“Huh?” Jessa felt something brush past her foot. She wiped away the wetness that had escaped from the side of her mouth, and looked down through her sore and barely focusing eyes to see a little girl.
“Sorry!” her young mouth whispered. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“That’s okay,” Jessa whispered back. “What’s the time?”
The young girl shrugged. “People are sleeping. Night time.”
Jessa saw the televisions still revelling in horror. 4:47 am, the ticker said.
“I’m really thirsty, but I don’t want to wake my mummy up,” said the little girl.
“Come on, I’ll help you,” Jessa wriggled herself off the bench and explored the pub. There was a small kitchen in the back where she found some milk, and poured a glass for herself and another for the girl.
“Are we going to die?” the little girl asked.
“Umm. What?” Jessa was so taken aback at first that she forgot to wipe away the milk moustache. “Why would you think that?”
“I heard my mum and dad talking about someone killing children.”
“Oh.”
“So are you scared that you’re going to die?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it. But everyone has to die sometime, I suppose.”
The little girl frowned and Jessa suddenly wondered if she’d said the wrong thing.
“Don’t worry, you’re safe in here, for sure. Your parents are here, and there are other people to look after you, too.” She tried her best to sound knowledgeable and supportive, the way she imagined she was supposed to speak to a child. “We should go back in there—I don’t want your parents to panic if they wake up and see you gone.”
Jessa offered her hand to the child, who reached up her little fingers gratefully.
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And then.
Whoosh.
The little fingers were Jessa’s own, clenching hard into fists that she was desperately trying to throw at the two men holding her arms back. Visceral screams rattled through her throat but couldn’t make it out through her mouth. Some invisible force held her lips shut no matter how hard she tried to open them and scream for help.
Jessa felt the child’s terror, her pounding heart.
“Keep her still,” Silas Lynch sneered at the two men. “You know I can’t control the deflection if she keeps moving. We can’t risk being seen.”
The men held the girl’s arms tighter. They were in the corner of a car park. From Jessa’s limited awareness it seemed to be the back of a school. She could see parents walking their children to cars, listening to cheery young voices regaling lessons in colour, seasons or telling the time.
“Yes,” Silas growled. “Here we go...”
Jessa felt his spindly fingertips clutching the girl’s skull. She felt burning on her scalp, then pulling, then something else entirely as Silas grafted shards from his own consciousness into the pure white innocence of the girl’s mind.
And then it was gone. All of it. The pain was gone, his fingers were gone, the two men, all dissipated.
Jessa watched on from someone else’s vision as the girl skipped away happily.
“Mummy!” she tugged on the coat of a woman chatting away distractedly.
“Oh, there you are!” the mother said, tousling the girl’s childish mess of hair.
Whoosh.
Jessa was up high. Floating, undetected. She looked out over the vastness of a hall from above. Greyish brown columns held up an elaborately painted ceiling. Gold embellishments all around reflected light that poured in through stained-glass windows.
She’d never been there before, but she’d seen this place in photographs and movies. A prestigious venue, a house of faith turned into a home for the arts. And in the centre of it all, alone, on the smooth expanse of well-maintained tile stood Silas Lynch.
“One hundred,” the cavernous room carried his timid voice. “One hundred souls will feel my salvation.”
He placed his hands face-down to the floor, and telekinetically pushed his body from the ground, folding his feet beneath himself into a cross-legged position. Jessa’s form floated down until she found herself gazing, face-to-face with this strange and feared man.
His palms were upward and open to the ceiling, resting on his knees. Remnants of scars lay across his skin, his face ruined by time. His eyelids were closed but flickered with unease. His nostrils, filled with dark wiry hair, flared slightly with each breath. His earlobes were white and curiously shrivelled from scar tissue. The skin on his neck was bumpy and prickled with a cold that Jessa’s transcendental form could not perceive. In his details, he seemed frail and wholly mortal.
Whoosh.
Hugo and Audrey shook her awake. She was back in the kitchen, and Audrey was dribbling cold water from a cup onto Jessa’s sweat-glistened forehead.
“Hey,” Hugo said gently. “You okay? Did you see something?”
“She’s number one hundred,” Jessa said, letting her pupils adjust to reality. “And I think I know where he is.”
“Where?” demanded Audrey.
“St Paul’s.”