Solomon remembered his gun then. He wanted it in case this thing woke up again. He found it quickly with the flashlight, the muzzle still warm from the gunshot fired in error.

“It’s murder,” said Solomon. “You killed a boy.”

He turned back. Blackwood had produced a leather kit, unrolling it open upon the ground. Solomon saw that its interior pouches contained glass vials with powders and liquids, bits of plant matter, metal crosses. Blackwood returned the dagger to one pouch.

“He was no longer a boy,” said Blackwood. “He was well gone. I couldn’t save him. But I can release him now. I can grant him rest.”

Blackwood uncorked one of the vials of powder. He took care to lay the boy’s body out straight, arms by its sides, hands open, palms up. He closed its eyes.

Solomon said, “What the hell are you doing?”

It looked like some funeral rite. Blackwood poured the powder into his hand and arranged five generous pinches of the substance on the ground around the boy’s corpse, like points of a star. He pulled a vial of milky liquid from his kit and then stood at the boy’s feet. He spoke Latin, quietly but forcefully, an incantation. Solomon grew nervous and backed away. Using an eyedropper, Blackwood squeezed drips of the milky substance onto the powder, igniting five flames of pure white.

Blackwood extended his arm over the boy’s body, palm open and downturned, still chanting, the volume of his voice rising and falling. Blackwood’s hand trembled and his intonation became more insistent.

Solomon backed away farther, nearly tripping over the root of a tree.

Shadows moved over the boy’s face, his chest, his legs. Squirming, writhing. It looked like they were tugging at his flesh, a play of shadow…but how?

Something unexplainable was happening to the boy, outside and in.

Blackwood’s voice reached a crescendo, and at once he squeezed his open hand into a fist. The shadows raced away from the surface of the body to the five white flames, which surged and suddenly grew black—then were extinguished, leaving only a foul stench behind.

Blackwood dropped to one knee, momentarily sapped of strength, catching his breath. Solomon ventured forward a few steps, shining his flashlight on the boy’s face.

It was the visage of a young black-skinned boy again. Normal. Human. Innocent.

Solomon barely slept that night. He took two cleansing showers in the black-run motel on the edge of town, stopping the water multiple times to make sure the noises he heard—of someone moving around inside his motel room—were only in his head.