“LEAVE HER ALONE!”

Spencer yells the warning in my defense as I drag my body across the floor, watching as Laveau wearing the ‘Sophie suit’ reaches into the little bag again. I know what’s coming. Another bone, another break. But she’s broken me so many times.

I’ve been tortured before. I’ve died and woken again just to die one more time. And one more time after that. There is nothing she can do that has not already been done. Nothing she can say that she has not said before.

Spencer has not spoken again. He’s not moved closer to me. He is experiencing his own break—not physical, but mental. He’s accepted bits and pieces of what’s going on, but now the full weight of everything is falling down upon him like an acidic, polluted rain.

But that wetness cannot hurt me. Not now.

And, in that moment, I realize that Laveau also has no power over me. I will not let her have power over me anymore. She has no power. She is that rain, falling on stranger grounds than I.

I will no longer submit to her magics.

Looking down at my leg, at the deformed depravity of it, I will myself to not feel the pain. There were times when I have been a nothingness in this house, my body invisible, my mind silent. I have existed within the knots of the wood of the floors, within the hidden knob-and-tube wiring buried in the walls, with the particles of insulation in the attic. If I can be nothingness now, then I cannot be broken.

Breaking nothing is impossible.

Slowly, my leg bends into a normal position. The visible, cream-hued bone sinks back into flesh to be hidden by my skin, which is slowly gaining pinkness again. I nearly laugh, but the quiet sound of a ‘snap’ interrupts me. I gasp, feeling the elbow joint of my left arm rush out of the socket in a sickening squelch. I look up at Laveau, my eyes wide. She’s smiling, a maniacal look on her face.

“You know what this makes me think about, girl? The torture your mother inflicted on my people. On those she considered lesser than, considered property to do with what she would. To think that her daughter has suffered the same fate now. To be cattle, chained and broken and used by its master.” Sophie is dropping the second broken bone onto the floor. I cannot get a clear look, but I think it is the wing of a bird. Fragile, delicate, pale as ivory. “It’s beautiful, delicious karma.”

She is already pulling out a third bone, glowing and fear-inducing, but she has not seemed to notice that my leg is no longer maimed. She is so caught up in the flush of violence, that her vision is compromised.

“I’m not your property,” I grunt out, holding my arm gingerly and willing it to also become that nothingness that cannot be broken.

“The only thing you are is my property,” she hisses, snapping the third bone and causing a wrenching, jolting pain in my chest. A rib this time. It too will become nothing.

In my peripheral vision, Spencer takes a step towards me. My gaze flicks to his face, to the warring emotions written in his eyes. He is a solider, he can’t stand by idle as someone suffers. The rain is barely there now. He is moving past his own terror and confusion. When he takes another step closer, Laveau whirls to face him. She speaks something fast and rushed and Spencer is lifted off his feet and flying through the air to slam against the staircase banisters. He grunts and falls to the ground. His eyes are closed, knocked unconscious, but his chest still rises and falls jerkily. He’s alive.

And this fight is up to me to win. No help will come.

“Leave me alone,” I stammer, forcing my body to move, forcing myself to stand on unsteady legs. “Leave us alone.”

It is then that Laveau sees that my leg is whole once more. It is then that she sees I do not cradle my arm, do not clasp my hands to my chest with its busted rib.

“How? Not possible.” She hisses again, a snake who is realizing his prey will not be squashed so easily. She retrieves another bone and breaks it without hesitation.

This time, I am not damaged. Because I am nothingness, from toes to scalp. I am gone. I am unreal. I am walking illusion.

“No!” She screams, rushing towards me. Towards me... and then through me. I am smoke and mirrors. She is the one who has been tricked this time.

Whispers sound in my mind. The mother with the empty womb. The father desperately searching for his stolen babe. I have always been the subject of their wrath, but I see now. It was never me they were after, never me the subject of their anger. It was her. Laveau.

“You stole their child,” I speak quietly, a hollow sound to the words, an empty space in my own stomach. I feel all of the times that my belly grew with need and life, all the times I came to consciousness with barrenness my steady companion. “To set my spell, to bind me with blood.”

I turn, finding Laveau standing wide-eyed behind me. “You stole their child.”

“What child?” She spits out.

“The husband and wife you trapped in this house, trapped and set to my torture. They come to me, screaming for their baby, hunting and hurting me, but it has always been your crime, hasn’t it? You are no better than my mother. You are the same sort of devil, spending blood and life as though it’s nothing.”

“I am nothing like your bitch of a mother, girl.” She spits at me, rage twisting her face.

