Looking up, a large mansion was standing before us. The outer walls had at some point been a nice, off-white, but looked dirty and gray towards the ground. Spiky bushes of five petal white were placed in front to try to cover the filth. The mansion was about three stories tall and was very long. I guess it would take me easily about fifteen minutes to do a single lap around the entire building. Each floor had a row of tall windows, most with curtains drawn. The door was large and ornate, but clearly decades old, and the steps leading up showed their age as well. Looking around, there was a small makeshift parking lot beside the mansion with a handful of cars in it.
“Well. I didn’t know what I was expecting,” Jo said as she took in the building.
“Yeah, me neither,” Bond chimed in. I looked at the building for a long time, feeling some odd sensation creeping into my bones and the crevasses between them. I said nothing as we exited the car, and everyone took a second to stretch out. It was now close to noon and the sun was bearing down on us. It was hot sticky out, but that didn’t stop the coldness that inched its way into my body.
“So how are we supposed to do this?” Bond asked, clapping his hands together. “What are we even supposed to be looking for?”
“Ama?” Jo asked, gesturing to me.
“I guess we can start by going up to the front door?” I suggested with a shrug. Walking up to the door, I stood almost awkwardly. For a moment, I thought I could hear Madison whispering something on the outskirts of my thoughts. I could feel there was something familiar about this building, as if I’d been there before. Obviously I hadn’t, but the feeling was there; a vague Deja vu. I probably had been there before, just not as me.
Standing there for a moment, not quite sure of what I was looking for or waiting for, Evelyn went ahead and knocked for me anyways. I glanced at her, but said nothing as we waited for a response. Despite the unease that was growing around her, I was glad she had knocked because I didn’t know if I would have brought myself to. A vague sense of impending danger had set in as soon as she’d knocked, and it was this feeling that had stopped me from knocking myself.
A second after she knocked, sound was bustling from inside, and someone came bursting through the door with a large, almost comical smile on his face.
“Welcome, welcome!” the man yelled to our faces. “And to what do we graciously owe the honor of your presence?” The man was large and tall and had an imposing demeanor about him instantly. He was clad in purple from head to toe. He had a violet suit jacket with matching slacks and a lavender dress shirt beneath topped with a wine colored tie. His hair was white and his eyes were large and stale blue. I consciously forced myself not to take a step back from this man’s already overbearing presence. There was something not right about him, either. Bond poked my back, and I piped up, said, “Um, hello. We were, um, we’ve come a long
way to learn about Azazel.”
The man glanced at me. “Oh, you’re an interesting one, aren’t you?” he said, his tone dropping without warning as he studied me. Something sticky and fearful seemed to clamp onto my back as he zeroed in on the triangle on my face. I took a step back, feeling almost pushed back by the intensity of his scrutiny. His demeanor flipped a moment later, and resumed the original persona.
“Our Lady in Heaven,” the man said with a swoon as he looked up and put a hand to his chest with a dramatically relieved smile.
“Of course! Come in, come in!” he said excitedly, gesturing us in. I inhaled silently and stepped over the threshold, that sticky fearfulness unmoving.
“Ah, where do I begin?” the man called almost joyously as he walked forward through the building. It didn’t look anything like I thought it might on the inside. There was a small foyer with checkered tiles which immediately led on to a long hall of unmarked, out of place doors. The walls between the doors were bare and light gray. Everything seemed to be old and stale and weathered. I looked around warily as the man went on.
“We can start with how this faction was started.”
That’s an interesting word to describe this group, I thought to myself, but I listened on quietly as he led us to a large room in the back and far off to the side.
“We officially began October 30th, 1965. This was back when the Azelian group was beginning to pick up momentum across the country and began to splinter off to create and spread more of Azazel’s teachings,” the man said.
“Azazel’s teachings?” Jo echoed.
