“What do you mean?” I asked. My mouth felt cottony from the gag. I couldn’t get enough saliva to enunciate clearly. I licked my lips, but it didn’t help.

Andrew set the flashlight between us. I’d grab it and bash it against the side of his skull, except my hands remained tied behind me. He’d released my ankles, allowing us both to sit cross-legged on the floor. I had my back against a wall of dark windows. He had himself situated between me and the bedroom door.

I didn’t hear crying anymore. The house had gone eerily quiet, the silence freaking me out more than the noises had. Bad things happened in places that were this hushed.

“Evan is an old soul,” Andrew stated.

This sounded like the Andrew I knew, so I nodded.

“He feels too much, is saturated by the negativity of this world. Other, crueler souls haunt his dreams. They seep into his waking consciousness. They encourage him to do bad things, such as kill his own mother. It’s a terrible way to live, such a young boy, fighting a war nobody else can see.”

I’d heard this spiel before, so I nodded again.

“He’s not the only one, Danielle. There are other souls caught in a horrible abyss. They cannot return to this world for a fresh set of experiences, nor can they journey to any other plane. They are trapped in the black hole of unfinished business. This is the Hell writers such as Dante described for us. It is a horrible, horrible existence, Danielle, for it has no end. Old, sensitive souls trapped for eternity.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I nodded again. Gag was gone. Ankle bindings were gone. If he’d just release my hands, I might have a chance of winning this.

“People fear death. They’re bound by primitive notions of Heaven and Hell. But that assumes we exist only in one dimension. Once you accept that souls are capable of moving among many spiritual planes, then you understand the greater truth of our existence. Physical death is nothing, merely a blip on a soul’s radar screen. Ozzie and his parents—they’re not gone; they’ve simply moved to the next set of experiences. Ishy, Rochelle, Tika, and baby Vivi. Again, not destroyed, just set free from an unfortunate corporal existence.”

“You killed the Harringtons and the Laraquettes?” I exclaimed in horror.

“I enabled them to move on to the next plane of existence,” Andrew corrected.

“Oh my God. And Lucy, too?”

“I’ve already explained to you that she’s happier now. You know what happened to her here. Surely you can understand it’s been better for her to journey on.”

“You hanged her?”