“This isn’t your fault,” Vera insisted, but she knew he wouldn’t hear her. Guilt and logic rarely met.

They pulled onto her block, a sudden fog tugging a thick gray blanket over his truck. It was sunny a moment ago.

“I can’t see anything.” Max slowed, flicking his headlights on as they rolled closer to Vera’s house.

Hairs lifted on her arms and she felt the urge to hold her breath like a kid passing a graveyard, not wanting to let the spirits in. Slowly, the truck’s beams closed on a figure hovering in the dewy grass dressed in white—a long flowing Victorianesque nightgown merely missing the chains it forged in life. And it was clutching something—no, someone.

“Chloe!” Max slammed on the brakes and Vera was flung forward, seat belt biting her collarbone.

His mother stood on the lawn with her black spiraling curls blowing in hurricane-force winds that hadn’t existed a moment ago. She was gripping Max’s sister, her own daughter, with bony hands clamped around the little girl’s throat. Chloe’s sobs melted Vera’s heart.

“I’m coming!” Max shouted, his panic thicker than the air outside.

Where were her neighbors? And where was her aunt?

Vera jumped out of the truck, but Max was already tearing across the lawn.

Max

“Let her go!” Every ounce of training he’d had as a sprinter prepared him for this moment, because he dashed that hundred yards to his sister at Olympic pace.

“Back off!” it shouted in a hellish tone, knuckles whitening.

“That’s your daughter! Mom!” Max shouted. She had to be in there. Somewhere, his mother had to be in there. If it was true, if she really was grieving so profoundly, then how could she bring more death to his family? She had to have some control. She had to.

“She is nothing.” It tightened its grasp around Chloe’s neck.

“Mom, please!”

Vera darted in front of him, putting her body between him and his mother, or what used to be his mother. He nudged forward but she held out her arm, straight and low, a mom stopping her kid from darting into traffic. He didn’t need her protection. This was his family.

“You don’t want her. You want me,” Vera said.

“No!” came a voice charging from the front porch. “Vera, don’t!”

“Do not get any closer to it,” yelled a man.

Max flung his head and saw Aunt Tilda and Father Chuck bounding down the porch steps, each clutching a black leather-bound Bible.

“In nómine Patris et Fílii et Spíritus Sancti.” The priest made the sign of the cross in time with her aunt.

Then they chanted in some language (Latin?) while reading from a book, reciting lines Max had never heard before. His mother laughed. No, it laughed, that same throaty, cursed sound.

“You are all fools!” It lifted Chloe by her slender throat, her bare feet kicking frantically at the dewy grass. She was wearing her long cotton twirl dress. She had begged their mother to buy it for her last birthday. It was her favorite, with blocks of fabric in varying shades of blue, and she only wore it when she was happy. That meant she had been happy today—until her mother began to choke her.