The Outside by Laura Bickle Read Free Book Online Page A

lump rose in my throat. I had no answer. I wanted to say: “This is my home. Of course I belong here.” But the words would not come.
    I heard something beyond him, in the living room. I knew that sound, from the church.
    I pushed past Elijah to see what it was. I stopped cold in my tracks.
    Something lay in the shadows, bloated and dark. It curled around the room, thick and black as a rotting tree trunk. It was a massive snake, at least thirty feet long. It scraped around the bottom of table legs, behind the couch and wooden chairs and treadle sewing machine, its scales moving against the hardwood floors.
    Impossible.
    I knew it for what it was. It was no snake. It was pure evil. It was in my house.
    I wheeled to Elijah. “You let it in.”
    He stared past me. The snake’s head, as large as a pumpkin, came into view. Its eyes reflected the lantern light like those of the vampires. I could tell that Elijah was hypnotized by it. Glamoured.
    I grasped his arm and shook it. “Where are my parents? Where is Sarah?”
    Dazed, he pointed to the snake. It gathered its coils to itself, and then I noticed that it had a lumpy, engorged shape.
    I stopped breathing. As it slid past me, I counted one lump . . . two lumps . . . three lumps.
    The snake turned its head toward me and opened its mouth. Its fangs were as white as a vampire’s, and its hiss was the one I heard from the undead creatures in the night.
    The sound of a predator.
    ***
    I woke with a start, against Alex’s shoulder.
    “Shhh.” He stroked my hair. “It’s all right.”
    I felt warmth on my face. But it wasn’t the heat of the fire. The church had burned down to black timbers and red embers. What I felt was the warmth of the late morning sun, melting through the last of the gray clouds.
    I pulled my bandaged arm into my lap, wincing. It was sore, but the swelling seemed to have gone down. I saw Ginger and Pastor Gene sitting a few yards away, talking in low tones. Horace grazed in the grass beyond.
    Beside me, I saw my
Himmelsbrief
, weighted down with a small stone. Alex must have taken it out of my pocket and carefully plucked open the folds to dry it. The ink looked a bit blurry, but it was still legible. I hoped that would be enough.
    “I’m going to be all right,” I said. I couldn’t stand the worried look on his face. I reached up with my uninjured hand and pressed my palm to his cheek.
    “I was worried.” He turned his head and kissed my fingertips.
    I cast my eyes down and blushed. I felt the hand of God in this, but I didn’t know how to say this to Alex. I didn’t think that he would really believe it, not the way that I did. There was a vast chasm of something between us. Faith. He was still a good man, upright and much kinder than many people of my own sect. But I didn’t understand how he could do the right thing without thinking that God was watching. I knew that he had his own moral compass that led him, and sometimes it seemed stronger than my own.
    Pastor Gene had stood up and was approaching us.
    “How are you feeling, Katie?”
    “Weak,” I said, honestly. “But much better than before.”
    He crouched beside me. “It’ll take some time before you’re feeling normal again. Bites can take a long while to heal entirely. But I think you had some help.” He winked.
    I felt Alex glowering above me, but I smiled back at the pastor. “Thank you, Pastor Gene.”
    My smile faded as my gaze tracked back to the burned-out husk of his church. Two walls were standing, with the wet roof caved in over it. The structure was no longer habitable, and the vampires could reach in and pluck us out like sweetbreads if we tried to stay.
    His eyes followed mine. “It’s just a building,” he said. “All the people who were in it are gone.”
    “Come with us,” I said. “We are going north. To Canada.”
    He shook his head. “It’s time for me to come out of hiding, to see what remains of my family and the rest of the world.”
    My brow