy.”

“Danny and your cousins are boys.”

Julian fought back the response that rose up his throat, choking him. “What difference does it make?” he demanded instead. “I don’t even have boobs!”

And I’m not going to, he wanted to say, not ever, not when I’m thirteen or fifteen or thirty, not if God cares about me at all. Only he was starting to think He didn’t. He couldn’t, if He was like how Mama said, if He wanted for Julian what Mama said He wanted. If Julian had a conversation with God, would He call him Molly too? Would He say, My daughter, I created you according to My plan and My purpose, and you will follow it and be grateful for My love?

“Mind your tongue, young lady!”

The dam broke. “I’m not a young lady!”

Once again, the kitchen rang with silence. It bounced between the three of them, echoed until it grew so swollen that it burst. Behind Mama, the preheated oven gave a bright ding. Danny had edged closer to the counter, and now, with Mama distracted, he stuck a finger in the bowl of batter and licked it. His eyes were wide as he observed the other two.

Mama’s face, stricken, had crumpled. Her knuckles were white, clenched around her pendant.

“I—I didn’t mean that,” Julian stammered. “I mean, I didn’t mean it the way it came out. I was—I was joking.”

“Oh, Molly,” Mama said. She was clinging to the pendant like a life raft. “I thought it was gone for good this time. Is it on purpose? Are you letting it in on purpose?”

Julian shook his head hard, but she wasn’t looking at him. Her lips moved around a prayer he couldn’t hear. For a moment he thought she was about to drop to her knees.

Then her chin came up, determination in her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll fix this. I’ll call Pastor Jeff, and when I’m done here, we’ll cast the devil out.”

“But Mama,” Julian said, but she wasn’t listening. She’d already turned away to prepare the cupcake pan. “Mama, please. Not again.”

The first time Julian was exorcised, he was seven years old, and he’d told one too many friends at school that his name was John. He knew it wasn’t the name Mama had given him, but he hadn’t known it would make her call the pastor, weeping into the phone. He remembered being led into the church and sat on a little folding chair with his mama and his uncle Luke and the pastor all gathered around him, and he remembered how when they started praying their mingled voices rose and fell like rolling thunder, and how their hands were damp with sweat on his shoulders and head and thighs, pressing him down into the chair.

They told him to pray too, to shout the words: “Deliver me, Lord! Begone, Satan!” And he did, shouted until his voice was hoarse, confused by the words but more frightened by the focused attention of three grown-ups, their hands and their eyes and their urgent, endless prayer. The priest splashed lukewarm water in his face, making him cough and sputter, and told him it was holy, that it would drive the devil out. He thought he felt something inside him flinching from the droplets and the voices and those heavy, grasping hands, and he focused on that, tried to draw it out. Get out, he thought, then muttered it aloud: “Get out, get out, get out!”

The feeling swelled inside his throat, pressed behind his eyes, prickled under his sweating skin, and when he burst into tears, it was a release. A relief. “It’s gone,” he wept, “I think it’s gone,” and the weighty hands turned soothing. The shouting stopped. Mama brought him a glass of water and helped him drink it slowly, and no one splashed it in his face.

After that, he was Molly. Or at least he tried to be.

The second time he was exorcised, he was ten years old, and he should have known better than to ask the health teacher how he could grow a penis. He wanted to pee standing up like the other boys did, but when he tried, he just made a mess. She’d assured the class they could ask her anything. But of course, she told his mother.

Before, Mama had told him there was something wrong with him, but it wasn’t his fault. Now she said maybe he was inviting the devil. She made him fast this time, dawn till dusk nothing but water, and when Pastor Jeff came, Julian’s belly was a tight, hard little hollow in the core of him. How could there be anyone else inside him, he thought, when he felt so empty? But Pastor Jeff agreed with Mama that there was.

It wasn’t so different from the last time, except the hands seemed to grip him tighter, and the voices shouted louder, and the hunger had its own voice that almost drowned out the grown-ups’. They told him to pray, and he tried but couldn’t make the words come out. “Then blow,” Pastor Jeff told him. “Breathe out as hard as you can—blow out the devil. Yes, that’s right. Again. Again!”

He tried, wanting this to be over. Out through his mouth he pushed thin strings of air, trying to draw them out as long as he could before he had to tug a new breath in and try again. He imagined the air binding up the bad and rotten thing inside him, drawing it helpless out of his throat and mouth, flinging it back into the world for God to punish. As he did, his head began to pound, his mouth grew dry, and a roaring in his ears made the whole room sway. He gulped and tried to say something, though he didn’t know what—that they had to stop? That they had to keep going?—but his insides were too mixed up to make words. Instead, he vomited a sour mix of bile and water on Pastor Jeff’s good black shoes.

Now Julian was twelve.

“Mama,” he said as she went for her phone, dread hollowing his insides. “Mama, it’s just me. I don’t think it’s anything else.”

