I let out a sharp breath, air knocked from my lungs.
I needed to turn. I needed to look. But my body froze with sudden fear and the absolute certainty there was someone behind me. Someone who should not have been there. Someone who had orchestrated this entire revival so they could watch with twisted curiosity as it played out.
“Parson…who are you speaking to?”
His eyes fell squarely on me. “Look at her, Ellerie. Isn’t she magnificent? An angel of vengeance, come to purify the Falls. You don’t know how hard I’ve prayed for her.”
A shiver raced over me, my body cold and trembling. I could feel evil wafting off the creature, malicious and irresistible. It called out to that dark, hidden place within me, where every angry impulse I’d had and shoved aside was buried. It reached out, wanting to sort through them all, find the worst and stoke its rage.
I strained my eyes, looking as far to my periphery as I could. There was a slender form bedecked in white eyelet, and my mind raced back to that night when Papa and Samuel had emerged from the pines. The night I had lit the Our Ladies. The night I had seen a woman in a pale dress step out from the wheat field.
The night I’d lit the schoolhouse on fire.
No.
“What do you want?” I hissed, unable to turn and face her. “Why are you doing this to us?”
She said nothing, but I felt the weight of her gaze shift as she considered me. A hand stirred, impossibly long and bulbous fingers reaching out to brush the weave of my braid. I wanted to cringe from her touch, but was trapped, caged, a butterfly pinned on a mounting board, to be studied and stared at.
“Me?” she murmured, her voice soft and alluring. “I haven’t lifted a finger in any of this. Look. This is all them.” She made a soft sound of consideration. “All you, honey-haired girl.”
“This is madness! We have to stop! We have to stop right now!” Rebecca Danforth shouted, drawing my attention.
She’d pulled herself onto a chair in the middle of the tent and was struggling for her voice to carry over the indignant roar. Someone knocked into her, and she clutched at her belly, altering her balance to avoid toppling over.
“Stop!” I cried, running toward Rebecca and leaving the creature behind.
No matter what unkind words had passed between us, I could not stand back and watch something terrible befall her.
“Stop! Stop this!” I shouted, pushing my way through the melee. Someone swiped their nails across my face, and I had to duck to keep from being hit as Mark Danforth charged into my path, but I finally made it to Rebecca. I held out my hands, trying to steady her. “Are you all right? This is out of control!”
She nodded and pushed aside my assistance. From her pocket, she withdrew a pistol, and before I could scream, she fired a warning shot into the air, ripping open a hole in the canvas above her.
“Enough!” she cried, and the crowd fell into an uneasy silence.
There was a small burst of laughter from the corner where Parson Briard now cowered, but when I looked, the Dark Watcher was gone.
Rebecca dragged her hand over her face. “Look at yourselves! Look at what is going on. Our town is tearing apart. Again. Something is terribly, terribly wrong here.” She turned her focus on me. “Isn’t it?”
“It is,” I said. “And I know why.”
Everyone had stopped their struggles, turning to face us. Not a single person looked unaffected by the fighting. Everywhere I looked there were broken noses, broken lips. Torn clothing and swollen fists.
I scanned their rapt faces, turning until I came to the parson. With a trembling hand, I pointed to him. “There are things that man knows and has not told you. There are dark forces at work, causing the troubles in Amity Falls. The drought, the bad harvests, the strange mutations. All of…this,” I said, gesturing to the destruction throughout the tent. “The suspicions and violence. All because of these things in the woods. The Dark Watchers. I don’t know what exactly they are—creatures or monsters, old gods or supernatural…things. But they’re here, and this…all of this…is because of them.”
Alice Fowler—with her silver hair now ripped free of its usual tidy bun, and a sleeve hanging off her bodice, torn ragged—glanced back at the parson. “Is this true, Clemency?”
“I…” The parson adjusted his collar, his face dripping sweat.
I pressed ahead. “The Fairhopes told the Elders—they told Briard—and rather than go out and fight these things, the parson wanted to hold this ridiculous revival. And all along, they’ve been here, using him the entire time. That wasn’t an angel of vengeance, Parson. It was a Dark Watcher. Laughing at you, laughing at all of us for falling into her trap.”
He shook his head. “That’s absurd. That was no—”
“Matthias,” I said, whipping around to find the Elder. “Amos, Leland. You were there last night. You heard Ephraim speak. Tell them what he said.”
“No. No. It doesn’t matter what was said.” Simon Briard spoke up, coming out of the crowd. He helped Rebecca from the chair, snatching the pistol away. “It doesn’t matter what any of them say. They say to unite the town—be it supply runs or revivals, Decidings and Judgments. But you can’t unite what has already rotted away to the core.” He took a deep breath. “Ellerie speaks of strange creatures. Of monsters. Harbingers of evil and doom.” He turned on me, eyes blazing. “Call them what they really are—devils.”
Voices rumbled throughout the crowd, murmuring and hissing.
“And devils don’t come unbidden. Someone in Amity Falls wanted those things here. Someone brought them to us. On purpose. To corrupt and twist. To destroy us all.”
I shook my head, trying to stop him, but Simon pressed forward, fingers tightening on the gun.
“I was out along my property line this morning when I stumbled across…something. It was a circle of stones and trinkets, strange markings in the dirt. It looked a few months old, probably made before the snows set in. Someone came onto my land and summoned this evil. And I know who did it!”
He held a small square of fabric above his head.
“What is it?” Amos McCleary called out, squinting through a black eye.
“A handkerchief. One of Old Widow Mullins’s designs. See here the monogram she stitched into it? S-E-D.”
My throat tightened as he read off the initials. I knew what he was about to say.
“Samuel Elazar Downing,” he proclaimed. “He summoned these devils. He brought this darkness upon our town. And look—here is where he sealed the unholy bargain with his own blood. Three drops exactly.”