Chapter 6: The Last Sermon

The door was ajar.

     That much gave me pause. For the first time since setting foot in Abraboca, I felt the smallest sliver of humanity run down my spine. Jennifer stood behind me, her empty gun at the ready in case we needed to trick someone into thinking we were dangerous. She nudged me, impatient, so I took a deep breath and prepared for the worst.

    It wasn’t enough. As soon as I’d set foot inside, I wished to God that I hadn’t. The smell was the first thing that hit me. The house was choked with the stink of blood and unloosed bowels, and there was nothing more hellish in all nine of Dante’s circles. I stepped through the threshold, gingerly, pulling my shirt up over my nose as I went.

     Mary Lawson’s body was in the parlor, slumped against the stairwell. Her blood ran down the stairs, a waterfall of dark red that stained wood below. She fell, I thought, and realized with a pang in my stomach that it was nothing less than a mercy. Cracked her skull against the stairs. It was quick. Painless, maybe. God knows what would have happened if they’d found her alive. My throat was tight, my stomach in knots and knots and knots. I thought of Angie for some reason. Or maybe it was Amy.

     We stepped over Mary’s body and ascended the stairs. Every creak of the wood was an explosion in the dead silence of the house. As soon as we reached the landing, I could hear the soft pattering of rain against wood. I followed the sound, through the darkness, past the hallways, and into what was clearly a child’s bedroom. Stuffed animals, books bound in brightly-colored leather, little pink shoes. A hard rain poured in from the open window. Wind rustled at the curtains, twisting them in knots and spirals and making them dance.

     A few discarded bows littered the floor around Lawson’s body, drinking the blood that pooled around his neck. Bile rose at the back of my throat. His throat had been gashed, I realized. The cut ran ear to ear, sloppy and gross and animal. A beast soaked in flame. Ia. Ia.

     “She’s not here,” Jennifer said.

     “No s**t, Constable Obvious,” was what I wanted to say. What I said was simply, “No.”

     Leonard’s eyes were still open, staring up at the darkness he could no longer sea. He looked skinnier in death than he had in life. Uglier, too.

     He knew it before I did. He’d heard her cries, saw the signs. He knew they were coming, somewhere in those rusty, liquor-soaked bones of his. He knew they were coming for her, knew they were going to try to take, he knew. “That won’t happen,” I told him. I’d promised him that. I owed him that.

     “Your friend,” she said, and I felt a hand brush against my shoulder. “Do you think we should…I mean, do you want to "”

     “No,” I said again. Staring down at Leonard, I felt very tired. And so, so old.

     “Well, where do we go from here?”

     To hell. Where else to go? Richard Parish promised to plunge our world into a fire that never ends. Bollocks to it. Let him have his flame. The world was burning long before him and his fire god climbed out of the muck.

     I reached down, closed Leonard’s eyes, and remembered my promise. My eyes were fixed on the open window. Somewhere out in the darkness of Abraboca, Darcy was alone and afraid and so, so close to oblivion. I imagined demons soaked in flame stalking through the darkness, silent and horrible, and wondered how in the hell how I was going to kill them.

     “When Leonard, when I saw him last -” We stood on the porch, pumping cancer into our throats and saying not a word. I never even said goodbye, did I? Just a pat on the back, that’s all I could spare. What a crock. “He told me that she was scared, that she knew what was coming somehow. She was -” Too young to see stuff like that, Lawson had said. “She thought they’d be safer…” I paused, letting the creaky old gears turn in their creaky old circles. If there was ever a time for a theological relapse, then it was whatever apocalypse Parish and his fire-brothers were planning. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the religion is, by chance?”

       It turns out she did.

     And when we stood in the courtyard with the sky weeping buckets down on us, that pale church with the faded grey paint and the rickety wood and the tower with the cracked bronze bell, the only thought that held any weight was this: It’s a not a church. It’s a tomb. My tomb. This is where John Swansea dies. The tiny grey building looked more like a shack that looked more like a tombstone gone to ruin. The door was ajar.

     The old wood creaked as we entered, and the floors protested under our weight. Even with the rush of water bashing against the soggy earth, I felt like a giant in a house made for mice. A towering stain-glass Christ stood behind the altar, gazing down on his empty house; the rain fell down his cheeks like tears and past his wrists like blood. Still, the church was barely bigger than my own dingy apartment, and it took no time at all to find Darcy.

     She was sitting on the front pew, curled up in a ball with her eyes closed and her fingers clenched around her knees. Her blue nightie was stained with blood that had gone brown.

     I grabbed her arm, and for one horrible moment I thought she was already dead. Her skin was cold as snow and her pulse nonexistent. Slowly, her eyes creaked open and her mouth moved to form words in a voice that was so, so small.

     “Mister Swansea?” She blinked and licked her lips. “Did my dad send you?”

     “Yeah, sweetie.” I tried my best to produce a smile. “Yes, he did. He did. We came to get you, the Constable and I. We’re going to help you.”

     “I saw you in my dreams.” She stood up and rubbed her eyes. “Then there was screaming and daddy told me to run. I went through the window, like he said. And I ran and I ran and I ran. Mama always hates it when I go through the window. Is she very mad at me?”

     “Oh, of course she is. She’s very cross right now. But she’ll get over it.” What was I supposed to say? “Can you stand, sweetie? Can you walk? We need to get out of here.”

     “But church is safe. It feels better here.”

    “As long as you’re in Abraboca, you’re not safe, Sweetie.” Jennifer gave me a look that said, I have no bullets left so none of us are safe, technically, but let’s maybe not tell the kid. “You can come with us. It’ll be like a vacation.”

     “Are mommy and daddy -”

    “We’ll meet up with them on the road,” I said. “C’mon, darling. It’s time to -”

     “Go?” The voice was high and shrill, echoing from the entrance and drowning out the patter of rain. “But we haven’t seen mommy in so, so long. Won’t she stay and play with us?”

     Her skin was ragged, her eyes yellow and hollow. The dress they’d found her in was in tatters, barely clinging to skin that was barely clinging to bone. Naomi Fisher cocked her head at us, like a wolf trying to decide which gazelle to eat first. Her lip twisted, grinning.

      “You’re not her.” Jennifer stood her ground, even as her voice quivered and her legs shook. “Whatever you are, whatever they’ve done to you…”

    “He said it would hurt. He said we’d be different.” She shambled down the aisle, fire cracking under her flesh. “It’s good to see you. All of you. The coward mommy. The coward soldier. And there, our precious lamb, why won’t you come play with us? There’s too many grown-ups here for our taste…”

     “Or ours.” Richard Parish came next, along with a herd of others. The vagrants wore ragged ruins of clothes and dead, empty looks. Fiery veins showed through their cracked, thinning skin and their eyes were full of fire. “We can’t wait much longer. Up there in the sky, he waits. He’s hungry. So, so hungry. Just one more. Isn’t that what we said. Just one more? Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Fthaggua Ktynga wgah’nagl fhtan!”

     And then the crowd was singing: “Ia! Ia! Fthaggua fhtagn! Ia! Ia! Fthaggua fhtagn! IA! IA! FTHAGGUA FHTAGN!”

     Amidst the shouts and chants and screams soured with soot, he stepped forward, swaggering past the crowd with a boyish grin and a kick in his step. The young man looked older than he had down at the Scarpe: his hair was matted and his eyes hollow. His skin was cracked and dry, his lips flaky and red. But there was no mistaking that smile.

     “This is what we’re talking about,” said Bernie Lutz, eyes wide with fire as he spread his hands wide. “Now it’s a party!”