Everything stopped. The wind, the storm, the voices, the hands. And then Gretchen bolted upright, sitting straight up in bed, eyes snapping open, and she screamed a scream she’d been saving since birth, a scream made out of everything that had ever hurt her, a scream so shrill and so loud that the walls split, and the ceiling cracked, and paint chips rained down as Abby held on to the bed. Vile fluid poured out of Gretchen’s mouth and black tears drained from her eyes.
All over Charleston, phones started ringing and Gretchen’s scream became unbearable. Abby felt a storm of evil ideas rush through her: hollow-eyed men standing behind wire, human lampshades, the pain in Good Dog Max’s eyes because he didn’t understand what was happening to him, Gretchen stumbling naked out of the blockhouse, Mrs. Lang beating her daughter, the smell of Margaret’s bedroom, the silence at dinner tables, Glee screaming and thrashing as she was carried out of the bell tower, men laughing and cutting out a woman’s tongue, carving out her heart, burying her alive in an unmarked grave—and there was so much of it and it all hurt so badly and Abby felt it all . . . And then it was gone.
The room was a wreck. Abby’s shoulder throbbed. Gretchen lay on the mattress, covered in paint dust from the ceiling, head to one side, immobile. Then her chest rose and she inhaled, and her chest fell and she let out a gentle snore. Abby realized she was asleep.
And she was smiling.
Abby pulled her hand off the bottom of the bed and stumbled out of the room on legs made of wood; she winced. Full sunlight flooded the house and the ocean sparkled through the windows. They had been there all night. Abby heard muffled voices from far away, and she turned toward the front of the house. She heard a car door slam. She limped to the window.
Three police cars had pulled up in the yard, along with Mr. Lang’s Mercedes, and everyone was pouring out of the cars. And then Mrs. Lang looked up and saw Abby and pointed, and the police were running for the house.
Abby hobbled back to the guest bedroom.
“Gretchen!” she whispered. “Gretchen! They’re coming!”
She was kneeling by the bed, cutting the sheets off Gretchen’s wrists, and Gretchen was waking up. She saw Abby and smiled, and it was Gretchen again.
“Abby?” she said.
Heavy feet were pounding up the wooden stairs outside the house and everything was shaking.
“Gretchen,” Abby said. She cut the last knot and tore off the sheets.
“I could hear you,” Gretchen said. “You were the only thing I could hear and I was drowning, and you reached down and you pulled me out.”
Someone kicked in the front door, and then they were in the house, shoes thundering across the floor, shaking the walls, heading for the bedroom, voices shouting.
“I love you,” Abby said.
And she was hugging Gretchen, and Gretchen’s arms were around her.
“What about Max?” Gretchen whispered in her ear. “What did I do to Max?”
“It wasn’t you,” Abby said. “Max knows it wasn’t you.”
And that’s what Abby was saying when arms grabbed her from behind and yanked her away. She was in the air, her feet kicking, and Gretchen held on as long as she could. But then cops were pulling her arms away, and Gretchen screamed and reached for Abby.
“Abby!” she shouted as her mom hugged her.
“Get her out,” said a man’s voice, and the Langs’ beach house was full of men in blue uniforms. “Get her out of here!”
“Gretchen!” Abby shouted, reaching for her friend.
Abby was being hauled out of the bedroom backward, and the police were between them, and Mr. and Mrs. Lang were there, and the last thing Abby saw was Gretchen reaching for her over her mom’s shoulders. And then they had her out of the house, and down the stairs in the cold, and they were slamming her into the back of a squad car; the engine was starting and the beach house was disappearing behind them.
She heard a faint cry: “Abby!”
Abby twisted around in her seat and pressed herself to the back window and saw that Gretchen had gotten away. She was running down the front stairs and through the yard, and they were all trying to catch her but she was pounding up the street in bloody bare feet, in her shorts and filthy tank top, her face a stricken mass of grief, and she screamed one last time.
“Abby!”
Abby pressed her good hand against the back window, and the car picked up speed, and it was going faster and taking her away and she couldn’t see Gretchen anymore. She couldn’t see her best friend, her reflection, her mirror, her shadow, herself.
“Gretchen,” Abby whispered.
Gretchen was gone.
Fast Car
They said it was a closed courtroom, but for Abby it might as well have been the middle of Marion Square: a pair of lawyers representing the Langs, two State Law Enforcement Division agents, the city prosecutor and his assistant, two bailiffs, the court reporter, and a consulting psychologist who specialized in satanism and ritual crime. The only person not in the room was Gretchen.
Abby sat on the hard wooden bench that smelled like furniture polish, her shoulder aching, her arm in a sling, stitches in her left ear, and she listened as the judge tore her parents apart. They were unfit, they were irresponsible, they should be ashamed of themselves. And they were. Abby’s mom had done her hair like she was going to a party, which made Abby extremely sad, and she chewed the inside of her cheek and stayed silent while her dad rubbed his thighs and his eyes shimmered. Then the Langs were brought in and Abby was sent out in the hall with a female SLED agent. But she could hear every shouted word, even through the closed door: the judge, the lawyers, the Langs, but never her parents. They just sat there and took it.
“Sounds pretty crazy in there, huh?” the agent said.
The special juvenile hearing happened one week after they found Gretchen and Abby at the beach house. Abby had wanted to sneak out and see Gretchen and find out if the exorcism had worked, but her dad had nailed her window shut and padlocked her door. When she wanted to go to the bathroom, she rang a bell and her mom left the bathroom door open and waited outside.
An investigator from SLED came to their house and sat in the living room and asked Abby questions: How did they get to the beach house? Where did she get the GHB? Who else was involved? He pretended to be concerned about her, he pretended that it was all for her own good, but Abby remembered what happened when she tried to tell the truth to Major, and Father Morgan, and the Langs, and she didn’t say a word. After half an hour of her silence, he stopped acting like her friend. He took her parents aside and, speaking loudly enough for Abby to hear, told them how she was going to ruin her future if she didn’t start cooperating.
Too late, Abby thought.
When they finally let Abby back inside the courtroom, her parents looked harrowed. Abby thought the judge was going to let her say something, but it quickly became clear that no one expected her to say anything. They were going to make all the decisions about her life and she would never even get a chance to speak.
The lawyer for the Langs was talking about a residential treatment facility for at-risk teens in Delaware, he was saying something about a restraining order, he was talking about how many years Abby would have to live on a locked ward, when a man who looked like an accountant came in and whispered something in the judge’s ear. The judge held a quick conference in his chambers for everyone except the Rivers family. Abby sat next to her parents, numb and cold, the courtroom empty except for the three of them and a bailiff, waiting for everyone else to come back and pack her away and ship her up north, and her shoulder hurt and her ear ached and she was glad because at least she could still feel something.
The judge returned and said there was someone who needed to speak, and the Langs’ lawyer looked exasperated and made a big show of slapping down his legal pad; Gretchen’s mom was crying and Mrs. Lang’s jaw was clenched, and a few minutes later the rear doors opened and the exorcist was led in by three cops. He wouldn’t meet Abby’s eyes. Abby felt it all end. Now he’d tell everyone about Andras, and Abby approaching him, and how they planned it, and she would sound crazy. Now they were going to put her on drugs. They would send her to Southern Pines. He was going to make it all so much worse.