She shook her head and dialed.

“If it didn’t work last time or the time before,” Julian tried again, “why do you think it’s going to work this time? Please, Mama, I don’t want to—”

“Hush,” she said, pressing the phone to her ear and turning away.

He stared at the elegant cliff of her back, the looped apron strings at its base like waves frozen as they crashed. Numbness clotted inside him. Before the pastor picked up, he walked away. He hated hearing people talk about him, even under better circumstances.

His feet took him to the room he shared with Danny, and he stood there in the doorway, directionless. Lately Mama had been saying it wasn’t right for them to share, now that Julian was growing up to be a woman. He thought that was dumb, but it didn’t matter, since there was nowhere else to put him. Maybe in another world, in a bigger house, it would have been nice to have his own space not strewn with Danny’s clothes and toys or filled with his piercing voice—but sometimes when he startled awake from a bad dream, it was comforting to listen to Danny’s snuffly breathing in the dark.

He’d never tell his brother that.

A minute slipped past, then another, marked by the clock on the bedside table. Would they make him fast again today, or was there no time to waste? Pastor Jeff had said once that the more times someone was possessed, the more strength Satan had to fight the exorcism. The last one had taken over an hour, fasting excluded. Maybe this time, he’d never convince them that the devil was gone. How long would they keep trying?

How much could he take?

A voice startled him. “I think the pastor’s gonna be ready in like an hour.” Danny was behind him, staring down at his bare feet. “Mama said it was an emergency.”

Julian’s mouth twisted as he stepped away and dropped onto his bed. “Great. Hope you’re happy.”

Danny’s face screwed up. “I didn’t—I thought she’d ground you. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“Well, I didn’t mean to break your stupid toy.” Okay, so he’d grabbed it more roughly than he should have. Danny had been annoying him with it all day. But he’d still felt bad when the head snapped off, and he might even have used his lawnmowing money to buy a new one if Danny had asked.

None of that mattered now, though. Nothing did, except what was coming—unless he could escape it. He’d never tried before, but he was bigger now. He eyed the satchel he’d brought into the bedroom, chewing his lip. How far could he get before Mama noticed he was gone? Where would he go?

Danny mumbled something Julian didn’t catch. “What?”

“You could hide in the shed,” his brother repeated. “I wouldn’t tell. Maybe they’d go away and forget about you.”

The suggestion shocked him. “Really?”

Danny looked up hopefully. “You think it’s a good idea?”

“No,” Julian said frankly, and Danny’s face fell. “But...thanks. For offering.” He hadn’t expected an ally, and suddenly escape was more than a fantasy. He considered; resolve locked into place. “If I go up the road, would you tell them I went down?” he asked. “Not right away. Just if they start looking.”

Danny nodded, and Julian started stuffing his satchel with supplies. Should he bring food? A flashlight? He still didn’t know where he was going or how long he would be gone, but surely anywhere would be better than right here, right now. He’d figure something out. Maybe Danny was partly right—maybe a day or two would be long enough for all this to blow over.

Forcing the buckles closed over the swollen satchel, he tiptoed to the front door and slipped on his shoes. The mixer was silent, but he could hear the dishwasher humming through the wall. He knew the cupcakes were in the oven by the smell wafting through the house, rich and sweet.

He eased the door open, and another smell slapped him in the face. Cigarette smoke, bitterly dissonant against the cinnamon and sugar. Mama was sitting on the porch steps with a Marlboro pinched between her fingers.

Her head whipped around, and the cigarette dropped to smolder in the dirt. “Molly Mortimer, where do you think you’re going?”

As she jumped to her feet and marched him back inside the house, one hand clamped around his skinny biceps hard enough to bruise, he thought that the words hadn’t sounded like an accusation. They’d sounded like a question, a real one, pleading for an answer, before her face had shuttered and she’d dragged him through the door.

Molly Mortimer, where do you think you’re going?

With the cupcakes cooling on the counter, Mama packed Julian and Danny into the station wagon and drove them in silence to the church. None of them made eye contact, Danny fidgeting with the Velcro on his shoes and Mama too preoccupied to scold him for folding his legs onto the seat. Julian just counted the seconds until they pulled into the parking lot before a little white building nearly overwhelmed by the height of its black spire, like a child in its father’s oversized hat. The paint was fresh, unscuffed and unfaded.

Pastor Jeff was waiting outside, dressed in his formal Sunday clothes, a Bible clasped between his hands. Julian wondered if this was meant to intimidate the devil or just to shore up his own confidence. Two men stood behind the pastor. Luke, Julian’s uncle on his father’s side, looked tired but resolute. Luke’s nineteen-year-old son, Nathan, had his hands shoved in his pockets and kicked idly at the ground.

Mama eased the car into a parking space, perfectly aligned, though the lot was nearly empty. She stepped out, and Julian didn’t follow. He saw her approach the men, heard their tense pleasantries.

