Down in the darkness, Matt was finding it difficult to mark the passage of time. For a few minutes he tried counting, but unfortunately after he got a bit past three hundred he’d gotten distracted by boredom and found himself losing track. He then settled instead for feeling around with his hands at the chains binding him and the metal plates drilled into the ground where they were attached. So far, his fingers hadn’t been able to discern any loose bolts or weak links, but Matt remained optimistic that with time he could find something. Some unexpected edge. Privately, he was a little surprised at how nonchalant he was about this whole capture and imprisonment situation. Guess the whole ‘grim reaper girlfriend’ had its benefits.

There was a low familiar thud, thud, thud across the floorboards above him, and instinctively Matt followed with his ears as the footsteps swung round on approach. Internally, he hoped that it might be literally anyone other than Pastor Fredericks – the priest had seemed uncharacteristically taciturn the last time round and Matt wondered if another Eastborough practitioner might not prove more forthcoming.

But Matt’s hopes were in vain. When the cellar door opened it was again Pastor Fredericks who descended, silent and clutching a tall glass full of clear fluid. Matt tilted his head to demonstrate confusion, but the Pastor continued to say nothing, merely stopping before Matt and holding out the glass.

“Ah yes,” Matt said, grasping the vessel with both hands, careful not to drop it, “Everyone knows you can’t donate blood without at least ten cups of water.”

Even in the dim light, the Pastor stared down at his prisoner with withering contempt. Matt suspected he was already beginning to regret his kindness, if that was indeed what the water was.

“Drink,” Fredericks commanded, little more than a grunt. Matt made no move to do so.

“How do I know it’s not poisoned?”

The Pastor’s lips curled. “If I wanted you dead, you would be.”

“Yeah,” conceded Matt, “Suppose so. Though I gotta say, there’s been some evidence to the contrary.”

“You know nothing. Shut up.”

“I know a few things,” replied Matt, “Well, know is a strong word. More like educated guess. My guess is that you’re working with someone, maybe working with the military. My guess is that they want my blood, to harvest it, anti‑powers, blah blah blah. They were just going to kill me and take it, at first, but then that failed. Since I seem to be having a little dying problem.”

The priest continued to glare at him, his eyes narrow.

“Am I getting close?” Matt continued, turning his head but never leaving his gaze, “Am I getting warmer? See now I figure you’re in a bit of a predicament. You want my blood, except, you know, you can’t take it without me noticing, and you can’t kill me to keep me quiet. Which really only leaves one option, and you’re looking at it. Captivity. If you want my blood, and you don’t want anyone to find out you took my blood, you have to keep me imprisoned, and you have to keep me alive.”

Fredericks remained silent, still standing at the foot of the staircase, staring, and Matt overdramatically rolled his eyes.

“Oh give it a rest with the brooding silence! You do not scare me! I am not worried about you! You are an idiot, with a plan that’s doomed to fail, and you know what, you better get used to the sound of my talking, because as long as you keep me down here I am going to be doing a lot of it.”

In the light of the trapdoor Matt could see a vein twitching in Fredericks’ forehead.

“Do you even believe in God?” Matt laughed, voice brimming with disdain, “Is any of this real? Do you guys actually worship the toilet bowl I poop in, or was that all just a scam to-”

“Shut up!” the Pastor roared, and suddenly Matt’s world reeled as in the space of an instant Fredericks lunged forward and slammed a fist into his head. Matt staggered, the darkness swirling around him with sudden pain and delirium as the Pastor reared up again and again and pounded his fist into Matt’s face. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! You stupid, arrogant, blabbering imbecile, you think you know anything?! You think you understand?! Shut up!”

Fredericks stumbled back, blood dripping from his knuckles, leaving Matt to gasp and whimper, his ears ringing, spots dancing before his eyes. “You know nothing,” Fredericks whispered, and in the shadows of the cellar door his eyes shone, utterly mad. “Nothing. Not you, not anybody…”

And suddenly, to Matt’s pained, groggy bewilderment, the priest fell to his knees and began crying. Through a throbbing haze, the left side of his face bloody and swollen, Matt could only watch in disbelief as Fredericks curled into a ball, wracked by endless, shaking stops.

“I have to…” he whispered, and the words skittered from his mouth like rats squirming from a cage, “I have to do it, but I’m scared, but I… I have to.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Have to do what?” Matt whispered, forcing the words off his bleeding tongue, his numb jaw and mouth still screaming at him. Fredericks drew a long, abrupt sniff and looked back, still crouched, clutching his knees.

“You wouldn’t understand,” he murmured, hunched shoulders suddenly stiff, staying dead still on his toes like a taunt, teetering boulder, “None of them understand, they’re all…” he sniffed again, “…all fools, cattle, idiots, shuffling about their meaningless lives without thinking… without knowing…”

Slowly he shuffled backwards, climbing to his feet, pushing from the dirt with a small step, gazing unfocused around the corner of the curving basement and its empty barrels, staring mournfully off into the dark.

“The military,” he mumbled, “Pff. Ants clambering over rocks. Governments, societies, everything we’ve built, none of it matters, none of it…” His voice trailed into nothingness, and for a few moments no sound came from between his hulking shoulders. “It was me,” Fredericks murmured, “Just me. Only me. Guided, yes – but alone. No footprints on this path. Only I walk it.”

