Chapter Forty-Eight
Helen knew it was pointless. She couldn’t fight the darkness with a steel blade. She lowered the ax to waist level but kept
her grip on it firm.
“Isaac, please,” she pleaded.
“Please what? Please touch you? Please hurt him? Please don’t? Please do?” Isaac’s tone was crueler than she’d ever heard
it, and yet it spoke to the hollow place deep inside her.
For a long time, they just stared at each other.
Finally, Helen asked, “Why are you haunting us?”
Isaac cocked his head, as if surprised that she didn’t know. “Because you asked me to.”
Her shoulders slumped and her grip on the ax loosened until it slid from her grasp and landed softly in the grass next to
her.
He was right, and she was tired of pretending that Isaac had been entirely uninvited, that she’d been the lady in the carriage
and he’d been the highwayman. She was a raider of the night too. In her grief, she’d kicked down doors that should have stayed
closed.
Isaac smiled. “I made you something.”
“What?”
He walked to her and put his arm around her. “I’ll show you.”
The worst part was that she wondered what it was. She wanted to see.
As he guided her across the yard toward the garden, he gently placed a lit candlestick in her hand. He hadn’t been holding
it a moment earlier, but there it was now.
“You can do anything, can’t you?” she said, staring at the candle.
“Maybe not anything.” His hand, featherlight on her shoulder, squeezed. “Or maybe I can. Does that excite you?”
She realized mutely that all of the visions she’d been having—they were Isaac’s creations.
As they got closer to their destination, Helen knew where he was taking her.
The grave.
She held up the burning candle as they both peered down into the hole. It was the perfect size to hold her body forever. It
would be a premature burial.
“I can help you go there,” Isaac said.
Helen shook her head, but it wasn’t very convincing.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” She could hear a trace of amusement in his voice.
“No.”
“No?”
“I don’t know.”
Isaac showed Helen his hand. The revolver rested in it.
“It’s my brother’s fault I left this world prematurely,” he said.
“It was an accident,” she said weakly.
“Doesn’t matter. He was mad and he was reckless. That makes it his fault,” Isaac said, and Helen couldn’t help but feel the
slightest pang of sympathy for him. “I wasn’t ready to go. But you, you can choose.”
She felt a trembling in her core. Fear first. But temptation second, and the second wave crashed in stronger than the first. Delicately, she took the gun from him and stared down at it. It felt warm and inviting in her hand, like a piece of poetry. That wasn’t how a gun was supposed to feel.
She looked up at Isaac, just in time to see the shock of impact—crack!—as Wade slammed a shovel into his back.
Isaac stumbled forward to the edge of the grave, but it was as if a force field prevented him from falling in.
Wade swung again at Isaac, but the shovel made contact only with the force field and created a rush of energy that knocked
the candle and the gun from Helen’s hands, sending them several feet away into the garden. The flame lit a vegetable bush
on fire with an unnatural intensity that swiftly spread to other plants.
Isaac turned to Wade with a look of disgust. And suddenly, all around them, the land was filled with a thunderous roar. Helen
recoiled and covered her ears. Isaac was simply staring down at Wade as he cowered in the dirt, but she knew Isaac had to
be the one creating the sound. It was worse than any physical pain she’d ever felt. The powerful noise went on and on as the
flames spread through the garden.
She spotted the gun lying at the garden’s edge. She grabbed it and jumped into the grave. The fall was farther than she anticipated,
close to five feet down, and when her feet hit the soft dirt at the bottom, she fell forward onto her knees.
It was much quieter down there, peaceful almost. The sounds above were abnormally muted, as if the grave was her own safe
and private chamber. The Edgar Allan Poe book was down there, and it lay open to “The Raven.” Next to it lay the dead raven
that she’d tried to bury.
She sat down beside the book and contemplated the gun. It was time to finally go through with it. She had grown far too weary
for this world.
“Helen?” The voice that said her name was heavenly.
She knew it was him before she even lifted her head and took in the sight. Tyler was sitting in the grave across from her.
This time, Helen knew Tyler wasn’t one of Isaac’s wicked distortions. She could feel it in the fabric of her soul. She’d never
been more certain of anything. Tyler had finally answered her pleas.
Helen burst into tears.