I’m going back.

The car bounces and skids on the long, forgotten road. The dim light from the radio creeps over the worn gray seats of my worn gray car. Static crackles and spits from the speakers, the noise mimicking the constant din in my head, like a station in my mind that keeps searching for what’s missing. But I know what’s missing.

Mom took him from me. My friend. My companion. My power.

The windshield wipers squeak-squeak across the glass. The night beyond the smeared raindrops looms like a void, and I drive on, falling and falling into the darkness. My fingers tap on the wheel, echoing the rain hitting the roof, echoing the frantic beat of my heart.

I’m going back. I’ve been powerless for too long. I’ve been trapped in the light for too long. I’ve been alone for too long.

My whole body and soul vibrate with anticipation at our coming reunion.

I don’t have a map or directions. No miles to go. No signs. But my excitement screams that I’m almost there because of a feeling. A trail of cold, of dark, of power.

And the whispers help.

The ones that come from the shadows. A familiar voice. Deep and soothing, the same voice he used to speak to me with from under my bed when I was five, from my closet when I was seven, from the heating vents when I was nine.

The voice was there to comfort me when Dad moved out, leaving Mom in tears and me sad and lost. The presence listened to me cry when Mom sent me to my room with a shout and dismissive wave of her hand. My friend told me I could be more. I didn’t have to be sad.

Eventually the voice became a shadow, slinking over the walls and ceilings, and leaving cold caresses on my cheek. His icy embrace held me when Mom treated me like I didn’t matter, and Dad never came to my band concerts.

Eventually he became part of me, his words inside my head and his power radiating from my body. Strength, so I wouldn’t be weak.

But a year ago, Mom ripped it away, leaving me hollow and small. My friend, the voice from the black, gone forever.

Until a few weeks ago, when words oozed out from my closet. Faint at first, but day by day, they grew stronger.

My friend isn’t gone. Only trapped. Waiting.

And I know where.

The more-mud-than-dirt road passes under my headlights, its secrets revealed in moments of brightness. Rocks and water-filled ruts and dead animals.

Lizzie. My name crawls out from under my seat.

A shudder of delight creeps up my back, and I squeeze my hands on the wheel with glee. “I’m so glad you’re not gone. I’m so glad. . .”

Shadows lurk at the edges of the road. The dark blur of trees creep closer and closer. The same as it was nine years ago when Mom and Uncle Shawn brought eleven-year-old me out here. To the middle of nowhere.

To isolate me.

To save me from what they called The Devil.

He wouldn’t tell me his name, but he wasn’t The Devil. And I didn’t need to be saved. I needed my friend. I finally had a life I liked, not being a worthless lump of flesh doing what I was told and hiding in a corner. The kids at school didn’t bother me anymore, not after my friend showed me how to scare them, to hurt them. Mom spent time with me, listened to me. We baked cookies and went to the movies, though mostly she did that because of my friend.

“She thought you were imaginary,” I whisper. “She had no idea.”

Of our power. . . his words trickle from the backseat.

Except for Dad. I never could get him to listen, to call, to love me.

My friend knew what to do about him.

When Mom found Dad’s lifeless body at the bottom of the stairs, her attention increased, became obsessive. Simple probing questions shifted to meddling, to needing to know where I was all the time, needing to know what the voices said, needing to take me to a therapist. I told them what the voice said. That I didn’t need Mom. That I didn’t need anyone. Going to the therapist’s office stopped when Mom started taking me to church. To all the churches. Talking about how I felt to the person with glasses and a clipboard transformed into prayers with men in long robes and crosses.

Everyone’s faces creased in worry and disappointment when I told them that my friend was still with me, when I told them I didn’t want him to leave.

Mom locked me in my room.

She called Uncle Shawn, who would know what to do, who would help me.

They whispered in the hall, muttering the words ‘possession’ and ‘The Devil’ and ‘rituals.’ She told me I was too young to understand what was happening to me, too young to know what was best.

But I did understand. She wanted to take my power, the thing that made me more, made me strong. And I couldn’t stop her.

I slam my palm on the steering wheel. My need to be reunited, my need to find him, seethed. “You have to be close. I have to be close.”

Lizzie. . .

My headlights flicker. The radio crackles and whines, and I shut it off with a smack. “How much farther do I have to go?”

Trapped. . .

“I know! I’m coming, just. . . the last time I was here I was. . .” I was a child, a tired, hurt child.

The eight years locked in that house linger like a shapeless stain in my mind. Mom and Uncle Shawn moved me there as part of the plan. A faraway, secluded place that was perfect for what they had to do. Locked in the basement, I grew accustomed to musty darkness, yelling, pleading, and chanting. The lumpy mattress on the rickety frame squeaked every time I moved. I used the stained toilet and sink behind a crumbling wall. I didn’t care. Because I had him. Because I just had to survive, be strong. Outlast.

