We made it to the barn. The hooded figures were closing in. Every time lightning struck they were steps closer, moving like a film with missing footage, scenes cut in half, motions jagged. It seemed impossible—the way they moved, the night, the storm, all of it. It was more like something from my visions than anything from real life. Grandma held the shotgun under her arm and yanked a huge key ring out of her jeans pocket, and she set to work on the lock. It was hard going in the rain and hail, and the key kept slipping. Thunder crashed around us, so deep and loud I felt it in my chest, and my heart thudded with it.

All around us the figures came closer.

“Hurry, Grandma!” I said.

“Almost got it,” she said. The lock fell into the mud. Grandma grabbed the big barn door and pushed it open. We ran inside, and I slid the door closed, bolting it from the inside.

The barn was utterly dark. Only the slightest sliver of lightning flash blinked under the door. I heard a kind of groan from the back of the barn, an animal noise. But it could have been the wind, or the rain and hail, or just my imagination. It could have been anything or nothing at all.

“Where are the lights, Grandma?” I said.

“No lights,” she said, nothing but a voice in the darkness. “Just the lantern. Hold on.”

I heard a flick, saw the small spark of a lighter trying to catch, until a flame shone and a small pale glow illuminated the barn.

The lantern light wasn’t much, but it was enough to show me that the barn didn’t look like any barn I’d ever seen before. There wasn’t any equipment in this barn, no hay or straw, no farm tools scattered about. Instead, rows of wooden benches sat on either side of a long walkway leading up to an elevated platform, a kind of stage. The walls were covered in what had to be more of Mom’s murals. But these were grander, more triumphant somehow: A young boy with the sun as his halo. A fiery pale moon dangling in a star-slathered sky. A cup full of golden coins overflowing. An orchard full of hummingbirds, the fruit dangling from the trees alive enough to eat. They felt like stained-glass windows, like they were pictures meant to tell a story, symbols crammed full of meaning. It was Mom’s masterpiece, there was no question about that.

This wasn’t a barn, and it never had been.

“Welcome, Lee,” said Grandma, the lantern glowing her face gold. “Welcome to your church.”

“My church?” I said.

“What is this, Lee?” said Murphy. “What the fuck is going on here?”