I spend Sunday hanging around my house with my mother, which is weird and suspicious because I’m used to having the house to myself. She’s always finding excuses to be busy, same as my father, because neither of them wants a divorce even though they’d probably be happier for it. I don’t want to die, but I think everyone is going to be a lot happier for it. Even if my mom will have to wear a black dress she hates at my funeral. So long as Aidan isn’t the one to kill me, I think it’ll be okay.
That’s about what I’ve decided by the time my mother asks if I’d like to go to the store now to pick out my new phone. I don’t want to go, but I get in her car, we drive to the store, I turn over my phone with the busted LCD-screen, I get a brand new phone and pretend to be excited that it’s the latest model.
Does this thing have the internet? Look at something else. How many times are you going to look at the settings?
I ignore Cain, even though he won’t shut up. I send a text to Aidan letting him know I got a new phone, and he texts back immediately something enthusiastic and normal, like yesterday’s awkwardness never happened. I stand there messing around with the phone while my mom finishes paying for everything.
When she’s done my mom sets her hand on my back to get my attention. She’s been touching at me all day like I’m a small child that she needs to keep track of and not a teenager. “Do you like it?” she asks. “Is it the one you wanted?”
I’m reminded of all the times she’d buy me a new toy just because I’d be crying too much about my parents fighting again. New toy, ice cream, my mom would do lots of things to try assuring me everything was okay and our lives were normal and nice.
“Yeah. Thanks, mom.” I flash her a smile.
Ask your mom if she’ll buy you a gun.
We leave the store, and I play with my phone in the car rather than look out the windows. I don’t want to know what I might see. I don’t want to know if I’m still going to see dead people everywhere now that I have one inside me. Aidan and I text back and forth about which phone I got, if I’m going to jailbreak it, if I’m going to school tomorrow, and I tell him I don’t know to most his questions. That’s all I want to say to anyone anymore, is that I just don’t know. Someone who isn’t Cain needs to start telling me what to do, because all Cain wants to do is kill people and fuck.
Who else you got? Anyone you hate enough to kill for me? Look, I’ll even do the actual killing if you just keep fucking calm while I’m in control.
I wait until we’re back at the house, until she’s tucking her keys back into her purse as we walk into the kitchen from the garage. I try to sound casual about it, appropriately hopeful but not too eager, maybe a little bored, painfully normal. Just as normal as I can sound.
“Mom? Can I borrow the car?”
Oh, we going out?
She looks at me with a soft, worried frown.
“I’ll be home before dinner,” I say. “I want to go to the bookstore.”
Boring.
“You should have said something while we were out,” she says. “I would have taken you.”
I shrug. I try to look innocent about this, like there’s nothing suspicious about me wanting to borrow her car even though I never have. Aidan’s been driving me everywhere since he turned sixteen, because his grandparents bought him a car for his birthday. It wasn’t a new car, he’s just got that old sedan that rumbles but hasn’t ever broken down on him.
Are you old enough to drive? I know how to drive. I know all about cars. Give me control again, I’m great at driving.
I have my license, I took Driver’s Ed, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to borrow my mom’s car except I know she’s going to refuse. I can see it all over her face. She’s thinking of a good excuse to give me that isn’t the truth, which is that she’s too concerned about me being crazy to let me go anywhere.
Finally she just says, “Maybe not, sweetie. You need your rest.”
I don’t, but that’s okay. I’m not going to fight her on it, I’m not going to steal her keys out of her purse or hotwire the car like Cain suggests. I haven’t said a word to Cain, and I’m not going to, even though he won’t shut up. I’m going to ignore him. I’m going to behave myself and be a good son to my mother, because I made her cry yesterday, and I think I’m going to make her cry a lot more pretty soon.
We sit together in the livingroom to watch nothing in particular. I’m thinking of what to do, if I really want to do this, if I even can kill myself with Cain inside me. I don’t want to kill anyone, especially Aidan, so I might have to kill myself if that’s the only way to stop Cain. I don’t really want to, because it’ll make my mom cry and Aidan’s going to miss me, but I don’t want the alternative to be more of Cain taking over my life. Not if he wants me to kill people. Not if he’s going to try kissing Aidan again, or if he’s going to kill Aidan, or do really anything with my body again.
That’s how it is when my father comes home. My mom and I both look to the front door as it opens, but I sink lower into my side of the sofa while she gets up. My father’s wearing a suit and dragging his luggage set, because he’s been out of town on business, and I just need one look at him to know my mother already told him all about my unexplainable adventure to the hospital.
