CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Trinity’s feet were encased in mist, fog swirling in slow circles as she tried desperately to figure out where she was. She took one hesitant step forward, then another, and then a crack sounded behind her, the outside world where she’d just been falling away into nothing. She screamed, leaping forward and landing on her belly on the floor of her father’s church. She knew it—oh God, she knew it. The smell. The feel. No. Oh no. How?

She gasped, her head whipping back and forth, her fingers gripping the tile floor beneath her as her body slid forward. She was flipped sideways, and then back on her belly, a scream caught in her throat, and she was pulled, her shirt riding up as the cold travertine met her ribs.

You’re a whore, aren’t you? Little whore who likes that.

Some unknown force was pulling her like a magnet. She took one hand off the floor and used it to grip a leg of one of the pews and sit up, her hair flipping in the direction of that unknown force as she turned to see what it was.

A gaping hole. Black and somehow undulating. It swirled and pulsed, and Trinity turned her head away, tears streaking down her cheeks. It was horror. It was grief and pain and shame and loneliness and all the things her father had made her feel. It had a name, and she heard it whispered, and she didn’t know the language. But she knew what it meant: unloved .

Trinity leaned over and vomited on the floor, the puddle of sickness moving and swarming and hatching and then becoming insects that burst into her face and screamed, “ Whore! ” She twisted away, the magnetic horror whipping her onto her stomach and dragging her again. The thing that was the opposite of all goodness had come to life and was trying to suck her inside it.

Shh, shh, shh. The soft sound somehow rose above the others. Soothing. A lifeline in the mist. It gave her the strength to resist that incessant pull, to turn her eyes away from the black hole from which she could hear shrieks emanating. She grunted with effort, her body being dragged ... dragged ever forward. Those shrieks, they curdled her blood and made the slow tears turn to breathless sobs.

Her father appeared suddenly, standing at the front of that sunless chasm leading to the lowest depths of despair. His hand was raised to the heavens, and he was ranting, speaking of judgment he proclaimed came from the Lord, his voice drowned out by the sucking, swirling void. The screams and shrieks emanating from the blackness became louder, a merciless howl that beckoned Trinity ever closer. And though she tried, she was helpless to resist.