Watching the clearly disturbed man muttering incoherently into the darkness, Matt’s brow furrowed, a reaction he regretted a second later as pain shot through what felt a cracked eye socket. He grit his teeth and forced himself to push further. “How…” he breathed, the words coming through thick and bloody, “How did you…?”

The Pastor barked, a short, joyless laugh. He shook his head, not turning around. “Money,” he said, “Just money. So simple, so pathetic, and yet it just… turns all keys. Opens all doors. All men have prices and I paid them, I paid and I paid and I paid, buying every one of the pieces. All King Solomon’s gold. Meaningless. Trinkets. It’ll all be gone.”

Matt’s head swam as he forced himself to listen intently to every word Fredericks was saying – but it didn’t make sense. They were talking billions of dollars here. Philip Fredericks wasn’t some secret plutocrat, he didn’t own entire countries or half the stock market, he was just some irrelevant old preacher with like a few acres of land. Maybe if there was oil… but the idea was absurd. It was all utter nonsense.

“All that,” Matt fumbled out, “All that… to kill me? Why?”

Fredericks rolled his head back, staring at the ceiling as he let out a great, frustrated sigh. “Endless,” he almost shouted. A part of him seemed almost pleased to be talking, to finally be releasing all these pent‑up thoughts. “Just endless self‑obsession, these delusions, this-” The Pastor suddenly rounded on him, jabbing a finger in Matt’s face.

“You are a fool,” he snarled, “An unfit, clownish child, so obsessed with your own existence that you cannot for a moment picture a world that doesn’t revolve around you.” He stepped back, throwing up his hands with so much force they almost struck the ceiling, half his face illuminated in the light of the stairs, eyes fervoured and insane. “It has never, ever, been about you. You were a pawn. An instrument.” Fredericks paused as his arms sunk back down into place. “It was always about her.”

In the cold and earthen dark, Matt felt his face pale.

“Jane.” The words were barely a whisper. “You’re trying to kill Jane.”

“Kill?” Fredericks’ laugh bounded off the walls around them. “Oh no. No, never, and she will never… No.” He turned back towards Matt, his eyes wide, unblinking, gleaming. “I’m not going to kill her, I’m going to help her, and I have, and I have, it’s all gone as He said, as He promised…”

“Who?” Matt asked. Yet somehow he already knew.

“The Child,” the Pastor muttered, “The pale, all‑seeing Child. He came to me in my moment of weakness and He laid it out for me, the only way, what I must do…”

He spun back to look at Matt, eyes burning in the shadows. “It’s all okay. We’re at the end now. I’ll let her wade and rage and then I’ll reveal and she’ll come racing back, as only you could make her, as only you motivate…” He let out a psychotic, high pitched chuckle. “So hard to tame. So indomitable. Yet so predictable. So predictable. For you.”

“It’s okay,” pleaded Matt, “You don’t have to hurt her.”

Fredericks recoiled as if stung by the very thought. “Hurt her?” he scowled, “Hurt her? You don’t understand, I’m not going to hurt her.” And then abruptly he fell silent, and his entire body slumped, as if he was sinking slowly underwater.

“Do I believe in God?” the Pastor murmured, turning away, so low it was almost difficult for Matt to hear. Suddenly the fire and the fervour in his speaking had vanished – replaced by this bleak, mournful sorrow. “I did. Once. Born in it. Raised with it. All my life, all my… I studied. I knew. Thought I understood, could cite with precision, the canon, a hundred generations of learned men. With fire, you see, with… everyone was wrong. Disbelief, sin. I knew the world. I knew… knew my place.”

“And then I went on a TV show,” he stated, mouth moving silent between breaths as if whispering back to every echo, “And I was ridiculed by this… atheist, this fat, smug man who… and everything he said made me so angry, and I left that room, and I went home, and I tore through tome after tome looking to denounce him…”

“But the more I read,” Fredericks murmured, “The more I yearned, the more I could not get away… I… I was learned. I was logical. Six thousand years of arguments and I… and all of them are wrong.”

And in cold and empty cellar, the great priest began to rock. “We are alone,” he whispered, “It is all random. There is no meaning, there is no purpose, we are a speck in unyielding darkness, we will… we are dying, our planet is dying, everything is dying, and at the end there is nothing, there is nothing, there is only…”

He sucked wet air between his teeth, his chest rising and falling fast with fast, shallow breaths. “There is no God,” Fredericks whispered, “There is no one guiding us, just coincidence and our own misdeeds, a hundred billion light years of dust and nothingness, and to dust we will return and I cannot… I cannot…”

And for the second time since Matt had awoken Philip Fredericks broke down crying, collapsed on the ground in a heap, curling into a foetal ball which rocked his giant frame with shakes and sobs, the deep gurling of horror and the wet sucking of breath.

Matt stared at him wide‑eyed, his heart hammering. “I… it’s okay,” he murmured. He tried to lace his voice through with compassion and understanding, to calm and reassure this unhinged, insane man. “It’s going to be okay.”

“You don’t understand,” Fredericks whispered, alone in the weeping dark, “There is no God.”

And suddenly his head snapped up and from beneath his arms he bored into Matt with a demented, bloodshot gaze.

“There has to be a God.”