“What am I?” she asked.

She could not tear her gaze away from the body. She could not stop her feet from moving her closer. She had to see, even though she knew, deep inside knew, that what she would see would destroy her.

Brittney stood over the body. Looked down at it. Shirt torn to ribbons. Puffy lacerated flesh. The marks of a whip.

A terrible animal noise strangled Brittney’s throat. She had been there, on the sand, unconscious when it happened. She’d been right there, just a few feet away when the demon had struck this poor boy.

“The demon,” Tanner said, appearing beside her.

“I have not stopped him, Tanner. I failed.”

Tanner said nothing and Brittney looked at him, pleading. “What is happening to me, Tanner? What am I?”

“You are Brittney. An angel of the Lord.”

“What aren’t you telling me? I know there’s something. I can feel it. I know you’re not telling me everything.”

Tanner did not smile. He did not answer.

“You’re not real, Tanner. You’re dead and buried. I’m imagining you.”

She looked at the damp sand. Two sets of footprints came to this place. Hers. And the poor boy in the surf. But there was a third set as well, not hers, not the boy’s. And this set of footprints did not stretch back across the beach. It was only here. As if it belonged to someone who had materialized out of thin air and then disappeared.

When Tanner still said nothing, Brittney pleaded with him. “Tell me the truth, Tanner. Tell me the truth.” Then, in a trembling whisper, “Did I do this?”

“You are here to fight the demon,” Tanner said.

“How can I fight a demon when I don’t know who or what he is, and when I don’t even know what I am?”

“Be Brittney,” Tanner said. “Brittney was good and brave and faithful. Brittney called on her savior when she felt herself weaken.”

“Brittney was…You said Brittney was,” Brittney said.

“You asked for the truth.”

“I’m still dead, aren’t I?” Brittney said.

“Brittney’s soul is in heaven,” Tanner said. “But you are here. And you will resist the demon.”

“I’m talking to an echo of my own mind,” Brittney said, not to Tanner, to herself. She knelt and put her hand on the wet, tousled head. “Bless you, poor boy.”

She stood up. Faced the town. She would go there. She knew the demon would go there too.

Mary worked on the next week’s schedule in her cramped little office. John stood in the doorway.

In the plaza they were starting to cook food. Mary smelled it, even through the omnipresent stink of pee and poop and finger paint and paste and filth.

Charred, crisping meat. She would need to gag some of it down and do it publicly. Or everyone would look at her and point and whisper “anorexic.”

Crazy. Unstable.

Mary’s losing it.

No longer Mother Mary. Crazy Mary. Off-her-meds Mary. Or on-too-many-meds Mary. Everyone knew now, thanks to Astrid. They all knew. They all could picture it in their heads, Mary searching for Prozac and Zoloft like Gollum chasing the ring. Mary sticking her finger down her throat to vomit up food even while normal people were reduced to eating bugs.

And now they thought she’d been tricked by some fraud. Made a fool of by Orsay.

They thought she was suicidal. Or worse.

“Mary,” John said. “Are you ready?”

He was so sweet, her little brother. Her lying little brother, so sweet and so concerned. Of course he was. He didn’t want to get stuck taking care of all these kids alone.

“That food smells good, huh?” John asked.

It smelled like rancid grease. It smelled sickening.

“Yes,” Mary said.

“Mary.”

“What?” Mary snapped. “What do you want from me?”

“I’m…Look, I’m sorry I lied. About Orsay.”

“The Prophetess, you mean.”

“I don’t think she’s a prophet,” John said, head hung down.

“Why, because she doesn’t agree with Astrid? Because she doesn’t think we just have to be trapped here?”

John moved closer. He put his hand on Mary’s arm. She shook him off.

“You promised me, Mary,” John pleaded.

“And you lied to me,” Mary shot back.

There were tears in her brother’s eyes. “Your birthday, Mary. In an hour. You shouldn’t be wasting time on the schedule, you should be getting ready. You have to promise me you won’t leave me or these kids.”

“I already promised you,” Mary said. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“Mary…,” John pleaded, having run out of words.

“Get the kids ready to go outside,” Mary said. “There’s food being cooked. We have to get our share for the littles.”

THIRTY-SIX

47 MINUTES

WORD HAD GONE out about the cookout. But it wasn’t really necessary. The smell of food cooking was all that was necessary. Albert had arranged it all with his usual efficiency.

Astrid sat on the town hall steps. Little Pete sat a few steps behind her, playing his dead game like he was playing for his life.

Astrid swallowed, nervous. She smoothed the two sheets of paper in her hands. She kept crumpling them unconsciously and then, realizing what she had done, straightening them out. She pulled a pen out of her back pocket, scratched out some words, rewrote them, scratched them out, and started the whole crumple and uncrumple pattern again.