“You know what’s going to happen,” Gretchen said. “My parents are already looking for me. Can you imagine the choice tantrum my mom threw when she came home from the game, all full of crab dip and fried chicken, only to find her precious perfect baby girl missing? Beloved family pet dead? Blood all over her clean white carpets? I mean, those will definitely have to be replaced. They’re going to call the police and the first person they’re going to wonder about is that girl—what’s her name?”
Abby crouched down and pressed the heels of her hands against her temples. This isn’t Gretchen, she told herself. Gretchen is someplace else.
“That girl,” Gretchen continued. “You know, the one dealing drugs? The one who almost got expelled? The one who stole the dead baby from the hospital for some kind of sick sex orgy? Oh, right, Abigail Rivers. Is she home? Ring-ring! Hello, Mrs. Rivers, at some point in the last twenty-four hours while you were being total white trash, did you notice anything different about your daughter? She’s gone? Now, I know we’re only the Mount Pleasant Police Department and we don’t have two brain cells to rub together, but this might be a clue. Hey, Cletus? Do you think the crazy pizza-faced girl might have something to do with the abduction and possible murder of this nice, sweet, upstanding, and—dare I say—smoking-hot girl? Well, Retus, I think it’s worth a look.”
Abby began to rock back and forth. This isn’t Gretchen, she told herself over and over. This isn’t Gretchen.
“They’re going to come for you,” Gretchen said, and she didn’t look cold anymore. In fact, she looked like she was exactly where she’d wanted to be all along. “They’re going to find you here with me tied to the bed, and they’re going to put you in a facility. Your parents will be the most hated people in Charleston. You’re such a schizo it’s going to be legendary. People are going to remember the dead-baby-stealing, kidnapping druggie from Albemarle Academy forever. Even after they finally let you out, even after you’re old and dried up and thirty—even then, you’ll never get to be anyone else. You’re always going to be the same tainted, pathetic spaz you are today.”
Abby leapt to her feet and ran for the living room. The thing using Gretchen’s voice had wormed its way into her head and squeezed Abby’s brain, making it pulse blood. She needed quiet. She went to the front window and watched the street grow dark. A man in a red raincoat passed by, walking his dog. A plane left contrails in the violet sky. Time passed. Eventually the streetlights blinked on and that’s when Abby had to face facts: the exorcist wasn’t coming back. She was all alone. A demon was waiting in the next room, and no one was going to help her.
“Abby,” the Gretchen-Thing called out. “Can you hear me, Abby?”
Abby rested her forehead against the glass. There was no way out. She had ruined everything.
“What if I let you go?” she called desperately. “I’ll let you go, and we’ll just leave. We’ll go to a neighbor and call the cops and you promise to tell them you took the baby. And then we’ll go our separate ways, and you won’t hear from me ever again.”
“Oh, we’re way beyond that now, Abby,” Andras said. “You know why? Because you’ve truly pissed me off. I’m tied to this Christing bed, but you’re the one who’s trapped.”
Abby shook her head, trying to wish everything back the way it was before she screwed it all up so badly.
“They’re going to be here soon,” Andras continued. “Are you ready to go far, far away? I think you’re way past Southern Pines now. And once you’re gone, I’m going to have so much fun. I think Margaret might become another teen tragedy. I’ve barely even started on Wallace Stoney. Maybe Nikki Bull can be the first girl at your school to get AIDS.”
Abby looked down at the coffee table. Sitting on a pile of out-of-date National Geographics was Brother Lemon’s Bible. She picked it up. His cheat sheet was shoved into its pages. She pulled it out.
It was the exorcism. All the prayers, all the rituals, all the rites, all written down, with directions. Abby took out the pages and looked at these useless prayers and incantations. She was going to jail, she knew she was going to jail, but Andras would keep going and going and going. There was no end to it.
“Do you know what I think, Abby?” Andras called. “I think it’s time that Dereck White got tired of the way those football players treat him. I think maybe it’s time he brought his gun to school. Can’t you see it? He’s walking down the hall, going from room to room, and for once no one can tell him to shut up. After you’re gone, I’m going to have so much fun.”
There was no more Margaret. No more Glee. No more Wallace Stoney. No more Father Morgan. Soon there would be no more Brother Lemon. When did it stop? How much misery did there have to be? Abby knew the suffering would be infinite. It would spread from person to person to person and go on and on until there was nothing else. Until everyone felt the way she did right now.
It had to stop. It didn’t matter what happened to her anymore: this had to stop.
Abby turned out the lights in the living room and checked all the doors to make sure they were locked. She got a glass of water and walked into the guest bedroom, carrying Brother Lemon’s Bible and instructions.
“Saint Michael the Archangel, defend me in battle,” Abby read off the sheet. “Be my protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, I humbly pray. Amen.”
The paper trembled in her hands, but she told herself it was because of the cold. Abby stood at the foot of the bed and her voice sounded too loud, too theatrical, too much like she was pretending. The overhead fixture made everything look cheap and shoddy.
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” she prayed. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done . . .”
“Seriously?” Andras asked, raising Gretchen’s head. “You’re seriously doing this?”
“. . . as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation . . .”
“It won’t work,” Andras said. “An exorcist has to be pure and honest, and that’s the one thing you’ve never been. You’re arrogant, Abby. You think you’re the only person who works hard, you think no one suffers but you . . .”
“. . . forever and ever. Amen,” Abby breathed deeply. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .”
She repeated the Lord’s Prayer three times.
“Ask yourself, Abby,” Andras said, talking over her. “If you’re so wonderful, if you are truly this selfless giving tree, why are you only friends with rich girls? You used to be friends with Lanie Ott and Tradd Huger, but they’re not rich like me and Margaret and Glee. I bet you wouldn’t even talk to your parents if you didn’t have to live with them. They’ve done nothing but sacrifice for you and you’re humiliated by them. You think they’re trash.”
Abby’s hands were shaking harder now, and she raised her voice to drown out Andras.
“I command you, unclean spirit,” she said, her voice quavering. “Along with all your minions now attacking this servant of God, be gone.”
Andras laughed at her.
“Once more, by the power of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I command you to depart this servant of God.”
“You know, Abby,” Andras said in Gretchen’s voice, “this is one of those things that’s broken, and it’s not getting fixed. Some mistakes are forever, and you committed one. Welcome to the rest of your long, lonely life.”
They went on this way for an hour. After a while, Abby couldn’t remember how long she’d been in the room; Gretchen’s body was exhausted, her hair sweaty and matted, wrists and ankles chafed raw by the sheets, the mattress cold and wet.