Her body is still lifeless when I wake from the fever dream. I did everything that I could for her, but none of it mattered. In the end, it was her time, and all I did was prolong the inevitable. I close her eyes and move her hair away from her face, trying to make her look as peaceful as possible given the circumstances.

  She is so tiny, like a mouse sinking into the ocean; she lies in a pool of her own blood. I do not know her name, but I hold her hands and pray for her. I pray that she will make her way to the pearly gates that allow her access into heaven. I pray that she has no more hardships on the way to that holiest of places. I pray that she is able to meet with her family once again.

  I pray for her soul.

  When I finally gain the courage to stand, I look to the sky and see that the moon has changed. It still lingers high in the sky, floating above the city like a halo, but the color is wrong. Blood stains the moon red; it washes over the face of the moon like the mark of sin. It is a horrific sight to behold. There is no waiver in the presence of the moon, only the fact that it is an ominous omen looming over me.

  I’m captivated.

  There is something different; my mind stirs like a pot of soup. I can not place what the change within myself is, but I can feel that something is amiss. I look at my hands and think about the vision that I just had. It was vivid.

  Real.

  No. There was no vision. That was a memory, the memory of what happened in the woods. But that cannot be possible. I was taken over by the demon. There are still gaps in the memory that I can not fix. I remember that woman pressing a bloody finger to my forehead, but then there is a gap until I find the sewer.

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  Was I possessed by the demon that entire time? The question rolls around my skull like a dice in a hat. Tossing and turning to a new side, but there are so many sides to this dice. There is no real way to figure out what is real, what happened to me, and what will happen next.

  I no longer believe that I am safe. Even if I find my daughter, I could put her life in danger by being taken over.

  I sigh, letting go of everything that makes sense.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  I remember the day that my father fell ill. A black cloud hung over him; people from the church shunned him. There was no onset to the illness; he woke up one morning and never got better. I always assumed that it was because my mother had passed. I told myself that lie to keep my sanity, but I knew the truth. I heard the conversations that he had with the shadows. At the time, they made no sense to me.

  I hide the truth from Lenora. I told her only of the illness, not whispers in the dark that had haunted me my whole life. Mother and father had made a blood pact with something. They had oaths to uphold. That shack, held together with bones, was all that we had. Mother and father had so many secrets.

  Mother did things that she wouldn’t speak of and was never allowed into a church. Father was a ruthless man, a drunk, and a gambler. Together, they seemed to be the embodiment of sin.

  We were gutter rats.

  The voice rings and echoes through my head, and I’m taken back to the shack. I hear the voices in the darkness. See my mother and father, their pain, their hardship. I push my way through memories like gliding through clouds, opening doors that I never knew were there. Then, I see them. Standing before a cage, bright eyes cutting into their souls. They whisper something, then turn to point at me.