Gianfranco Mancini’s Reviews > Seed > Status Update

Sprinting across that cracked parking lot, he nearly lost his footing on some loose gravel, the pebbles rolling beneath the soles of his boots like roller skate wheels. Regaining traction, he bounded toward the Olds, all the while hearing that laughter boom behind him—laughter that seemed to be less and less human with each passing second.

There was one option left—one that he could hardly bring himself to acknowledge. Calling an exorcist would not only mark his daughter as disturbed, but also mark his entire family as crazy, insane, out of their minds...the kind of backwoods hillbillies who believed in witchcraft and the end of the world. He hadn’t considered it before, but maybe exorcisms really worked.

“He says he knows you,” Charlie whispered. “He says you guys are friends.”

For a while, his mom did nothing but yell, insisting they were wrong, that they were all missing something that she could plainly see. Jack couldn’t help but to believe it, because normal kids didn’t hang cats by lengths of fishing line from the branches of a family tree.

“I’ll do what I want with you,” she hissed. “And I’ll take your family too.”

Copeland had prescribed antianxiety meds, assuring Gilda that as long as Jack took them he’d be fine. But Jack didn’t take them. He had wanted to, especially on nights when he knew he wasn’t alone, when he could feel the rats crawling over him only to disappear when he opened his eyes. But every time he reached for that pill bottle, somehow, by some unexplainable force, he failed.

“I’ve never seen any miracles,” Reagan said, “but I sure as hell have seen my share of darkness. Does God exist? I don’t know. But I kind of hope he does. Because if he doesn’t? We’re probably fucked.”

“I do,” she insisted. “Please? I won’t be scared, I swear.” Her expression gave her away. She was terrified. Anything was better than sleeping in a room with someone who held darkness in their eyes.

Even he knew that if demons could exist, it meant there was real evil in the world, and if you believed in the devil, somewhere in the deepest fibers of your being you had to believe in God. He knew, firsthand, that the devil was real; he’d seen it with his own two eyes. But he’d never seen God. He’d never felt God. He’d never been helped by God.

Jack returned to his seat, smoothed his napkin across his lap, and grabbed his fork. “Let’s all just keep quiet and eat,” he said. “We’ll trick him.” “Or he’ll trick us,” Aimee muttered. Less than a minute later the sound was back, but this time it was in the walls. “Great,” Aimee said with a huff. “We’re going to have rats making little rat families inside the house.”