I slide even lower onto the sofa and pretend to fiddle with my phone. I pull up a new text to Aidan and just type and delete gibberish while my parents start their fight. Like most fights they begin with terse politeness and frigid matrimonial affection, a stiff kiss on my father’s cheek before my mom asks about the trip, asks about dinner, starts whispering about me.
Now would be a good time to steal the car, you know.
“How much more therapy does he need?” my father demands. Not whispering, so that my mom tries to hush him, and then the fight starts in earnest.
Are they going to do this right in the foyer when I’m sitting not twenty feet away? I glance over the top of my phone at where my parents are faced off against each other about me. I’m an only child, center of their parental universe. They only have me and this house that they share, I’m the only thing keeping them together. If I die, they’ll sell the house. They’ll get divorced.
“Maybe if you were home more often,” my mom snips.
“Don’t start in on that again. You’re not blaming this on me.”
I glance to the staircase. The trick now is moving out of hearing range without them seeing. Without my father seeing me, because he’ll want to say something to me. I never like what he has to say about me to my face. It’s bad enough I have to hear what he says to my mother about me.
Your dad’s a dick. Mom’s kind of cute. You look a lot like her.
I wish I could get out of hearing range of Cain.
I’m being pretty patient about this whole thing, but we need to talk about getting me a body. Much fun as watching your fascinating life has been, I think we’d both be a lot happier about this if we weren’t sharing this body.
I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from saying something to Cain. I glance over at my parents and then scoot off the end of the sofa. I walk quickly to the staircase and can still hear them arguing, so I rush up the stairs two at a time to reach my bedroom.
I close the door — I don’t slam it, I actually make sure to be quiet. I go to my alarm clock and turn on the radio. Classical music drowns out the sound of my parents fighting, and I flop onto the bed and drag one of my pillows over my head.
How about just a stranger? Pick someone up at the bar. Pretty thing like you, it’ll be easy. And I’ll be quick about it, if you keep your shit together long enough for me to figure out how to get your scrawny body turned lethal. Does your mom have a bunch of cooking knives? Is your dad into hunting?
“I’m not killing anyone.” I mumble into my comforter. “Why do I have to kill someone for you?”
Isn’t it obvious? You really are the dumbest necromancer I’ve ever met.
“I don’t even know what a necromancer is. I don’t know anything about this. I don’t know anyone who does. I –” I pop my head up and roll onto my back. I do know someone who can explain this, or at least will tell me he understands, so I’ll understand it somewhat better.
I sit upright and grab my phone out of my pocket. I fire off a quick text telling Aidan to come pick me up, because I know he will, and then I rush to my closet to hunt up a hooded sweatshirt. I also dig the earbuds out of my new phone’s box and jam them into my pocket.
Yeah, no shit, you’re dumber than bricks.
I turn off my radio and hear my parents arguing. My dad, I hear my dad yelling, because my mom never yells. She gets softly fierce and will bite her words at my father, but she won’t raise her voice like he does. I hate hearing him yell at her, because more often than not it makes her cry. I hate seeing my mom cry. Ever since I was a little boy, I’ve hated seeing my mom cry.
I wait until Aidan texts me back that he’s on his way over, I wait until he texts that he’s out front, and then I run down the staircase.
“Aidan’s here! I’m going out!” I call.
Maybe if I’m quick about it they’ll be too distracted to care, but I don’t think they hear me anyway. I don’t really want them to hear me, I just want to leave, and I know it’s wrong to rush into the garage without actually making sure my mom knows I’m leaving, but this is normal for me. This is my normal life where my parents fight if they’re in the house together, and those are the times I won’t be in the house.
Aidan usually waits at the street, at the bottom of the drive, but he’s pulled all the way up to the curve under the portico this time. I hurry to his car and yank open the passenger door to throw myself inside.
He stares at me and then flicks his eyes to where my dad’s car is parked in front of the garage. “Hi,” he says.
“Go to where I delivered the letter,” I say. “And, please don’t say anything.”
I pull the hood up, sink low in the seat, get myself tucked away so that the only thing I see is my lap, nothing visible even from the corner of my eye thanks to the hood. I pull out my phone so Cain will have something to look at rather than try to ask where I’m going.
“Ethan, I’m not sure –”
“Please,” I say. I peek around the edge of the hood at the front door. “Aidan, go, before my mom realizes I’ve left.”
