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Yeah, so do I… I thought, blinking slowly. I couldn’t think straight at all now. Where was I?

“What if she’s possessed?” Lauren asked, a tremor in her voice.

“She might be,” Martha said, nodding sagely. “Let’s go to the chapel and pray. Jolie, do you think you can manage that?”

“Yes. Praying. Chapel.” I barely uttered the words. Martha and Lauren looked at me and then briefly shot glances at one another. Glances which suggested I’d lost my mind.

I had, hadn’t I?

They led me into the church and took me up to the front. I knelt before the altar and gazed up at the stained glass windows. I knew they were fake and there was nothing behind them but dirt, but they looked real with the little lights shining behind them. My father had put a lot of money and effort into building this place, evil or not.

Speaking of my father… he was staring down at me right now. Not the real man, but an oil painting version of him. The canvas had been hung on the wall beyond the altar so that my father could look down on everyone in judgment, as if he were the only God in this place.

I was suddenly overcome by uncontrollable fits of laughter. I remembered from when I was a child that other churches had depictions of Jesus and angels throughout them… but ours just had a giant painting of my father instead. It was so ridiculous.

“Jolie, why are you laughing?” Martha asked sharply.

“I don’t know,” I lied, gasping for breath as the laughter shook my chest. “It’s nothing.”

“I really hope the Devil hasn’t gotten into her,” I heard Lauren whisper from beside her.

“Jolie, have you seen anything else lately, apart from whatever you’ve seen today? Like visions? Or have you heard voices in your mind?” Martha asked.

Her voice sounded distant. It took me a moment to register her words, but when I did, I stopped laughing. It felt like someone had reached inside my chest and hollowed it out.

My recurring nightmares… could they be visions?

I closed my eyes, trying to process the new idea. My mind was working sluggishly, turning duller and hazier from the pills with every moment that slipped by. It seemed to take a thousand years just to process one thought, but they kept coming anyway, and I kept wondering.

What if my father wasn’t the evil monster I’d recently begun to view him as, courtesy of Mason? What if he truly had visions sent to him by our God, and the gift was hereditary? All the terrible images sent to me at night lately could be the first stirrings of my own visions for the world.

That meant…

Nausea made my head spin all of a sudden. Bile bubbled up in my throat. I got up and stumbled forward before throwing up all over the altar.

“The Prophet once said that’s a sign of the Devil,” Martha muttered. She left the room for a moment and returned with a cup of water. “Here, drink this,” she murmured, pressing it into my hand. There was a troubled yet curious expression on her face.

Lauren fretted nearby, anxiously picking at her nails. “What do we do?” she asked, eyes wide.

Martha cast another curious glance at me. Then she looked over at Lauren. “Let’s wait,” she said. “She might just be sick. We need to be sure before we tell the Elders that it’s a demonic possession.”

“Okay.” Lauren turned her attention to me. “How do you feel now, Jolie?”

I couldn’t reply. I felt too weak. Too dizzy and confused. Perhaps I waspossessed.

I crumpled back to the floor and stared up at the portrait of my father again. In my mind, I heard his voice faintly calling to me from the pulpit, telling me how the Devil didn’t come dressed as a demon. He came dressed as everything a person could ever dream of in order to tempt them to the dark side. Once he had them ensnared, he would finally show his true nature, and by then it would be too late to get rid of him.

Mason’s face immediately popped into my mind. He was everything I’d ever dreamed of. Everything I thought I wanted. He was perfect.

Perhaps a little too perfect…

A chill ran through my blood. What if I’d been wrong about him? What if he was the Devil and he’d deceived me all along, exploiting all my weak spots? What if he’d come to me dressed as everything I desired, just to tear me away from my duties as a good woman?

I’d fallen so easily. With his handsome face and honeyed tongue, he’d convinced me to turn my back on everything I knew and commit nearly every sin described in the pages of His Word.

I was sure I had a good reason to believe everything he said, sure I had a good reason to sin with him, but when my mind was so foggy, I simply couldn’t grasp it. It was like trying to scoop up water with a net; the thoughts just slid away whenever I tried to capture and examine them.

Another thing my father used to say popped into my mind as clear as day. Just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may be led astray from your devotion to me.

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