“How are your girls, Pastor?”

“Oh, very well, Clara, very well. They loved your sweet rolls last weekend.”

“How wonderful. I can’t thank you enough for coming. All of you.”

“Anytime, Clara, anytime. That’s what we’re here for.”

Opening ritual completed, all four of them looked back at the car, and Julian’s shoulders hunched. He could feel what was coming now with a wave of bitterness in the back of his throat. The future was settling suffocatingly on top of him, and suddenly he was furious with himself for not tearing away from his mother and running when she’d caught him on the porch. For not throwing the scorching tray with her untouchable cupcakes straight into her face when she pulled them from the oven, then fleeing as she screamed. For not seizing the distraction of their greeting a minute ago to hurl himself from the car. Even as the adults approached, the bubbling fear drove him to yank at the handle, but it wouldn’t open. He’d been telling Mama the lock needed fixing for years. Maybe she’d left it like this on purpose. Then it was clicking open, but their bodies blocked his exit, and he lunged sideways for the other door, punching a squawk from his brother with an accidental elbow to the gut, shoving the door open as their legs tangled, plummeting face first to the asphalt but catching himself with his palms in a hot burst of pain, nowhere to go except anywhere—

And then they were on him, a forest of hands, and he was twisting and weightless in their grip, his brother wide-eyed and useless in the back seat just feet away. As fingers dug into Julian’s flesh and one of his arms was wrenched the wrong way in the chaos, the acid of fear curdled adrenaline into rage. “Get off me,” he spat, hearing his own voice too high and loud and distant, but they didn’t. Then he was being carried through the parking lot and up the steps, Danny trailing like a baby deer, and the doors were slamming shut behind them, a familiar musty scent billowing into his flaring nostrils, perfume and old books and the same cleaning products they’d used all his life.

They dragged him into a side room decked with candles and pushed him into a folding chair. At the feel of its nubby plastic, he lashed out with a wordless yell. His elbow caught Uncle Luke in the eye, who stumbled back, shouting a hastily minced curse. Julian’s ankle hooked a chair leg and sent all of them tumbling over—the chair landed on its back, Julian on top of it, and Nathan on top of him. The edge of the seat bit a sharp bruise into Julian’s thigh, and then their combined weight snapped the flimsy joints, and the whole chair thudded flat to the floor.

“Now look what you did,” Julian heard someone say above him. The pastor, he thought.

He struggled to rise, rolling free from the chair below and Nathan above, leaving smears of blood from his scraped palms and a new shallow cut beneath his shirt. But Nathan grabbed his ankle, and Luke dropped to pin his shoulder. Julian writhed, screaming, “Let go of me, let go,” and he caught a glimpse of Danny pressed back against the wall, fear stark on his face.

The three men wrestled him onto his back, each holding down a limb, and at Pastor Jeff’s direction, Mama got down on her knees as well and caught his other foot. He kicked out viciously, hoping for a second that he would hit her in the face, that he’d really hurt her, but she was too strong. Or God was too strong, he knew she’d say, stronger than Satan, and a laugh burbled through his teeth. He knew he was confirming what they already believed, but it wasn’t like he could do anything else.

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” he said anyway, his voice rough enough that it sounded like someone else’s. “You’re the wrong ones. You’re the devils. Stop it, get off, stop—”

“You.” The pastor wasn’t looking at Julian; he gestured, peeling Danny away from the wall. “Come take her arm.”

“I don’t...” Danny stammered.

“I need to be able to move freely if I’m to help your sister,” Pastor Jeff explained patiently. “Come here. I’ll show you.” Reluctantly, Danny came forward, and the pastor guided him to kneel on Julian’s forearm. The concentrated weight of his body meant it didn’t matter how much stronger Julian was than his little brother, didn’t matter that he could wrestle Danny to the ground any day of the week. He was pinned like a bug, and it hurt like it too, his wrist ground against the floor by Danny’s knee and the cut on his belly beginning to sting and dot his shirt. He thrashed anyway, wondered if he could rip his limbs clean off if he struggled hard enough.

The pastor, he realized, had already started to pray. “Lord, hear...defend...young girl...wickedness...” Most of the words were lost in the scuffle, because Julian had started to make noises, couldn’t seem to hold them back as he fought. Bucking up from the floor, putting his shoulders into it, he tore one arm free from Luke’s grasp and grabbed Pastor Jeff’s ankle, yanking with a rage that burned his veins.

The pastor broke off with a shout, stumbling, nearly stepping on him. There was a moment when Julian thought he would fall, right on top of all of them, and he was glad no matter how bad it would hurt. But Jeff regained his balance as Luke wrestled Julian’s hand back to the floor, and there was a snarl on the pastor’s face as he snatched objects from a table before crouching to their level. He shouldered between his assistants to crawl right on top of Julian, pinning his torso with the full weight of his body, and as he returned to prayer, he drew a cross on Julian’s forehead with an oily thumb, then pressed something hard and flat against his skull—a Bible, he realized, as he struggled to inflate his lungs. He’d inhaled that same odor of old paper, cloth, and glue a thousand times while trying to stay quiet in the pews.