“You’re exactly like her! What, you needed sacrifices to do your magic? Are you that talentless?” I’m goading her now, but I do not care. I’m not sure what has allowed me the knowledge of my torturer’s sins, but I am glad for it. It is my weapon now.

“I will kill you.” Laveau reaches into her bag, but finds it empty. Only so many bones, only so much prepared magic.

“You cannot kill me,” I say, resolved in my rightness. “I am dead, aren’t I? My body is already rotted and ruined. It is my soul you tethered to this place. You made me nothingness. You made them nothingness. And the others...” I pause, as realization floods my mind, as if the knowledge has always been inside me, but something has kept a wall in place. Until now. “The children. Like the stolen baby, all taken from their families and used until they were nothing save for husks and twisted, abhorrent souls.”

“They were already dead,” Laveau’s voice is a harsh whisper, yet it fills the space around us with tangible venom. She rushes me again, falling through the etherealness of me to land on the floor. I turn to her, see the wild expression plastered upon her face. “Everything I had to do was worth it. You deserved this suffering.”

“I deserved nothing! And those children, that baby, they deserved to live!”

A flickering of energy at my back draws my attention. It is the man and woman, coming into full focus. They do not look at me, they do not scream for their child or revenge. They have heard. The wife opens her mouth first. “This whole time, we have been in this house with our child, our baby.”

“I saved you from the pain of parenthood. I saved you the horror of the little, ungrateful wretch. You should have seen him, seen how he fought and screamed the older he got. He rejected my teachings, rejected the spells. I was his mother and the bastard child defied me!” Laveau shuffles back across the floor, a spider realizing it is caught up in its own web. I look at her, pity my only emotion. I pity her. I do not hate or fear her now. “And those girls were worthless, whining brats. Human death... so much stronger than animal sacrifice.” Laveau almost seemed wistful at the last.

Behind the couple, children appear. They are no longer demonic, but angelic corporeal beings. They are clean, as if freshly bathed. Smiles make their faces kind. They are not here to attack me now. I point, with a shaking hand, and the couple turns around.

“Andre,” the mother says, immediately melting into tears. “I would recognize you anywhere. You look so like your father.”

The father says nothing, but he launches his body forward with a great heave, only making it a little ways before falling to his knees and pulling his boy into a tight embrace. The two girls hug one another, grieving that they are not loved so, now that they are reminded of the humanness of their spirits. The mother, whose body is whole as she holds both her husband and son, looks up and sees the girls. She beckons them forward. They rush to join the mass of redemption.

I glance quickly at Spencer, still lying near the banister. We will both be redeemed.

“This. Is. My. Prison.” The witch’s words are punctuated, angry, powerful, yanking me away from the solider on the floor. “You will not break from my control!”

“You don’t own them now, Laveau. You’ll never control them again.” I say it with triumph, but my face goes white with fear at her next words.

“There is still something here that heeds my call.”

I have forgotten one thing. The thing I fear most. The final monster.

It comes fast this time, reverse origami on high speed. Flesh. Bone. Blood. Jagged. Broken. It vibrates and fluctuates and appears before me, the twisted thing it has always been. My hold on the nothingness shakes and threatens to give way. But I must stay in control if I am to survive.

It seems to fill every nook and cranny with its body, with its shadow.

There was never hope. How could I think I would ever win against her?

Its tangled mouth with four sets of teeth gapes open, drool extending from its bottom lip. The tri-eyes roll inside their sockets, around and around, as if they are not connected at all. But I know it sees me. I know it smells me. The seven mutant arms reach towards me.

Yet, there is something different. I lean closer, look harder. There is a sprout of fingers trying to emerge from between the shoved-together arms. Another hand. The beast is not one thing, but four.

“Kill her!” Laveau screams, her voice haunting the room with its tremor. “Kill her!”

I do not sit, waiting for the inevitable this time. I walk towards the creature, my own hands outstretched. It does not want to hurt me now, no matter its creator’s urgings. I look at it and it looks at me with its three eyes. It is not pain that is making me see it now, the similarity to my lost beloved.

Plunging myself between the seven fully-extended arms, I stretch my fingers and find that eighth appendage. It greets me like a friend. We clasp onto one another and I feel relief flood through me, and it is not just my own relief. I begin to pull. Because I know now, as I’ve somehow known the truth about the other specters that have haunted me these years, that this creature is in pain. And that pain belongs to one I love.

I pull until I see wrist. I pull until I see elbow. I pull until all eight arms are moving and free. And then I let go of the single hand and I find two arms that are identical in skin tone. I wrap my hands just above the elbow joint and I begin to yank again. I pull until I see the crown of a head. I pull until the head is birthed and I see shoulders. I pull until I see torso and waist and hips and legs and finally, at the vision of ankles, the man I have extracted falls atop me.

