The wind gusts and sends a veil of smoke and soot coursing past her. Clare coughs and stumbles on something before righting herself. Ahead, their house is an inferno. She marvels at how fast the fire has spread. It licks and walks across the walls, moving up and beyond the height of the chimney. The windows have shattered and she realizes the sound she’d heard earlier had been the other cans of gasoline igniting beside their generator.
The heat tightens the skin of her face even at a distance and she brings an arm up to shield herself. “Shanna!” she screams into the blaze. There is no reply except for things popping as they burn. Clare mounts the stairs, and ducking her head, makes it to the door. She grasps the door handle with both hands and pain erupts in her palms like nothing she’s ever felt. It is blinding, searing agony and she screams, falling backward as her hands begin to blister. “Shanna! No! Shanna!”
Then someone has her by the upper arm, gripping so hard it hurts. She’s dragged away, pulled back from the all-consuming heat where her sister is burning. She fights, kicks, squirms, and screams Shanna’s name as fire gushes out of the broken windows like reverse waterfalls. Yet the hand holding her arm is relentless. It draws her ever backward from the blaze.
“Everything will be well,” her father says from somewhere that sounds miles away. “Come with me, Clare. Close the circle.” Her legs give out completely and her father loses his grip. She falls to the ground, one hand landing on a bulbous rock. She grabs it without thinking. “You’re not leaving me,” he says. “No one’s leaving me ever again.” When she feels his hand on her shoulder, she turns and swings her arm with all the hatred, all the fear, all the will he’s tried to steal from her, and feels the rock connect with something.
He stands staring at her, bright red blood sheeting down the side of his head where she hit him. It shines in the firelight as if lit from within. Simon Kinley staggers backward, a look of confusion crossing his face. He tries to say something but falls before he can get the words out. Even amidst her terror and ever-rising reservoir of guilt that is becoming a flood inside her, Clare feels a stab of sorrow for him. He is her father, and in that fleeting second before she turns to run, she sees herself walking with him, hand in hand, down the long drive of the Refuge. It was years before the cult grew to what it is now. He had been of a calmer mind then and his hand had felt so sure and comforting around her own as they walked together.
Clare watches him roll to his back and lie still as another gust of wind pushes past her, feeling as if a massive oven door has opened close by. She drags her gaze free of her father and looks at the burning skeleton of their home. Shanna is lost somewhere within it, and it is her fault. She started the fire and Shanna is dead because of her.
Clare stumbles backward and turns, unable to look at the fire, unable to look at her father lying on the ground fully in its path. She hurries into the woods, shoving branches and brush out of her way.
The night swallows her whole and she embraces it because it is not accusing or condemning. It does not know what she did. The night does not remember. She will mirror its darkness. She will forget.
And as each image tries to rise into full view, she banishes it. Shoves it away, down to a blackened place inside her where there is no fire, where there is no memory, where there is only darkness.
Her face was wet and she couldn’t draw in a breath. Clare gazed around blearily, looking at the woman seated nearby.
“You remember now, don’t you, Clare? You see what your lack of faith brought. I saw what you did that night.”
More logs were dropped onto the fire by phantom hands and the flames ate higher into the air. By the light, Clare saw where they were.
The Refuge.
To the right she made out the cracked and uneven shamble of concrete and past it the blackened face of a boulder. On the left the raggedy growth of tag elder where the woman who sat before her now had paused to weep on their prior visit. Paused to weep, not at the former home of her friend, but at her own.
“Abigail,” Clare whispered.
There was a moment of silence only the crackle of fire filled before the woman laughed and clapped her hands. “It’s so good to hear you say my name. You don’t know how long I waited for that.”
Abigail moved closer and clasped her arms around bent knees. She looked like a child again, one Clare hadn’t laid eyes on in almost two decades. She could see the differences between the woman and her sister now that the veil of hope had been drawn away and revealed the truth. They were subtle, but there. Abigail and Shanna had looked so alike back then. Like sisters, which they had been. They’d all been sisters and brothers, and Clare had been the eldest, the one all the other children looked up to. The one that should’ve taken care of them, saved them.
“Why?” she asked finally. “Why pretend to be Shanna?”
“For you, Clare. So you’d come home. So we could close the circle. It took us so long to find you. Years and years. You hid yourself well and we couldn’t risk exposing who we were so we had to be careful while we searched, while we grew.” Abigail reached down and touched her wrists as Clare had seen her do so many times before. “When we finally located you I wore ropes for months to make these. Harold cut me the night I was found. It hurt so badly, you don’t know how bad it hurt, but we had to make it look real. There was no other way to get you back. Daryl watched you and was there just in case you refused to come home after I was found. Harold wanted you to come on your own. His hand was only forced to bring you here like this when we had no other choice.” Abigail’s eyes softened in the firelight. “We wanted you to believe. I tried telling you about the voice we both heard, Charon’s voice, but you denied it. The sickness you think is in your mind are his signs, Clare. Charon is reaching out to you, beckoning to join the circle. He left his obols for you to find.” Clare saw the wooden coins she’d found and shook her head as if to clear it of the images. To deny them. “The only path is free will. Choice is everything.” Abigail leaned closer and her face fell into full shadow. “Sacrifice is love.”
Out of the darkness came a commotion and several figures appeared, two guiding a third between them toward the fire. Clare sucked in a breath and felt it shudder out in a quiet “No” as the light revealed the group.
Steven Parson and Harold Rainier stood watching her, their eyes cold even in the glow of flame. Each held the arms of the third man whose hands were bound before him, his face badly bruised and bloodied, but she would’ve known it anywhere.
Eric.
He saw her and his eyes flew open wide. “Clare! Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said through a sob. Then to Abigail, “Let him go. You have me, that’s all you need.”
“We need more than your body, Clare,” Rainier said as he approached. Other people loomed out of the darkness behind him, members of the Free Spirit Disciples. The woman who had assumed Brynn Johnson’s identity smiled at her and waved. She also caught sight of Margaret Parson and her two children nearby, the firelight turning their emotionless visages into masks. A much smaller figure joined them, stopping beside Margaret. The boy was young, maybe five or six, with dark hair and large eyes. He watched Clare before shifting his gaze to Abigail.