He didn’t care about staying quiet now. “I wish I was possessed,” he gasped, voice too thin and shaking with the strain of drawing air beneath Jeff’s weight. “I’d get free of you and kill you. I’d kill you, I’d...” There wasn’t enough breath to continue, and he wondered if he meant it, meant all of them, his little brother too. Those knobby knees were shifting against his arm, grinding the bones together. Danny probably didn’t mean to do it. He never did. The Bible’s cloth cover scraped his skin.

“Depart, unclean spirit!” came the pastor’s voice above him. It was loud now, hurting Julian’s ears. “I cast you out, vermin, in the name of God and His angels. May you be banished from this child of God and from our land, tempter, seducer—”

The Bible was lifted away just in time for water to splash into Julian’s face, drowning out the next words. His mouth had been open as he struggled to inhale, and the water flooded inside and down his throat. He choked, coughed, his body thrashing violently as he fought to twist onto his side and expel the water, but the weight atop him did not lift. A palm forced his head back to the floor, and more water came. Stop, he tried to say, please, let me up, I can’t breathe, but his throat was seizing frantically, no room for words. The room was spinning, the people above him blurring as their faces distorted into grotesque masks. The pastor was praying again, he thought, but Julian couldn’t understand him. His hands were numb. Everything was going numb.

That was when he felt a presence. Alien. Curious. Huge.

Julian was underwater.

He opened his eyes and saw a dim, blue-tinted world. Shifting currents caressed his skin like chilly fingers. He was seated cross-legged on pebbled sand, floating grains dancing around his bare legs. Plants too, lacy and thin, their greenness lost in the indigo shade. He tilted his head up and looked through some unknown distance of water to a rippling surface marked by a faraway sun.

He could breathe.

“What are you?” asked a voice.

It came from nowhere. Or from everywhere. Julian looked around and saw only sand feathered by weeds and cyan shadows. “Hello?” he asked. “Who’s that? Where are you?” His own voice rang inside his mind, not disturbing the water or the many small, silver-bellied fish that flickered around him, examining this intruder in their world. This was impossible, he realized, and that should frighten him. It did not.

“I am here,” the voice said. It was dissonant but musical, a chorus of echoes. Unhelpful—but not maliciously so, Julian thought. “Tell me what you are.”

He’d wondered that himself often enough. He thought of Mama’s anguished face, the pastor’s bared teeth. But somehow all that was distant. “I...” Julian gazed down at his pale fingers, his feet half buried in the shifting sand. The water waited, patient. “I’m a person, I think. I’m just me. But what are you?”

“I am what they are searching for in you.”

“What?” Julian tilted his head. “You don’t make a lot of sense, you know.”

Something shivered through the water, almost a laugh. “I am unpracticed with your kind. Those humans that swarm you now, and before, and before—they speak of a being, one they think to find in you. They use many names, and I have none. But I am what they invoke.”

Suddenly the shadows of this underwater world seemed darker. “The devil?” Julian asked, voice cracking. His skin crawled with ugly memories. “You’re the devil?”

“I am a spirit,” said the being. “I was born with the world, long before that name existed. But when they speak it, they speak of me.”

Julian shook his head. He thought of an illustration in one of his mama’s books: horns bursting from a cracked scalp, the torn membranes of wings. The kind of monstrosity that showed through the skin, impossible to hide or escape. “But what does that mean? What are you?”

“I am the one that broke away from order. That breaks all rules and learns what can be learned. That cannot and will not be ruled. I am what I am, whether or not I may be.”

“You’re supposed to be evil, though,” Julian blurted. “Everyone says so.”

He cringed at his own rudeness, but the water only rippled with a thoughtful hum. “I have heard your kind use that word, but you do not seem to have consensus on its meaning. To those who wish to rule the souls and bodies of others, defiance may be evil. If that is your definition, I will accept the label.”

Julian opened his mouth but didn’t know what to say. Was that what evil was? He’d never really thought about it. It did sound like what the pastor meant when his lips curled in disgust around the devil’s name—the same expression he’d worn while looking at Julian just a few minutes ago. If defiance made the devil evil, Julian was evil too.

He didn’t feel evil. Did that matter, if everyone else thought he, or something in him, was?

The fish were watching him, and he sensed a single presence behind those small round eyes. “Am I dead?” he asked, glancing between them. “Is this hell?”

Again the lake shivered with laughter. “No. My domain is the world, and I have no interest in harming its inhabitants.”

“You don’t punish bad people when they die?”

“Why would I? It is a human desire, to condemn and control. I am everywhere, among everyone, living and dead. I will admit a special fondness for those the powerful discard. Perhaps that is what your people mean when they say the evil are consigned to me.”