“Of course! She has so much to teach us!” the man called happily as he opened the door. Inside, there were rows of seats as if in an auditorium, and each one was filled by a single person clothed in a dark red robe, their hood up. “Why don’t we sit in on this sermon, shall we?”
I glanced over at Jo, Bond, and Evelyn. Bond and Jo shrugged, Evelyn just stared at the person on the podium, who was dressed in a purple robe, their hood also up and concealing most of their face.
“Sure,” I murmured, but the man didn’t really give us a choice as he led us to a few seats in the back. We settled down silently as we watched the person on the podium turning pages in a book. He was some distance away, but I could tell the book was old. Not as old as I might expect, but still old. As old as the man claimed this “faction” of the cult to be. It was a man by the lowness of his voice. He read directly from the book in a language that reminded me suspiciously of tongues. The crowd echoed a single phrase: “To her, we give life, and from her, we receive life.”
The man continued on, “Azazel has much to offer us. We are but vessels of which we exact her will, and her will is to–” the crowd echoed with him as he spoke, “—educate man and purify the world.”
The man nodded and continued, “As vessels of our Lady in Heaven, it is our duty to further educate our fellow man. Those that reject the word of Azazel are–” they echo, “sinners from birth and sinners unto death.”
The man continued, “Today marks a heavenly, sacred day in our lives dedicated to our Lady in Heaven, Azazel, for today is the day that we give our thanks to our Lady Azazel.”
“Today, we give our thanks to our Lady Azazel,” the crowd echoed as they all stood.
“We’ll go ahead and leave for now. This part is for the ones who have gone through confirmation,” the man said suddenly as he stood and ushered us out.
“Confirmation? Like in Christianity?” Bond asked.
“Nothing alike at all,” the man said simply, shooing us out of the auditorium. I glanced back at the crowd and caught the man on the podium pouring himself a glass of some sort of wine.
“What’s this confirmation?” Jo asked.
“It’s a rite of passage in which a brave soul transforms into a true follower of Azazel,” the man said as he led us to the back and outside the door.
“So, would you say people who reject the word of Azazel are sinners?” Bond asked.
“Yes,” the man answered simply. “The word of Azazel is righteous and true, and to reject the truth is to be wrong, and to be wrong is a sin.”
“Mm . . . okay,” I said mildly, looking on toward the back of which he gestured to. It was a large grave, which I was slightly surprised to see.
“This is where we lay our beloved Azelians,” the man said, looking serenely about the grave site. It was pretty big, almost alarmingly big, and it looked as they were expanding it.
“Come with me,” he said, descending a small set of stairs and into the graveyard.
“Okay,” Bond said in an odd tone, the same tone we likely all had I mind. The tone of ‘I think I’m being held hostage but if I make a scene I think I’ll die’.
“Why?”
“I tell it more passionately among the souls,” the man replied dreamily.
“Uh-huh,” I said, making a face as I threw a sideways glance at Jo. She gave me the same face but said nothing. I could tell she was on edge as much as I was. The tension among our group felt palpable. Even Evelyn, who had been silent the whole time, had a tense air around her as she studied everything with scrutinizing suspicion.
We followed him to the graveyard anyway. We followed him because I followed him because despite this unease and fear, I needed to know what was happening. If I could have told them to stay back, I would have, but something about the snapping movements of this man’s gestures told me to stay quiet. We continued through the graves, and my mood rapidly sobered, and something within me hardened. The cemetery reminded me the little girl would be buried in one herself.
“We believed so strongly in the teachings of the main faction of the Azelians, but our founder, John Jones, found a fatal flaw in their logic,” the man said wistfully. “Azazel, our heavenly savior, is of course who we follow and worship, but John Jones discovered that she is all we should follow and worship. He discovered that Azazel was the only and true being of the world that was truly worthy of our praise and worship, so he denounced all other false idols.”
I looked around at the tombstones. Most of them looked well maintained and had various names, various dates as we continued on slowly. “So, like any pioneer of history and time, John Jones created his own path, and he founded our faction, Our Heavenly Lady.”
