I wait for the punchline, but Wrath doesn’t follow up.

  Collecting apocalypses? That’s not a thing! “Be serious, Wrath. Everyone collects something. It’s not like serial killer memorabilia. ”

  The demon leans over from his side of the couch.“Just because it’s not something everyone collects doesn’t mean no one does.People like strange things.And crazy people like…collecting extinction events - every vintage they can scavenge.”

  “Fine,” I say, crossing my arms in front of me. “How does that work?”

  “If it was easy enough to explain, then someone would be making money off it,” he replies flippantly.“I might as well put it on the internet, and call it The Necronomicon’s Cookbook.”

  “Wrath!”

  He sighs, then rests his claws gently on my ankles. “You remember the story of the Garden?”

  It takes me a moment to understand what he’s talking about. “The bedtime story Mom used to tell me?”

  “The very one.”He looks expectantly at me.

  I recite what I remember. “Once there was a perfect garden at the center of the world, and at the center of the garden there was a tree larger than any other.On that tree grew something forbidden and not meant for men.”

  Wrath nods and picks up the story. “And yet, in their hearts men are craven, vicious animals, and if they could not have the fruit of the tree, then none would. So they destroyed the tree at the center of the Garden of Hell, and it tore all worlds asunder. Now we live within the Broken Hells, some above, some below. Our world is just one of a thousand different Hells, some no larger than an angel’s compassion (which is very small indeed), and impossible to traverse.”

  “I remember the story,” I say, but in truth I barely remembered the beginning of it.

  “When that perfect Hell was destroyed,” Wrath says after a moment, “some artifacts crossed over.These are what the Order has been collecting.” After a moment he adds, “Were collecting? It’s hard to say.”

  I ignore that.“So these apocalypses are remnants of another Hell?”

  “An older one, I think if we’re being technical. When a world is destroyed and remade, whether it’s fire or flood, there are always pieces of the old world that clogs the drain.”

  “So how do my parents fit in?” I look down at my plate, realizing all the cookies are gone and the glass of milk is drained. There’s always been something soothing about when Wrath tells a story, and today is no different.

  “Sometimes when a Mommy and Daddy really love themselves—“

  “—I know where babies come from, Wrath—“

  “—and there’s a child down the hall that they’re uncertain about, they know the best thing they can do is to abandon him.”

  “Wrath!”

  “Fine! When I first met them, they were already entrenched within The Order.Or maybe they let The Order infest them.They rose through the ranks, as ones who hunger for power often do, and soon their desires were synonymous with The Order’s desires.”

  They led The Order? This is new information, and I want to question him about it further - why has he never told me any of this - but he keeps talking, never giving me a moment to cut in.

  “Soon they had taken over the hive, and their minions and workers scurried across the globe to bring The Order’s plans to a central focus.It’s hard to say who was truly in power: if father called the shots, or your mother pulled the strings. They were at the head, but no one was sure who was really in charge.Under their leadership The Order was poised to become a premiere power in the world again.”

  I lean against the couch cushion and curl up under my blanket.

  “Then, of course, they vanished without a trace, taking the most dangerous artifact and some other trinkets with them.Without them, everything the Order became started to collapse and they escaped in the confusion.The Order has hunted them ever since.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “So my parents stole a bunch of apocalypses, that’s what you’re trying to tell me.”

  “Among other things,” he admits, choosing his words carefully.“I’m not privy to all of it, of course, it’s not like they gave me a manifest of everything they stole, but it stands to reason they got the worst of it.That was, a demon could assume, their point.Why else infiltrate the bottom feeders? But yes, at the end of the day, they probably did the rest of the world a favor.”He smiles at me brightly.“Luckily for you, those calamities are probably not-so-safely hidden inside the Manor.Isn’t that fun?”

  This is what he’s been building towards, and even his half-hearted term of joy doesn’t quite throw me off.“Why are you telling me this now?”

  Wrath sighs slowly. There’s something he’s not telling me.Something he won’t even let show on his face.But I know him almost as well as I know myself, and I know when he’s holding something back. He’s funnier when he’s lying to me.“I think the reason the furnace nearly turned you into a Theopsicle is one of Mommy and Daddy’s dirty little secrets. And not the kind they played in the dungeon.”