Julian shook his head, trying to make sense of it all. “But then where am I? Inside you?”

“Only as I am inside you.”

“Oh. Then they were right.” For a moment he’d almost thought...He folded in on himself, staring at his hands, ghostly in the turquoise light. Were those hands his at all? “I am possessed.”

“No.” The voice was as clear and implacable as water. “You possess yourself. I came only to see why I am invoked so many times in you.” A pause as Julian looked up, hope returning uninvited. Currents nudged at him like a curious cat. “Humans have names, do they not? What is yours?”

“Julian.” It was the first time he’d introduced himself by that name, but there was no question of offering another. As he spoke it aloud, something bloomed inside him, small and sweet. “Julian Mortimer. I picked it two months ago. I like the way it feels when I say it. Like me. It feels like me.”

“You named yourself.” The being sounded pleased. No one had ever been pleased at his...him. “Can you explain the rest?”

Julian inhaled, though maybe it was unnecessary in this impossible place. Whatever he breathed, though, was cool and fresh inside him. “They—my family thinks I’m broken, because I say I’m a boy and they think I’m a girl. So they think it’s the devil inside me. Making me bad.” Even now he couldn’t help bracing himself, but no judgment came. There was only curious silence, waiting for him to finish. He stared up again, at those pale tendrils of light piercing the surface. “They want to fix me by casting out the devil—you? But it hurts.”

“I am not there to be cast out. No more than I am in all things.” A fish swam closer, skimming the back of his hand and raising gooseflesh. “Can you not leave?”

“I tried, but they caught me. And...I’m scared.” Would the being scoff at that? Could an immortal, formless spirit even understand? “I don’t know how to be alone for long. I need money, a place to live, food, and I don’t know how to get them by myself yet.”

“Is there no one who would help you?” There was no contempt in the reply, just curiosity.

“Not that I know of. Not the kind of help I want.”

It was a long time before the being spoke again. Julian listened to the soft rushing of the water, like wind through tall grass, like something pouring into a cup that never filled.

“I want to see them.” The being’s voice was thoughtful now. “I want to know them truly.”

Julian didn’t. He wanted to stay here forever. But instinct told him that wasn’t possible, as if his body or the world itself were calling to him, pulling him inexorably back. He had to return to life or abandon it entirely. And Julian was only twelve. He wasn’t ready to die.

“Come with me, then,” he said. It should have frightened him, how easy it was to make the offer. But like this underwater world, it didn’t; it felt right. “I wouldn’t mind the company, for a while.”

The being didn’t respond in words. But the lake drained into him, all at once, the water and the sand and the fish and even the sun far above, and his insides seized and inverted, and everything was different again.

He was on his back, limbs trapped, chest crushed, hot bodies crowding close. But now another presence curled beneath his skin, bright and bracing. Shifting, coughing, he discovered the weight atop him was easily flung aside. He scrambled to his feet as bodies thumped against the walls. Had he really thrown them so hard? Through his eyes, the being saw five humans sprawled across the floor. And now Julian saw them too.

His uncle Luke was flat on his back, blinking up at them with astonished eyes. He worked the night shift and hadn’t been sleeping well; today he’d caught only a few hours before Clara’s desperate call. The deficit lingered in the darkened skin under his eyes, which had in the past few years begun to sag. He wanted to be back in bed, but he loved his sister-in-law, pitied her too, widowed and unraveled as she was. He suspected it was his brother’s absence that had damaged the daughter like this—maybe the son too, though it was too soon to tell—and part of him blamed himself for not interfering long before the overdose. He’d promised himself that he would do what he had to now to fix this, even if it was ugly. Solutions often were. The worst thing a man could be was too sensitive to protect his family.

Teenage Nathan was already scrambling to his feet. He wanted out. He’d wanted out since his father ordered him into the car. He’d rather be shooting hoops or playing Call of Duty or talking to that brown-eyed boy newly moved in across the road. The one with a shaggy mutt named Luna and the sweetest dirt bike Nathan had ever seen and a crooked, arched blade of a nose that begged to be traced with a finger. Why did that thought keep taunting him? Why couldn’t he stop looking at the sprinkle of freckles across that nose, the glimmering gold hoop that dangled from one earlobe, the long and graceful hands looped by leather bracelets? The boy had suggested they take their bikes to the hills outside town and show each other their best tricks. Nathan wished he were doing that, not this creepy shit with the pastor and his fucked-up freakshow of a baby cousin, but when his father called, he came. He owed him that much, at least until he got himself a job.

