Eric considered him back. Did this guy actually think he was some kind of government agent? It seemed ridiculous that anyone could mistake someone like him for something so grand.
“You weren’t carrying a gun at the factory,” the stranger recalled. “Or a badge.”
“I don’t sound like a very responsible federal agent. And while we’re on the subject, let’s talk about you hitting me over the head back there, why don’t we?”
“I want to know who you are.”
Apparently, Foggy didn’t care to discuss that matter at the moment.
“I’d rather talk about who you are.”
“Answer me.”
“I don’t have any answers,” growled Eric, beginning to lose his patience.
The young man stared at him, apparently still trying to decide if he was playing dumb or legitimately stupid.
“How do you do it, anyway? How do you make the golems?”
Again, the stranger lowered his face and stared down into the darkness. Eric didn’t think he would answer, but like so many other times today, he was wrong. “I don’t know, honestly. I just can. I find a container. A box, a closet, the trunk of a car, anything. And then I… I just…funnel some part of myself into it.”
“A part of yourself?”
“It’s difficult to explain. It’s like a kind of energy deep inside me.” He glanced up from the empty abyss beneath them and met Eric’s eyes as he said, “I’m not sure…but I think it might be my soul.”
“Your soul…?”
“I’m not sure,” he said again, as if afraid that the man he’d three times tried to kill might think he was bugshit crazy for saying such a thing.
Now it was Eric’s turn to gaze down into the darkness and ponder. His soul? Really? He could hardly deny the possibility that a man could utilize his own soul to make monsters, certainly not when he’d already been attacked by three such beasts in only a few short hours. But there was something profoundly unsettling about using one’s own soul to create such foul abominations.
The man went on: “I funnel that energy out and into something…incredible. And I make it live. That’s a grossly simplified description, but it’s as good as I can explain it. They don’t make words for what I do. Not in any language.”
Eric had no doubt. “And the fog?”
“Fog?”
“That half-disappearing thing… Where you look like you’re standing in an invisible fog.”
“Huh. Never heard it described like that before.”
“So how do you do it?”
“I shift back and forth through physical space.”
“How does that work, exactly?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“You have to grasp the concept that there are things beyond our world.”
“I really don’t think that’s going to be a problem for me today.”
The foggy man shrugged and said, “Reality is layered. It’s a spectrum. The world exists across most of this spectrum, but most life on earth only exists within a small portion of it. Humans, in particular, only exist within a narrow band of it. I can slide along that spectrum, out of that narrow band, effectively disappearing from this world altogether. Or I can shift to the very edge of that band and only partially fade away, if I choose. You wouldn’t think only partially leaving this plane of existence would be useful, but it turns out it scares the shit out of people.”
“It is exceptionally frightening to see.”
The man grinned. He seemed quite proud of himself.
“So then, can you move between these two worlds without using the fissure?”
“No. The two worlds here are completely separate. All the worlds in all the fissures are. They each have their own spectrums. I can shift along the spectrum in any world, but I can’t just jump between worlds. That’s pure science fiction.”
“Right. What was I thinking?”
Again, he gazed down into the abyss. “But it doesn’t matter in this place. Nothing works here. And I don’t know why.”
“Neither do I.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you want. I don’t know why you can’t work your voodoo here. I could guess it’s because the singularity screws everything up.”
The foggy man stood at the railing, contemplating this in silence.
Eric stared at him. “Have you tried going down there yet?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m afraid.”
“You? Afraid? Maker of golems? Traveler of strange worlds?”
“I didn’t survive this long, doing this job, by being stupid. I can tell when things don’t add up. And this place is seriously wrong.”
“So you work for them, then? The people Father Billy told me about?”
The man looked up at him, surprised. “‘Father Billy?’ Really?” He laughed. “That’s a bit of a stretch. But yeah. Them.”
“Bad people.”
“Good, bad, what’s the difference? They pay good. It’s a fun job. Speaking of fun, wait until I tell them I found William Lonneskey hiding out in an old church out here.”
Eric glared at him. “Just leave him out of it.”
But the young man ignored him. “That should be interesting.”
“What’s your game?” Eric asked, eager to move off the subject of Father Billy. “What are you trying to accomplish? You try three times to kill me and then at the factory you just sucker-punch me and leave? Now you want to have a heart-to-heart? You beat me here. You had almost a whole day’s head start. Why didn’t you just take whatever’s down there and leave before I even arrived?”
“I already told you, it’s wrong down there.”
“It’s been wrong everywhere I’ve been today!”
“It’s extra wrong down there. I arrived yesterday evening and stood right here, looking down into that darkness. Immediately, I knew I couldn’t just go down there. All my tricks failed me. I couldn’t sense anything. It was like looking into absolute nothingness. I climbed back up into the crater, where my tricks still worked, and I looked for somewhere in the spectrum where this place was safe, but no matter where I went, it was always the same. It was death.”
If this man could do his “shifting” thing in the crater, then that explained why Eric never saw him as he approached. He was likely shifted as he approached the cathedral. The better to catch him off guard.
“So how did I fit into it all? How did you even know I was coming?”
“I didn’t. I have a few rules that keep me alive in my line of work. The first one is always watch your back. Jobs like these, I leave golems covering my trail, just in case someone decides to follow me. When one of them is disturbed, I know about it immediately. They’re a part of me, as I’ve said. I also instantly know the results of those confrontations. I know when my golem does its job and I know when someone manages to get away. So I knew you were following me. I knew you managed to beat the first two golems. But then you never found the third one that I left at that village.”
“Village?”
“I went back and found out you took a little detour. Visited Lonneskey at that church instead.”
The village must have been what he missed. He’d recalled a building or two, but because he circled so far around it, that part of the dream never recurred to him in enough detail to reveal what he’d found there. Now he knew.
“I saw you there, saw who you were with. I don’t know what business you were up to. I didn’t care. I just needed you both gone. So I left another golem. And I made sure you saw me leave it.”
“I didn’t have any ‘business’ with Father Billy. I left the path because I was chased by a bunch of corn creeps. He was a good enough man to not let me die on the lawn of his church.”