I killed Father Boyle.

  Everything hurt as Margaret clutched the baby to her chest. So small. Her flat feet pounded the dry dirt as she shuffled to the barn. She panted. After months of feeling so full, her abdomen sagged empty.

  They were dead. Jimmy was dead. Father Boyle killed him. Boyle killed them all. She could feel the cold blood caked on her face and neck. Her dress stuck to her body where it had soaked through to the skin. The baby.

  Her mind raced to her old Crown Victoria—more gray than silver. Prayed that the car still worked, then froze, chiding herself. Margaret looked back over her shoulder. No praying. Not here. Candles still burned in the windows upstairs. Orange flickered hungrily behind the basement window’s curtains as the color grew, as old dried wood caught fire. One last act of payback, the lone clear thought she had while running from the mansion.

  One shaking step at a time, she descended the front steps. The white barn shone blue in the moonlight. They had converted it into the women’s house two years earlier—the same year the pain had vanished. Her whole body shook as she waddled in the darkness, trying not to think about the umbilical cord catching at the bottom of her white robes.

  She was halfway down the path when another wave of nausea struck her. Margaret doubled over and clenched her teeth. There was nothing left in her stomach. Muscles tensed in another contraction. Different. Easier. She fell to her knees, one hand in the dirt, the other still holding the baby. From her abdomen outward, everything tensed. She didn’t scream, not this time. With a grunt, she tensed. What was left in her belly, the placenta, dropped between her knees. Margaret sobbed. Giving birth here, alone in this cursed place.

  A monstrous howl filled the air. The sound broke through the pounding in her ears. Her head swam as she peered back over her shoulder. The baby, clutched in her arms, let out its own warbling cry.

  She gasped. The mansion lurched, and the roof rose another forty feet into the air. A black cathedral dripping with blood and water. The bricks that lined the path grew to the size of automobiles. The trees surrounding the clearing grew into the black sky, locking her in a wooden fortress. Margaret shut her eyes, screaming the hallucination away.

  When she opened them, the stone Victorian returned to its normal size. No, not normal. The hallucinations unmasked normal. What she saw now was the illusion. The face it wore for the uninitiated.

  A fresh wave of adrenaline. Clarity flooded her brain. She looked down at the umbilical cord and shifted the baby to her hip. With the wavy black blade, she sawed at the slippery rope of flesh. She cursed as it slipped in her clumsy fingers. Margaret fumbled with the end that dangled from the infant. She tied a loose knot, and grimacing, she clamped the end in her teeth and pulled it tight. Margaret rose, but her head swam.

  She reached the converted barn. Inside, small nubs of wax spilled down the nightstands, flames eager to escape the confines of feeble wicks just like in the mansion. The room vibrated with the flickering candlelight. Or had the beast broken free? She spun to face the door. Just the candles. And the latent image of staring into another realm. Like the afterimage of the sun, burned into her retinas, viewed through a thin screen. A tattered veil that Father Boyle threatened to tear down.

  When she reached her bed, Margaret ached as she set the baby down and tugged the red-stained ceremony dress over her head. She wailed as the sticky fabric caught on her sagging belly, then her shoulders. The seams ripped as she yanked and threw it aside. Margaret grabbed the sweat-stiff clothes she wore that morning in the garden. Innocent filth. Honest dirt. She picked up the baby and ran to the bathroom at the end of the long hall, heedless of her naked body. A clean towel hung on the rod next to the shower. She threw the lever of the faucet and stared in the small oval mirror. Dried blood caked her face, black in the dim light. Cracks followed the lines on her brow and around her mouth. Clean rivulets cut through the blood where her tears had fallen down her face.

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  The sound of the flowing water caught her attention. She watched the water circle the drain. Wash in the tainted water? She forced her eyes shut and thrust the curtain back. Scalding water ran down her back as she shielded the newborn. A month ago, she would have relished the heat as it worked its way into the tight knots of her shoulders, but now she knew it was the messenger. Living essence that, after three years in the wilderness, flowed through her own veins.

  Margaret cranked the knob back until the water ran cool. She turned, scrubbed away the blood from her body and, carefully, the crimson handprint on her son’s head. The new mother hoped, dared not pray, that this one act wouldn’t push her over the edge. She squeezed her eyes shut so hard that lights glimmered in the darkness. Clean now, but a tainted clean.

  Delicately, painfully slowly, she ran the bar of soap over her body and while tears fell unchecked, the boy’s. She swaddled the baby in a towel and set him on the floor before drying herself. Margaret threw the baggy button-up around her shoulders and fastened two of the buttons. Every heartbeat pounded in her core. She pulled up the jeans and did the belt that just barely sat on the ghost of her hips, notches tighter than she had that morning.

  The baby mewled. She snatched him off the ground and ran back to her bed. Margaret yanked her shirt open, he latched on. They sat there in the silence. The black night gave way to orange as the fire grew outside. After a few minutes, he detached, and she shifted him to the other side.

  Boyle left Jimmy for last. Her lover. The boy’s father. Boyle brought him in front of her, knife at his throat. And, just like the others, Jimmy’s eyes rolled back, enraptured… enthralled. Boyle sliced and blood spurted. He let Jimmy fall at her feet. Father Boyle took the same crooked knife and jabbed straight through his hand and placed the bloody palm on her son’s head. A long, dark smear. Then he placed the knife in her hand.

  The baby finished. Her breasts ached just a little less. Margaret pulled him from the towel and wrapped him in the blanket. She jammed her feet inside the dirt-caked sneakers, stuffing in the laces. She stood and threw open the trunk. Her old knapsack sat crumpled at the bottom. Margaret pulled out the bag and rummaged for her old belongings. Wallet, the one photo of her and Jimmy smiling, arms wrapped around each other. Her hand brushed something hard and heard a metallic jangle. She snatched the keys and raced to the front door, the newborn clutched to her chest.

  Across the clearing, she could see the flames licking the first-floor windows. Black smoke belched into the sky, illuminated by the raging fire below, hiding the floors above. Standing on the threshold, she glanced back into the barn. A tiny candle sat on the windowsill next to her, wax pooling onto the wooden floor. She plucked it from the sill and held it against the gauzy curtains. The flame leaped to the coarse cotton and blossomed to the ceiling. She turned and walked out the door.

  Everyone’s cars sat next to the old barn—their various shapes and colors masked under a uniform coat of windblown dust and pollen. Neglected, most of them sat low on their tire rims, flat, cracked rubber hidden in the tall grass. She breathed a sigh of relief. The tires of her old sedan still held air. The windows remained intact. Her heart hammered in her chest as she unlocked the door and threw it open with a grating whine. Out the window, a second column of smoke grew toward the stars. She slid the key into the ignition, paused, then turned. The starter wheezed–engine turning again and again. The red lights of the dashboard flickered to life, and the chime of the seat belt warning chirped merrily. Margaret released and then tried again. The engine coughed and held, rumbling steadily. She held her baby close and threw the lever into gear.

  Margaret drove as fast as she could on the hard-packed road. She couldn’t afford to stop now–she’d rather die on foot trying to escape than stay another minute. Whatever was left of the order was dead, she hoped. The final ritual. Boyle had taken their faith and plunged a knife into it. Selfish. Loyalty that he shattered. What had he done? Rocks still bound the beast, their wild god. The one relief she had from the night: it could not escape.

  A mile after turning off the unpaved road, she gasped. Her foot slid off the accelerator, and the car rolled into the grass. Red and blue lights whirred in the distance. The dam that held everything back burst. She sobbed. Tears blurring the flashing lights.

  Boyle killed them all and let her kill him in return.