I staggered, my eyesight gone swirly, my head all foggy and strange. It was coming now, it was happening, it would strike me like lightning, it would sear me to my marrow, it would burn me clean, it would change me forever. I felt the ground quake beneath me, the whole earth a sick feverish shaking thing. A moan erupted from Horace’s gagged mouth, a kind of long sad whine like a kicked dog makes. Thunder boomed above us, lightning striking the church roof, shaking the whole building.

I fell to my knees.

It was like the church roof had been torn off, the storm roaring above us, and I saw past the rain and the clouds and the stars to what lay beyond. I could see the whole universe alive and breathing, lit on fire from within. I could hear the deep burning heart of the world, feel the lava in its core, the rivers of its bones. I saw a pair of pale eyes gazing down at me from the darkness, a god’s eyes.

The Spirit had come.

I heard a sound like a whirlwind, I heard the voices of a thousand stars screaming, and everything went black.

I was in the starlit world, the campfire burning, the corpses of the three Gentlemen gore-slathered and strewn about. The second Gentleman was stripped naked, and I saw that the monster now wore his suit.

The monster turned to face me, and I saw him truly for the first time.

It wasn’t Horace, this monster chasing me. No, it wasn’t a monster at all.

Before me stood Jeremiah Sanford, his face illuminated by starshine. He was the one from my visions, the one the Gentlemen kept apart. He appeared as a child in the daylight world of the Hummingbird Grove, but part of him was trapped in the campfire world, his spirit imprisoned as a monster. I understood now: I was the door through which Jeremiah would enter the world again, the way he would become whole.

I tried to speak, but no sound would come from my throat. I raised my hand in a kind of wave, and Jeremiah raised his back at me. I took a step forward, and he took one as well. I moved left, and Jeremiah moved perfectly with me, as if in a mirror. We walked closer to each other, and soon I couldn’t tell if he was mimicking me or if I was mimicking him or if we were the same person all along.

We stood face-to-face, Jeremiah my height, his eyes the most perfect blue I’d ever seen, the eyes of the first Gentleman.

He smiled at me, the smile of the second Gentleman, and I knew I was smiling too.

A wind blew through the empty place, and the stars seemed to shiver above me, and I felt the third Gentleman’s heart beat inside of me.

Something changed.