We are Wormwood by Autumn Christian

arm.
    “Don’t run,” she said. “Just walk with me.”
    It seemed important not to look behind me as we walked away.
Like Lot’s wife, I might turn into a pillar of salt. Like Orpheus escaping out
of the underworld, I’d lose something I could never recover.
    There was something in the woods looking for us, foaming
with anger, and I felt it. Anybody would’ve been able to feel that kind of
presence. Its shadow could’ve broken bones.
    The fawn screamed and screamed.
    I took a slow, careful breath with each step to keep myself
from bolting.  
    Keep walking. Saint Peter kept her hand on my arm. Keep
walking.
    That something barreled out of the woods behind us. Saint
Peter tightened her grip. Its colossal shadow skimmed over the treetops, and it
brought cold with it.
    I heard it tear into the wounded fawn behind us, ripping
into its muscle and flesh; the fawn stopped screaming. I stopped breathing.
    We reached the tree line and ran.
    I’d been into these woods before, years ago, trailing a
dead-thing’s dress behind me. Maybe the location changed, but the soil remained
the same. In the years when the demon left, I thought I would be safe, but,
with or without her, the shadows and their woods would follow me. One day I
would awake to find little blue flowers sprouting out of my arms, my feet
buried in the side of a mountain.
    If I got out of here alive.
    Saint Peter and I emerged from the trees into the backyard.
Cignus and Phaedra were gone.
    “Where did they go?” I asked Saint Peter, but she was gone
as well.
    The house lay empty. The street beyond the house lay empty.
    I
took a step forward and something broke underneath me. It was the blood
painting of me, now cracked in two.

 
Chapter Sixteen
    I
WENT INTO THE artist’s house, but everyone had already left. Empty bottles
of beer and liquor lay strewn across the floor.
    The couch and the stereo were gone. The broken mirrors on
the floor were swept away. Someone even removed the light bulbs from their
fixtures.
    I burst into the artist’s studio.
    The paintings were gone. The lights were gone. The desk, the
paints, the refrigerator of blood, and the stain from my spit dripping on the
floor were gone and gone and gone. Nothing left but bare, peeling walls.
    Saint Peter stood behind me in the doorway.
    “Where is he?” I asked.
    “The party is over. It’s been over for a long time.”
    “He promised he’d be here.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said.
    For the first time I noticed how tall she was, taller than
her brother. She wore a faux fur jacket and platform boots, her hair dirty and
hacked away in various places. She hardly looked the part of the disciple that
once chased after Jesus like a dog. The boy with ragged shoes
and ragged fingertips who demanded that he be crucified upside down because he
wasn’t worthy to die the same way as his god.
    “Where do I know you from?” I asked.
    “It was a long time ago.”
    “One person shouldn’t have to bear this much.”
    “And yet you do.”
    “Where is Cignus?”
    “He has done a terrible thing, and he is hiding,” Saint
Peter said.
    “I wasn’t supposed to go into those woods. Is that what you
mean?”
    “If I had known he was taking you there, I would have
stopped him,” she said.
    “I’m such an idiot,” I said.
    “Maybe,” Saint Peter said.
    I felt heaviness in my throat, a dark hole in my stomach.
    “But you’re looking better every day,” she said. “More like
your old self.”
    She touched my stomach. It was bleeding again from that
dirty cocaine glass, spreading through my shirt, but she wasn’t looking down.
    “Your eyes, they’re so bright. Like stars,” she said.
    “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “What happened to the fearless girl I used to know?” she
asked.
    I pried her fingers away.
    “Ask your brother.”
    She pushed me against the wall. She covered my mouth with
her mouth. She thrust her bloodied tongue inside me. She ran her fingers
through