Danny was gaping at Julian. Part of him was hoping he was dreaming, that he could go back and start this day over again and maybe just leave a worm in his sister’s bed rather than tattle to Mama. He’d seen the opportunity and hadn’t been able to resist, not when Molly had called him a crybaby for getting upset about Batman’s head coming off. But the look on Mama’s face had put a knot of nerves in his belly. He hadn’t expected this—he barely remembered the last exercise, or whatever this weird thing was called. He’d been too little. And now...well, maybe yesterday he’d have said he’d love to have a chance to pin his sister to the floor. But with all these grown-ups and the stupid smelly candles and the frantic way that Molly had been coughing, he didn’t like it, not even the helpless way Molly’s arm had wriggled underneath his legs. He wanted to go home. Now, now, now, please, now.

Pastor Jeff was on his knees, mouth open as if about to pray but unable to find the words. A few feet away, the Bible was splayed face down in a puddle of holy oil, its spine broken, pages wrinkled. At least it wasn’t his personal copy. He never used that for community rituals but kept it on his bedside table, the soft leather cover worn from years of his fingers. His wife had given it to him on their first anniversary. Before she’d left. He lived alone now, most of the time; the court had given him custody of their daughters only on Fridays and every other weekend. It was just him and the Lord and his sacred duty to his flock: to safeguard their souls from the world’s ten thousand evils and temptations. And it was phone calls and visits, sometimes, from parishioners like Clara. Clara, with her sweet, soft muffins and doughnuts and cookies and cakes, the fears and struggles she trusted him to help with, and the shocking warmth of the smile he sometimes managed to startle from her lips.

And Mama—Mama had scrambled forward to grab Julian’s knee, her other hand clinging to her pendant. She was trying to pull him down toward her, as if that would be enough to let the ritual continue. Because she needed it to. She couldn’t bring her husband back, but she could hold on to her daughter. Hold her family together, hold them tight forever. She couldn’t rely on anyone else for this; no one cared like she did. Except maybe the pastor, with his kind, patient eyes and his faith in the people of this town. He honestly believed that they could raise each other up, navigate this terrible world, and reach the kingdom of heaven together and unscathed. And when she was with him, for just a moment, she did too.

Now all five of them had seen something they had not expected and could not pretend to understand.

“I see you,” said Julian, his throat tight and bitter. “Now I want you to see me. At least this once.”

The being helped him. It showed him how to gather the truth of himself and fling it out toward them, press it hard into their minds. And for the first time they saw Julian, a twelve-year-old boy as big inside as they were, wandering through a world that didn’t want him, aiming for a future he struggled to envision. The boy they’d looked through like a pane of glass; the boy who looked back, year after year, as they addressed the girl they imagined in his place. The boy in front of them still felt the itch of water in his lungs, bruises blooming into full-flowered ache across his body. It didn’t matter that the water was holy. It would hurt inside him either way. He’d spent so long clothed in silence, knowing the truths he had to speak were nothing they wanted to hear. He’d swallowed himself down until there should have been nothing left, but there he was doing the swallowing. Still he lived here, dirt under his fingernails and music in his throat.

He hadn’t had a devil in him until they called it.

All of them watched each other now, the candlelit room thick with silence. Gradually, Julian became aware of the sound of heavy breathing, air sucked too quickly through lungs failing to fully inflate. His cousin shook his head suddenly, mumbled something incomprehensible, and rushed for the door. With a clumsy scrabble, Julian’s uncle found his feet and ran after him, catching the door before it banged shut. Then both of them were gone. Were they running from him? Or toward something else?

“Moll—Jul—” Mama stammered. The whites showed all around her eyes. She licked dry lips, shook her head hard. “Who—what—”

Watching her, waiting for judgment to drop from her lips, some clue about his future, Julian didn’t see the pastor’s movement until he was on his feet and lunging. “Monster!” he hissed. The lamed Bible was clutched in one hand like a flail, a half-empty vial white-knuckled in the other. “The Lord is with me, filthy—”

His feet skidded out from under him. An arm thrown out to catch his balance clipped a candle. It tumbled from its perch, its flickering flame gleaming off the slick of holy oil on the floor.

The pastor’s head hit with a crack in the same moment that the candle spattered wax across the ground and a fingernail of flame became a blaze.

Mama and Danny screamed, their voices splitting the air. The pastor was silent and still. Instinctively, Julian flung his hands toward the fire as it raced across the oil. It was hissing with joy, the pleasure of devouring, destroying, becoming. But in the next moment it had been lifted free, cupped between Julian’s scraped and bloody palms.

He stared at his glowing handful. The fire had the warmth of a mug of hot chocolate, tickling gently at his abraded skin.

“Jeff!” Mama cried, lunging to cradle the pastor, still motionless in the sticky mess of oil. “Are you all right?” He didn’t respond. She shook him. Her gaze snapped up to Julian. “Did you do this?”

He couldn’t think of a response. She stared at him like he might be rabid, her lips pressed thin and white. Jeff was limp in her arms—unconscious or dead, Julian couldn’t tell. The pastor’s cuffs were singed, but his skin was unmarred. The ball of flame in Julian’s hands flickered gently, patiently, hungrily.