Richard. God, it’s Richard.

“Marie,” he croaks out, brushing hair from my face.

“No, you’re dead. You shouldn’t be here.” White-hot tears slip down my cheeks. “You’ve been here? Here all this time?”

Like the stolen child. Laveau trapped Richard’s soul into this warped beast. Made him torture me. It was another level of her cruelty.

“There are others. We have to get them out.” Richard turns from me, grabs two more sets of arms and pulls. He makes it look easy. He’s stronger than me. He was always so strong. I let him unweave the three other men that have been merged by magic and malice. I turn to Laveau.

It’s a mercy Spencer is still prone and unconscious. No battlefield scene can explain the tumult around him.

“Stop! Stop ruining my creation!” Laveau is trying to scream, but the words fall flat. As her spell fades, so does her power.

“You have no power over me,” I repeat. “It’s over, Laveau. This is over.”

The witch who has been my captor is cowering on the floor, shrunken into herself in every way possible. She is tired-looking, haggard. The power of this house has kept her young. I can see her now, see the truth behind the face of the girl she stole. Sophie.

“Get out of her,” I command. I command, because I have power now. The life-force that seals her magic ebbs. Her spells are fading into oblivion. And so will she.

She shakes her head weakly, defiant to the last.

“Get out of her!” I scream, my words booming and launching off of walls to slap her with each syllable.

Sophie’s body seems to shake and become unfocused. Waves of energy float away from her skin and then back again, sinking down. Her eyes riot a bright red. Laveau is still trying to fight, but it’s over.

It’s over. I’m sure of it. I can feel the hold of the spell slipping from me. Like chains slipping from my arms.

“Get out!” I yell once more. And this time, she listens. She cannot resist.

Laveau’s essence is now separate from Sophie—who is still alive, breathing heavily on the hardwoods with her eyes tightly shut. “Impossible.” Laveau’s voice is barely audible. “You cannot do this.”

“I have,” is all I say.

Tremors begin to trail up and down Laveau’s body. She shakes as if she’s having a seizure, and the floor beneath her body cracks and begins to open, exposing a dark abyss. The darkness lights with flame, and she screams. She screams this time, as fire-born hands reach up to wrap around her torso.

“A soul for power. Power for a soul.” A disembodied voice calls quietly.

And then she is gone, yanked into hell. Hell, where she belongs. I can only hope she will see my mother there.

When Laveau is finally gone for good, I subconsciously release my need to be nothingness. I don’t mean to, hadn’t thought about it, but now I realize in the absence of nothing, is something. I am something. My limbs are flesh-hued and solid. My hair is lustrous and auburn, begging to be brushed into a shining plait.

My eyes first go to Spencer, who is awake now and staring at me. “Holy shit,” he says. “I had sex with... that.”

In the afterglow of triumph, his shock strikes me as funny. I chuckle, my heart lighter than it’s been in forever, and the soldier doesn’t know the half of it.

Then I look to Richard, Richard and the three other men who have appeared, extracted from the misshapen beast who has tortured me these years.

“Richard,” I breathe out, racing towards him. Sophie groans, and I know Spencer will go to her. The living for the living and the dead for the dead.

“I’m so sorry, my love.” Richard reaches for me, takes me in his arms. “She made us. I tried to resist, tried to stop the others from harming you, but she kept me only half-emerged. Half able to do anything at all.”

“It’s not your fault.” My face is pressed against his neck, against the realness of him, even though I know we are only souls. “I should be apologizing. My mother... I’m the reason you died.”

“I would die a million times to love you once,” he says.

“How did Laveau get to you?” Tears again. My heart is filled with tears.

“She called my soul from the other side. From purgatory. I existed in-between, listening to your mother sell you to save her from her own sins. And I could do nothing.” Richard is crying now, holding me close. I can hear his heart, his heart that is not actually there, thumping in his chest.

“What happened?” Sophie’s groggy voice sounds near us. She gasps and I can hear her moving. “Where am I?”

“Sophie, you’re at my house,” Spencer says.

I turn to see Spencer supporting Sophie’s body, an arm wrapped around her shoulders.

“But,” she hesitates, swiping a hand across her eyes, “who are you?”

“It’s Spencer. Sophie, don’t you remember me?” There’s a catch in Spencer’s voice.

She shakes her head. And now she is crying. “I don’t remember anything. I don’t even know what day it is. I went out with my friend, Linda, and that’s the last thing I remember.” She moves away from Spencer. “I need to call my boyfriend. I need to see him.”

