Mors

Chap 14

The air in this small town was supposed to be crisp and clean, a stark contrast to the smog-choked lungs of the city. But to me, it felt like breathing through a layer of wet wool. Three days had passed since I arrived at Mrs. Gable’s boarding house, and in that time, the silence of the mountains had become a roar in my ears. I sat by the window of my second-floor room, the lace curtain pulled back just a fraction of an inch, enough to see the street, but hopefully not enough to be seen.

Oakhaven was a town of shadows and echoes. Below, the main thoroughfare was a ribbon of cracked pavement where the occasional rusted truck would rattle past, its engine echoing against the granite peaks like a gunshot. I watched a man across the street painting a fence. I watched a dog sleep in the doorway of the convenience store. Everything looked normal. Everything looked peaceful.

So why did my skin feel like it was crawling with a thousand invisible spiders?

I hadn't seen a black SUV. I hadn't seen a man in a sharp suit or a statue with a radio earpiece. The only person who had even looked at me twice was Mrs. Gable, and that was only because I’d paid her in gold.

Yet, the sensation of being watched was so visceral that I found myself checking the corners of my ceiling for cameras and pressing my ear against the thin drywall, listening for the telltale hum of a recording device.

I pulled my backpack onto my lap, the weight of the remaining jewelry comforting and terrifying all at once. My fingers traced the velvet bundles. I had already sold the emerald ring to a jeweler two towns over, hitching a ride with a local delivery driver to avoid being traced at the bus station. The cash was hidden in my shoe, but every time I spent a dollar, I felt like I was sending up a flare.

He’s in jail, I whispered to the empty room. The FBI took him. The Commissioner has the files. You saw it. You heard the sirens.

But the rational part of my brain was being drowned out by a primal, screaming instinct. It was the feeling you get when you’re walking alone in the dark and you’re certain someone is breathing right behind your neck, even though the street is empty. It was the "hectic" energy of Augustino’s presence. a man who didn't need to be in the room to dominate it.

I looked at my hands. They were trembling. No matter how much I scrubbed them in the communal bathroom’s rusted sink, they felt sticky. Every time I closed my eyes, I didn't see the mountain mist; I saw the basement. I saw the man Augustino had shoved a gun into my hand for. I saw the look of pure, pathetic fear on the stranger’s face before the kickback of the weapon jolted through my marrow.

Maybe the eyes I felt weren't Augustino’s. Maybe they belonged to the dead.

By the fourth day, the walls of the room began to shrink. The floral wallpaper seemed to writhe in the dim light, the roses looking like blooming bruises. I was terrified to go out, but I was losing my mind staying in. I began to wonder if I was experiencing a psychotic break. The paranoia was a living thing, a cold hand wrapped around my throat. I hadn't seen a single soul follow me, yet I was convinced that every crow on a telephone wire was a sentry.

"You’re losing it, Everly," I muttered, my voice raspy from disuse. "He broke you, and now you’re doing the rest of the work for him."

The thought was a splash of ice water. If I went crazy, I was giving him exactly what he wanted. I needed to ground myself. I needed a sanctuary that wasn't a four-walled box filled with my own haunted thoughts.

I stood up, grabbed my hoodie, and stepped out into the hallway. The floorboards groaned, a sound that usually sent me bolting for the door, but I forced myself to walk slowly. I descended the stairs, nodding to Mrs. Gable, who was vacuuming a rug that had probably been gray since the Eisenhower administration. She didn't look up. She didn't reach for a phone. She was just an old woman in a drafty house.

I stepped outside. The afternoon sun was weak, filtered through a heavy layer of gray clouds. I started walking, not toward the shops or the bus stop, but toward the edge of town where a small stone structure sat nestled against the pines. St. Jude’s. It was a tiny Catholic church, the kind with thick stone walls and stained glass that had been dulled by decades of mountain winter.

As I approached the heavy wooden doors, I paused. I wasn't religious, not really. I hadn't stepped foot in a church since my mother’s funeral. But I needed a place where the rules of the world didn't apply. I needed a place where the shadows weren't allowed to follow.

I pushed the doors open. The interior was cool and dim, smelling of beeswax, old incense, and cold stone. It was silent, save for the flickering of prayer candles near the altar. There was no one else there. I walked down the center aisle, my footsteps silenced by a threadbare red carpet, and slid into a pew toward the back.

I knelt. My knees hit the hard wood, and for a moment, the physical pain was a relief. I folded my hands, but I didn't know how to pray. What do you say to God when you have lead in your soul?

"Please," I whispered, my forehead resting against the cool back of the pew in front of me. "Just let me be paranoid. Let me be crazy."

It was a strange thing to pray for. Usually, people pray for safety, for protection. But I was praying for the confirmation that my fear was a lie. If I was paranoid, then Augustino was really in a cell. If I was paranoid, then the FBI was actually protecting me. If I was paranoid, then the man I killed was just a ghost I could eventually learn to live with.

But if I wasn't... then the silence of this church was just another room in Augustino’s mansion.

I stayed there for an hour, watching the light shift through the blue and purple glass of the windows. I tried to focus on the figure of Christ on the cross, looking for some sign of mercy, some hint that my act of survival hadn't condemned me eternally.

"I didn't want to do it," I breathed into the stillness. "He made me. He moved my finger. Please, don't let him be the only thing I have left."

The silence of the church began to work its magic. The frantic drumming in my chest slowed to a steady thrum. I looked around the sanctuary. The shadows here didn't feel predatory; they felt restful. There were no cameras in the rafters. There were no men in suits behind the altar. The only thing watching me was a statue of Mary, her stone eyes filled with a quiet, unmoving sorrow.

I began to convince myself that my mind was simply playing tricks on me. The trauma of the mansion, the adrenaline of the escape, the isolation of Oakhaven…it was a perfect recipe for a breakdown. Anyone would feel watched after what I’d been through. Augustino was a man, not a god. He couldn't be everywhere. He couldn't bypass the entire federal government just to find a girl in the mountains.

I felt a genuine sense of calm wash over me. I wasn't being hunted. I was just haunted. And ghosts, unlike Augustino, couldn't actually hurt you.

I stood up, feeling lighter than I had in a week. I reached into my pocket, found a five-dollar bill, one of the last pieces of the emerald ring’s profit, and dropped it into the poor box. It felt like a small down payment on my soul.

I walked toward the back of the church, my hand reaching for the heavy iron handle of the door. I was ready to go back to Mrs. Gable’s, pack my things, and maybe move even further west. I would find a job, a real one. I would change my name legally. I would start over.

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