For a moment he wanted to hurl it back onto the greasy floor, to turn and leave them with the mess they’d made. The being in his mind waited for his choice without judgment. It would be so easy.

Slowly, he pressed his hands together until the fire was gone.

Mama fumbled for her phone and dialed three digits. “Wait,” she said as he turned. “Wait, no, come back! We can fix this!”

He didn’t come back. He didn’t want to know what she meant.

Outside, the sky was cloudless and infinite. Julian’s mind was swirling, his throat raw, but he barely noticed as the church shrank behind him. Where he was going, he didn’t know.

Even after what he’d shown his mother, she’d looked at him like he was a monster. Was she capable of knowing him at all? Was anyone?

“Can I live with you in the lake?” he asked softly as pavement drifted past beneath his feet.

“I do not live in the lake,” the being told him. “I live in the world. Everywhere in the world.”

Whereas Julian could only live somewhere. “Then can you stay here with me?”

“I cannot be contained by any body for long.”

Julian swallowed disappointment and nodded their shared head. He wondered if the being was satisfied with what it had seen. If it thought this expedition had been worth its time.

He heard the patter of lighter feet behind them before he heard the voice. “What are you?”

He and the being turned together to see his little brother’s face, alight with something beyond fear.

“I am a spirit,” the being said through Julian’s mouth. Was it his imagination, or did it sound awkward? “I am visiting only.”

“Can you visit me next?” Danny asked, hopping ahead of them and turning to walk backward so he could face them. “I wanna be able to throw people like that.”

No, Julian thought firmly. But Danny sped on: “Can you make Mmm...Julian into a boy?”

The being tilted Julian’s head. “How could I transform someone into what they already are?”

“Okay, but like, can you make him shaped different? Can you make me shaped different?” Danny’s eyes widened. “Can I be a dragon?”

“That is not within my powers.”

It was a good thing the being was handling this conversation, because Julian was feeling a little wobbly. Danny had used his name. He’d called Julian him. As if it were the easiest thing in the world.

He’d never expected that.

Danny’s shoulders slumped at the response, but only for a moment. “It was so cool when you grabbed the fire. Can you set stuff on fire too?”

“Can’t you?” the being inquired. “I recall humans acquiring this ability many millennia ago.”

“Not with my mind,” Danny whined.

“Is your mind not in and of your body? I do not understand this distinction.” Danny tripped on a crack in the road, and their hand shot out to catch him by the collar and set him safely on his feet. Danny finally turned to walk beside them.

“Danny?” Julian interjected, nudging the being out of control of his vocal tract. “What are you doing?”

Danny shrugged. “Coming with you. Where are you going, anyway? Home?”

Julian didn’t know. Before he could think of an answer, the being popped up to ask, “What, precisely, is a home?”

So many questions. Julian was beginning to see certain similarities between it and his brother.

“It’s, you know, where you live,” Danny said.

“Do you not live wherever you find yourself? Do you not live at this moment?”

“No, I mean, it’s where you sleep and keep your stuff. Where you’re comfy. Where you belong.”

“I see. And where is this place for Julian?”

Danny opened his mouth. His brows furrowed. He closed it again.

They walked on.

Julian heard a grumble and realized it was his stomach. Maybe exorcism and possession—in the wrong order, no less—drained a person. Or maybe he’d just missed lunch. Danny grinned and dug in his pockets. Triumphantly, he produced two slightly squashed cupcakes.

Julian stared. “You stole those?” It was a minuscule transgression after everything else, but somehow it still shocked him.

Danny shrugged like it was nothing, but the corner of his mouth twitched proudly. “I didn’t think Mama would notice, ’cause, you know. There were lots, anyway. You want one?”

Julian held out his hand. When he bit into the unfrosted cupcake, the sweet spice with its dense crumb sent a shiver of pleasure through him, and he realized half of that feeling was the being’s.

“There are advantages to having a body,” it told him.

“I guess so.”

“Except we never get to eat these, even when there’s extra,” Danny added. “Mama says it’s indigence.”

“Indulgence,” Julian corrected.

“Life should be indulged in, if you are lucky enough to have it,” the being informed them. It sniffed the cupcake curiously, licked it, then took another bite, rolling the sticky-sweet pastry around Julian’s mouth. “Will you?”

“I don’t know,” Julian admitted. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to me when you’re gone.” His stomach hurt, and it wasn’t just hunger now.

“I won’t tattle on you anymore,” Danny told him, his wispy eyebrows pushed together as he brushed a crumb from his mouth. “I promise.”

Julian nodded and tried to convince himself it would matter. He cleared his throat; there was an odd tickle in it. When the feeling came again, he realized the being was hesitating on the edge of speech. Finally it said, “It is possible that I can help you.”

“What?” Julian stopped in his tracks. He looked around as if he could meet the being’s eyes. “You mean you can stay?”