My throat catches, realizing what Spencer is going to lose. Me, to the death I should have been left to so long ago. Sophie, to the life she had before Laveau’s possession. I hate this. I don’t want to leave him to loneliness. I worry he’ll spiral, lost inside his past, inside the pain.

How long had Laveau been Sophie?

“What’s that light?” One of the men from the monster speaks, pointing. Richard and I turn to look.

The light is warm, like it is full of everything good and kind.

“The next room,” the mother says, holding her little boy tightly against her bosom. “The next place, the place that’s been waiting for us.”

“Heaven,” the others whisper together.

And they begin to walk towards the invitation to peace.

Richard smiles at me. “We can finally be together, as we always should have been.” He reaches for my hand.

“Yes.” My eyes go to Spencer who is rocked back on his heels watching Sophie use his phone to call the man she really loves. There’s so much pain upon his face. I can’t leave him here.

Alone. I’ve lived alone.

“Marie?” A note of confusion is in my beloved’s voice.

“Richard, I need a moment. Only a moment and then we’ll be together. Forever.” The last word makes my stomach hurt. I have loved Richard, loved him all my life, but Spencer woke something in me that I cannot ignore, that I know I will regret leaving.

Richard’s gaze moves from me to Spencer and back again. He releases my hand. “I’ll be waiting.” He is giving me the privacy I’ve asked for, walking away from me to wait by the heavenly light. Richard was always too good, too kind for me.

Spencer was the key. He broke the spell, and I can’t leave him behind so easily. I stand up, moving my corporeal self towards the man who helped me finally break free of my prison.

“Spencer?” My voice is calm. I do not let any anguish seep into my words. He has enough sadness of his own to carry.

He looks up, his own eyes threatening rain as he listens to Sophie trying to explain where she is to her lover. “Marie,” he says simply.

Swallowing, I fight the knot in my throat. I need to say this, need to close this door. “I have loved you while you’ve been in this house. Loving you saved me.” I cannot control the quaver in my voice.

“We saved each other,” Spencer is looking past me though, at something near the windows. I turn to see what it is. There is a man in uniform. “We saved each other.” Spencer speaks again. Through me towards the other ghost that has haunted his every action.

“Goodbye,” I whisper. “And thank you.”

Richard kisses me when I return to him. He kisses me like we have lived a life together, full and happy. Try as I might, I cannot give myself fully over to the kiss, or the sensations it awakes in my body. It makes me think of Spencer, of my first time. Richard should have been my first, but I am glad that it was with the broken man behind me who gave me strength.

“I’ll go first,” Richard says tenderly when he pulls away. Perhaps he has seen my hesitation and felt my reluctance to leave this place. You would think, after all this time, after all the torture, I would not wish to remain. And I love Richard. I love him so much.

But Spencer, the blood in his veins, the beat of his living heart, it calls me like a siren. I want to feel him again, before I am forever gone.

Richard kisses me once more, soft and sweet, before walking towards the glowing portal. The others who haunted this house, courtesy of Laveau, have already entered the beyond place.

I stand there a moment after Richard disappears. I look at Spencer. He is staring into the distance, tears rolling down his cheeks. He is dealing with his own loss, too occupied by a brothers’ reunion to stop me from leaving. Would he even stop me?

Taking a deep breath, I walk that first step forward. I can do this. “It’s time to leave.” I’m speaking to myself, no one is listening. “I can do this.”

I’m almost there, so close, and the expanse of light sparks and fizzles. I shrink back from it. Reaching a hand out, I find that the glowing is solid. I cannot move through it. It will not let me pass. I don’t understand.

The others passed through. Even Richard.

Turning, I find Spencer. He is hugging the man in uniform. Then the man walks towards me. He nods and enters the light, but not before looking at Spencer one more time and saluting.

But why can’t I? I raise my hand again, press it against the glow once more. It doesn’t yield, not even a fraction. It’s as hard as the barrier Spencer shattered to free me.

I glance at Spencer. His shoulders curve forward, and he’s studying his toes. He sniffs and moves to the window. Then he turns to stare at me, the ache of loneliness beads off him like sweat. I want to cool him, fill his need, the way he did mine.

That night. The night I gave him all of me.

Honking interrupts my thoughts. I hear Sophie say something and then the front door opening and slamming closed. I’d all but forgotten about her, the woman possessed by my longtime enemy. Moments later, a blue truck is peeling out of the driveway, carrying Sophie away from us. I love the absence of her.

Spencer flinches at the slamming and the vehicle rushing from his house, but then he says my name, and it is wondrously warm and fills every crevice of my soul. Maybe I cannot leave for Heaven because my work here is unfinished. Spencer needs me for a while longer.