“So how did he come to the conclusion that Azazel was the ultimate god?” Bond asked carefully, unsure of how to word his question.
“John Jones had an amazing revelation about ten years into being a devout follower,” the man responded eagerly as we came to a large tombstone. It was actually more like a statue carving of a man. He was sitting down and leaning forward on his knees, a serious look on his face and some odd carvings on his forehead. An immense sting rapidly shot through the center of my own forehead, and I heard a hundred voices scream at once, “Run.”
I faltered and stepped back a step as I stared at this tombstone. I glanced down, and on the plaque, it read “Here lies John Jones. Founder of Our Heavenly Lady, Father to Countless, Savior of All. 01/13/1931- 10/18/1971.” I felt Evelyn’s hand on my wrist, gripping me tightly as if I were falling, but I wasn’t paying attention to her. Instead, it was as if someone had thrown ice water down my back, freezing the sticky fear and holding me rigidly in place, a realization coming over me. The hundred voices seemed to be holding their breath as my eyes shot to the man.
His eyes were violently alert and scrutinizing as he saw right through me. I forced my face to relax, and he asked, “Is everything alright? You look very pale.”
“Low iron,” I barked out, trying to speak around my dry mouth. “I’m anemic and I, uh, yeah. I’m anemic.”
“Would you like something to eat then? I’m sure we’ve got some spinach in the temple somewhere,” he offered, his eyes not leaving my face. I carefully shook my head and said, “No, I’m okay. I have some iron caps in the, uh, in my car.”
“So this is his grave?” Jo interjected, attempting to drag his attention from me. The man’s eyes lingered on a second longer before turning back to Jo, and he said, “Yes. He couldn’t bear to part with what he had built from the ground up with his own two hands, so we buried him here with his many disciples.”
I silently looked around at the other graves stones. The ones closest to him all read the same death date, and that cold realization solidified in my head. Evelyn’s grip on me tightened almost painfully. She seemed to be warning me, it felt, and I spoke up, “Um, I think we should get back to my car. I could really use the iron pills right now.”
“I thought you said they were capsules,” the man said suspiciously.
“Capsules, pills, they’re all kind of the same right?” I laughed nervously.
“Last I checked, you needed a prescription for capsules,” he responded, his voice taking on the same tone it had taken when he first looked at me. I closed my eyes, silently chastising myself as I remembered that for whatever reason, the FDA had within the last year required capsule medication to be prescribed instead of over the counter.
“Why don’t we go back inside. There’s something I would like to show you,” he said in a dark tone as he pushed past us.
“Ah, I think we’re okay, we should probably get going,” Bond spoke. I could hear the nervousness in his voice. We were now all undoubtedly scared and on edge, and I could almost hear the hundred voices in my head shuffling back and forth anxiously.
“I insist,” he said back, a dangerous note in his voice. He looked at us from over his shoulder, and I glanced past him to see there were a handful of robed people standing outside the door, waiting on the porch for us. I looked back at Evelyn, and she had a grave look on her face. She just barely moved her head, but it was a slight, almost reluctant nod, and she relinquished her grip on my wrist.
I pursed my lips and pushed forward so I was closest to the man. If we were heading into trouble, I’d rather be the one to face it first. It now felt like a horrible idea to have brought them along with me.
Trying to ease my own tension, I carefully asked, “Um, what were those markings on that statue?”
“They were marks bestowed upon him by Our Lazy Azazel when he had his first revelation,” he responded curtly.
“No,” they whispered in my head. I swallowed quietly and asked, “What was this vision? The one he had?”
He looked back at me with a sour look, and I felt as if I had just stepped on a brittle piece of ice. “Only the devout can know that,” he answered as we climbed the porch steps. The robed people said nothing as we walked past them. Their faces were all concealed by low hanging hoods, but their heads followed us, making it evident that they were watching us. Any attempt at running felt futile and possibly even damning.
