Sunlight spilled through the bedroom window, illuminating an open Bible on the floor. Its pages were defaced with pen marks—annotations or desecrations, depending on who was asked to judge. A hand-drawn portrait of a despondent girl stared up from one page, her eyes rendered with such detail that they seemed to follow movement across the room. The artist had given her no mouth.
Madison stretched in bed, her body unfolding from sleep with languid movements. She shifted the pillow aside and slid her fingers beneath it, instinctively reaching for her cell phone, her modern talisman against isolation. Pulling it out like a secret, she watched the screen come to life under her touch. A smile spread across her face—a rare expression in this house of solemnity and shadow.
Her follower count had swelled to 165,000. Each of her videos had accumulated thousands of views, digital witnesses to the strangeness that had become her normal. She opened the comments section and began scrolling through the reactions of strangers who felt more real to her than the flesh-and-blood believers who shared her roof.
The sudden knock at her door sent a jolt of alarm through her body. Madison's fingers fumbled with the phone, muscle memory taking over as she concealed the device.
"One moment," she called, her voice steady despite the quickening of her pulse. She tucked the phone behind a pillow—a hiding place so obvious it barely deserved the name.
The bedroom door creaked open with the unhurried menace of horror movie sound effects. Madison spun around, prepared for Faith's disapproving presence, only to find Hope standing in the doorway. Her aunt's arm was wrapped in a stark white bandage, a reminder of the snake's bite and the ritual that had summoned it.
Hope stepped inside, closing the door gently behind her, trying not to disturb the fragile calm of the house.
"Oh no, the door is closed," Madison said, sarcasm dripping from each syllable. She shook her head and began nibbling on a fingernail, an unconscious gesture that betrayed her anxiety. "She's gonna freak out."
"I can handle your Mom," Hope replied, closing the door with deliberate gentleness.
"You? Okay." Madison's disbelief was palpable.
Hope approached her, moving with the careful steps of someone who had learned that sudden movements could provoke unpredictable responses. "What...? Now you're here to preach to me?"
"That seems to be effective," Hope said, a hint of her sarcasm bleeding through.
"Seems to me, you're all hell-bent on it."
"I see what you did there."
Madison's smirk acknowledged the wordplay—a small moment of connection through gallows humor.
"Your Grandparents were the same way..." Hope continued, her voice taking on a distant quality, as if she were speaking from across years rather than mere feet. "Craziest thing is, they thought it worked, and look how we turned out." She rolled her eyes, the gesture oddly youthful on her worn face. "It took years, years of self-reflection for me to even consider myself sane after how your grandparents raised us. God bless their souls, they took me in, but, they also taught me exactly how not to behave."
Hope shivered suddenly, then huffed warm breath into her cupped hands. "God, it's freezing in here."
Madison looked down at the floor, her momentary defiance collapsing under the weight of her aunt's words. The temperature in the room hadn't changed, but something cold had settled between them—recognition, perhaps, of shared damage passed down through generations.
"And this too shall pass," Hope offered, the biblical platitude hanging awkwardly in the air.
"It's not passing quickly enough!" Madison's head snapped up, tears welling in her eyes. The words seemed to burst from her, propelled by months or years of accumulated pressure. "I'm about to make a chunk of money, and I think I'm gonna run away."
The moment the confession left her lips, fear washed over Madison's face like a tide erasing footprints in sand. "Oh God, please don't tell Faith I said that... I was just joking."
"Not funny." Hope's expression hardened slightly. "All jokes aside, it's time to face reality. You can't run from your problems."
"Problem. She's my only one." Madison's correction came quickly, precise in its targeting.
"You can't run away from your problem, Maddy."
"I could join a Satanic cult. She'll never find me there."
Hope's concerned look provoked a retreat from Madison. "Fine, no more jokes."
"It's hard to tell when you're joking and when you're not."
"Fine. You want the truth...?" Madison paused, as if weighing what honesty might cost her. "At this point... running away seems to be the only answer."
Her eyes quivered as the weight of her own words settled upon her—not just the admission of her plans but the recognition of what they represented: defeat, surrender, the acknowledgment that there was no fixing what was broken here.
Hope took Madison's hand with gentle firmness, the bandage on her arm a white flag between them. "When you run away from your problems, you just create new ones, like wondering if your mom's okay... and what could have been. Plus, you know you'll miss me."
"But you ran away," Madison countered, the accusation landing precisely.
"And I returned with regrets." Hope's voice caught slightly. "Your grandparents were already gone. I couldn't tell them—"
Tears welled in Hope's eyes as she stared into Madison's, some unspoken confession suspended between them. "She cares about you. She loves you."
"She sure has a messed-up way of showing it."
"The problem is, your mom cares about you too much... but..." Hope's voice trailed off, as if approaching the edge of a precipice. "Is there really such a thing?"
The question hung unanswered in the cold room. Outside, clouds passed over the sun, temporarily dimming the light that spilled across the defaced Bible. The girl without a mouth stared up from the page, a silent witness to the circular conversation of two people trapped in the gravity well of Faith—both the woman and the concept, indistinguishable in this house.
Madison studied her aunt's face, searching for something solid to grasp onto—some proof that Hope's return meant salvation rather than just another body added to Faith's congregation. The bandage on Hope's arm suggested one answer; the tears in her eyes hinted at another. In this house, truth was as mutable as faith, shifting shape according to who was watching and what they needed to believe.
Chapter 15