“I’m good,” I insist, quietly crushing the fly within my grip. “Listen, I need to ask you something. Is there a month or two in your life that you just can’t remember? Last summer, maybe?”
Ally stares at me, but her expression is no longer confused. It’s blank.
“No,” she replies.
I lower my voice a bit, leaning in. “Do you ever see things? See … people watching you?”
Ally says nothing, frozen in place. I notice her body is trembling now, stress hormones flooding her system. She swallows gently.
I wasn’t planning on being this direct, but after speaking with five others who gave up no reaction at all, I can’t turn back now. Ally is the first person who seems to actually know something, who’s grappling with these forces instead of just assuming they’re a bad dream or blaming an anxious mind.
I hesitate, then jump into the deep end. “Have you ever been to Camp Damascus?”
Ally finally reacts.
“Why would I go to Camp Damascus?” she asks, suddenly just as rehearsed as her initial greeting. “I’m not gay.”
The slightest tremble in her voice is the only giveaway that something’s off, but the intensity in her gaze speaks to something more. Her look is one of either dread or furious rage.
“You know our dads volunteer at the church together,” Ally says. “You know they’ve been watching you.”
“I’m—I’m just trying to figure out what happened,” I stammer.
Ally’s lips slowly curl up in a pleasant smile, but the fake nature of her expression is promptly revealed as tears begin to well up in her eyes. One of them finally crests, rolling down her cheek, but the grin remains unwavering.
I realize now that Ally’s no longer staring at me, but through me.
I turn my head to follow her gaze, gradually revealing a dim corner that stretches out behind. While the rest of the coffee shop is bustling and vibrant, the little restroom hallway is quiet and tucked away, obscured from view of the other patrons. Cardboard boxes are piled in a high stack against one wall, and a bookshelf stuffed with old board games rests against the other.
A figure stands confidently in the shadows, eyes staring back at me as solid white orbs. This visitor is the smallest one I’ve seen, no more than four feet tall. Her skin is just as pale and waterlogged as the others, but her long black hair is slightly less patchy as it hangs from her head in tangled strands.
She’s wearing the usual uniform: a red polo with khaki pants below, and the name tag affixed to her chest reads LEPACA.
The demon is grinning an inhumanly wide, crooked-toothed smile, her teeth stained and sooty with some unknown grime as she watches me from the darkness. Her long fingers twitch slightly.
I slowly turn back to Ally, whose face is now streaked with tears.
“We’ll get rid of that thing together,” I insist. “I just need information.”
“What thing?” Ally hisses, her jaw clenched tight as she snarls through her teeth. “There’s nothing there.”
Her words hit me like a punch to the gut.
“I don’t think the Young Communicators course is for you,” she continues. “Now get the fuck out of my face.”
I heed her advice and spring to my feet, turning abruptly and hurrying from the shop.
My heart is slamming hard within my chest as panic overwhelms my senses, but it’s not the demon that has me worried.
You know our dads volunteer at the church together.
This time I pushed too far, got a little too excited by the prospect of new clues, and got burned in the process.
There’s a version of this where Ally would rather ignore everything, pretending our little meeting never happened and the curious girl who’s out to unravel these mysteries is just as fake as the demon watching Ally sip her cappuccino.
The other version, however, feels much more likely. In that one, Ally calls her father, who then calls mine, and soon enough a deeply unfortunate conversation happens at Kingdom of the Pine about the girl who simply refuses to leave things well enough alone.
“Five, four, three, two, one. Four, three, two, one. Three, two, one. Two, one. One,” I repeat under my breath as I limp across the street to my car, drumming my fingers against the side of my aching leg with the hand that still works.
I glance back one last time to see Ally in exactly the same place I left her, staring off into the darkness as tears stream down her face.
At least she doesn’t have her phone out.
I knew this would happen sooner or later, I scold myself. This is the path I took when I decided to turn my back on faith. I chose to abandon my cozy, calm life for this chaos.
But this wasn’t my choice. This wasn’t my fricking choice and I’m not the one who created the chaos here. Something is wrong in Neverton, and that something isn’t me.
I straighten up in the driver’s seat, overwhelmed with emotion but determined to hold myself together. My curiosity has finally done what everyone warned it would, and I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. The only thing left to do is see if I choke or swallow.
* * *
The drive home is spent alternating between blinding hope and certain doom. Every time I settle on one side, the other option pulls me back, until eventually I just can’t take it anymore.
I pull over, idling on the side of the road while I pull out my phone.
The internal debate rages fiercely within me. Do I ignore this completely and hope for the best? Or do I call my parents and get a jump on whatever they might hear through the grapevine? There’s gotta be a way to spin this, but after my recent troubles with the church, it won’t be easy.
Some girls in the congregation are spreading rumors about me.
This angle works, I suppose, and it’s better than nothing.
I call my dad, prompting a single ring before Luke picks up.
“Hey, honey,” he starts, his tone jovial.
“Dad,” I falter. “Hi.”
A brief moment of awkward silence.
“What’s up?” he finally questions. “You gonna be home soon? Dinner’s on.”
His familiar tone immediately puts me at ease as we slip into our well-worn father-daughter cadence. “Yeah. Sorry, I just … I wanted to get your advice on something. There’s a few girls spreading rumors about me. I’m not sure how to handle it.”
“Oh, honey,” my father offers soothingly. “Come right home and we’ll pray on it. Whatever it is, God’s gonna sort this out for you.”
“You’re right,” I offer, unconvinced of how effective that might be but happy to follow along. I’m suddenly wondering if I’ve overreacted. My encounter with Ally could unravel this whole thing, but it could just as easily not.
“Lot of rumors going around these days, you can’t trust ’em,” Luke continues. “You hear what they’re saying about butter?”
“No,” I reply, a little confused.
“I could tell you but I don’t wanna spread it.” My father hits the punchline hard.
This is normally where I’d sigh loudly and get secondhand embarrassed, but his cheerful nature in this tense moment is enough to warrant a full cackle of unexpected laughter to erupt from my throat.
It feels so much better than a single fly spit take.