They must accept it. They must worship it.

Death is forever.

He laughs, roaring, enjoying his final moments with such fierceness tears prick at his eyes.

He shifts to his girlfriend and smiles with all his teeth as the car fails to bank the turn. He watches her eyes as they leave the road. Isn’t it thrilling?

They veer straight. Together. All of them.

They soar off the rocky New England cliffside.

He laughs all the way down.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Max

Max tossed his clunky key ring onto the mail table, the front door slamming as he caught an odd shift in the air, the twinge that tells you something’s different in your home.

“Chloe?”

She spent last night at her friend Alexis’s house, and she was being dropped off in a half hour. No mother, especially Mrs. Tenn, would leave a seven-year-old in an empty house.

But his house wasn’t empty.

“Mom?” His voice shook.

It had been two days since Vera had been there, a day since they’d walked to the footbridge, and that time had been blissfully uneventful, because his mother slept the entire duration. Thirty-six straight hours. If his mom got up for a drink of water or to use the bathroom, Max hadn’t seen her. Every time he cracked her bedroom door, he spied her sprawled beneath a white sheet, not only breathing, but snoring like a potbellied pig in the mud, deep throaty grunts that ripped through her chapped lips. He wanted to check her for fever, place the back of his hand against her forehead the way she’d done so many times for him, but he was afraid to get too close. It had come to that.

A whisper echoed through the house.

No, whispers. More than one.

“Mom, is someone here?” His gut tightened, the way it does before a punch.

The murmurs continued, a low hum.

He checked his watch. Anyone who would visit his mother, in this state, was not someone he wanted to meet. And Chloe would be home soon.

He’d called his grandparents in New Hampshire this morning. He didn’t tell them what was going on (Hey, Pops, everything’s fine, it’s just Mom’s possessed by this demon….). Still, they heard the concern in his voice. Only, they were a four-hour drive away, and they worked Monday through Friday. They couldn’t pick up Chloe until the weekend.

It was Tuesday.

The voices intensified, their tones deep, almost rhythmic, like chanting. It was coming from his mother’s bedroom.

His breath quickened as he began to pace. There are people in my house, possibly possessed people with my possessed mother, and my sister is coming home any minute. Seriously, what the f—

His foot slammed into the curved leg of the coffee table.

“Goddammit!” he shouted, grabbing his big toe as he hopped.

“Ah, ah, ah.” The voice was crystal clear.

He whipped around, heart bouncing to his tonsils.

“Careful what you say.” It was her, her voice traveling from down the hall, but she might as well have been standing in the room. “He can hear you.”