“No, Father, he’s the devil.” So definite she sounded. “He’s not real, and he’s not made up either.”
Deidre Mayfair is a young girl trying to escape the house on First Street and Lasher. She opens up to the local priest about what is going on in the house. The existence of Lasher is a huge enigma in the novel that doesn’t get answered in this first part of the series. There are allusions here and there to the devil, but there is also a possibility of him being a real, natural existence bound to Earth. Nevertheless, it is clear that Lasher is a force that is antagonizing humans, an existence that uses manipulation and seduction to accomplish its plan.
“That I’m bad, Michael, a bad person, a person who could really do harm. A person with a terrible potential for evil. That is what all my powers, such as they are, tell me about me.”
There is a significant discussion about free will and whether the choices the characters make are of their own volition or predestined by some higher force. Rowan is inherently a good person, a person who enjoys saving lives and bringing families back together. However, she is aware of the evil power inside her. Rowan chooses to fight the evil inside her and the evil that lies in the house on First Street. But, despite that, the plan that was predestined before her by Lasher is accomplished through her power. This raises the question of whether any moment in Rowan and Michael’s lives was their free will or something planned by a force greater than themselves.
'But without a doubt, these simple folk seemed all the more tantalized by the fact that it was a good and great lady who would be committed to the flames before them, as if her beauty and her kindness made her death a grand spectacle for them to enjoy."
The context of this quote is the letter Petyr van Able sent to his correspondent in Talamasca. In his letters, he describes how he saved Deborah Mayfair after her mother was burned at the stake and how he accidentally discovered her years later facing the same fate. Petyr, pretending to be a priest, goes around town questioning the reasoning behind Deborah’s accusations and upcoming punishment, and discovers that she made a name for herself as a kind and generous healer with wondrous abilities. Despite her being accused of being a witch, most people speak kindly of her. This quote shows perverse human nature, as they would enjoy seeing the destruction of a person who showed them nothing but kindness.
