Thirty minutes before sundown, they completed digging and packing their shelter in the snow. With the tarp secured over it, Ryan could only hope it would be enough to shelter them from the cold. He’d watched enough survival shows to know how to navigate down a snowy mountain, and he knew the best way to live through an avalanche, but he’d be damned if he could recall an episode that taught him how to fend off man-eating hellions in knee-deep powder.

He had been stupid to think it would have been so easy. Nobody simply walked into paradise.

Don’t listen to him.” Mabel waved a hand in disregard. “He’s gone and lost his mind since the last time you paid us a visit. All his marbles fell out; rolled under the tables and counters, and he’s too old to bend down and find them.

You can’t make people go to your funeral,” Abby said. “They only go if they feel like it.” “They’ll feel like it.” Charlie pulled on a multicolored sock. “I’m gonna be buried in the sandbox next to the monkey bars. They’ll have to go because it’ll be during recess.

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.

Everyone, it seemed, whether a hardened criminal or a father of two, wanted to find some semblance of peace before exhaling a final breath.

He wore eyeliner and gauged his ears and bought intentionally offensive t-shirts off the internet, which he would then wear to the shop, betting Jack that today was the day he’d get punched in the mouth by a swamper.

Every mother has the miraculous ability of momentary blindness.

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. For all he knew, wickedness was strong enough to exist in a world without good.

But that was how the devil worked, making his appearance when you least expected it.