The halted procession had turned to take a look at us and finally I could see each of their faces, all manners of shapes, sizes, and shades, but each with the same fear tinged in a slight hint of distrust. Scales were stupid enough to worship the monsters responsible for terrorizing mankind. Of course, this made Effigies the bad guys. We were like their Lucifer or something.
“Please sit,” Pastor Charles told us. “Let us finish here. Then we’ll speak.”
When Pastor Charles asked the procession to continue, they did so, but only reluctantly. After prying their eyes from the two Effigies at the back of the church, they managed to complete their ritual, marching up the steps of the pulpit platform, circling the altar with their candles. I watched from my seat while their quiet chants rumbled low to the floor like the silent tremors of an earthquake. It was hard to concentrate for those ten minutes that they “gave thanks” to the beasts they called the spirits of life and death, “for where life begins, so too must death.”
“The spirits, you see,” Pastor Charles explained once the procession had ended and the worshippers had left, “are agents of both.”
“Spirits.” I stood up with Belle. “That’s what you’re calling them? Is that the politically correct term? Or are you trying to make phantoms more marketable and cult-friendly?”
“Phantoms are not spirits,” he said. “Phantoms are of spirits. But they are not spirits. The spirits’ existence is what allows for life and death to occur naturally in the world. In that way, they are also agents of fate.”
Walking up the aisle, he spread open his arms as if the painted phantoms would tear themselves from the wall and fly to him.
“Life and death.” Pastor Charles kept his hands behind his back as he spoke to us. “During our present lives, they maintain that balance, giving us the tools we need to live. They are in all things. They are our souls, the souls of nature, animals, the elements, the universe. They never leave us. They are with us always, even if we cannot see them. Feel them.”
Closing his eyes, he breathed in the air as if he didn’t look crazy enough.
“And when we die, our spirits leave our bodies and join the chorus before it’s time to be reborn again. Maia, these spirits are not our enemies.”
“Okay, I’ll bite.” I tilted my head. “You said phantoms weren’t spirits. They were of spirits. Now, I have no idea what you mean, but all this weird crap just sounds to me like you’re trying to let phantoms off the hook for what they do. If that’s the case, then I’ve seen enough of their handiwork to respectfully disagree with you on that, sir,” I told him.
I didn’t dare close my eyes, even for a second, because if I did, I’d see the dead bodies of all the people I’d failed to save.
“The phantoms are not spirits,” he insisted. “Indeed, phantoms are evil,” he agreed, surprising me. “But the spirits are not. Neither are the Effigies. And that is what I’ve always tried to teach here.”
“What do you—”
“Pastor Charles,” Belle interrupted. “I called you earlier about a request.”
“Ah, yes.” He nodded. “And this is Maia Finley.”
Despite his incredibly twisted point of view, he seemed nice enough. I shook his hand. “I don’t agree with you at all, but it’s nice to meet you.”
“Come.” He flicked his head toward the front of the church. “We’ll take her to the cellar.”
We followed him through a door at the rightmost corner of the church, which he opened with a key. He continued to explain his philosophy as he led us down the corridor.
“The common perception of the Deoscali is that we worship phantoms. And you’re not wrong.” His white robes skidded across the stone floor. “It’s a common perception among the Deoscali as well. But this is only a corruption of the true teachings handed down to us—the teachings of Emilia Farlow, the originator of our church.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Which are?”
“That it is the spirits who are agents of life, death, and fate. Not the phantoms. You see, we Deoscali are a relatively new religious group. The practice of worshipping phantoms began just shortly after the phantoms appeared themselves, but it quickly devolved into the blood-worshipping cult you’ve probably grown to disdain. I, too, once fell prey to this ideology.” And he looked like he regretted it. He shook his head. “Many view Effigies as the enemy. Groff grew up believing this. He only recently joined us here at this church. An uncomfortable amount of Deoscali have even come to believe in the terrorist Saul as a kind of a prophet, an envoy of the phantoms.”
Saul, a prophet. It really didn’t take much to get people to believe in garbage.
“I’ve been trying to rehabilitate some of these wayward thoughts. One can only hate the Effigies if you worship the phantoms. But the phantoms are not the spirits. The spirits only exist in the world as silent shadows, protecting the world without ever being seen.”
“A world of shadows . . . ,” I whispered as Saul’s words from that night in Marrakesh bubbled up in my memories.
“As I said, they are agents of life, death, and thus fate, existing all around us, existing in us, connecting us in a cosmic chain crossing space and time. They only become phantoms when something provokes them: a great sin, a great evil. The phantoms are a manifestation of that imbalance. Only then do they become beasts of nightmare.”
It felt like semantics, a way to ease the guilt of worshipping monsters, but he was earnest enough as he spoke.
“Oh, yeah?” He was probably so into his own babble, he didn’t notice the mocking edge I’d slipped into my voice. He didn’t show one way or another. An eerie serenity possessed him as he spoke about his beliefs. Creepy, to say the least, but maybe all religious types were like that. “So then, what are we?”
“The Effigies.” Pastor Charles breathed a sigh as he considered us as if we were the one puzzle he hadn’t yet cracked. “Farlow’s writings spoke at length about the spirits and the phantoms. But only one time did she ever refer to the four of you.”
“And what did she say?”
“That you were blessed.” Pastor Charles grinned down at me. “Perhaps it was the spirits that gave you your gifts. Perhaps you’re more connected to them than any of us will ever be.”
My family was never that religious. While many had taken to the refuge of the steeple to explain the existence of the phantoms, others like us chose to just take things as they were, but for me at least, I’d always figured there was a god. God. Magic. Spirits. Effigies and monsters. What was true? Or was it all true in this world where the impossible was possible?
I shook my head. “So what’s in the cellar?” I asked as we turned a corner and started down a flight of stairs.
“I met Natalya, the fire Effigy before you, about a year before her unfortunate death,” Pastor Charles said, and I felt Belle go rigid beside me. “She was curious about my views, about why my teachings differed from the usual discourse of the Deoscali. And one day, during our discussions, I showed her this.”