But what gave Greg pause was the people: they were packed outside the station, and he could see even more inside through the door that someone conveniently held open with their foot. Every walk of life was represented here in this crowd, from the elderly to the young, but they all had one thing in common: their eyes were red, their faces plastered in sadness. Some, like him, were obviously angry as well, but they were all somewhere on the spectrum of distraught to devastated.
For a second, Greg’s mind turned back to the bodies that he had seen in the morgue, and couldn’t help but think that if these people only knew what had happened to their loved ones, that they were, in all likelihood, dead, that most would lean toward the devastated end of the spectrum.
But unlike most of them, he knew—he knew what had happened to his loved one, to Kent, and that took precedence over all else.
Greg bullied his way through the crowd. At first he tried to be relatively gentle, to grumble ‘excuse me’, avoiding physical touch as he made his way past and through the elderly, but there were just so many people that this quickly stymied his progress. Eventually, he digressed to sheer determination.
He was almost at the door when he elbowed his way past a particularly large man in a cut-off t-shirt.
“Hey, get in line, buddy.”
Greg turned and looked at him, his eyes blazing. The man, catching this look, immediately clamped his jaw shut and stepped off to one side to allow him to pass. And pass he did. A few more strong elbows later, Greg was back inside the station, only this time, it was very, very different from what he remembered.
When before the place had been empty save him and a handful of others, fighting for their lives, the place was full now. Stepping on his toes, he caught sight of Deputy Williams’ smeared face as the man tried desperately to keep the mob away from the inner part of the station, applying equal efforts into holding them back and placating them.
It didn’t seem to be working.
But this didn’t matter to Greg; it wasn’t the deputy that he was seeking, but the sheriff.
Then he saw him, and he experienced an involuntary intake of breath.
Sheriff Paul White had his back to him, but it was clear that it was indeed the sheriff. It was his broad back that gave him away. That and his bald black head.
Corina Lawrence, Corina Lawrence, Corina Lawrence.
“Sheriff White!” he shouted.
But his voice was too quiet to be heard above the din of other shouts. Greg elbowed his way nearly to the very front of the crowd. Someone cried out when his elbow landed hard into soft tissue, but he ignored them.
“Sheriff White!” he yelled again. When this also failed to elicit a reaction, he raised his voice once more. “What the fuck happened to my son?”
And then it wasn’t just the sheriff that turned, but most of the crowd as well. Eyes still red, Greg glared at the man.
Their eyes met and for a moment everything seemed to stop.
And then recognition and sadness overcame Askergan’s sheriff.
Sheriff Paul White opened his mouth to say something, but movement distract both him and Greg before he got the words out.
Another man who had also been standing with his back to Greg, standing right next to the sheriff, also turned.
The anger fled Greg’s face.
“Reggie?”
29.
Greg Griddle was ushered and then pulled through the station before he had a chance to fully grasp what exactly was going on.
And then, before he knew it, he was back in Interrogation Room 1.
Full circle.
Only this time, Kent wasn’t with him. This time, Kent was dead.
Murdered.
When the door shut behind him, he realized that it was just him and Reggie in the room—the sheriff hadn’t joined them.
His burly friend stepped forward and surprised him with a strong embrace. Greg felt like this was the right time to cry again, but he was all out of tears.
He pushed Reggie away and stared up at his friend’s concerned face.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Reggie looked shocked.
“I could ask you the same question.”
Then Reggie went to embrace him again, but this time Greg pushed him back immediately.
“What are you doing here?” The words came out like an insult, and Reggie recoiled.
“I—I—they needed help, Greg. The sheriff asked me to stick around for a bit, to be an, ugh, impromptu deputy. Can you believe that?”
When Greg just stared, he quickly continued.
“I’m just glad you made it. The sheriff told me that they pulled you out of the fire. Man, that was…”
The words just dragged on, without Greg really hearing any of them.
When his friend had said the words, ‘deputy’, the man had had a hint of pride on his face. And this enraged Greg.
How dare he be proud at a time like this. How dare he feel that way when Kent is lying in a morgue, surrounded by the dead.
“How dare you,” he barely whispered.
Reggie immediately stopped talking and stared.
“How dare you stand there and speak to me as if everything is normal. My son is dead, Reggie. Kent’s fucking dead.”
It was all he could do to prevent from lashing out and striking the much bigger man.
“Where’s your son, huh? Where’s Baird?”
There was a pause as Reggie, his face pinched now, debated whether this was a rhetorical question. When it became apparent that Greg was waiting for an answer, he finally spoke up.
“He’s at home, Greg. Baird’s at home. And I’m so sorry about—”
That was it. Greg blew a fuse, and his right hand fired out with speed and accuracy he hadn’t known he possessed. His fist made contact with Reggie’s face, and the man’s head whipped to one side. A loud crack echoed throughout the small interrogation room.
As Greg watched, fists clenched at his sides, Reggie turned back to him, rubbing his cheek that had already turned a shade of pink.
He was crying, Greg saw, but this did nothing to temper his fury.
