Page 61 of Conjure

When the blood pressure cuff inflates with a hiss, Dominic interlaces his fingers with mine, and I focus on the sensation of his calloused palm, his heat.

Brittany’s croaky voice brings me back to the present. “It feeds on our fear and pain—our sanity, which sustains its existence on this plane. It needs us to grow stronger.”

Aron lifts his head. “Why us? Why not someone else?”

“Because of the séance,” I say quietly.

“There’s no logic,” Brittany continues. “This…thingisn’t human. It’s…ancient. It existed before the beginning of time and will exist long after.”

“How did it enter our plane?” I ask.

Brittany turns those empty eyes on me. “It was called here a long time ago.”

“The previous owners of my house were into the occult.” I look at Gwen, swallowing roughly. “That’s what you told me.”

“Rumor has it the husband invoked the devil,” she confirms with a shaky nod. “His family disappeared shortly afterward.”

“They were never found,” Aron grunts, his arms straining as he looks past us out the window, still gripping the railing like his life depends on it. “And the cops were quick to brush it under the carpet. Blamed their murders on the husband. They think the bodies are buried somewhere in the woods.”

“There’s nowhere to hide,” Brittany says in a haunted, quivering voice. “No matter where we go or how far we travel, it will find us.”

“But why?” The desperation in Aron’s tone breaks my heart.

“It wants her.” Brittany points at me.

Silence falls over the room.

“Why would it want me?” My voice cracks at the end. I look between everyone, trying and failing to plaster a fake smile on my lips. None of this makes sense. “I’m no one.”

“Not true.” Brittany shakes her head, and I drop my gaze, only to see blood seeping through the bandage, bright red against the white. “It brought you here.”

“Brought me here? What do you mean?” I laugh, but it lacks humor. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. Remember the night of the crash?”

I can feel the blood drain from my face as Dominic turns to granite behind me.

“You saw someone in the road, didn’t you? A vision.”

“That wasn’t?—”

“Everything that happened was designed to bring you here, to this town…and that house.”

“Why me?” I breathe defeatedly.

“Because you got away.”

I open my mouth to reply when the door opens, and Brittany’s parents enter. Her eyes remain locked on mine as they fawn over her. When Dominic pulls on my hand, I reluctantly allow him to lead me out of the room.

“Because you got away.”

I mull over the words in the truck on the way back to the house while watching the cornstalks pass by outside in a blur of yellow. My neck is sweaty, and strands of hair stick to my equally perspiring forehead. This summer never ends.

We pass Wilfred’s farm, and I crane my neck when I spot his rusty Volvo parked beside the tractor. The bag of animal remains on the porch is gone.

Dominic’s glare burns the side of my face as we turn down the dirt road that leads to our house, and then it’s there, looming ahead of us like a grotesque abomination that rises through the earth.

A window is open upstairs, the white curtains dancing in the afternoon breeze. Mom’s car is gone.