“What exactly did you want to show us?” I asked, trying to keep the silence from consuming everything. He opened the door and gestured for me to go in first, said, “You wanted to know more about Azazel. I will show you more about her.”
There was something about how he had said that, or how he had worded the response that seemed more like a threat than anything else. I took a deep breath and walked in. Absolutely nothing had changed about the building, but now there was this overwhelming feeling that something bad had happened and something bad was going to happen again. In an instant, I was remembering I had been here before, standing in this exact spot with this exact feeling with the same people standing around me but at a very different time. What the hell is going on? I asked myself in my head, not expecting a response, but Madison responded back anyway. She spoke loudly in my head, “I knew there was something familiar about this place. Ama, someone was here before. Someone was here when John Jones was alive. You need to be very careful. He’s going to bring you to the basement, and you need to remain calm.”
“What?” I asked aloud, alarmed.
“What?” the man snapped.
“Nothing, I thought you said something,” I said quickly.
“Nothing. Now please, step inside. Go to the second door on your right.”
Wordlessly, I stepped inside and went to the second door on the right. I forced myself not to think as I opened the door and saw a set of stairs descending into darkness.
“Go ahead.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, took a slow breath and took the first step down.
“Uh-uh. Just her,” the man said behind me.
“Wait a second!” Jo protested, but before she could continue, I said, not turning back,
“It’s okay. You can trust me.”
“Yeah, I know I can trust you–” she said quickly, but she was suddenly cut off, and I glanced back to see what had made her stop. My eyes widened slightly, because there was now a hooded person standing behind her, and I could see they held something up against her back. She was the only one in the doorway, but I had a feeling that the same thing was happening with Bond and Evelyn.
“Walk,” the man barked, following behind me. I took another breath and continued into the darkness wordlessly. I didn’t seem to have a choice now. The stairway was long, and I remained silent as I tried to silence my thoughts and growing fear. It grew colder and colder the deeper into the stairwell we got, and it somehow seemed to grow so silent that even my footsteps were hushed, as if something were taking all of the sound right out the world. The longer I walked and tried to keep myself upright and calm, the more it felt the world was tipping beneath me and before me, until we finally reached a door with two torches on either side of it.
I grit my teeth inside my mouth, feeling as if I’d stepped into another realm. There was something very wrong and very off, because we came upon the door, which made no sense. In a place that dark, I should have seen the door from probably even at the top, but instead, it was as if I’d turned a corner, and then I was there. The door looked old and worn, and it had similar symbols as the ones that were on the forehead of the statue of John Jones. The man pushed me from behind, urging me to open the door. I’d almost forgotten he was there, but I gingerly put my hand on the door, trying to keep my hand from the symbols, and I flinched. It was freezing cold. Everything was silent, even my own mind, as if everything I possibly could have done or heard or thought or seen or said was taken away from me before it had a chance to form. Against my own volition, I pushed the door open. It swung open easily, as if it weighed nothing.
Behind this door was absolutely nothing. Just pure darkness; the man pushed me on, and I peered in, looking for something I could place my feet on, but there was nothing. I looked back at him, confused, but he had a hostile look on his face, and he pushed me in. I fell forward, and a voice reverberated from the darkness, “Fear not, child. You will not fall if I do not wish it.”
My eyes widened as my heart picked up and fear ran through my body. The voice wasn’t human. It sounded evidently like that of a man, but there was something impossibly low and ragged about it. There was nothing before but this empty darkness, and as I continued walking on, compelled to walk on, a cold dread grew within me. There was something waiting for me
somewhere at the end of this invisible path.
“What is your name, child?” the voice asked as I walked on in the darkness.
My own name was pulled from my mouth before I even considered answering. “Amor.”
“Love,” the voice mused. “Why are you here?”
“I need to know more about Azazel,” I answered again, the words leaving my lips before I could stop them.