Kent’s dead; asphyxiated.
The door to the room suddenly flew open, and both men turned to see the sheriff lumber in.
The man’s eyes darted from Reggie to Greg, and finally to Greg’s fists. Greg didn’t know the man from Adam, he realized, but he could tell by his expression that he had guessed what had happened.
“You lied to me,” Greg hissed. “You lied to me about Kent.”
The sheriff looked confused.
“You lied to me… said that the crackers got him, that he fell victim to whatever the hell the things are that attacked this shithole of a town. But he didn’t. He was strangled to death. Murdered.”
Both the sheriff and his “deputy” gaped.
“Murdered?” the sheriff gasped. “What? By who?”
There was genuine surprise on the man’s face, but this wasn’t enough to stop Greg.
“Why was he even here? Why was Kent back in Askergan?”
“Murdered? Greg—”
“Don’t you fucking ‘Greg’ me!” he shouted. “One of your fucking men picked him up and brought him back here. Why, Sheriff? Why?”
Reggie and the sheriff exchanged looks, and Greg took an aggressive step toward the sheriff.
Reggie moved to step in front of him.
“Oh, now you’re protecting him? After all we’ve been through and you’re protecting him?”
When Paul spoke again, his voice had lost some of the confused quality and had regained a modicum of authority.
“Calm down, Greg. I didn’t know about what happened to Kent.”
“Calm down? Calm down?! Don’t you fucking tell me to calm down! You killed my son! You killed Kent!”
Reggie had to physically get between the two men now as Greg was inches from throwing another punch. But this punch, he knew, wouldn’t have been shrugged off like th
e one he had delivered to Reggie moments ago. This one would land him in jail.
Greg backed down; being thrown in jail would mean he might never get to the bottom of this.
“Corina Lawrence,” he mumbled, his eyes remaining trained on the sheriff.
Something passed over his face, and Greg instantly knew that he was onto something.
“Where is she?”
The sheriff opened his mouth, then quickly closed it again.
“Where is Corina Lawrence?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
The sheriff looked away when he said the words.
“Well then tell me what the fuck happened to my son!”
Greg became distinctly aware that he was no longer the only one shouting. The mob at the front of the station must have been fueled by their argument, as their voices had started to escalate as well. Sheriff White glanced toward the closed door, concern on his face. After all Askergan had been through, after all it had survived—barely, by the skin of the county’s proverbial teeth—it was all about to come crumbling down.
“I can’t tell you where she is, Greg. I’m sorry. But I’ll find out what happened to your son. I promise.”
“Fuck your promises!” Greg screamed.
The tension in the room had reached a breaking point, and was at a juncture.
When Greg made up his mind and stepped forward, the sheriff didn’t back down. Greg didn’t blame him; despite what was going through his mind, and undoubtedly how badly the man before him felt for what he had gone through, for what Kent had gone through, he still had a county to preside over, to protect.
Strong hands suddenly grabbed Greg by the shoulders, and before he could reach the sheriff, he was quickly guided to one side. He tried to shrug his friend off, but Reggie was too strong. The much bigger man exerted his will, and before he knew it, Greg was being forcefully shoved back into the hallway. He tried to turn, to confront the sheriff again, but Reggie’s grip tightened and he was unable to stop his forward progress.
No, no, no. I need to find out what happened!
But he couldn’t turn, couldn’t do anything but continue back toward the mob of citizens. With a strong shove, Greg found himself being propelled into the crowd. When he was finally released, the people filled in his path, and he found himself unable to make his way back, even if he’d wanted to.
He turned and caught his friend’s sad face.
Reggie was crying again.
But despite his tears, he managed to mouth the words, “the church—they went to the church”.
For a moment, Greg did nothing; he simply stood still amidst the chaos even as his once best friend turned and tended to other Askergan citizens.
The church.
It felt like a curse word to him.
The church.
On some fucked-up level, it kind of made sense; after what Corina had done, after what she had done to Kent, she—anyone—would seek some sort of salvation.
Greg Griddle’s needs were on the opposite end of the spectrum, but their basis in human nature was equally as primal.
Revenge.
He was seeking revenge for what had happened to his son, despite his promise all those years ago, despite trying with every fiber of his being to not treat his son or anyone else in the so utterly inhumane way that his father had treated him.
In a way, he too was seeking salvation, but his redemption would not come from God.
Gregory Griddle swallowed hard and then turned and left the Askergan County Police Station for the final time.
30.
“And so I ask you this one simple question: where was God during the most recent crisis? Where was He when the Devil’s parasites crawled forth and took so many of your loved ones?”
