* * *
That night, just like with the first family, I swooped to the Sloans' hours after Cyrus, Alex, and I visited the cafe. I stole Cyrus's car yet again, and I crept back into the house the way we had exited - through the front door. It was another suburban home - large, fresh, new, and sleek.
I slipped quietly into the long hallway and towards the light that was shed from a large room to the left - the Sloans' living room - and when I arrived, the bodies lay exactly as I had left them.
This is my work I realized. And if it were not for my ability to resurrect them, I couldn't have done it, I thought. Or could I?
I rubbed a hand hard against my head, trying to massage understanding from myself, but nothing helpful arrived, only more questions. Was the ability to bring people back from death suddenly permission to kill everyone, even women, even children, even the pure, just like the box had wanted, since, at the end of it all, I could undo what was done?
Was the man with stars in his body indeed at war with Cyrus, or was he a tool that Cyrus used to help further convince me to do things that I would never normally do? Was he like Roland when I was a child? And just what was Roland?
I sunk to my knees, feeling the chaos buckle. I did not know up from down anymore. I did not know the lies from the truth. I couldn't even separate life from death in my head anymore. It was all an unidentifiable blob of reality.
No, I suddenly thought. No, there is one thing that I understand. I can bring them back. Yes, there was a rock amidst the endless ocean. There was an ability that I could exercise, even if I did not know what reason the Universe might want me exercising it.
I could use this power because I wanted to. I had the power to resurrect, the power to kill, the power to do both or either or neither. In action, there was meaning, and I meant to act.
I reached my hand towards the Minister's wife on the floor, and just as I was about to touch her, I heard a voice.
"What are you doing?" it said.
I looked up and across the living room to its end. From the dark hall that lead to the bedrooms, out walked Cyrus.
"I'm..." I started, but I had nothing to finish the sentence with, and so I stopped, feeling a weighty hand of defeat crush me. I retreated from Mrs. Sloan's corpse and sat back quietly on my heels.
Cyrus began walking around the room, as though a shark considering to circle. "You know, I went back to the Rileys' tonight. Don't know why, just did. Had an inkling that there might be something interesting to see.
"Sure enough, I looked in their windows and, for a dead family, they're surprisingly active. There's an alarm system in there now. It sounded as soon as I opened the door. Could have silenced it. But I didn't. I realized they weren't worth killing again. At least, not while you're still here." Cyrus stopped close to me. His hands were clasped behind his back. His gray hair was piercingly silver in the light - the color of a blade.
"Is there something you'd like to tell me, Jack?" Cyrus asked.
I shook my head back and forth. There was no point in saying a word. He knew. I knew he knew. This was all pointless. And now, right by that dead family, he was going to kill me.
I saw movement from the dark hallway again, and it was Alex. He stepped into the living room.
I tried to bolt. I failed.
Cyrus was upon me, straddling me, and beating me. He was yelling curses that I could not process, for the pain was striking and everywhere. I perceived Alex walking around near us and then pausing to watch.
After a great length of time, I was seeing black dots and I could not cough out any words to Cyrus except, "Stop!" but he never said a word, just continued to hit me and punch me, and though I kicked him, I was in no position to easily advance, and so my only choice was to let the blows descend.
I remember hearing Alex say something. I did not know just what at first, but then he said it again, louder, with the sound of dis-ease. "The blood is... smiling, Dad." And then, just a short time later, "Dad... the children are sliding out of the room. Dad!" Then, a door slammed in the distance. Yet, Cyrus continued his rampage against me.
Finally, there was another yell. It was Alex's.
As he yelled, my eyes shot open to see a hand climb over Cyrus's right shoulder, clutch the lapel of his jacket like a silver claw, and pull him back. A face appeared beside my maniacal leader's neck, and it was that of Lezlie Sloan's. I gasped.
The eyes were green. The skin was taut, bloody, and the teeth were jagged like fishing hooks. I've gone insane I thought, but I still kicked at Cyrus and pushed myself away. When I was free, I scurried backwards against the wall.