“You have come to the right place,” the voice said as I stopped walking. I was no longer in control of my own body. I was at the whim of this creature. It was then that I felt very alone with this creature. I was very aware of the shadowy presence of this evil . . . thing, and some part of me crumbled in sheer terror, my mind running in manic circles throwing different parts at the whole and putting a face to this demonic voice. A set of horns here, yellow glowing eyes there, ash gray skin. Is that him? Hooves? Wings?
Without warning, a light snapped on directly overhead, and a man was standing there before me. Internally, I jumped away, but my body was still. It felt as if my body had gone to sleep, but my mind was fully awake as I stared at this man. He was wearing a white suit and standing very awkwardly. One leg was slightly bent out to the side from the knee down. One seemed to hang too low. He was angled slightly at the hip to his side. He looked almost like a broken doll, and then his head slowly lolled gently off to one side. His hair pulled away from his forehead to reveal the same marking as the ones on the statue of John Jones.
“I need to know the truth of your heart before I can tell you the truth of Azazel,” the voice said, but it came from the man’s mouth in an awkward way, like his lips didn’t quite match up with what he was saying. I didn’t say anything, partly because I did not know what to say, but before I could think of anything else, the man was quickly rushing at me and I inhaled sharply,
still unable to move my body.
He stopped just before he collided with me, and he bent down slightly to look me eye to eye, and it seemed as if someone were holding his head up to stare me in the eyes. I clenched my teeth as panic washed through my body. His eyes looked dead. They looked flat and glassy and milky. His mouth still moved like the words couldn’t match up with his lips. Despite the death on his face, his eyes moved to the mark beneath my right eye, and an odd twisted grin pulled his lips, revealing gray teeth dripping with blackened spit, and a terrible, biting stench flowed from his mouth as he breathed on me.
“Ah, you are a special one, aren’t you?” he asked. His hands were on either side of my face then, jerking my head back, and I couldn’t help but let out a scream. His hands were freezing, and his fingers felt as if they sloshed slightly in his skin. He laughed and said, “Oh, yes, you are very special indeed.”
All of my bad memories came rushing to the surface of my mind, everything I’d tried hard to repress, everything I’d chosen to ignore and forget and ghost over and pretend never happened. All of the bad terrible moments of my life that destroyed me and brought me to my knees countless times came roaring to life and devastated the stability of my mind. My sight was melting away from me as I came across a darkness I was too familiar with, and I could hear screaming all around me. I could feel the pain on my body, my arms as if it was all brand new, and I could almost feel the blood dripping down my skin as I felt myself spiraling further into this abyss.
I could see all of my breakdowns. I could see every single time I’d cut myself. I could see every time I’d lost control and every time I told myself I’d be better, as if it were a smack in the face to remind me I could never be better. I was still this terrible person. I was such a bad person. I was someone who only hurt other people. I was someone who only used people. I wasn’t good for anything except taking up space. Why was I even there? Why did I even bother trying to do anything? I should have just killed myself the first time I ever thought of it. Everything I did, every breath I took, every beat of my heart was just a painful reminder that I was just a waste of space and life, that I would never amount to anything except this sad little shell of a person who relied on everyone else to survive. I was nothing. I would always be nothing. What was I doing thinking I could be someone special? What was I doing thinking I was someone special?
Among this whirlwind of all my insecurities I’d worked hard to fit into one box that I had at the back of my mind, I could hear this man saying, “Yes, give in to me! This soul is teeming. Submit. Submit to me, child.”
I could never be an angel. What was I thinking?
My body was on suddenly fire. Tearing away at my body, my skin, eating me up and trying to devour me whole, the starving fire enveloped me. Everything was on fire around me, and I could feel myself being consumed, and in the roiling fury of the fire, some part of me slipping away and past my fingers, out of my grip. I was losing myself. I was losing myself to the tides of this fire that desperately tried to consume my body. I thought I could hear someone calling my name, but it was drowned out by the endlessness of my screams as I scrambled desperately to try to gain some part of me, of who I was and who I am. As these parts of me slipped away, it all slowly began to unveil parts of me I’d hidden away, far from everyone and even myself.
