Under the Light - By Laura Whitcomb Page 0,65

like a swarm of ants. Why did they have to pull me out of my numbness? The sadness opened in me like a shattering window.

Mrs. Caine stepped closer, standing right in front of my chair. “Jennifer, you have to refuse evil and give yourself back to Christ.

“I do,” I said. I knew it was better not to argue. Just agree that you’re a sinful wretch and promise never to do it again.

“The Devil tricked you. That’s what he does. But you invited him in, didn’t you?” asked Mrs. Caine.

The word woke me up, made my ears taut. Devil.

“No,” I said. My face was burning. I wanted to throw up. “Not the Devil.”

“A demon, then,” said Mrs. Caine. “But Jesus Christ is stronger than any demon.” She stepped closer and nodded to the other women. “Just relax, Jenny. We’re going to lay hands on you.”

This wasn’t foreign to me. It happened every week in my house, but as Mrs. Lowe and Mrs. Baum came over and knelt in front of me, they pressed my wrists down onto the armrests and held my legs against the chair with their bodies. I knew this was not really the laying on of hands in prayer. It was more like holding me down to be tortured.

“Don’t!” I tried to pull free, but the women held fast and whispered comforts to me like aunties who want you to stay still while they take out a splinter.

“It’s expected that she’ll fight,” Mrs. Caine said matter-of-factly.

Mrs. Garman and Ellen Woolcott came and each held one of my shoulders to the back of the chair. I wanted to scream and throw them off, but I didn’t want to look or sound like a possessed person.

Mrs. Caine lifted the little pitcher of water and dipped her fingers in it, then flicked the liquid in my face. A drop stung my left eye and another hit my lower lip. Salt water?

Mrs. Baum whispered, “It hurts her!”

Ellen Woolcott gasped, let go of my shoulder, and hurried out of the room and down the hall.

“It’s fine,” said Mrs. Caine. “If she’s scared, it’s better if she’s not in the room.”

Finally my mother spoke up. “I don’t like this.”

“Trust me,” said Mrs. Caine.

There was nothing I would’ve liked more than to run away, but I was sticking to my plans. Go along with everything. Let them think what they wanted. Just be passive and thank them afterward. But as they began to read aloud together, it hurt my feelings that my own mother didn’t stop them. They were treating me like a monster and she was letting them.

“Lord have mercy,” Mrs. Caine chanted, and the others, even my mother, joined her. “Heavenly Father, hear us. Intercede, O God,” they spoke in unison.

I wanted to slap their hands away. But that would be exactly what they’d expect a demon to do. “I’m not evil,” I said. But I felt like my body was weak and empty, my spirit was small and cowering—I was shrinking on the inside like a burned-up match. I said, “I don’t have a demon in me.”

“Don’t converse with it,” whispered Mrs. Caine.

I remembered the way my father would hold up one finger while I was trying to talk about my feelings or ideas and I would have to be silent. If I spoke again, my mother would hush me. In those moments I was nothing, less talkative than a sparrow.

Be a sparrow, I told myself. Be silent and fly away. No one will bother you if you disappear.

CHAPTER 27

Helen

IN MY PERSONAL HELL, time had stopped. I was already drowned and now I was seeing the gap in the cellar door through a distorting veil of silty water. I was upright, the crown of my head floating just a few inches below the ceiling, my body hanging below, my hands floating at shoulder height.

This time the scene felt different—it used to scald my skin with cold and chill my bones to aching—now the cold only brought a numbing sensation. I was as stiff as clay. I could see one frozen bolt of lightning hanging in the sky, its brilliance diffused in waves of blue and green.

What tortured me was that this storm would never grow or wither. No sunset was pending, no season change. No one would ever come to find my body.

Better that I should hide here instead of haunt Jenny, I told myself. Yet a hard lump of doubt weighed on my heart—I had abandoned her. That was worse than