“Um, Ethan, if your mom –”
“It’s fine,”I say quickly. “Aidan, it’s fine. I’m sorry about yesterday, but I just really need you to shut up and drive right now. Please.”
He shifts the car into gear and putters forward while still looking over at me half-terrified, half-concerned. I get to where I can only see the screen in my lap again. Cain can’t hear me think, so long as I don’t say anything and don’t look anywhere he won’t know where I’m going. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s the way it works. Since I’ve been thinking all day about Cain without him saying anything about what I’m thinking, I’m pretty sure that’s the way it works.
I pop open a private browsing session on my phone and type into the search bar ‘ways to kill people and not get caught.’
What’s this? Is this the internet? Fuck, yeah. Wait, that one. I was reading it — hey, move the text back where I can see it.
I’m going to have to reformat my phone just to be sure this can’t be used against me in court someday. I hope Aidan can’t read the screen. My thumb rests against the side of the phone to let Cain keep reading. I can’t say anything with Aidan in the car. After a while Cain gets bored and declares he already knows how to kill someone without getting caught, so I type into the search bar ‘porn’ before he can ask where we’re going.
What, no way! Wait, yeah that one. Fuck, yeah.
“Ethan?” I hear Aidan ask.
This is great. Your world is great.
I don’t say anything, but I go back to the search and type ‘demon’ instead and pull up images of horned red things with bat wings. Cain’s laugh makes me squirm and shiver in my seat, because it’s all that shattered rock rumble of the dead cat’s laugh only inside me.
This is a riot. Is this supposed to be me? Wait, go down further.
I hope Aidan’s looking at the road and not my phone. “Ethan, I want to go in with you this time. I’m going to find parking, okay?”
“Fine,” I say. If I protest, Cain’s going to know something’s wrong. “That’s fine, sure.”
Look up people we can kill. Find me a body — is there dating on here? I heard you can find people on the internet to fuck.
I go into the app store and download the first search research for dating. I create a profile using the name Abel Kane just so it won’t look too obvious and I can’t think of anything better. I put my age as eighteen first and then change it to twenty-one. I don’t dare go older than that. For the profile pic I start flipping through my photo stream with Cain offering way too much commentary on just which picture he thinks is best. I find one where my head is turned, where I’m not much more than blonde and slim, a photo Aidan took using my phone that barely looks like me at all.
Profile created, I start swiping through pictures of potential matches.
No, ugly, ew, fuck no, maybe, is that a chick? Sure, maybe, no, no, fuck no, no —
“Ethan?”
I realize the car’s parked and quickly exit the dating app. I pull open the music player and pull down a playlist out of my account, because I’m not trusting the cell service inside the building. “Sure,” I say. “Okay, just a minute.” I dig the earbuds out of my pocket. I plug them into my phone and then nestle each speaker into my ear.
“You do all the talking,” I say to Aidan. “I can’t hear anything you say, okay? Don’t talk to me.”
“What? What do I say? Ethan, what –”
I put the volume up enough that I can’t hear him. I get out of the car without looking at anything other than my feet.
Hey, where are we? What are you doing?
I tuck my phone into view and pull back open the dating app.
No, enough of that — where’d your friend go? Oh, we’re moving — turn down that fucking music.
Aidan has his arm looped through mine to get me into walking, because I won’t look anywhere but at the phone screen.
Abel, this isn’t cute. You’re up to something. Don’t make me fight you again.
I swipe through pictures on the dating app even though Cain’s not paying much attention to it anymore. Aidan can probably see what I’m looking at, but I can’t hear if he says anything about it. I have the music blasting into the earbuds so the only thing Cain’s going to hear is silly pop music, even as Aidan brings me to a stop. I feel brick against the back of my sweatshirt as I lean into the wall with my phone.
Abel, you stupid motherfucker, what are you doing?
It’s not long at all before Aidan pushes me forward – no, a different set of hands, pulling me forward into the building. Beyond the rectangular outline of my phone I see the shuffling of feet — my sneakers, Aidan’s sneakers, polished black leather shoes, and then a set of navy boat shoes peeping out from tan suede pants that rush right up to me. A slim hand darts out to grab the cord dangling over my chest, and I look up with a gasp at the same time as the earbuds get yanked out of my ears.
“– get a look at you,” he says, this person staring right at me. He’s got a pretty, heart-shaped face with wisps of chin-length platinum-blonde hair framing it. He’s dressed in normal clothes, bright colors, unlike the handsome man in the eye patch and then this one other person now in the room with me who are both in all black.