“You wanted to know of Azazel!” the man screamed, “Here I am!”
His face appeared before me in my mind, blaringly clear, the fire dying for a moment as I beheld him. His face was large and distorted and decaying, but it quickly melted away to that of a goat’s skull, dripping with black blood and connected to the torso of a man, whose arm fell away to tentacles that wrapped around my body, and everything grew hysterical as I stared into the abyss of the eye holes.
“No!” I shrieked at the top of my lungs, fighting manically against the constriction of the tentacles. I could feel them trying to pierce my skin, and I just kept screaming, louder and louder and louder until I couldn’t hear myself anymore. All I could see, all I could hear, was this monster and its disgusting cackle.
“Give in to me, child. It will be over soon,” it sneered, the last of my wits leaving me as everything slowly disintegrated into dark chaos.
Without warning, an agony even more great than the one I was already facing shot through my face and my back, setting my body on to a fire I didn’t know if I was actually feeling. The pain dwarfed and drowned out the agony the monster was putting me through, and for a moment, if I hadn’t already lost my mind, I thought I was going to lose it then.
“What do you think you are doing?” another voice bellowed in my mind, easily drowning out that of the monster. My eyes rolled back into place a second later, and the pain immediately stopped, both from the monster and the fire I thought had sprouted from my body. I didn’t have the energy or the wits about me to actually let out the scream I should have when I saw that the monster was actually standing before me. It was a giant, towering over me by at least five feet. The skull was alarmingly real, and the tentacles were even more disgusting in real life. It had the torso of a bulbous pale man and stood on the legs of a goat. The body of John Jones was now decomposing in a heap beneath it, and I scrambled backwards. The creature cocked its head to the side, as if listening for something, and a second after that, my hand shot to my face as that same searing fire erupted across my face and back.
“How dare you?” the same voice raged. She echoed inside my head and in the place we were in, and the creature chuckled as it turned to look back at me.
“I knew there was something special about you. I really should have known it was you, but I didn’t think you were so closely connected to her,” it said as I reeled backwards, trying to get away from the pain and from it.
“My Lady!” the man behind me yelled, coming up behind me and pushing past to get to the monster.
“Do not let that vessel escape,” it spoke, and the next moment, something came crashing through the ceiling, light pouring out and bathing her, a woman. I sat, shocked and heart racing as I stared dumbfounded at what was happening before me.
This can’t be happening this can’t be happening this can’t be happening, I repeated over and over in my head as a single wing unfurled from her back. Her hair was long, black, wavy hair reaching down to her knees. She was wearing a black jacket and matching jeans, and fire danced beneath her feet. The man was stuck for a moment, awestruck as I was, and the creature screamed, “Now!” as its jaw opened, revealing rows of black teeth dripping with what looked like blood. The man hurriedly jumped into action as he wrapped an arm around my neck and tried to twist my arm behind my back.
The angel jumped as well, lunging at the creature, who lashed out an arm to attack. Feeling part of me slamming back to my senses, I jabbed an elbow back hard against his stomach, and he doubled over, but did not loosen his grip. I took the opportunity to jerk my arm forward and throw myself forward and over. We both fell to the ground, but it was enough to knock his arm loose, and I quickly scrambled up and started running back to the place I had come from. There was nothing before me, but if I kept running, I might find something. I just had to. In this place of senselessness, the only thing that might even make a semblance of sense would be to follow the path that had brought me here. Behind, the monster let out some gruesome cry, and the woman’s voice echoed throughout the place we were in. I could hear the man running behind me, which forced me to run even faster. I had to find it. It couldn’t have been that far. The door couldn’t be very much further. It needed to be in reach. It had to be. There was no way I shouldn’t have reached it by then, but somehow I was still running farther in the dark, and somehow the monster and that woman were still fighting in the same place not far behind me. I couldn’t hear my footsteps echoing. I couldn’t even see anything, but it was all I could do to keep running, and then the man was somehow on me again, tackling me to the ground.
