By the time Bijou arrived with her mother and Silas, she realized they were not actually going to Raging Rivers, and she was pissed. It'd taken a lot of convincing to get her to go to the water park, but Anjulie had stressed needing help with Silas, that having Bijou there would encourage him to try new things and overcome some of the anxiety he was exhibiting. "He's not the strongest swimmer, and you know how he listens to you over me. Please—he needs to make some new memories with us!" Anjulie had bemoaned. So when they pulled up outside an ordinary house in a dated suburb, Bijou knew she'd been duped and held back her bitching only because Silas was present.

There were three other cars in front of the house, none of them particularly recognizable, and the girl couldn't help at least asking as they got out and started up the paved walk, "What is this, mom?"

Pausing, turning to face her daughter, Anjulie took hold of Bijou's shoulders. "I'm sorry. Really. But I didn't think you'd come, otherwise."

Bijou shook her head, smirked, crossed her arms. "Lying to me—I get it. But Silas? He's going to cry."

"Which is why we'll go to Raging Rivers tomorrow, all right? Maybe even after this, if it doesn't take too long."

The girl looked toward the gray-siding, two-story house with its car-port and boxwoods, its white shutters and rock flower beds, its limp American flag and its decorative windowed front door. "Who even lives here?"

Anjulie sighed. "A very old . . . acquaintance." Then she continued to the porch and rang the bell.

Glancing at Silas, whose innocence couldn't mask his confusion, Bijou shrugged and took his hand. "Come on, dude. Guess we're stuck here for a bit. I'll let you play games on my phone, all right?" The child could do nothing but follow his stepsister.

A harried woman answered the door. Bijou couldn't help but feel involuntarily proud of her own mother, who in spite of her age and what she'd been through managed to exude a sort of dark sex appeal. This woman—the one at the door—looked absolutely old and fatigued, with no makeup, little attempt at style beyond a coordinated sweatsuit, and damp right-out-of-the-shower hair. She hardly greeted Anjulie, which Bijou thought odd, but she did look Anjulie's children up and down as they entered the house. Inside, in a sitting room right off the entryway (one of those rooms a little too nice for lounging and therefore not used enough to be comfortable), was an unexpected assortment of people. Bijou noticed three other women: one relatively stylish with short, sleek black hair and dark eyes; one whose somewhat forgettable traits were made memorable by her height and ability to accessorize impeccably; and one quite older yet far more eccentric than the others (including her own mother), who wore a long cerulean sundress beneath a glittering array of every sort of religious and spiritual jewelry one could possibly imagine and whose arm and neck tattoos were difficult to make out between her wrinkles. In addition were a couple of children, a young boy who refused to look up from the floor and a girl who was probably around thirteen or fourteen, her eyes moving suspiciously amongst the assembly.

Bijou didn't even realize the grimace that had sneaked across her face until the older woman smiled at her, approached, and said, "No need to be angry, dear. I'm here to help." Instinctively, Bijou took a step back, but the old woman turned away from her, massive evil eye earrings clanking, and spoke toward the woman who'd opened the door. "Danielle, it's important we all be here. Why don't you get the baby?"

The addressed person left the room. While she was out, the old woman asked the new arrivals to sit, and Bijou obliged by settling onto a periwinkle sofa, holding Silas on her lap to afford room for her mother.

"My name is Zelda," the old woman began, clasping her bony veined hands, pale gray eyes twinkling. Bijou took note of how purple her lipstick was and wondered, suddenly, whether she herself were destined to end up an old spiritualist hippie, sporting age-inappropriate bright colors and tattoos of—what was that one on the old woman's craning neck?—naked fairies. "I understand we're here today to cleanse a presence from your lives."

Bijou's interest piqued. A presence? As in, like, a ghost? Or was this some spiritual healing stuff? Maybe the woman wanted to cleanse negative vibes or something. But who were all these others? The girl's gaze flicked from person to person in attempt to read each of them, to understand what on earth was going on, and it seemed to her that their mélange of expressions ranged from embarrassed to stoic to frightened with a few inscrutable shades in between. Did her mother actually know these people? Bijou hadn't seen any of them before, and although she'd met some of her mother's acquaintances over the years, none had remained consistent, and none had looked anything like these strangers.

This whole thing, whatever it was, was beginning to unsettle Bijou, though she wasn't entirely sure why. She didn't really believe in the supernatural . . . at least, not beyond it being fun to pretend to believe in. And yet that boy across from her, the quiet one—he definitely seemed off. And the brown-haired girl—why was she so nervous? The thing was practically trembling where she sat.

What was this?

The woman called Danielle returned to the room, a bundled infant in her arms. She'd sucked in her lips and moved to a corner, where she stood and gently bounced the quiet baby.

"Now I've only just met many of you," Zelda went on once everyone had assembled, "but I came to this town after hearing about Miss Anjulie's trouble on the news, the loss of her loved one under mysterious circumstances. I might look a little strange, but I want you to know that I've been dealing with the spirit world for most of my life. I knew exactly what this was the moment I heard about it."

"And what?" the black-haired woman next to the unsettling boy interrupted. "Is it your practice to just show up places and hawk your services?"

Zelda smiled, unabashed. "I go where I am needed. I am here to share the gift I've been given."

"And are we supposed to pay you for this?" the black-haired woman went on.

An expert in sangfroid, Zelda's face remained benign. "If you feel you should, after I've completed my services."

"And how can we be sure you aren't a total fake? There's a whole lot of history, here—"

"Oh shut up, Joanna!" Danielle hurled from her corner. "It doesn't hurt to try, does it? Let's just get it over with! Anjulie started this shit. Let her try to end it."

