Where Angels Fear to Tread

happy.

The Church of Dagon had welcomed them with open arms, giving them a place to stay when they’d had no other, and even inviting them for a special visit with the church’s founder, Pastor Zachariah.

And suddenly their lives were changed. They were no longer failures. They were chosen, Pastor Zachariah had told them. The pastor’s words were like a magic potion, and Carl and Deryn had thrown themselves into the church, body and soul, waiting for the time when they would be able to fulfill their special purpose.

Then Deryn became pregnant. All the plans began to fall into place, and their future never seemed clearer.

The pastor told them their baby would be the vessel for their god. . Dagon. And the world would be changed forever.

Carl opened the door, letting a rush of moist, West Virginia heat into the coolness of the air-conditioned car.

“Stay right there,” he told his daughter as he exited. She continued to rock to some silent tune that only she could hear.

He slammed the door closed and walked around the car, standing before the metal gate, craning his neck to see what lay beyond. It appeared to be more of the same, but he didn’t want to believe he was lost.

Not again.

The closer it had come to the time for the ritual, the more doubt had filled Carl’s mind. He’d known it was selfish, but he didn’t want a god to live inside his baby. Carl wanted his baby to belong to him, and to Deryn, not to the church. . not to the world.

And that was when he had taken a walk down the road to failure again, placing a series of phone calls to various state and federal agencies, suggesting wrongdoing at the isolated church compound.

He’d believed his attempts to rouse the suspicions of the authorities had failed as the night the god Dagon was to return to the world was upon them. All the church was to play a part in the ancient ritual, sacrificing their lives for the good of the world, for the good of their god.

Their lives would reach to the void, punching through the barrier that kept the Lord of Abundance separated from this reality.

The ritual had been well under way, the church brothers and sisters in the throes of death, when the authorities laid siege to the compound.

Carl hadn’t taken his own poison as his wife lay there, waiting for the ritual to be completed and the god to take possession of the child—their child—growing in her belly. As the officials poured into the church, weapons drawn, he had looked into Pastor Zachariah’s eyes and realized the holy man knew he was responsible.

The pastor had run, using the confusion and clouds of tear gas to escape prosecution.

Carl, Deryn, and the baby had been the only survivors, and Carl had believed he was the luckiest man alive.

But he’d been wrong.

Because of his betrayal, he was back on the path of failure, and things had gone from bad to worse.

Carl shook his head and returned to the car.

“C’mon, hon,” he said, opening the passenger door and unbuckling Zoe’s seat belt. “We’re gonna go for a little walk and see what’s up this road.”

The child’s hands were flailing. It had been quite a while since she’d last held a crayon.

“I’ll get you some paper in a little while,” he told her, taking one of her hands in his and leading her toward the rusted gate. Carl picked the child up and placed her on the other side, climbing beneath the metal obstruction to join her.

His life after the Church of Dagon had been exciting at first, as they were interviewed by the newspapers and television, but it seemed like no time at all before things had turned to misery. It had taken Deryn some time to get over their no longer having a special purpose, other than to be mother and father to their new baby.

She had eventually accepted that, but doubt ate at Carl every day. He had thought the move to Florida would help, but a change in temperature wasn’t enough to convince him that what he had done was the right thing.

Zoe’s being diagnosed with autism and his and Deryn’s splitting up were punishment for what he had done, for allowing his selfishness to prevent the world from seeing something special.

But then he had met Frank and learned that the man’s place of worship, the Church of His Holy Abundance, was an offshoot of the Church of Dagon. It was an opportunity for Carl to make amends.

“Let’s go up here,” he told his daughter, leading her up the rock and dirt path.

Frank had seen Zoe’s drawings and taken them as a sign that Carl and his child had been delivered to him, that he would be the messenger, the one to return them to their god.

Carl had followed the man’s directions to the West Virginia compound of the Church of His Holy Abundance to a tee, or at least believed he had, but now he was beginning to think that maybe he was, as he had been for so very long now. .

Lost.

Rounding the corner, he saw that the rocky path continued.