At first shocked, I quickly let out an angry cry as I forced myself to flip over beneath his weight. Somewhere inside me, some fire ignited and turned my fear to kindling as rage spread within me and gave me more strength than I knew I had. The man was on top of me, a wild look in his eye as he bared his teeth to me and slammed a fist to the side of my face. My vision did a barrel roll, but I snapped my head back and bucked my hips beneath him so he was sitting on my stomach. I kicked a leg high up, and my foot connected to the back of his head. He let out a cry and slammed a fist to the other side of my face, and feeling that anger mount, I bucked my hips again and forced every muscle in my body to push him off and to the side.
I rolled over on top of him and punched him as hard as I could in his throat, and he began to gag, his hands reaching for his neck. That rage was still surging through my body, and I couldn’t help myself as I began to send fist after fist into his face and neck. He reached up to grab my wrists, and I jumped up immediately and wrenched myself away. I turned to run, but he grabbed my ankle, and I crashed to the ground. I turned around onto my back and stomped down with my other foot straight onto his head. Still not releasing his grip, I continued to kick down onto his head and his hands and arms until he finally loosened his grip enough to let me go. I jumped to my feet again, but instead of taking off, somehow feeling cheated and greatly disrespected, I turned and kicked him hard in his stomach, and I didn’t stop until he reached for my ankle again, and I stomped down as hard as I could on his wrist. He let out a cry of pain, and I kept stomping on his hands until I knew at least one of them was broken. Even then, I kept stomping violently down on his body. I didn’t stop, I couldn’t stop my relentless attacks on him, feeling this almost sickly sweet fury that coursed through my body and gave me the will and the strength to exert my will over his. This rage scared me. I couldn’t stop myself, even as this man began to bleed, even as his bones slowly broke beneath my ceaseless attack. I just couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop myself. This wasn’t me, but it was. It was me still attacking this man, and it was me who could not stop this from happening. I was both the will and at the whim of myself, and this was what terrified me.
Someone finally slammed a hand onto my shoulder, and I whipped around, savagery in my eyes and ready to attack the next person who dared lay a hand on me, but it was Evelyn, and there was a door flung wide open just behind her. She had a blank look on her face, and she glanced down at the man, who was now unconscious. She looked back up at me and said, “You’re going to kill him. Do you want that on your hands?”
Heaving and panting for air, I looked down at him, bewildered. He wasn’t moving, and part of his face was unrecognizable. I said, still trying to catch my breath, “No. No, I don’t.”
“Let’s go,” she said as she pulled me toward the door. Just before we could cross the threshold, a tentacle shot out from the darkness and wrapped around my waist. Evelyn and I exchanged a quick look of panic before her hand slipped from mine, and I was pulled back into that nightmare.
“I won’t let you get away so easily,” the monster called out, sounding ragged and tired.
“We’re not done yet,” I heard the woman say in a deathly dark tone, and then the tentacle slackened and let me go. I could still see Evelyn and the doorway, so I sprinted after her and pulled her up the stairs with me, slamming the door shut and bounding up the stairs as fast as I could.
“Where’s Esteban and Joana?” I panted at the top of the stairs.
“They’re already in the car, let’s go,” Evelyn answered quickly as she dragged me to the car outside, which was already on and running. Jo was in the driver’s seat, and I hopped into the back as fast as I could. Jo gunned the car and pulled out as fast as she could. The blood drained from my face and body and I grew cold watching the building receding in the distance. It was a bitter, consuming cold that tangled itself in my bones, and a dark, unsettling feeling befell me. A second later, the building exploded into flames, and I just looked back with wide eyes and a terrible, sinking feeling in my stomach. I could faintly hear the roar of that woman, the angel, from the belly of the fire.