Chapter Eighteen
“The foggy man…” Eric breathed.
There was nothing out there to obscure his vision, yet the mysterious figure was partially faded from view in the gloom, as if he were shrouded behind a heavy haze. It was exactly as Annette first described him, and every bit as terrifying as he’d imagined.
“Friend of yours?”
Eric turned and looked at Father Billy. “You don’t know about the foggy man?”
“Should I?”
“He got here before me. He’s supposed to be trying to get to the cathedral first.”
“Then what’s he doing here?”
Eric had no idea. “He’s been leaving these…things…along the path. Monsters. Two of them have tried to kill me so far.”
“Monsters?”
Eric peered outside again. The foggy man was no longer there, gone as quickly and mysteriously as he’d appeared. In the spot where he’d been standing, there was now a large box. “What the hell?”
Father Billy pushed him aside and looked out. “Where’d he go? What’s with the box? You expecting a package?”
“Nothing I’d care to open.”
Father Billy turned and looked at him, his eyes narrowed. “You said he was leaving monsters for you?”
“Yeah. One was in a wardrobe in an old farmhouse. The other came through a kitchen door in an abandoned resort.”
“What did they look like?”
“Hard to explain. Huge, kind of—”
“Hard to explain? Or hard to comprehend? Like you just can’t quite make parts of them out no matter how hard you looked?”
“Yeah. I guess. I was too busy running for my life to look very hard. All I know is I’m supposed to break their focus.”
“Break their focus…? Aw fuck.” He pressed his face to the peephole again and stared out at the box. “He’s leaving you fucking golems? I can’t believe this shit!”
“Sorry.”
“It’s a little fucking late for sorry! He’s already dropped another one off. At my church! Son of a bitch even gift-wrapped it for you!”
“How considerate.”
Father Billy cursed bitterly and slammed the peephole closed again. “I need to think.”
“So what the hell’s a golem? Isn’t that some kind of fairy tale creature or something?”
“Jewish folklore, actually.”
“You’re Jewish?”
“No.”
“Right. Didn’t think so.”
Father Billy sat down again and rubbed tiredly at his eyes. After a moment, he said, “So how the hell did you get away from the other two?”
“Guy named Grant drove a tractor through the front porch of the farmhouse to stop the first one.”
“Not bad. And the second?”
“Fell off a four-story building.”
“Impressive.”
“Lucky, actually.”
“Impressive luck, then.”
“I’d rather not rely on luck to get through another one.”
“Me neither.”
Eric stood beside the door, staring at Father Billy. “So why is it you know about golems, but you don’t know who the foggy man is?”
“I never claimed to know everything.”
“No. You only acted like you did.”
Father Billy glared up at him. “I’ve had some experience with the weird, okay. I used to be mixed up in some pretty heavy shit.”
“Heavy like waking up from crazy dreams with irresistible compulsions to drive out into the country and then go strolling through a deadly crack in the universe? That kind of heavy shit?”
“Not exactly, no. More like I used to work for some people who made weird shit like this ‘crack in the universe’ their business.”
Eric lifted an eyebrow. “Now that sounds interesting.”
“It was. I’ve seen some weird-ass things, let me tell you.”
“So you guys were…what? Like Men in Black or something?”
“What? No. Nothing so glamorous. It was… Well, to be honest, I couldn’t tell you what it was. At first, I thought it had something to do with the mafia or something. I was hired by a guy named Saulkin. Never even knew his first name. This guy’s job was to find—as he put it—‘items of interest.’ I never knew what these items were. I never even saw the items. I just ran errands for the guy. I gathered information. Me and two other guys. That was our job. We weren’t supposed to ask questions.”
Eric sat down across from him, interested.
“Wasn’t always ethical work. I don’t know who Saulkin worked for. Never met them, but I heard they were some scary-ass dudes. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was in real deep with something way more fucked-up than the mafia.”
“And you came across these golems working for Saulkin?”
“No. I never actually saw one. But I heard about them. There was supposedly this guy who knew how to make them. Used to hear about a lot of things like that.”
“So, what kinds of things did you see?”
“Mostly I just heard things. But I did have a run in with some kind of witch.”
Eric raised an eyebrow. “A witch? Really?”
“She was some kind of crazy-powerful bitch. Turned two hard-trained men into raving lunatics and made a third vanish off the face of the earth, all between breakfast and lunch.”
“Wow.’
“Yeah.”
“How’d you get away?”
“Crushed her against a concrete wall with a Jeep.”
“Ouch.”
“Not ouch enough. They told me she was still alive when they took her away.”
“Still alive? What happened to her?”
“No idea. When they told me I hadn’t killed her, I went straight out and got passed-out drunk. No one ever told me what they did with her and I never asked. I only hope they put her where she’ll never get out. I still have nightmares about that bitch.”
Eric sat there for a moment, taking these things in. It was a lot to swallow, but given all that he’d already seen, why not add a secret, supernatural organization and a real-live witch to the mix? He had no reason to doubt that these stories were true. “So how is it you know so much about me?”
“I don’t know anything about you, per se. I told you my job was to gather information. Well, my last assignment was to gather information from the cathedral. We only knew as much about the place as was absolutely necessary, of course. As always, it was all on a need-to-know basis. So all we knew was that there was something at that location that was of interest to Saulkin’s employers. There were three of us there that night. I was keeping an eye out, so I didn’t go in. The other two did. Neither came back. That was when I decided that maybe I wouldn’t come back either. I’d known for months that the only way to leave was to die or vanish, so I vanished. Eventually, I ended up here. And as far as I know, they still think I disappeared with my partners that night.”
“So that’s how you know there’s nothing but death waiting for anyone who goes inside the cathedral.”
“That’s right. That…and the gas station attendant told me.”
“The gas station attendant?”
“Yeah. I expect you’ll meet him a little farther up the road. Little guy. Kind of funny. Acted like he knew me. Knew about where I’d been. Told me I’d be smart to never go back there, which of course he never had to worry about. He never said it outright, but he managed to suggest that I’d be safe if I kept to the fissure, that no one bad would ever find me again.”
“And it was around that time that you came across the church?”
“It was, actually.”
“Nice.”
Father Billy nodded. “I know. It may not seem like much of a life, but at least I’m alive. Thanks to him.”