Page 7

Five

Tori tosses the bible she’s been holding onto for dear life just as she announces she’s coming. She isn’t lying either. I already knew she was getting close, she’s been practically convulsing, thrashing against my mouth. But I can’t focus on that, nor do I care. All I can pay attention to are the footsteps on the other side of the door that I know are Araceli’s. She thinks I didn’t see her—of course I did. That dark corner she thought she hid in failed at providing her with the camouflage she needed. Darkness doesn’t provide her with the shield she thinks it does. It compliments her, highlighting all the parts of her that she is forced to keep hidden but I wish she didn’t, not from me.

I lick up Tori’s orgasm, secretly wishing it were Araceli’s, and skid the chair back just as my phone pings.

What do you want, Araceli? I know her well enough to know that she isn’t trying to small-talk with me, and that she didn’t come down here just to watch me go down on Tori. Just like I know when I get a text from her it’s because she wants something.

Araceli: When you’re done eating, be a good big brother and get me my pills from Daddy’s office.

Knew it . I’m about to text her back when she beats me to it.

Araceli: Hope she’s a squirter and blesses you with her holy water =P

My fingers glide across the keyboard to text her back, but before I know it, Tori is fully dressed in the outfit she wore during service.

“Everything okay?” she asks, standing over to my side.

Her hair drapes over the phone screen, blocking my view. Not wanting her to see the text, I hit the lock screen.

“Yep. All good.”

“Okay.” She bites down on her lip. At first, I take it as a flirtatious thing, but the longer she stays with her lip trapped and kneaded under her tooth, I see the guilt on her face.

“Are you okay?”

She stops chewing on her lip to answer. “Yeah, but you’re not going to tell anyone are you?”

“No,” I reassure her.

Satisfied with my deadpanned response, she turns on a smile. “Okay, just wanted to make sure.”

I nod, looking around the inventory room. I don’t know why Dad told me to come down here. Everything was in order by the time I met Tori here.

“Yep,” I drag, an awkward energy filling the room. My mind drifts off to Araceli, wondering what she thinks about what she saw me do. Hoping it turned her on as much as I hope it pissed her off. “Well, it looks like everything is taken care of down here, so I’m going to head home.” I move to the doorway, ready to sneak into my dad’s office to get Araceli’s pills—and hopefully not get caught this time. Patting my pockets, I realize that I don’t have the key.

Something jingles and distracts me.

Tori, now dressed, walks past me with the keys to my dad’s office. “Thank you,” she blushes, placing her hand with the keys on my cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Are those the keys to my dad’s office?” I ask, already knowing the answer but confused as to why she has them.

A laugh erupts from her. “Yeah, silly. Since my mom had surgery, I’ve been filling in for her as secretary. Well, just on the days or nights that I can since I have to juggle my own job and commuting to campus.”

“Right.” I offer her a short response while I’m trying to brainstorm how the fuck I’m going to get into the office now with her having the keys. “Are you locking up or do you have work to do?”

“With the Holy Harvest tomorrow, there’s so much work to be done.” She begins to move through the doorway. “So I’ll be here for a little bit still.”

Great.

I follow after her. “Need help?”

She pauses her stride, looking back at me over her shoulder. My gaze falls to her lips and the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. She says something, but I can’t focus on what she’s saying. Like a pin dropping in the dead of night, something crashes, faint yet loud enough to be heard, behind me. The acoustics linger in my eardrum, causing a ringing to occur. The noise is unbearable. In desperation, I throw my hands up, covering my ears, but it only makes it louder. I look around to see where the noise is coming from, but I see nothing.

Tori walks over to me, fear ripe within her hazel stare.

“Harlan.” My name is muffled, but it cuts through the ear-piercing ricochet that is attacking my hearing .

With a yank at my wrist, she breaks the seal I created with my hands around my ears. To my surprise and much to my relief, the sound is gone.

“I was just telling you I don’t need any help.”

