“If you ask me,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, to project an air of nonchalance that I didn’t feel, “I don’t think there was a moment where she wasn’t possessed. You saw her, the way she was.”
He nodded. “It’s true. That is enough to make you go crazy, to know that you’ve had someone else inside you, pulling the strings, controlling the ride. To fear that your child may not be as totally human as you had hoped.”
There was that word again. Human.
“Are you saying I’m not human?” I asked, wincing at how incredibly stupid the words sounded coming out of my mouth. The fact was though, if he told me I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have been surprised about that either. It would explain at least some of the bogus shit I’d been putting up with.
My brother gave me an uncharacteristically shy smile. “You’re human, Declan. You have some abilities, as you know, that make you special.” He snorted at his choice of words, as if I could ever be that. “But you’re still a product of your mother and father, no matter what residue remains.” His smile now turned pitiful. “You are nothing like me at all. I’m not sure why you thought you were the one they were afraid of.”
I didn’t understand. But I felt it. The malevolence, the evil. It came off of him just as it did from the fiery pit at the end of the cave or from the oozing black walls in our old hallway.
I was afraid of him. I always had been. Not because he was better than me. No, I was quickly figuring that out now. But because he was worse.
“Who are you?” I asked him, my voice rough and ragged, caught in my throat.
Another smile with dead eyes. “I used to be your brother. A very long time ago.”
“What happened to Michael?” His name sounded strange on my lips.
He shrugged. “He was phased out. He wasn’t very strong. He wasn’t like you, you see. You had some inner strength that he didn’t have. Wasn’t his fault, of course. You had your parents. He did not.”
“He had them too,” I said, knowing it was going to be refuted. It was strange talking about my brother in the third person to my brother. But I knew that wasn’t him. I should have always known but I was too fucking self-absorbed to even notice he had changed over the years, distancing himself from me, my mother and Pippa. We had never been close, so it was nearly impossible to tell when the rift had started. But it had and now I was feeling the first feelings of loss over him.
“He did, at first,” he said. “But I think your father always knew that he wasn’t his. He revered him out of fear, not pride.”
“What the hell do you mean he wasn’t his?” I asked incredulously, trying not to look this man, who looked like Michael but wasn’t Michael, in the eyes. Those fathomless, oily eyes.
“Your mother wasn’t you when she had you. But you still had a father, your father. Michael had neither.”
I shook my head slowly, unable to understand. My thoughts felt like they were trying to form through molasses. “How is that possible?”
“Anything is possible, Declan,” he said smoothly, adjusting his tie. “Your mother was taken over for her first pregnancy. Nearly all the way. She still had a shred of humanity in her, but it wasn’t enough. Not then. She was able to…consort…with something she ought to have not. It wasn’t your father.”
I blinked. Now we were going from The Changeling to some Rosemary’s Baby shit. I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around it. I was open-minded but what I was hearing was too fucking much. My brother was the product of my possessed mother and a demon? My family had just turned into every seventies horror movie cliché. Why didn’t I just start running around with a chainsaw and call myself Leatherface?
And yet for how fucking ridiculous and unbelievable it all sounded, I knew deep down that this was the truth. That made it worse, somehow, to have your guts tell you that all this crazy shit was as real as the as the balls between your legs.
All this damn time I had been living with a brother who wasn’t really mine. All this time I thought my parents had been afraid of me, when it was Michael they had feared. No wonder my father took off when he did. No wonder my mother drank herself into the abyss. No wonder I had turned out so utterly fucked up.
But in the end I was still human. I was still me, no matter “residue” he said had stayed behind. I was no demon child. Not like him.
“It’s a lot to take,” he said, eying me carefully. The air around us snapped, growing colder, screams starting again, wailing from along the tunnel.
“I’m an old pro,” I said cautiously. All the chit chat and the revelations, they weren’t for nothing. All of this was going somewhere and as the seconds ticked by in this cave, in this house, in this world I wasn’t even sure existed, I was getting closer to some reveal I wasn’t going to like. Something worse than, “your brother is a demon.”
So I bit the bullet. “Why did you come for me now? Why am I here, wherever this is?” I took in a deep, icy breath. “What do you want from me?”
He put his hand out in front of him and lifted one finger. “Why did I come for you now? Because things in your life are starting to align. The company you keep is becoming more and more like you.” I opened my mouth to question that but he lifted another finger. “Why are you here? Because this was where hell began for you, for Michael…” he looked down the tunnel, to the fire. “Where the walls are weakest.” He studied me carefully. “You’ve been close to it, you know.”
“To what?”
He grinned. “To Hell. You nearly went there once to bring back your dear beloved Perry. Your nanny called it the Thin Veil and it is thin. It’s growing thinner. And you’re able to punch holes into it. You can step into the Veil and from there you can step into Hell. And those like me, we will be able to do the same.” His eyes flitted over to the flames. “We’ve been waiting a long time to come over. Not everyone is as lucky as I am.”
Clarity came over me with a kick of nausea. I knew where this was going. Every stretched nerve in my body was telling to run far away from the truth. But of course, I was a dumb fuck who wasn’t going anywhere.
He lifted up the third finger. “And finally, what do I want from you? Declan, you’re special, so fucking special, as you would say. But I, we,” he gestured down the tunnel, “We don’t want just you. Alone, you’re not as good as you think you are. Together, though, that is a different story.”
I swallowed hard, unable to feel my feet. “Perry,” I whispered.
He nodded with ease. “Yes. Perry. She makes everything you do…better. But it’s not just her. It’s what she’s brought with her.” He took another step and lay his hand on my shoulder. It felt like the weight of the world. “All of them, in this place, will cause a rift you’ll never be able to piece back together.”
He leaned in, so he was whispering in my ear. His voice was no longer human. It conjured up images of beasts and death. “And, with my help, you’re going to lead them straight back here, to the house that life and love forgot. Aren’t you, Declan?”
I found myself nodding as he pulled back.
Flames danced in his dirty eyes until the orange glow was all I could see.