Bijou looked to her mother questioningly, but Anjulie ignored her and nodded to Zelda, who closed her eyes, effectively shutting out the room, and announced, "I've preemptively burned sage in every space," (That was the smell, Bijou realized. That and weed. She'd been unable to place it at first), "and I'll need quiet from you all, unless you're asked to intervene. First, I need to meet this spirit." She shook herself, her charms and pendants jingling, and took a deep, calming breath before proceeding in a voice deeper than the one she'd been using. "I call to the beings in this room. I welcome the human beings, and I welcome the spirit being. This place has become a gateway, a safe place between the plane of the spirit world and the plane of the mortal world. Spirit who has attached yourself to these women—do you hear me? Will you answer?"

Bijou sat riveted, sure this was some theatrical production. Certainly no spirits would answer this lady! But the moment Bijou thought it, the chandelier overhead shifted, swayed, rattling its fake crystals.

Eight pairs of eyes went immediately to the middle of the ceiling; only Zelda remained unmoved. "I'm pleased to make your acquaintance," the old woman went on. "Will you reveal your nature to us?"

At that request, various small objects in the room suddenly lifted into the air: three magazines, an ashtray shaped like a pair of lips, a half-burnt candle, two framed photographs of some weasels, a small statue of a little boy holding a bird, and a potted violet. The gasps were audible. Bijou didn't know where to look—at the faces of those around her (even the silent boy had glanced up at last) or at the objects themselves, which hovered inches above where they'd been resting. No one seemed willing to breathe, and Bijou herself was unsure what would happen next, but her wonderings were quickly answered when the items lifted higher into the air and began to rotate slowly, in a horizontal circle.

"What's happening?" Silas whispered in a mouse-ish squeak, and Bijou, who'd nearly forgotten he sat on her lap, tightened her arms around him, gazed in awe, before coming to her senses. She moved the boy off her onto the couch and scooted toward her mother.

"What is this?" she hissed. "This halloween shit is freaking out Silas!"

Anjulie turned to her daughter, something like an apology on her face. "I'm sorry to have brought you into all this," she said quietly, "but Zelda's going to end it now, thank God."

Bijou didn't know what to make of her mother's statement, but the others in the room had begun to shift and mumble as well, and Zelda, who'd instructed them all to keep quiet, opened her eyes and overrode their conversations. "Hush! We'll confuse the spirit! You want to play, is that it?" she asked, and they all knew her question was meant for whatever was moving the objects. "Oh, very playful. Yes, this one likes tricks," she added good-naturedly. "But these women don't understand your games. You upset them. You've got to leave. They don't want you here anymore. It's your time to go!" The artifacts began to spin faster, suddenly, too fast, and the people beneath them instinctively pulled more into their seats or against the wall. The lights began to flicker on and off. "Now you stop that!" Zelda scolded, shaking a pointed finger as if speaking to a naughty child. From somewhere within the house came other sounds—clanking and shattering, slamming. "You stop your play! They've had enough of your little jokes."

"It's not some fucking leprechaun!" the woman holding the baby suddenly cried. "It's not play! Just get rid of it!"

The moment Danielle's words ceased, several things happened at once: her infant began wailing, the spinning objects flung themselves against the walls (where those that were breakable indeed shattered and crumbled downward), and the young girl with the wavy brown hair screamed in terror "I can't, I can't!" before covering her ears and burying her head into her mother's lap.

A sudden wind moved noisily through the room. The chandelier swayed violently; the hair and clothing of everyone swirled about in the impossible gust. The curtains at the broad window pulled shut, dousing the room in a gray dimness broken erratically by the strobing lights throughout the first floor.

Above the din, Zelda called in a piercing, urgent voice, "Oh my dears, my dears! It's—it's not it . . . it's . . . ooooh! There's a terrible, evil presence here! I didn't know! Spirit, where did you come from, and what is your purpose here?" she tried, yelling above the noise and fear. "What is your purpose? Why do you torment these children? No, no! It won't do! I must—oh gods of every faith and tribe, Pazuzu and Shiva and Hecate and the Holy Spirit and all the others, I call upon you to cleanse these people of the evil that manifests as another, to sever the ties that bind the spirit to them, to this world—!"

Bijou snapped toward Zelda, whose words were suddenly cut off. She saw amidst the disorienting lights the old woman's mouth working as if she were chewing on a piece of gristle, her claw hands scrabbling at her throat, her eyes beginning to bulge until, horrifyingly, they were sucked back into her head. The woman's entire form jerked erratically, her mouth widening, widening, until in a burst of pink and red and brown liquid and tissue everything inside of her erupted from the hole between her teeth, spraying the room in viscera.

Just as suddenly as it'd all begun, everything fell dead still, then. The wind vanished; the curtains opened and the lights stilled; and the baby's crying ceased. The four remaining women and their children were left paralyzed, staring, covered in wet filth, while on the carpet next to the coffee table, in a pile of clothing and hair and skin, lay the outsides of what'd just been Zelda.

In that moment of terrible and bizarre silence, Bijou became aware of unidentified material trickling down her neck and into the collar of her T-shirt, noted that a new smell now mingled with the sage and pot, and felt the boy and girl and infant across from her emanating something furious and desperate that resonated within a secret part of her. She was like them in a dangerous way; they shared something. But there was no time for thinking about it, because behind her, Silas let out a jarring shout, and Bijou spun to find his small body disappearing between the couch cushions.

The dark-haired woman with the silent boy screamed and fled from the house; the tall woman and her girl leapt to help Anjulie and Bijou locate Silas's arms and pry him from the furniture that was trying to smother him; and Danielle, with the baby in her arms, fell to the floor and broke down in hysterics.

END OF PART III