Everybody likes to get preachy about drugs, John thought, because it’s a handy way to deflect from their own even worse vices. Dave drank every night and rarely ate a meal that didn’t leave a grease stain behind. Amy ran on sugar, caffeine, and pain pills, and would sacrifice an entire night of sleep to level up a character in one of her games. The people with health insurance get antidepressants and Adderall, the rich get cocaine, the clean-living Christians settle for mug after mug of coffee and all-you-can-eat buffets. The reality is that society had gotten too fast, noisy, and stressful for the human brain to process and everybody was ingesting something to either keep up or dull the shame of falling behind. For those few who truly live clean, well, it’s the self-righteousness that gets them high.
John headed for Mine’s Eye, a spot so scenic that couples actually hold their weddings there. Well, the ones who don’t know the backstory, anyway. The little church and several rental cabins sat up on a hill that encircled a small weirdly colored pond. At the base of the hill opposite the church was the entrance to what had been a coal mine back in the 1800s, before it collapsed in a horrific disaster. Nobody ever attempted to reopen it because, you guessed it, the circumstances of the disaster were creepy as shit. The miners had collapsed the shaft in on themselves with dynamite, supposedly in order to stop what was in there from getting out. They had sent out one guy—the youngest—to tell everyone else not to attempt a rescue. The town dealt with it in the usual way, which was to simply put up a sign warning people away and otherwise never think about it again.
The whole area in front of the mine had filled with water over the decades, the mouth now appearing to be frozen in the act of puking loose rocks into the new pond. The minerals in the rock would turn the water emerald green, teal, or cobalt, depending on the color of the sky. So, on a clear day, there’d be this vivid shimmering pool that stood out sharply from the landscape around it, like a magical eye had opened. The church up on the hillside had been built after the collapse, as if someone had planted it there as a safeguard.
John followed a narrow road around the hilltops, passing the cabins and arriving at the church, which had a sign out front with whimsical slogans they swapped out every week (today’s: CHOOSE YOUR AFTERLIFE: SMOKING OR NON-SMOKING). John thought the building itself did in fact look like someone had taken a “church” symbol on a map and blown it up to life size—tiny building, white painted wood, ornate doors on the front with a cross and steeple overhead. Two stained-glass windows on either side of the door. It also looked just like Maggie’s drawing, though if you grabbed a hundred children and made them draw you a church, they’d all look like that. Again: shitty artists.
John reached the parking lot and found that Dave hadn’t arrived yet, so he pulled up to wait for him, keeping an eye out for any horror that might be occurring. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He realized he was clenching his jaw, and forced himself to stop. He grabbed the coins out of the center console. He polished them with his shirt, one by one, then placed them on the seat next to him in order of value and then date minted. He found he was clenching his jaw again—
There was a scream.
He was sure he had heard it. A little girl.
John jumped out of the Jeep. He reached into the back seat and pulled out the T-shirt cannon. He ran up to the front doors, found them locked, then asked the Lord for forgiveness a split second before he kicked his way through.
Thunder clapped as John stepped through the entryway, shirt cannon at the ready. A half-dozen doves flew past him out the door.
Standing at the pulpit was a thin, shirtless man holding a cigarette.
Ted had described Nymph as a creepy sexual deviant type, but John didn’t get that vibe from the guy at all. He had slicked-back hair and narrow, dismissive eyes—he struck John as a cutthroat stockbroker type, a guy who would sever a friendship over a lost game of racquetball. A small man, but wiry. Tight, compact muscles.
The wind picked up and the walls creaked under the strain. The rain went horizontal, spraying into the open door behind John. He slammed the door closed behind him with a backward kick.
John said, “Mister Nymph, I presume?”
The guy took a drag off his cigarette and said, “Congratulations on following a series of groaningly obvious clues. When you enter a room, do you see little equations flying around in front of your eyes?”
John brandished the gun. “WHERE IS SHE?!?”
“You tell me, John.”
“You’ve heard of us.”
“I have.”
“Is that why you took the girl? To lure us in? Well, you’ve got us. Let her go. There’s no reason to involve anyone else.”
“Yes, we wouldn’t want to traumatize poor Ted any further, would we? Do you know why soldiers march in unison? Or why they are compelled to chant in groups? It’s a form of hypnosis, it overrides the brain’s critical thinking centers. It’s the same reason we make schoolchildren shout the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. But, so difficult to adjust after the programming wears off. Tragic, really. And no, John, it turns out that in fact there exist things in this universe that are not about you.”
Lightning flashed and brought a clap of thunder a half-second later. Close. The wind picked up again. Outside, a branch was wrenched off of a tree.
“What is it you want, then?”
“The same as all of us want. To feed and to breed. Do you wish to guess which I intend for little Margaret Knoll? Perhaps both.”
“She’s still alive.”
Nymph took a drag off his cigarette. “Tell me, John. Do you believe in the existence of the human soul?”
“Oh, Jesus, I do not have time for this shit.” Another blast of wind outside. Something heavy smacked into the wall. The ground shook with what John was certain was the impact of an entire tree collapsing nearby. The storm, bursting free of its restraints. “I don’t think you have a soul, how about that?”
“Now we’re getting somewhere! Why don’t you think I have a soul?”
“Because you’re a sick fuck who kills little girls.”
“That tree that just fell—did it have a soul?”
“You’re stalling. I’m not playing your game.”
Nymph didn’t answer, just stared and waited for John’s reply. His silence, of course, made the statement for him: You don’t have any choice but to play.
John growled, “No, a tree doesn’t have a soul that I know of, but I also don’t give a shit.”
“Of course it doesn’t. It’s just a series of chemical reactions. Sun, water, air. It cannot refuse sunlight on moral grounds, or share water with a more deserving tree. It’s just a machine that soaks up whatever sustenance it encounters.”
The wind had become a steady howl, a sustained assault that whistled around the corners of the structure. There was a noise like something tearing loose from the roof.
“I get it,” said John, now having to raise his voice to be heard over the maelstrom. “Trees are stupid. Where is the girl? Maggie, can you hear me?”
“Does a maggot have a soul?”
“Is this conversation going the way you planned it in your head? Do you sound clever, like an evil mastermind? Because if this was a video game cut scene I’d be skipping past all this shit.”
“Of course, a maggot is no more ensouled than a tree; put it on a piece of rotting flesh, and it will eat. The concept of not eating what is in front of it is utterly alien. So what about you? Do you have a soul?”