Mom and Uncle Shawn didn’t know what they were doing. Upstairs, they would argue, their angry and desperate voices drifting down to me. And I laughed at their stupidity, at their weakness.

Mom brought trays of food and glasses of water. And I ate, but refused to swallow the little pills she hid in my sandwiches. My friend warned me about them, told me they would make me sleep, make me vulnerable. Uncle Shawn ushered strangers dressed in black, waving bitter-smelling smoke and wearing strange symbols into my basement.

And the sessions. His voice shakes with rage.

“The sessions,” I mutter. “I forgot.” For days, Mom and Uncle Shawn constantly attacked us, trying to drive my friend out. They said it was out of love for me, to help me. I kicked and screamed and scratched when they dragged me to the chair and wrapped chains around my arms and legs.

It burned.

“It did.” With every ritual, every prayer, his roar filled my head, and I screamed with him. But he wouldn’t leave me. I didn’t want him to.

My friend loved me. He was the only one who understood. The only one who helped me take care of my problems. He showed me the scissors that made quick work of removing the teacher’s tongue, the one who yelled at me for running in the halls. The kid, who didn’t invite me to their party, didn’t enjoy the cupcake I made with my friend’s secret ingredient. And with a push, Dad never let me down again.

Set me free. His voice is stronger, louder.

“I will.” I squeeze the steering wheel with a mixture of excitement and desire. I must be close. The black lurks on the other side of the windows like a barrier. But it can’t stop me. . . there’s no one to stop me. Not anymore.

Mom tried. To make me who she thought I was supposed to be. To make me her little girl. To make me feel bad for what I had done.

In the basement of the rotting house, she talked of vacations we could have, of friends I could make, of a wonderous life waiting for me away from the house in the woods.

“I didn’t understand.”

Until that night. . .

“When she told me that we were leaving without you.”

That last night in the basement, Mom announced the final plan. I thrashed and wailed at the thought, telling her she couldn’t. Mom said I would get over it. I would be happy again. She said she loved me.

Her words stung. So, I stung back. I screamed. I kicked. I spat in her face. She didn’t understand. She would never understand.

I didn’t love her.

She was nothing.

She feared us. . .

“Yes. She did.”

She and Uncle Shawn argued louder than they ever had, then silence swallowed the house. A terrible silence. Finally, Mom returned down the creaky stairs, and Uncle Shawn followed.

They told me not to worry. That this would be the final ritual, the last push.

I sat chained to my chair. I burned. I screamed. I hissed and threatened.

Days of prayers. Days of charms. Days of words and words and words.

I hated them for it.

My friend fought to stay, but his grip on me loosened. When he was ripped out, I touched the silent void in my mind and felt truly alone.

With shaking arms, Mom carried me up the stairs, calling in a hoarse voice that we had to get out. With her cheek pressed to mine, she whispered that I could have a life, that I would be fine.

It was so hot, so bright, and I fought to keep my eyes open, to find my friend. I called, but my voice was too weak.

Sobbing, Mom put me in the car, smoothing my hair out of my face. She drove us out of the woods without Uncle Shawn.

I rub my hand over my face, the road a rutted path to hope. “I never knew what happened to him.”

A deep chuckle drifts from the shadows. You’ll remember soon.

The car splashes through potholes and bumps over rocks. “You keep saying that. What did I forget?”

The end.

I remember that I didn’t want to leave, but my battered and bruised body couldn’t fight. “The world she took me to,” I mutter, wiping a hand across my forehead. “It was so bright. I tried to hide, but Mom kept bringing me into the sun, into the crowds.”

I hated the shopping trips, the dinners out, the feel-good movies. Mom never left me alone, always muttering that she was keeping me safe. Our new house had so many windows, looking out at a street full of too many people. Mom sat with me as I took classes on the computer. She made me get a job at her office, where I felt useless and alone.

A year of what Mom called ‘normal.’

Except Uncle Shawn never came to visit. Mom never told me why, avoiding the question with a sudden need to take me to get ice cream. I didn’t press to get an answer because part of me wasn’t surprised that he never came.

I fought this new life where I had no power, tried to find the me I had been, and always hoped that my friend would return. Hoping to find him when I beat the neighbor’s dog with a bat. At times hopelessness sent me wandering off the sidewalk and into traffic, but Mom always pulled me back. And when I slashed at Mom with a knife, she only held tighter, whispering that she loved me, that I would learn to be happy.

I couldn’t take it, that life she wanted for me.

“I was lost out there.”