Greg slipped into the church when the pastor paused to take a breath. It was packed inside, and it was also hot and uncomfortable. The pews were filled with people, and there were more standing at the sides and at the back, whom Greg joined presently. It seemed unusual that, despite what had happened in the county over the past week or so, the place would still be so packed, but this congregation—coupled with the throngs of people back at the station—was clear evidence that people were seeking answers to things that they couldn’t possibly understand. Still, he was amazed at the speed with which they had congregated. After leaving the police station, Greg found out that he had been out—unconscious—for nearly two full days, although he still couldn’t ascertain if this had taken place in the basement of the house, or in the hospital. In fact, he remembered next to nothing after entering the house, only a strange dream, about his childhood, growing up with his brother…
“And when you ask yourself these important questions, I demand that you ask with conviction,” the pastor continued with such vigor that it interrupted Greg’s thoughts. He looked up at the man in the plain black outfit and the traditional white collar. He was younger than Greg would have expected, somewhere around thirty, but not much older. The man had a propensity to scratch at his short, yet thick black beard, which wasn’t unlike his hair, and he had cool blue eyes that were strange for someone with such dark hair.
But it was the smile that Greg immediately gravitated towards. He recognized the smile because he had used the same one to gain access to the morgue; it was the smile of a salesman, the smile of a conman. This was no priest, Greg knew almost at once. The problem was, as he looked around at the parishioners staring at the preacher with rapt attention, no one else seemed to notice.
“With conviction. Because the Lord wants you to question what has happened here, what has happened to Askergan.”
Greg raised an eyebrow.
Definitely not a priest… no priest would ask their parishioners to question; that flew in the face of all that the institution stood for.
“These beasts, these parasites that have invaded the town, came and took our loved ones with them—and for this, I am incredibly saddened. But you must ask yourself why—why would the Lord inflict such pain and suffering on this town? Why this town, of all towns?”
Greg caught several of the people look up quizzically with tired, sad eyes. He took this opportunity to scan the crowd, to try and locate Corina Lawrence.
The only problem was, he wasn’t sure what she looked like. His memory of pulling her out of the basement was as clouded as the air had been in the house.
Black, obscured, toxic.
But he remembered she was young, had short hair, and, last but definitely not least, had an artificial leg.
“Why?” someone from the crowd shouted.
The wannabe priest nodded, and he proceeded to pace from one side of the altar stage to the other.
“Yes, go on, it’s okay. Ask why.”
Someone else shouted ‘why’, which was quickly followed by a few more inquisitive yells.
“Why, Lord? Why did you take Harvey from me?” an old woman shouted from Greg’s right. She was so close that he could smell her lavender perfume.
And then it felt like everyone in the church was shouting, filling the rafters with their saddened cries.
The priest continued to nod as he walked back and forth, his eyes low.
This guy is good, Greg couldn’t help but think. As a fellow salesman, even in his current state, he couldn’t help but appreciate the pitch that he was seeing unfold before his eyes.
Several people broke into sobs, and the priest let this carry on until it seemed that things might get out of control. Just as the noise reached its peak, he raised his arms and slowly lowered them. Like a conductor commanding an orchestra, the shouts and cries quickly died down.
“You might also be wondering what happened to the cross with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, that used to hang behind me.”
The pastor raised a hand, indicating the empty space behind the altar. Greg squinted his eyes and thought he could make out the dark outline of a cross amidst the sun-bleached wood backdrop.
“And I am compelled to ask you to q
uestion why I, Father Carter Duke, am here instead of Father Peter Stevens.”
Nearly everyone in the church nodded. This time there were no shouts, however, only hushed silence.
“I am compelled, because I asked those very same questions every night for the past week. And last night, God finally answered.”
There was a collective intake of breath as Father Carter built the tension. When he spoke again, his voice wasn’t quiet, subdued as before, but bombastic. He held his palms up to the rafters above.
“And the Lord spoke to me, and he told me that the parasites that invaded Askergan were necessary. That they were part of His plan, that they were not the work of the Devil—oh no—but that they were His doing, that they were necessary to cleanse this town of the evil that had lain its roots. The drugs, the crime, the disease that was rampant in Askergan has been cleansed, my people, it has been cast out! Like the Devil himself, God has cast this evil out of Askergan!”
A cheer erupted in the church, making it difficult for Greg to make out what the pastor said next.
“… and we shall rebuild… former glory… idyllic Askergan will be reborn!”
Another cheer, this one louder than the first.
Greg tried to scan the crowd again, to find Corina in the throng of people. But it was too hectic inside the church, too hot and heated, for him to find anything but raised arms and the backs of desperate people’s heads.
“And now we pray.”
Silence again, accompanying bowed heads.
“As you pray, my colleague will be coming around with the collection basket. But this is no ordinary Sunday, my devoted disciples, but a new beginning. A modernization of Askergan, one without crime and without disease—without the influence of the Devil. I ask that you empower me with the financial resources to carry out God’s word, to finish what He started.”
With everyone else’s bowed heads, their lips moving in silent prayer, Greg had a clear view as the man seated in the front row stood. He was sharply dressed in a navy suit jacket and maroon tie, which matched his slacks. The man had a large basket in his arms, which he held out to the first parishioners that he approached. As Greg watched, he noticed that not only did they empty the loose change from their pockets, but they also rid themselves of the bills in their wallets with such gravitas that it was as if they were on fire.
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