Ricky stopped speaking and the voice transferred back to George. It was though something else was speaking through them. The gesture came and it was Amber’s turn to deliver a line. She stumbled over the first sounds and then they flowed out of her on their own. Although she recognized the lines that she was supposed to be delivering, they issued forth from her mouth before she could remember what they were supposed to be. An invisible puppeteer was pulling her strings.
The wind swirled, bringing the foul stench of death to her again. The monster was closer.
“He’s the father of all of them,” Amber thought, remembering the mumbled warning from Romeo. That much was obvious now. What Romeo had left out was that Prescott wasn’t just the father. He was the father, brother, and lover of all these terrible monsters. There wasn’t a single natural creature within a half-mile of that graveyard. Everything had been perverted by his knife or his teeth. They were all unholy experiments. She had no idea where these ideas had come from, but they felt undeniably true.
The vortex was opening between them. George thought he was in control. Amber feared that this had never been the case. Every impulse George had was being guided by an outside force. It was using them all to gain access to their world.
George’s voice rose as he delivered the final lines.
Amber heard laughter from the woods.
Prescott was mocking their effort. Compared to him, the three of them were children.
“You’re going to have to bring him back,” Amber heard a voice say. She turned towards George, thinking he must have said the words. George was still finishing his incantation. Amber turned towards Ricky. His mouth didn’t move as Amber heard again, “You’re going to have to bring him back. Like before.”
Amber realized that she recognized the voice.
It was her father.
Thirty-Nine: Ricky
Ricky opened his mouth to deliver his line. The first few syllables came easily and then his voice cracked and his memory failed him. If he could relax, he knew the words would come. That idea only increased his panic.
Ricky remembered that it didn’t matter. The whole idea was to have George create a distraction. With the fire and the ceremony, Ricky wanted Prescott to move in closer. Then, when he was just about to strike, Ricky would turn and attack. Closing his eyes, he could feel Prescott behind him, lurking beyond the trees. The monster had so much power, and that would be his downfall. Ricky could feel that power—feel when Prescott was close enough to be impaled on the end of his spear.
Confidence flowed through Ricky and then the words came back. He let the strange language fall from his mouth. When he didn’t try to remember, it all came easily. In fact, the sounds coming from him were so slippery that he didn’t know if he was remembering them or just making them up. It didn’t matter. He kept reminding himself of that.
Amber’s eyes grew wide. She looked like she might be about to bolt. Then, he saw tranquility and acceptance wash through her. Ricky tried to feed off of her calmness. He took a deep breath. At his back, he felt a warmth that was analogous to the warmth of the fire, but it also felt different. The glow behind him was malicious—a burning hate, perhaps.
Ricky knew that Prescott was getting closer.
He kept his eyes forward, letting them drop down to the flames so he could concentrate his other senses on what was coming.
Ricky heard a voice from the flames.
“Feed me your gifts, Richard Virgil Dunn,” the voice said. It was his brother’s voice, but it also wasn’t. The flames were imitating George’s voice, but they couldn’t capture the spirit behind the tone. It was a trick. There was a demon in the flames and it wanted Ricky to help it get out.
“Stop,” Ricky whispered.
The flames flared.
Forty: Amber
The ceremony was coming to a finish. Amber couldn’t understand the sounds coming from George’s mouth, but she understood his tone. The whole thing was building to a climax and once it did, they would lose control.
“You have to bring it back,” her father whispered.
Amber realized that his voice was coming from the flames. She shook her head.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. Her own voice was only in her head. She knew that she wasn’t speaking aloud—that would be wrong. The only voice that was supposed to call through the night was George’s.
“It was never about the earrings,” her father said.
For a moment, Amber was thoroughly confused. What could earrings possibly…
It came back in a flash. Her grandfather was killed because he wanted the earrings back. His wife had given the earrings to Amber’s mother, and Grandpap came to get them back. Only, he didn’t really want to get them back. He wanted to give them…
“To you,” her father said.
Amber shook her head. She didn’t understand and she didn’t want to understand. There was some terrible fact that was beneath that understanding and she didn’t want it in her head.
She remembered her mother yelling, “Inappropriate!”
Amber couldn’t recall why. The word, on its own, didn’t have any significance.
“It does though,” her father whispered. “That’s why…”
“No,” Amber said. Again, the word only rang in her head. Nothing came out of her mouth.
She remembered her mother standing up to Grandpap and telling him that it was inappropriate for him to give the earrings to Amber. For one, Amber didn’t even have pierced ears and she wasn’t going to get them pierced. Second, Amber was just a little girl. Grandpap didn’t have any right to give expensive jewelry to a little girl.
Amber remembered.
She remembered hiding in her room, listening to that argument and understanding what it was about even though she really didn’t understand at all. Her mother was trying to protect her, but she couldn’t figure out why there was a need to protect