Where the fuck is this? Who the fuck are these people? Is that — oh shit.
I don’t want to look at anyone or anything, but I can’t help but look everywhere, at all three of these strangers, and I feel Aidan press close. Besides the man in the eye patch, there’s a shorter man standing back with his arms crossed just watching me from behind a dark sweep of bangs. It obscures nearly as much as his face as the eye patch, but what I can see is delicate but dangerous.
Run. Abel, get the fuck out of here.
I feel my eyes going wide, same as I feel the vibration that seems to start at my toes. I can’t take in everything at once, so that I look everywhere and nowhere and know that I shouldn’t have looked up from my phone at all. My breath picks up into panic. Cain’s fighting me for control, so that my hands twitch and I sway.
“Oh, dear,” says the blonde. He has hold of my shoulders now. “Whatever’s possessing you is trying to come out to play, I think.” He puzzles a frown at me before looking to the others. “Well, I guess we’re doing an exorcism.”
Goddammit, run. Abel, don’t do this!
“You are not doing it here,” says the man in the eye patch.
“Of course we are. Hi, I’m Phobos,” he says to me. “Don’t tell me your name. Let’s go –”
Aidan grabs onto me as I stagger. I can feel Cain struggling inside me, it’s an awful sensation of getting ripped in two as I fight him back so that neither of us has control. I have no idea what anyone says or does or even what I say or do, because my body is only half-mine as I fight Cain.
Abel! Abel, you idiot, you fucking son of a bitch liar!
I think if I try to tell Cain to shut up, if I try to tell Cain to behave, I think it’ll be my voice forming the words or I think I might throw up instead. I think I hear Aidan, I think I hear the man in the eye patch because he has that distinctive accent and low, calm voice that’s certainly better than the furious, shrill beat of Cain trying to take my body from me.
You said you didn’t know anything about this shit, and now here you’ve taken us straight to the one fucking person —
I scream, I know it’s me screaming, because I can feel the vibration in what I’m pretty sure is my throat. I’m nothing but agony, nothing but clutching and yanking pieces of myself back together as Cain tries to take them, if these people know what to do with me then I want them to do it. I’m not going to let Cain stop this. Everything and nothing, everything hurting, I’m not going to give up and let Cain take over.
Abel! Abel listen to me. Listen to me, kid, this isn’t going to work the way they want it to, you need to get out of here.
Other voices, too, I can hear the alto-soprano sweetness of the blonde saying, “Put him in the center!”
It’s pitch black in this room, it’s bright without shadows in this room, there’s a coppery sheen on the floor in the shape of a pentagram. I’m being carried, my body is thrashing and not even mine or maybe mine so much that I can’t control it even though I think Cain stopped fighting me. Is that my voice shouting and wailing, so that everyone else has to yell?
This pretty blonde stranger who knew I was possessed, he seems to know what to do about Cain. He’s bossing everyone around, hurrying around everywhere, jumping over the lines on the floor with elegant, well-practiced ease. “Deimos, get the knife!”
No!
Cain’s loudest of all, he’s right inside my head.
Abel, make them stop!
I have no idea how Cain thinks I’m going to accomplish that considering what a mess he’s made of this for me. I have no idea where I am if not in control of my body, because the convulsing flail of limbs and shrieking that’s being set on the floor isn’t something I can do anything about it seems. I barely even feel part of this, so that maybe I’m actually Aidan standing in the corner with both hands over his mouth and tears streaming over his cheeks. Oh, maybe I’m nothing, because it seems strange how much I can see clearly everything and nothing, like I’m not even inside my body anymore. I hear a voice, I hear voices, I hear Cain the most, and he sounds scared.
These idiots, these fucking idiots! This isn’t going to work, fuck! Abel, sweetheart, I’ll find you. I’m not going to let —
My eyes snap open, even though I’m not sure they were closed. There’s a silence, a stillness, I become so silent and still. I see the ceiling, I’m in my body, I see shadows move over the room, shadows move over my eyes, shadows moving in this room without shadows, so that I have a crystalline moment of pure terror.
And then I sit up, calm and controlled, no longer twitching or shrieking, I’m very calm now as I sit up to look at the shadow-filled room. I feel so calm even though I am terrified. Everything in this room is a shadow. Grey shadows, a black and white world, intangible like smoke, I don’t understand what I’m seeing, it’s the room and everyone in it but so wrong.