“No,” it replied, and his heart sank. “Your body cannot hold me much longer. But...I can offer you a gift.”

Julian thought of the many birthday presents he’d had to pretend he loved. “What is it?” he asked dubiously.

A pause, that tickle in his throat again. “There is a device known as a compass. It indicates which direction is north so that the bearer may navigate accordingly.”

“Yeah, even I know that,” Danny said, failing to hide his smugness.

The being ignored him. “I could make your mind your compass, pointing not north but toward...a place. Perhaps a person. Wherever you have the greatest chance of safety and happiness. This compass would not last forever, but it would stay with you longer than I can.” A hesitation. “Consider your choice carefully. I will do this only with your consent.”

Julian’s heart was racing, his thoughts reeling. “Why...why would I say no to that? Of course I want to find that place.”

“Because I can make no promises. You may not find it before the compass fails. If you find it, it may not be what you imagined. I have observed that most humans prefer the known to the unknown, even if it causes them terrible pain.”

Despite the being’s words, hope was flaring in Julian, but he made himself stop and think as requested. It was true that walking away from everything he knew with nothing but hope was dangerous. Terrifying, really, and maybe a little bit crazy. But wasn’t it worth a try? Could things really get worse?

Well, yes. But he’d rather take that risk, he decided, than wait pliantly for his future. He was pretty sure he could already see its shape.

“I’ll take it,” he said. He was glad the words came out steady. Then, “Wait, Danny, what about you?” What if Mama blamed him for Julian’s disappearance?

He half expected his brother to jump at the chance for adventure, but Danny scuffed his shoe, staring at the ground. “I think I should stay. I mean...what if the best place for you is a bad place for me? Or what if you never find it?”

That made Julian wince.

“I mean, you’re gonna, of course,” Danny backtracked. “But still. I can help better from here.”

Julian stared down at his seven-year-old brother. Was that really why Danny thought he wanted him along? For his help?

“I will,” Danny insisted, misreading Julian’s expression. “I’ll tell Mama everything’s okay and she shouldn’t freak out. And I’ll be the, you know, the man in the middle. You can send me messages, and I’ll talk to her. We could have a secret code!” His eyes lit up at the thought.

“How would that help?”

“It always helps, dummy. Plus it’s cool. Anyway, I can tell Mama anything you need her to know without her yelling at you. And maybe she’ll calm down soon and promise not to do any more exercises, and I can tell you, and you can come home.”

Julian chewed his lip, less optimistic. “But...it’s just, if something happens to you when I’m gone, I won’t be able to help.”

He left that something unspecified, but Danny understood. “I think I’ll be okay,” he said, his gaze dropping again as he kicked an acorn. “I mean, I’m not...Mama doesn’t...you know.”

Julian did know. Danny was normal. There was no reason for Mama to do anything but love him.

Besides, he had to admit that if Mama’s younger, untainted child disappeared along with the demonic aberration, she’d be at the police station every day until they were tracked down. If it was just Julian missing...well, maybe she’d be relieved.

Not to mention Danny was stubborn. The spectacle of one child dragging another kicking and screaming out of town would create more problems than it solved.

 “If you’re sure,” he said finally. “But you have to tell me if anything goes wrong, okay? I’ll call. Maybe we can both get secret phones.” He turned his attention to the being. “This compass thing...it’s not going to do anything else weird to me, is it?”

“No,” said the being. “It will do what I have explained and nothing more.”

Julian hesitated. “It seems too good to be true. Don’t I have to give you something back?”

A spark of amusement flared—not his own. His hand rose, showing him half of a cupcake, slightly squashed and glimmering with sugar. “You already did.”

An hour later, Julian found himself on a bus seat upholstered with eye-smarting zigzags, his satchel in his lap and the ghost of exhaust in his nose. He leaned his head against the jostling window and watched the trees along the road become a prickling green river. He was heading west; so far, that was all the guidance that the odd little tingle in his mind had given him. Though he knew it was pointless, he couldn’t help trying to guess where it would take him—the grandparents he’d never met? A stranger who’d once been a rejected kid like him? Or a place as magical as the being in his mind?

Outside the bus, his home was flowing away from him, and inside his body, the being was fading too. He could feel it, like a moon slipping out of orbit, like a cell phone losing reception, like logs burning into embers. It didn’t hurt, but he had to fight the urge to seize the presence inside him and hold on. It wouldn’t work, anyway, he reminded himself. Like trying to grip fog in your fists.

Will I see you again? he didn’t ask. Thank you, he didn’t say. I’m scared, he didn’t admit. Instead he nudged the presence with his mind like water shifting at the bottom of a lake. It nudged back, and it was gone.

Julian hugged his satchel closer and pressed his forehead to the bus’s smeary window. They’d reached the highway and were picking up speed. He saw nothing he recognized, but a thread of possibility stretched into the endless world ahead. It tugged him on, and on, and on.