A shadow darted forward into the light: Yusuf, snarling, his hands up and hooked into claws, and Row felt a wild burst of relief, because even though he didn’t understand everything about the child, he knew what it was capable of—
Lily turned on Yusuf and snarled, a sound with no more humanity than the grunt of a pig. Yusuf flinched, as if struck, and fell to the ground, twitching. In the corner, Gavin gave a low moan and wrapped his arms around his head, covering his eyes. Lear was nowhere to be seen; he had collapsed in one of the pews.
“We were such good friends,” the apparition whispered, its voice sibilant, the sound of an animal carcass being dragged across stone. “Why do you run away?”
Row turned and dashed down the row of pews, but when he glanced behind him, there she was, at the end of his row, even closer than she had been before. She smiled at him, and he saw that her teeth were needles.
“Katie?” he asked, and then, his mouth full of dark horror, “Lily?”
“Katie? Lily? Ah, Row.” It giggled, raising its arm, and Row saw that it was holding a spade, not one of the small gardening tools the Town used at harvest but a broad, flat spade, tall as a man, its head dripping blood.
He fled then, toward the doorway, where blessed sunlight poured in, thinking God, get me out of this, please, and I’ll be the man they think I am, Brother Row, Father Row, anything, only—
He was no more than five feet away when the doors slammed shut, and he ran into them full speed, bouncing off and falling to the ground with blood seeping into his left eye, a swirl of blackness over the vision in his right.
How can this be? his mind demanded, wild and hectoring. We planned it so well! They performed so well! How can this be?
Nearby, he heard the dragging crunch of feet coming closer, and squeezed his eyes shut. When he was a child—he hadn’t thought of this in so long—he had been afraid of monsters in his room at night, but if he closed his eyes long enough, they always went away. What he wouldn’t give to be back there, curled up in his bed, five years old!
Fingers grabbed his shoulders, their tips like claws, and Row was jerked to his feet. He opened his good eye and found those deep black pupils staring directly into his. When it spoke, its breath wafted through those needle teeth, and it was the smell of the crypts that a thirteen-year-old Row had pried open, looking for treasure, not sure yet what he meant to do but he knew he had the will to get it done, even then—
“I defend this land, Rowland Finn. No one wants to know how I do it, but I do.”
Row began to scream.
Katie woke up gradually, with the sense of having slowly broken free of an unfathomable dream.
She was lying on the floor in the middle of the church, just in front of the pulpit where Row had given so many of his sermons over the years. Something cold lay against her chest, and after a moment she realized that it was the silver chain, Jonathan’s sapphire around her neck.
Raising her head, she saw a body lying several feet away. It looked like Jonathan, but it couldn’t be; the two of them had just come up the staircase. She dragged herself to her knees and crawled over to him, turned him over.
Jonathan’s dead eyes stared up at her.
Katie barely felt surprised. A dim corner of her mind murmured that she had always known it ended this way, of course she had, William Tear had told her . . . but lack of surprise did not mute her grief.
A choking sound came from the far side of the church. Katie looked around wildly and saw Gavin, crouched in the corner, his wide eyes upon her.
“What did you do?” she demanded, though the venom in her voice was buried beneath tears. “What did you do to him?”
Gavin shook his head, his face whitening with panic. “Not me! I swear!”
She pushed herself to her feet and strode over to him; as she came, Gavin wrapped his arms around himself and drew into a tiny ball in the corner, his voice breaking with panic.
“Please, Katie, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
For a moment she hesitated over him, thinking how good it would feel to kill him, how easy and pleasurable and fair—but the thought of Jonathan’s corpse, lying behind her, held her back.
She turned and found that the church doors were wide open, a beautiful summer day pouring into the aisle. Outside, she could hear the distant shouts of children at the park. None of it seemed to connect to what she saw in here: Jonathan’s body, Gavin cowering in the corner.
We were coming up the stairs, she thought, and then?
At the far end of the aisle, near the doors, she saw a wide, dark pool that looked like oil. But when she ventured closer, the smell hit her like a slap, and she saw the lift and buzz of innumerable insects around the puddle, flies and gnats. Near the puddle lay a glimmering object; when Katie drew closer, she saw that it was a blue jewel on a silver necklace.
She turned back to Gavin and asked, “Where’s Row?”
Gavin began to sob, and this made her so angry that she strode over and slapped him in the face.
“It’s all well and good to cry now, you little shit. What are we supposed to do?”