Page 18 of Heart, Haunt, Havoc
They poked at their dinner. Tension filtered through the silence, disrupted by shifting silverware and the crackling fire. Outside, wind howled, sending glittery snow through the pitch.
“I know nothing about you,” they said. When Colin glanced at them, he caught a distinct pinkness glowing on their copper cheeks. They pushed their glasses up their nose with a bent knuckle. “You’ve been in my head; you’ve been in…” They paused, clearing their throat.
“What do you want to know?” Colin asked.
“Tell me about your mistake.”
He forked more macaroni into his mouth and chewed, considering the truth in comparison to something,anythingelse. It’d been a long time since Colin had told the story, even longer since he’d thought about that brisk morning six years ago with a sober mind. Lying would’ve been much,mucheasier.
“Liquor, first. If you wouldn’t mind.”
Bishop quirked their head and the blanket fell from around their shoulders. “Bourbon or mezcal?”
“Surprise me.”
They shuffled into the kitchen, lighting their way with their phone’s flashlight, and returned carrying two short glasses and a bottle filled with amber liquid under their arm. They poured a generous amount into both glasses and pushed one across the floor with their foot.
“Surprise,” they said, feigning playfulness. “Are we sipping or drinking?”
Colin tipped the glass against his mouth and swallowed. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and knocked the glass across the floor.
“Drinkingthensipping,” he rasped.
Bishop nodded curtly, raising their eyebrows. They poured him another double-shot. “Got it.”
He adjusted on the floor and turned his gaze to the fire. Sent the bourbon swirling along the sides of the glass. Swallowed around the hot sting left in his throat and touched the rigid scab on his neck. Anxiety needled him, prickling on the underside of his skin, but he heaved a quiet sigh and nodded.
“I found God in a woman named Isabelle,” he said. His voice almost cracked over her name. His tongue was unused to making the sound. “She was my first everything. I considered myself an exorcist back then. Trained with the church, followed my faith, worked with Isabelle to deliver innocent people from unholy circumstances…” He paused, allowing liquor to soak his bottom lip. The memory pulverized his heart. “Until a demon leapt from an eleven-year-old boy and landed inside her.”
Hello priest.Colin remembered her chapped lips spreading for an unfamiliar voice.Your whore tastes like crushed figs. Like sex and cigarettes. I can smell her cunt under your fingernails.
He sipped his drink. “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but possession happens quickly. One moment, Isabelle Washington was laughing with me in the car, listening to Critical Role, and the next she was tied to a chair, snapping her teeth like a crocodile. Her skin flaked, her voice faded, her hair came away in fistfuls. I worked on her for seven months—seven months.” He drained the rest of his drink and exhaled sharply. “And when I finally got her back, she was lucid for long enough to ask me to end it.”Please, Colin. Her trembling voice beamed through his mind. Colin physically recoiled, wincing terribly.Have mercy on me, darling. Deliver me. He glanced at the tips of Bishop’s fingers and heard a smallclinkas they leaned over and poured him more bourbon. “Thank you.”
Bishop set the bottle down and lifted their own glass. “When you sayend it—”
“I cut her throat,” Colin said. Each word landed like a bullet. He rested the glass against his mouth, staring at the floor in front of Bishop’s bent knees. “She died in a barn on a Sunday morning. Five-foot-six, ninety-eight pounds, eyelashes plucked, teeth loose, fingernails torn. I have…” His voice fractured and he cleared his throat. “I have a picture of her, if you’d like to know what she looked like before.”
They furrowed their brow, lips parted, wide eyes searching his face. Their throat flexed. “If you don’t mind.”
Colin swiped his finger across his phone and opened the photo app, scrolling until he found the lonesome folder at the bottom of a long list. He hovered over the first of several images. Swallowed around the sea urchin in his throat. Tapped the picture and turned the phone around, displaying Isabelle Washington in the passenger’s seat, window down, brunette hair roped into a loose braid, gold-framed sunglasses glinting in the summer sunshine. She was grinning, one finger hooked through the chain around her neck, crucifix dangling over her thumb.
Despite the whipping storm and the crowded, watchful house, Colin and Bishop fell into a shared silence. Bishop craned forward, blinking at the image of Isabelle. Colin buckled under the weight of missing her. Her absence hollowed him. Stayed with him. Haunted him. He swiped his thumb across his watery lashes and set his phone face-down on the floor, tucking her smile away.
“I failed her, and I failed God,” Colin said, simply. He chewed on his tingling lip and let the alcohol rushing through his veins shoo the pain from his heart. “So, I distanced myself from the Vatican and worked alone after that. Cleaning people and their houses, joining camera crews at active sites, bartering with angels for a chance at borrowed power. Exorcism stopped being a practice and became a tool.”
Bishop tilted their head, bourbon-flushed and bathed in bouncing firelight. “You barter with angels?”
“Yes. Your power is ancestral, mine is permitted. My tattoos are protection, but they’re also direct links to the High Court. The only reason I can banish and extract is because God’s first creation allows it.”
“And you thinkGodwon’t listen?”
Colin pursed his lips. “God stopped listening six years ago.”
They ran their mouth across the edge of their glass, sipping gingerly. Their bare feet stretched, and the blanket scooped around their shoulders, exposing the round neck on their thin sweatshirt. They took their glasses off and cleaned both lenses with the blanket. Quiet settled again. Snow fell, ghosts eavesdropped, and Colin wanted nothing more than to scream.Give her back to me. Give him back to them.But Isabelle was gone, and Lincoln had made his choice.
“You lied to get me here,” Colin said.
Bishop lifted their gaze. “Yeah, I did.”