  ***

  All of that makes it hard to sleep, but the glass of milk and the plate full of cookies does a lot to soothe my spirit. So when I finally curl up in bed, still fighting off a lingering chill from the afternoon, Wrath is right there to curl up at my side, a demonic furnace who regulates my temperature.

  Falling asleep is less falling and more dragged down into the maw of something indescribably old and plunged into watery depths.

  I come out the other side and into a memory, one of my mother.

  She crouches down next to my bed, impossibly tall and statuesque.Her dark hair gleams both black and red at once, shielding me like a fortress from the rest of the world.

  “There now, my little poppet,” she murmurs, pulling the covers until they can be tucked under my chin.I’m wedged inside the bed, covers so tight I can’t move my arms or legs.“Finally safe in your little bed.”She picks up a stuffed animal, much smaller than I remember it.Now it’s just a little plushie, about as big as a child’s head.She tucks it in at my side, pressing his head against mine.

  “Wrath wants to be tucked in, too,” I say, feeling my voice higher than it’s been in years. A childish soprano. I am somehow both my child self and the adult, sharing a single space in time.

  She looks at me like she knows this, too, but carefully lifts the Wrath plushie up and pulls the covers back to include him in their vice grip as well.“There, Theo and Wrath are all bundled together, just as they are always meant to be.”

  “Forever and always, right?”

  “He will protect you forever and always.He’s your guardian demon, after all.”

  I scrunch up my little face. “What’s that mean?”

  “It means he will eat little boys who ask too many questions,” she says warmly before bopping me on the nose, “And then you’ll burn in the Broken Hells forever without Mommy and Daddy.And you don’t want that, do you, my little carrion beetle?”

  I whisper quietly a “No…” that does not make a sound, my voice stolen by terror rushing through me like a ghost train.

  I remember this conversation. Mom came into my room, tucked Wrath and I in, and then told me things that I thought were loving and kind at the time. Later they seemed suspicious.

  A moment later the memory buckles. Warps like a bubble and then passes.Mom pauses, but instead of leaving she cocks her head to one side, and says, “Ahh.”

  “Is the boy asleep?” From the doorway comes the voice of a man, older than his body, gravel in his lungs, rot in his voice.

  “Not now, dear,” my mother says, scrutinizing me in my bed. “We have a visitor.” Slowly she begins to walk around, and my eyes follow her, though I can’t move my head. She circles me, a finger pressed against her lips. Her fingernails, long and polished absolute black, curving to tight little points. Where the light hits, the gloss shines, but I can see cracks of red light amidst the black, like magma breaking through the cooling lava.

  “Did you come looking for me?” she asks, leaning down, nails trailing my cheek.She leans in.“I will answer no questions, little corpse fly. There’s a jar filled with screams hidden deep within my domain,” she whispers in my ear, “and yours the most precious of all.”

  A ticking clock begins to sound, chiming the midnight hour. Gong. … Gong. … Gong.

  The room slowly fills with water.

  The water ripples with the force of the sound.Gong.

  Gong. Faster now, pounding. Each crashing wave a percussion beat.

  Gong. Gong. Gong.

  Mom glides from the room just before it reaches the ends of her gown. As soon as the door closes behind her, the water rushes up, filling the room faster and faster.

  Gong.

  It reaches the end of the bed.Gong. The box spring. The mattress.

  Gong. I struggle, writhe, anything to give myself some room.

  Gong.

  The water overtakes me.

  And just as the last bell chimes, just as the thirteenth hour is cast, I hurtle up through the dream back towards my body, back towards somewhere safe.

  I wake screaming.

  ***

  Wrath sets the mug of tea down and takes the seat across from me.The coffee maker also makes hot water, but it’s the fact it does so without complaint that surprises me.

  “And then what happened?”

  I think back, trying to remember the end of the dream. “The room filled with water. And there was this bell in the background. It kept ringing, like it was counting to something, and in the dream it was like I knew it was counting to thirteen instead of twelve.”

  Wrath leaps from his chair, nearly knocking it to the ground. His eyes go wide, and the normally expressionless face now shows something that I think is surprise.

  “What? What did I say?”

  “It’s fine,” he says. “Everything is fine. Nothing to worry about.” In contrast, he looks like he’s panicking. His voice rises from a sulfurous bass to a devilish tenor.

  It takes him a moment to square himself away.I wait patiently.Eventually he claps me on the shoulder.“You’ve got a date with the Doom Clock.”