“Hello?”

  Margaret froze at the word. The voice came from within the house. She snatched the hand towel and wiped the rest of the soap from her face. A man’s voice called again from beyond her bedroom. Margaret plucked her robe from where it lay strewn across the bed and hurried down the hall to the living room. Benny’s room door was closed. It was still quiet inside. If he woke back up, she’d need to spend another hour singing and giving back rubs to help him fall back asleep.

  She crept passed her purse, then stopped, and rummaged inside, pulling out the pepper spray her father had given her when she moved into the small house in Houston’s Third Ward. Another sound—a car passing on the street—louder and more distinct. Was the door was open?

  She turned the corner. A man in greasy coveralls stood back a pace from the open front door. ‘Cal’ embroidered on his chest. He stood there holding James’s hand. The boy stood in his long sleep shirt with his bulky nighttime diaper, giving him comical proportions.

  “Sorry to bother you ma’am, I found this little guy in the street pulling on your car door.”

  Relief, terror, embarrassment, and anger strucker like a wave all at once. She pocketed the pepper spray before the man noticed and swept up the toddler.

  She started crying.

  “Better be careful, ma’am. You’ve got a smart boy there,” Cal said as he stepped backward. An expression flashed across his broad face as she closed the door. She could read the question written there as plain as a billboard: How does a woman lose her baby outside in the middle of the night? As soon as the door latched closed, she threw the deadbolt. She turned, knocking over a little pile of books. Two romance novels and a thick black book. Perplexed, Margaret stared at them in the middle of the entryway. Until she realized James used the books to reach the lock. She shuffled back to his room. There was a mountain of stuffed animals—presents from her parents, always stuffed animals—inside his crib. A few more on the ground—a landing pad for his escape. Margaret kicked the pile of stuffed animals under the crib. She scooped out the rest and roughly dumped him back in his crib. He cried—ot on the street, or holding the big stranger’s hand. He cried when she put him back to bed. She swore, feeling guilty about the way she dropped him in the crib.

  “You brought it on yourself.”

  A streak of light caught her eye—the street light leaking through the curtain. She peered through the slit. A white, battered old truck coughed to life. Cal cast one last look at the little house with the delinquent mother and shook his head. The truck rolled away.

  James could cry himself to back sleep tonight. She was in no mood to soothe the boy. Not when she was struggling to keep it together herself. Especially when the boy was the cause of some of those emotions. Especially when she was the cause of most of those emotions.

  She stalked to the kitchen. Deep in the top cabinet above the refrigerator, she hid a bottle of whiskey. She grabbed the bottle and one of the short glasses next to it. She poured two fingers—a third—then took a swig straight from the bottle. She capped the bottle and placed it back in its hiding place. Mother of the year over here, she thought. Just as she brought the cup to her lips, the boy’s father came to mind. Not that they really drank at the mansion. It wasn’t some cult with starry-eyed idealism. Just hope and then faith. And then… The first drink hit her stomach with a familiar pang. Her jaw bunched as the memory of doctors and their bills flooded her head. Sitting there clutching her stomach on the examination table, when the dull ache became a constant in her life. She forced open her mouth, drank the contents in two gulps, and looked at the empty glass. She reached up to the cabinet again. She doubled over as the pain lanced through her midsection. When it subsided behind the growing warmth, the veil of alcohol, she grabbed the bottle.

  The baby quieted down quickly. She snatched the monitor from the counter and spun the volume dial to its highest setting. There was the fitful stirring of fabric but nothing else. Margaret took her glass with her to the living room. Turning off the lights as she passed. Her eyes fell on the avalanche of books by the front door. The Western romances reminded her of the boy’s father, Jimmy, what could have been. She clung to the stories. They were beautiful fiction compared to the painful memory. Reality and fantasy fought for the same place in her mind, only to force each other out into the open. Preferable lies. Brief beautiful pain.

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  Like the whiskey and the cancer cells fighting in her stomach.

  The other book, though. A Bible? She didn’t pack one. From her parents? The back cover was blank and black. She picked it up. Old cracked leather… Margaret flipped it over. Blinding terror washed through her. The book. Gilded lines scratched out indescribable characters—a language best left unspoken. Her hand trembled over the cover, keeping time with her quickening pulse. She split the book open in the middle.

