I knew no one else could see him, no one could hear him but me. Grandma watched me, the moonlight glimmering in her eyes, Murphy struggling beneath her, that knife held tight to her throat. I stepped closer to them and pointed the shotgun at Murphy’s head. I couldn’t look at her face. I couldn’t look her in the eyes.

“I’m going to move my hand,” said Grandma, “and then you shoot. Do you understand?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think I can do it.”

“You have to,” said Jeremiah. “Don’t you know how beautiful this world can be? How loving and how pure? We can have a family more perfect than anything you could ever imagine. And your sister is trying to ruin it, same as my sister ruined it before. Don’t let her, Lee. Be strong. Be a leader even greater than I was. Become who you are destined to be.”

I saw my vision again, my glorious future, the adoring enchanted crowds singing the words I taught them, the hymns of my visions.

All of those people loving me.

I knew what I had to do.

“Do you see him?” said Grandma, her voice pained, pleading. “Can you see my son?”

Grandma moved the knife from Murphy’s throat, giving me a clear shot at my sister’s face.

“Lee,” said Murphy. “Please.”

I pulled the trigger. The kick from the gun half knocked me to the ground.

The shot hit Grandma square in the chest. Her body flopped lifeless to the floor, the gore of her flung all over the wall of the shed. Jeremiah vanished, gone.

Murphy screamed. Her arm was bleeding. I thought I might have shot her too.

“You okay?” I said.

“I . . . I think so,” she said.

I helped her up, trying not to look at Grandma’s body, trying not to see the damage the shotgun had done. I couldn’t stop shaking and crying.

It was over. I had ruined everything.

“Thanks, Lee,” said Murphy. “You saved my life.”

Horace moaned from the floor. I guessed he wasn’t dead yet.

Murphy ran to Horace and helped him to his feet. Blood ran down his back and legs and onto the floor.

“You dying?” said Murphy.

Horace, all haggard and starved and blood-soaked, his shirt ripped in gashes from Grandma’s knife, shrugged at her.

“Doubt it,” he said. “Don’t think she stuck me anywhere too important. Want to hand me that shotgun there, Lee?”

I looked at Murphy, and she looked back at me.

“You can trust him,” she said. “I promise.”

I gave Horace the gun.

“Just follow behind me,” he said, “and we’ll get us the fuck out of here. How’s that sound?”

We walked out into the hot summer night, mosquitoes swarming us, as the members of the Farm began to stream out of the house and into the yard, curious.