The silvery glint of a knife pulls my gaze at a shadow that moves away from me — a person, it’s dark, wispy shade of a person who steps back with this knife in hand. I hear sounds, these rhythmic sounds that are like the cadence of speech but incomprehensible.
On the floor around me is a brightly-glowing scarlet pentagram, the only splotch of color in the whole world that I see. This can’t be real. I must be hallucinating without an hallucination. I am so frightened as I get to my feet and it’s silent, the shuffle of my sneakers on the floor is just a mute nothing. It feels like being in a dream. I put my hand out and try to touch the arm on the shadow holding a knife, but my fingers wisp through it like smoke.
I think these four shadows I see in the room with are people. One of them is Aidan, one of them is the bossy blonde who called himself Phobos, I can guess who is who by the posture, the size, the positioning, I think these shadows are supposed to be people. I think they just stabbed me to death trying to perform the exorcism, because I think I might be dead.
I hold out my hands. I’m not a shadow. I’m my mother’s peaches-and-cream skin, a length of heather-grey sweatshirt sleeve. I pull my phone from my pocket, and of course there’s no service, of course the screen is a scrambled disaster of multicolored pixels, of course none of this makes sense.
Abel?
It’s such a soft, barely there whisper that makes my heart leap. “Cain?”
Yeah. Hey, sweetheart.
He sounds ragged, raw, somehow hurt even though he’s just a voice inside me and I don’t feel hurt at all. I don’t feel anything except fear.
“What happened? Cain? What happened? Are you okay?” I shouldn’t care if he’s okay, but it’s just the way he sounds. I ask it without thinking.
One thing at a time, kid. I need to find you first.
“I’m here. I didn’t go anywhere. I’m in the same room, but everything’s wrong. Am I dead? Did I die?”
Probably not. Can you leave that room? I think I found you, but I can’t cross the threshold. You need to come outside.
That makes as much sense as anything. I’m careful not to step on the glowing pentagram lines as I walk around the room to try understanding all the shadows better. I find the table, and some of the murky shapes glitter with strange symbols, but I don’t look too close as I walk along the wall to find the corner.
From there I feel around and swiped my hand through insubstantial nothing until I feel fabric. The curtain, I think, so I leave behind the glowing pentagram and the people I can’t see or understand. It’s probably a bad idea to listen to Cain, but once again he’s the only thing telling me what to do, and I think he was right about trying to stop this. I hope he knows what he’s doing. I certainly don’t.
I try to remember the layout of the building. It’s a lot of strange wandering through this nightmare until I find the stairs. Everything’s that grey haze, walls seem to gently undulate, it’s like the whole world burned to ash and I’m walking in the ruins. I’m scared to touch anything, scared to put my feet on the floor.
“Cain?”
Here, sweetheart. You’re doing great, keep going. I definitely found you. Come on outside.
I feel around at the entry and put my hands into the flickering white flame of the candles. I don’t smell the incense and realize I don’t smell anything at all. As I try, I realize I’m not breathing — I am silent and still, no pulse and not breathing.
“Cain, I think I’m dead.”
I hear him laugh.
Come outside, Abel.
I find the door, but it takes me a minute to understand how to get through it. I don’t want to think about how it’s mostly moving myself through an impossibility of smoke and shadow. I understand all the curtains now, because it’s both disconcerting and uncomfortable to the point of pain to get through the door.
A hand closes over my arm and pulls me closer. “Hey, sweetheart,” says a voice. Not in my head, no, this demon isn’t inside me anymore. He’s bottle-green eyes and black fur, he’s a young man with a curved smirk on a handsome face — a demon, I know it’s Cain looking down at me. He’s color and substance in this shadow-world, tufted dark brows above dark eyes — not green, those were the cat’s eyes, his eyes are dark mirrors for me to get lost in staring.
“You have a body,” is all I can think to say.
He laughs, and I watch with fascination as the sharp glint of his toothy grin takes shape once he’s done laughing at me. I can’t believe how normal he looks, this demon doesn’t have horns or bat-wings, he has shaggy black hair, a blunt set of attractive features, dusky-tan skin, a black leather jacket, he’s wearing a red shirt, jeans, combat boots. I keep finding new things to stare at as we stand there in wherever this place is where he has a body and everything is wrong.
“Welcome to the Otherside,” Cain says. “Fuck if I know how I’m getting you out of here. You’ve really fucked us now, princess. I hope you’re happy.”
I’m not, at all. I don’t think I’ve ever been unhappier in my life, because I think Cain might be right about everything, and I think I’m going to have to start listening to him.