Cyrus fought with the thing, scraping against the arms of Sloan's wife, but they would not budge, and as she looked at me and grinned with her fishhook teeth cutting her lips, she slowly and delicately, as though placing the last Ace atop a four-tier card castle, pierced her teeth into Cyrus's lily white neck, as he - for the first time in my entire life - screamed like a mortal man.
"Die!" he shrieked, but she continued to chew and grind and nip at him, his skin now caught within the barbs of teeth. It stretched like warm cheese.
I whispered to myself, "She's already dead. You can't kill her." He continued to scream the word, though, and I did not move.
What I wanted was to run to him, to hold him down, let this monstrous thing sink itself further into him, but I was too terrified to do anything but watch. I thought it would kill him. I hoped it would.
But Lezlie Sloan - or whatever it was within her - let him go. Her teeth unfastened, and though much of his skin was still stuck within those teeth, Cyrus pulled away, snapping the last cords that bound him to her. He pulled back, fearfully, not menacing, and that was the first time I had ever seen terror in his face.
The thing spoke in a gritty, demonic voice. "Bit off a bit more than you can chew?"
She smiled, the pieces of Cyrus's skin hanging like spaghetti across her chin.
I watched as Cyrus swung himself down, slamming his hands that had been holding his neck to his face, and bending over as a bucket of blood dropped from him. When he rose again, his nose was bleeding like a faucet spilling water. I looked to Alex, and he, too, was dropping blood all over the front of his shirt. I touched my nose. I was fine.
Cyrus and Alex bolted from the room and I heard them rush from the house. I wanted to run, to follow them, but this ugly demon stood between me and the door.
Though it seemed insane, in the back of my mind I also knew that I had come there with a job to do, and it was not yet done. I did not want to leave without bringing the children back.
I eyed the monster before me, watching its green eyes observe me, and I saw the blood run down its chin. It grinned. I felt shivers course over my body, and I had to fight every impulse to turn away, to sink down and quiver, to melt into the floor.
But then in a breath, yes, just one breath, the colors of Lezlie Sloan intensified, and then there was no more blood, no sharp teeth, no stringy skin, no anything. She was just a woman, but at the same time realer. She wasn't a woman at all.
I held out my hands to her, as though to protest. She cocked her head and smiled delicately. "Jack, not everything wondrous in this world is against you." She sounded human again, not disturbing or supernatural, just normal.
"Why didn't you kill him?" I asked.
"That's not my job," she replied.
I considered this. "I'm so sorry I killed her," I said. "And the children. But I was coming here to bring you... them, I mean, back."
"I know," she said. "And that's what you're going to do." She stepped away from me, making her way towards the darkened hallway and the bedrooms. As she stepped, the blood disappeared from the house.
She turned to me, and she beckoned with her hand. It reminded me ever so slightly of Meredith's hand in my room that terrible night.
Still terrified, I followed, but at a distance.
When we arrived at the master bedroom, both children were cleaned of blood, tucked wi
thin the covers of the bed. Only the slits at their throats remained. I looked at my reddened hands, the hands that could heal them, and the blood on them seemed out of place.
Lezlie Sloan motioned towards the children, and I touched each of their foreheads, bringing them back to life. They slept soundly.
"Cyrus is a hard one to clean up after," she said to me. "But we do it all the time."
I watched her climb into the bed beside the children, her clothing and skin now just as spotless as theirs. "Cyrus will hurt you now, you know," she said, pulling the covers tight across her chest, "so much more than he ever has. But you do have to go back."
"I don't want to. I... I can't," I said, shivering.
She looked at me as though she pitied me. "We must all do things we do not want to do. But for some of them, if we do them right, we never have to do them again.
"Besides, if you do not return to him, he will find you."
"What can I do?" I asked her.
"Find help," she said quietly.
She closed her eyes, and as I watched, her skin began to gray along her arms. She solidified along her chest and neck, up to her face. Finally, her whole body was still, gray, and frozen with rigor. The corpse was no longer possessed.
I touched the woman, felt the rush from me enter her, and then she was laying there, sleeping, warm, heated, as though the entire night had never happened.