Maybe a little bit farther, he thought, tugging on Zoe’s hand. The child was bent over, her index finger moving in the dirt. As she drew, she made strange, explosive sounds, almost as if she were imitating gunshots.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Why are you making those sounds?”

And as if on cue, the men with guns emerged from the high underbrush. There were six of them, dressed in military fatigues.

“You are trespassing on private property,” one of them bellowed, aiming down the barrel of a semiautomatic rifle.

Carl immediately let go of his child’s hand and put his own up.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes darting from one armed man to the next. “I didn’t know. . I’m looking for a church and I think I’m lost.”

“What kind of church?” the man asked, still staring down the length of his weapon.

“The Church—the Church of His Holy Abundance,” Carl stammered. “I used to be a member—a long time ago. I want them to take me back—and to forgive me for what I did.”

Carl was babbling, his voice quivering with fear and emotion.

The man who questioned him lowered his gun.

“You used to be a parishioner?” he asked.

Carl nodded. “When it was the Church of Dagon.”

The mention of the old church got an immediate reaction.

“Lower your weapons,” the man said, and the others did as they were told.

“Do you know of the church?” Carl asked nervously. “Is it close by?” His arms were starting to ache, so he cautiously lowered them.

A phone began to chirp. The man reached down to a pocket on the leg of his pants, retrieved the phone, and brought it to his mouth.

“Go ahead, base,” he said.

“What’s the problem up there?” a voice asked.

“Seems we have a lost sheep that has returned to the flock,” the man said.

There was a pause. “A lost sheep, you say?” the voice asked finally. “Ask him his name.”

“What’s your name, sheep?” the man asked. He held out the phone.

“Carl. Carl Saylor.”

The man brought the phone to his mouth again. “Did you get that?”

“I did,” said the voice on the other end. “The Judas has come home.”

The other men instantly raised their weapons, hate suddenly evident in their eyes.

“The Judas,” the man with the phone said, and Carl thought there was a very good chance he was about to be killed.

But the voice from the phone spoke again.

“Bring the Judas to the compound,” it said.

And Carl and his daughter were escorted up the road at gunpoint, but he was exactly where he wanted to be.

Lost, but now found.

The sun was going down, and the tide was rolling in.

Remy reclined in his beach chair; his entire body hurt.

“Are you all right?” she asked him.

He turned his head to see Madeline sitting there beside him, her silly beach hat still adorning her lovely head.

“I think I got my ass kicked pretty good,” he said. Even talking hurt him. His jaw throbbed painfully with the beat of his heart, and the muscles in his neck and stomach were aching with even the thought of movement.

“What happened back there?” Madeline asked as a gust of warm wind came off the ocean, nearly stealing away her hat. She gripped the brim, tilting her head down to ride out the breeze.

Flecks of sand irritated his eyes, but he stared ahead at the roiling ocean slowly making its way up the beach toward them, toward the end of their days together.

“I’m not sure really,” he said. “The people who attacked me—they were missing their souls.”

“That doesn’t happen all that often, does it?”

“Not usually,” he said with a shake of his head that hurt way more than it should. “Something has taken their souls and left them angry, destructive shells of what they once were. Without a soul, they’ll just lose the will to live, and eventually waste away.”

“What about their leader?” Madeline asked. “He didn’t seem like he was going to be wasting away any time soon.”

“No, he didn’t,” Remy said, remembering the gray-haired man’s cold, lifeless eyes. “Something tells me he wasn’t using his soul all that much even before it was taken.”

They both fell silent for a while, staring out across the ocean. The pain of his body had started to subside, which meant he was healing; one angelic aspect that he’d never made any effort to suppress.

“This is nice,” he said finally, reaching to take her hand.

“It is,” she said, “but you know it’s not real, right?”

Remy sighed, not wanting to see the truth in her gaze.

“I know. But I really don’t care. I’ll see you any way I can.”

He felt her smile at him, and his heart did the same kind of acrobatics it had done when they’d first met.

“You’re sweet,” she said, leaning over to kiss him. “But you really should get going.”

“You’re probably right.”