And now, Mom’s dead. Cancer. A price for fighting so hard for so long. A price for dealing with rituals and words she didn’t quite understand. A price for touching the darkness in my mind.

Moments before she died, she told me that all that mattered to her was that I was safe.

But I never felt safe. I felt weak.

And then the voice returned.

A low hum tugs at the dusty corners of my mind.

You’re close.

My headlights sweep over an old mailbox swinging from a post. Rusty and battered. A mailbox no one uses. A mailbox no one knows exists.

I’m waiting.

My hands shake with excitement as I make the turn through the brush and onto the two faint, muddy ruts. A little more overgrown since I saw it last, the night Mom shoved me in the car and sped away. My chin quivers with tears of happiness. “I’m finally home.”

Come back to the dark.

The headlights flash across the trees, then reflect off a window. I slam on the brakes.

Half of the house is a blackened ruin. The other half leans, waiting to fall, to die. Cracked windows stick out like jagged teeth. The door hangs from broken hinges.

“It can’t be. How did this happen? When. . . wait. . .” Because I do remember. . . heat and light.

I burned, so I wanted them to burn.

“The fire.” I lean forward, inspecting the ruins. That final night, Uncle Shawn held his cross and shouted commands for my friend to return to hell. Mom prayed and prayed, trying to keep candles lit in the gusts of foul-smelling wind. The smoke, heavy and suffocating, threatened to choke me. The odor. . . bitter and sharp and rotting. And in the rush of fire, the spitting and hissing of flames, my friend faded.

Then it was done. The voice gone. My power taken.

And Mom was screaming that we had to get out.

“It didn’t stop them. You were gone.”

Not forever.

“No.”

The house hunches in the woods like the corpse of a sleeping monster. The wipers squeak over the windshield, smearing the water and warping the scene.

It burned. But I remained.

I throw open the car door and run to the shell of a house. Raindrops fall through the beams of my headlights like daggers. I won’t live in Mom’s world of classes and jobs, of smiling and light. The rain coats me with cold; the night covers me in dark. My headlights show me the way.

The floor creaks and cracks as I cross. The rituals echo. The prayers linger and rot as they cling to the place. It will always be haunted by memories, by fear, by despair.

Water drips down the walls and drops from what remains of the ceiling to splash to the floor with tiny, whispered cries. The light from my car struggles to penetrate the gloom but shows me enough. Most of the kitchen stands. Warped cabinets hold on with quiet desperation. The cracked and moldy plaster walls weep.

And behind it, beyond it, the voice whispers.

Come. . .

The blackened door to the basement opens with a shriek. For eight years, I only ever saw the crooked stone walls, the dust-covered ceiling, the stained concrete floor. I only knew the spiders and the rats.

I descend the blackened stairs, the edges eaten away. The floor, the walls, the ceiling. . . everything is black.

The crunch of my feet on the basement floor cuts through the silence. The twisted and burned frame of my once bed sits like a forgotten nightmare. In a corner, bones slump, a charred book still clutched in his hand: Uncle Shawn.

I kneel beside him, my fingers picking at the disintegrating book. “She never told me.”

Of course not.

“But I knew.”

She always had secrets.

She told me what she wanted me to know, trying desperately to make me live the life she wanted for me. I stand, wiping my hands on my pants, and turn with hope beating in my chest.

In the center of the room, a chair waits. A plain wooden kitchen chair, once painted white, now only a worn shade of used, sits on an unburned section of concrete. My chair. A mixture of elation and fear ripple through my thoughts at seeing it again.

“Are you here?”

I am.

Joy flutters in my gut. Grit grinds under my feet as I approach the chair. When I reach it, I run my fingers along the back, still stained with my sweat and blood, along the curved wooden arms to the chains that still hang.

I grab them. The thick, metal links clink and clank. The sound I recall from years of fighting, from countless exorcisms.

Until Mom and Uncle Shawn succeeded. They did what they thought was right, I suppose. They drove out The Devil.

And they paid a price.

“You’re not The Devil.”

Silence.

“Who are you?”

Silence.

“Where are you?” Cold drips from the ceiling and oozes across the floor. The chair doesn’t protest as I take my place, as I do what I need to do, to be who I want to be.

Faint promises of power drift to me from the shadowed corners of the room. My room. Our room. Icy cold touches my back, then my mind.

Ready to embrace the darkness, I relax in the chair. My arms dangle. My knees fall together. My fingers twist in the chains.

Whispers skitter at the edges of the room, through the shadowed corners, and across the cobwebbed ceiling. It returns. Not gone, just waiting; trapped here by Mom’s rituals.

I grip the chains, their weight a comfort. “Will you tell me your name this time?”

Maybe. . .