“You didn’t hear that?” I blurt, baffled by how nonchalant she just spoke to me.

Dumbfounded, she widens her eyes at me. “Umm, my voice echoed a bit. I, uh…” She fumbles her words, and it’s clear she didn’t hear what I did.

“You seriously didn’t hear that sound? It was so…” Now I’m the one fumbling my words. “It was so…” I don’t know how to finish my sentence. Even if I wanted to. I’m too distracted by one of the many core memories embedded in my psyche taking this opportunity to remind me how fucked I am.

My body remains where it is. Where I know it ought to be. In the church basement next to Tori but mentally I’m back home. Younger than I am now by about fifteen years, back to my five-year-old self, curled up in a ball, crying. Begging for the sting to go away on my back from my father’s belt.

“It’s in your head! You were never there! It doesn’t exist.”

“No. It’s real. I heard it. I saw it. I was—”

Whip.

“You hear that? That’s the sound I will continue to make until you stop talking altogether. No child of mine will feed into these delusions. You’re just like your…”

“Harlan.” Tori breaks the bubble I’m in as she rubs my back, but her touch only drives the trauma further to the surface, and I tear away from her touch.

“I’m sorry, I just wanted to see if you’re okay. If you need me to do something I can…”

I lift my hand to stop her. “I’m good.” I lie. The same lie I've been telling since I learned my lesson at the ripe age of five, and of what telling the truth to someone who can’t accept it means—embarrassment, pain. Neither of which I have time for. Making my way out of the storage room, Tori follows after me .

“Didn’t you need something from your dad’s office?”

“Forget it,” I say, continuing to walk away.

I shake my head, brushing off whatever it was I thought I heard back there. Convincing myself it’s in my head, and needing the lie to be true. I continue moving, through the blanket of darkness in the hallway of the basement and up the stairs. I only stop to place my head on the door that separated me from the main sanctuary. Hand on the knob, I go to turn it, and as I do, the uncontrollable urge that I have to look down at the floor overcomes me. I peer down as I open the door, look to the floor, and giant muddy footsteps fill my vision.

I walk around them and the noise sounds in my ear again, forcing my attention back to the floor. This time I see something. A pentagram—Araceli’s pentagram—lies on the floor. I bend to pick it up, slipping it into my pocket. A grimy texture brushes against my callouses but I don’t have time to look at what it is, not with Tori now standing a few feet behind me.

“Where are you going?” Tori calls out.

My lips part, but something else catches my attention on the floor, dark brown blotches of mud line the floor. The footsteps I saw just moments before are now long, jagged letters. I take a step forward, trying to decipher what it says. Squinting, I can make out the first two words, ‘ no one ’ but it isn’t until I move closer that I can see the rest, ‘ gets in for free .’

No one gets in for free. What the fuck does that mean?

I blink. When my lids ascend, and I go to read the message again, the writing… the mud… all of it is gone .

“Harlan.” Tori breathes my name, a question on her lips. “What’s wrong?”

I shake my head, heading back to the door. “Nothing,” I quip as a vicious chill lodges down my spine.

I have to get out of here. I need air.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” I burst through the doors into the October night air. Leaves whip at my jeans, and the weight of the necklace in my pocket becomes prominent .

Araceli probably put some spell on it, or whatever she believes in, and she’s fucking with me. That has to be it.

I convince myself that this is the truth, as I walk past the graveyard that separates the church from our farmhouse on the property, replacing one nightmare for another. If she did purposely leave her necklace for me to see in the hopes that I’d bring it back to her and she tampered with it, that means that whatever she did, is real.

So maybe her mom was right, that night that she and my dad were arguing before she was found in the cornfield not too far from here.

Maybe the veil is slipping since tomorrow is Halloween.

That, or I’m cursed for everything I’ve been secretly wanting to do with Araceli. Nothing brotherly, and everything that makes me the sinner my dad has always feared I’ll turn into.