Dead Harvest

  "My mom. My dad. My brother. I'd been planning a road trip with some friends for the summer. There's this music festival out in Washington – three days of bands and camping and whatever. It just seems so fucking silly now. Anyways, Dad said I could go, but Mom thought I was too young to go traipsing across the country by myself. I tried to tell her I wouldn't be by myself – that we'd be fine – but she wouldn't hear any of it. We ended up shouting at each other over the breakfast table, and I said some things…"

  Tears spilled down her cheeks, and she was suddenly racked with sobs. "Kate," I said, "you don't have to tell me –"

  "Yes, I do. I can't just keep carrying it around. It's too much." I nodded, and she continued. "I told her that I hated her. That my real mother would've let me go. That I wished that she was dead instead."

  I was taken aback. "Your real mother?"

  Kate nodded. "She died when I was very young. Complications from childbirth. And Dad… I mean, I know he missed her, but he never took it out on me. When I was three, he met Patricia. She's the only mother I've ever known. I just can't believe I said those things – and all over a stupid fucking trip!"

  "I'm sure she knew you didn't mean it."

  "Did she? Did she know I didn't mean it when I killed her husband right in front of her? When I killed her son? Did she know it while I tortured her?"

  "Kate, that wasn't you. You have to understand that."

  "How can you be sure? How can you know I didn't, I don't know, invite something in when I said what I said? That I didn't open the door for this to happen?"

  "It doesn't work that way, Kate. If a moment of anger was enough to invite a possession, there wouldn't be demons enough for the demand."

  "You say that, sure, but you aren't certain – I can see it in your eyes. You've seen what I'm capable of," she said, nodding toward the factory door. "You've seen what I can do when I get angry."

  "Yeah, I have, but I've also seen your soul. I know you weren't responsible for your family's death, Kate, even if you don't. You've just got to trust me."

  Kate brushed tears from her cheeks and looked at me, eyes rimmed with red. "And what about what I did back there? If you looked at my soul now, what would you see? Have I been tainted by what I've done? Can you just collect my soul now, and go on about your merry way?"

  "It doesn't work that way, Kate. You knew full well what Merihem was when you did what you did. Besides, you're innocent in all of this – he and his kind had no business meddling in your affairs."

  She laughed – a shrill, humorless bark of a laugh. "So I just get a freebie, then?"

  "I wish it were that easy," I said, "but taking a life – human or not, justified or not – it eats at you. You take enough of them, it'll hollow you out from the inside, until there's nothing left but a husk of your former self. I don't want to see you head down that path."

  "Is that what you are, Sam – a husk of your former self?"

  I shook this borrowed head, shrugged these shoulders that weren't mine. "Sometimes I think I'm something even less than that." I took her hand, led her back toward the open factory door. She didn't resist – not exactly – but there was no volition to her movements; I felt like I was posing a doll. "C'mon, kid," I said, squeezing her hand in mine, "time's short. We've got to get you out of here."

The midday sun reflected off the chromed storefront of the bar, casting haloes of light across the sidewalk and causing me to squint. I took a sip of coffee from the mug in front of me, but it was cold and bitter, and seared like acid as it went down. I pushed the mug aside. Really, I shoulda stopped drinking this shit three cups ago: my eyes were dry and itchy, and felt too big for their sockets; my scalp was crawling from the caffeine and the lack of sleep. But I wasn't about to slink off to bed. Not with a fortune in heroin stuffed into the back of a borrowed car. Not without talking to Dumas.