What Happened In Paradise?

First Visit: Full Moon

Da-dum da-dum-dum-dum Da-dum

Maxwell struggles against his restraints; his legs and arms are bound; his body stretched out…on a stretcher? Footsteps shuffle around him. Now and then, a body shifts into his view, blocking out the moon, causing a thick darkness to descend upon him which makes the air around him feel colder.

“Sarah, come here.” The voice from beyond the wall; the infamous father. Maxwell arches his back, looks up, searching for the one who holds the voice.

“Father, I do not think…” Sarah’s voice is barely above a whisper. If she had not been the latest body to block the light from the moon, Maxwell wouldn’t have been able to hear her.

“I do not care what you think. Start the damned ritual.”

Da-dum da-dum-dum-dum Da-dum

Da-dum da-dum-dum-dum Da-dum

The drum beats multiply; Sarah chants; her father joins in; other voices join in.

“Get the eyes.”

“Father,” Sarah says, “we cannot get the eye, not yet. If we take it and cannot use it, we will not be able to do this again.”

“Get the damned eyes!”

“Have…have Harry do it,” Sarah says. “This…this is his ritual.”

“I. Told. You. To get the damned eye.” Another slap. “When I tell you to do something, you do it.”

Sarah falls to her knees, reaches for Maxwell’s right eye. Maxwell flinches. Nothing happens. Sarah must be trying to save him somehow.

“It…it is not working,” Sarah says.

Father pushes Sarah out of the way; Maxwell tightens his eyelids, sinks his body into the stretcher. If only it would split, open up, let him fall to the ground. If only the earth would open up as well, take him in, bury him alive. Maxwell doesn’t feel anything, still, he keeps his lids squeezed tight.

“We cannot hurt him,” Sarah says.

There’s running. Maxwell hears running. Nothing’s happening. It feels like forever and nothing is happening. Maxwell resolves to keep his eyes closed.

“That…bitch…” Father pants over his words. “I have had it with that b***h. It is time that we paid her a visit.”

There is cheering going on around Maxwell. In the excitement, Sarah loosens Maxwell’s restraints and hurries him to the plantation house, then into the hidden room.