The thing lay on the ground some feet away, half on its side, twitching. Blackwood looked down at it, too. Solomon now saw the thing Blackwood had been holding, a thin silver handle sticking out of the base of the thing’s neck.

The thing’s slender hands reached for the implement impaling it, but never touched it. The twitching stopped. The thing lay still.

Solomon, however, could still feel its small-handed grip on his throat. “What was that?” he said. “What was that?”

Blackwood looked him over. “You appear unhurt.”

“I SAID WHAT WAS THAT?”

Solomon heard his own voice echo into the trees and was scared he had woken some other evil spirit.

Blackwood had turned back to look at the dead thing. “That was an invocation.”

“The robed figure—?”

Blackwood shook his head.

“Got away?” said Solomon, each word like a gasp.

“I heard you scream,” said Blackwood. “I had to make a choice.”

Solomon was a moment processing that. He looked down at the thing. He remembered the flashlight in his hand and switched it on. The flat glass lens had cracked against the thing’s jaw, but the light worked. He shone it on the thing’s bare back, the silver-handled implement shining in the beam. “You killed it.”

Blackwood crouched next to the body. As Solomon watched in horror, Blackwood placed one hand on the back of the boy’s head, and the other on the silver handle. He pulled the blade out of the boy’s neck.

It was slick with blood, but there had been no bleeding. No spilled blood. The implement was a dagger with a fine, thin blade, almost the shape of a screwdriver or ice pick.

Solomon turned around and doubled over, vomiting violently. He continued until he was through retching. He felt no better.

He turned around again. Blackwood was cleaning off the blade with a soft cotton cloth. “May I have your electric torch?” he asked.

Solomon handed over the flashlight. Blackwood trained it on the back of the boy’s skull at the base, using his free hand to ruffle the hair.

Solomon saw the sigil in the boy’s flesh, looking like an old-fashioned letter seal pressed into hot wax, but formed by raised veins beneath the skin. He couldn’t make out the exact design, bisected as it had been by the wound from Blackwood’s dagger.

Blackwood handed him back the flashlight. Solomon waved it over the clearing, over the graves where the spirits of dead slaves had arisen in a violet mist.

Again, he said, “What was that?”

Blackwood rolled the boy over onto his back, and Solomon remembered that it wasn’t a boy anymore. Its face was contorted and evil, now locked in an agonal expression of terror.

“What is it?” said Solomon.

Blackwood answered him only indirectly. “Possessed,” he said.