  The handwritten words swam on the page—english interspersed among the incantations. She couldn’t read it without hearing the Boyle’s passionate voice coming deep from his chest. God and the beast were the same. Blood of life spilled and spilling. Forests coming to life. We drink, and it gives us life. Life to the fullest. We must be as pure as God, purified by the terrible beast. When he returns, he will collect us as his children, clean and holy, hearts beating with the same blood as his own. Can you see it? Can you hear it, Margaret?

  The book fell from her hands. The slap of pages as it landed between her feet. Margaret stared at the thing on the floor as she stepped back. A cry sounded from the nursery, shrill and otherworldly through the monitor. She picked up the book, breathing hard. She thumbed through the pages but couldn’t find the one she just read.

  How did this get here? She stared at the book, frozen to the spot. Margaret shut her eyes and drained the glass of liquor.

  She dropped the cup heavily on the side table. Everything seemed to slow, like the air pushed back against her movements. She descended on the books. The novels joined the glass on the table. Margaret marched the tome to the kitchen garbage. She stomped the pedal, flinging the lid open. The book tumbled from her hand and landed on James’s unfinished cheesy egg breakfast like a missile. Releasing the pedal, she scowled. Then she thought better of it. With one smooth motion, the trash bag was out of the can and dangling from her hand as she marched outside. Trash collection came in the morning. Horror-wrapped curiosity wondered how it got into her house in the first place, but she thrust her chin up against the smell of spoiled food. She stood in front of the large trash receptacle and tied two knots in the tabs at the top of the bag. Margaret opened the lid and dumped the wretched book into the can. Fear still prickled in the back of her mind, and she yanked the large can by the handle and rolled it down to the curb. When it dropped heavily off the curb, Rozie caught a whiff of cigarette smoke in the breeze. Her gaze traveled upwind, but none of her neighbors were out. Nothing but cars lining the road. Outside in her robe, suddenly self-conscious, and keenly aware of the growing static on the monitor, she rushed back to her front door, feeling eyes on her back the entire way.

  She hurried back into her son’s room. He stood clutching the rail of his crib like a prisoner in his cell, sobbing. Shushing him, she scooped James up and began the long process of putting him to bed, again. A song and back rubs. Quieting down to a hum, as she cradled him low in her arms, until she slowly lowered him back onto the mattress. More back rubs. More humming, swaying as she drew out the nursery rhyme.

  The street light outside still sliced between the curtains. As she swayed, the light drew her deeper into the whiskey-soaked trance as she passed back and forth through the beam. She reached for the fabric to tug it closed when another, smaller light caught her eye. A flame flickered to life In one of the cars parked across the street, then the small orange dot of a smoldering cigarette. The angle of the street light kept the occupant in shadow, but the burning orb swiveled and held while the driver watched Margaret’s house. A chill ran up her back and down her arms. The ember grew bright, tipped out the window, and then back between the lips of the shaded figure. She saw the long-fingered hand illuminated by the movement. A flash of a memory. Long fingers, wrapped in wrinkled gray skin, reaching out of the water. Margaret shuddered.

  Back in her bedroom, she set her glass under the lamp, threw her robe back onto the bed, and pulled back the blankets. She turned on the lamp beside her table before flipping the switch on the wall.

  Margaret yanked the curtain closed and turned off the lamp. Who? They all died. Or ran aground—no good broadcasting any connections to the death cult in East Texas. Brother Gary and Sister Helen were in Galveston, but they were smart enough to let bygones be bygones. Right? Were there others?

  Alone in her bedroom, the gnawing, dark corner of her mind opened up. She let herself think about the book. How had it gotten into the house? As quickly as it came, it vanished beneath a mother’s guilt. Cal. The raw memory crashed back around her, and again the emotions welled up, knotting in her throat. Her head hung. Fists clenched the bedding. She took a deep, shuddering breath. And it burst out in long aching sobs. Until the alcohol seeped beyond her stomach and lulled her to sleep.