“There were people sitting in the pews at the front half of the room, facing the dais, where a white guy dressed in some kind of robes was standing behind a podium. As I got a little closer, I could see that it was Jeremiah Standfast Parrish, whom I recognized from the author photo on the back of his book. He was talking to the folks in the pews like a preacher on Sunday morning, talking about how the hard work that they’d done had made them ‘primed,’ their minds ‘unlocked’ and made ready. Then he started calling folks from the front row to come up to receive their ‘daily sacrament.’ And one by one they knelt in front of him, and tilted their heads back with their mouths open. From where I was standing, it looked like he was pouring a drop from a black pitcher onto their tongues while chanting some kind of nonsense, but as I got a little closer I could see that the pitcher was actually made of clear glass, and the stuff inside that he was pouring onto their tongues a drop at a time was some kind of thick black goo, almost like oil.”
“Like ink, maybe?” Izzie prompted.
“About like, yeah,” the old man allowed. “Well, the folks would just shiver a second or two, then he’d pat them on the top of the head and they’d go on back to their pew. Looking with the knack, though, I could see what was really going on. All of those folks were Ridden, little clouds of shadow trailing from their heads. But every one of them that went up and got that ‘sacrament,’ the shadows around them grew bigger and stronger while I watched, coming up from their heads and shoulders like tendrils reaching up into nothing at all. Like he was pouring more of whatever was controlling them right into their bodies a little bit at a time, strengthening the Otherworld’s hold on them every time he did. And Parrish himself?”
He shook his head, a pained expression deepening the lines on his face.
“Him I could hardly stand to look at. The shadows had damn near swallowed that man whole, until there was nothing left of him. The body I could see with my eyes was like a thin shell covering up the darkness inside. I doubted there was much left of the man he’d once been in there at all.”
Jett drew in a ragged breath through his nostrils and composed himself before continuing.
“I’d gone close enough to the front of the room that I could see the faces of some of the folks in the pews. I recognized a lot of the kids that I’d been tailing on the street, all of them with the same glassy look in their eyes, zonked out and expressionless, like they’d been hypnotized or something. And sitting right next to each other on the back row, on the same side of the room as I was standing, were two of the kids I’d gone in there looking for: Muriel Tomlinson and Eric Fulton. They hadn’t gone up to get the ‘sacrament’ yet, and there were a couple of rows to go until it was their turn. Judging by the shadows that the knack was showing me around their heads, I could see that they weren’t yet as far gone as some of the others, but it looked to me like another dose or two of that oily junk was likely to eat away enough of them that there wouldn’t be any coming back from it. The whole damned place, the entire Eschaton Center, seemed to be nothing more than a factory churning out Ridden, taking in lost and vulnerable young people at one end and pumping out possessed minions at the other. Just what Parrish planned to do with them—or what the force that had taken control of Parrish, I guess I should say—I didn’t know. But I had to do something, and fast. I couldn’t just stand there and watch those two kids give up a little bit more of themselves to that junk while their families were out there waiting for me to bring them home. So, while everyone else’s attention was on the front of the room where Parrish was dosing one dupe after another, I slunk over to where the two kids were sitting, keeping low and hoping nobody looked in my direction.”
“You were still wearing the janitor’s uniform, right?” Izzie asked.
“Yeah, and I had that Colt .45 riding in the waistband of my pants, hidden by the shirt’s hem. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to use it, but considering that there weren’t any maintenance or cleaning folks anywhere to be seen on those lower levels, I knew that if someone were to spot me, there was a good chance that I might have to. If I just tapped Tomlinson and Fulton on the shoulder, I figured there was an even chance that when they saw me they might start hollering for help, so instead I leaned in close and, before they’d even had a chance to turn around, I whispered that Parrish needed their help with a special ceremony. They turned and gave me that same zonked out, glassy-eyed stare. They didn’t holler, but they didn’t budge, either. Tomlinson was at the end of the row, so I took hold of her arm and pulled her to her feet, and held on tight so she wouldn’t wander away while I grabbed Fulton and dragged him off the pew, too. As I pulled them into the shadows at the edge of the room, I chanced a look back over my shoulder and saw that Parrish was still occupied with chanting and dosing the kids with the gunk, and hadn’t seemed to notice me yet. So I kept on pushing the two kids toward the back of the room, staying in the shadows as much as possible, keeping a
