Fear the Wicked (Illusions Series Book 2)(29)

"We should pray," I announced, my voice booming so that it echoed, the tone demanding but not disconcertingly so. I was the point of unity and strength that could bring this group of warriors together. "We should pray for God's holy guidance! That He shines His light on us and shows us the path to our absolution! We should pray that with His power harbored inside our hearts and souls, we do His will in our battle against the evil that plagues us."

I chose not to lead the prayer, keeping my voice silent while the family lifted their voices to the heavens, begging in their undying faith that God would strengthen them against the evil that closed in around their tiny little world. What they didn't understand was that evil had always stared them in the face smiling a friendly grin while luring them down a path that would ultimately destroy them. Casting my gaze about the room, I focused my attention on Gentry Holmes, noticing the way he fell prey to the harmony of voices praying to the Almighty.

Faith, in of itself, can be an uplifting chorus, the music that crawls inside the weary soul to act as a balm soothing its many troubles. Adding to the harmony of voices was the environment: the dim lighting, the flicker of candles, the religious symbols, and the swirling smoke of scented incense that helped elevate the soul to a higher plane, helped make a person falling prey to the vestiges of a long remembered story believe they were communicating with something bigger than their self.

The ease with which religion and faith could warp the mind was a fascination to those who were born into a life of logic. I wasn't the first to take advantage, and I wouldn't be the last. For centuries, religion has warped the feeble minded. Wars have been waged in its name, blood spilled, lives lost, and the victor riding off into the sunset believing that slaughtering men, women and children had somehow earned his place beside God.

Even I had fallen prey at one point, had been beat down and torn apart, made to regret being alive while lifting my voice to a higher power that didn't give a fuck about me.

There were times I remembered being so engrossed in the spirit that my heart would race and my lungs would work harder to draw in air. My mind would float off with the harmonious voices and I believed in God's holy light just because my body had been so affected. Just like Mr. Holmes was now, I assumed, the drug I'd given him heightening his senses, creating the physiological response inside his body that cemented him to the moment, lifted his spirit as high as my family's voices as they sang out in prayer.

From where I stood, I could see that his eyes were glazed over, not because I'd given him too much, but because I'd given him just enough to believe he was connected to this gathering, that he belonged with the group of men and women who were steadfast in their resolve to do God's work.

He was right where I needed him: worn down by the state of his life and open to any suggestion I gave him.

It wouldn't be long before I knew his brother would join him in that belief, would turn a blind eye to the odd occurrences and nascent whispers of a town falling quickly under my control.

Unable to help the grin that stretched my face, I joined my voice to that of the family's, leading the prayer into its holy crescendo before bringing it to a close.

The room fell silent and I continued my sermon. By the time I'd suggested the violence to come, and by the time I ended my sermon with feigned sincerity, I knew that Gentry Holmes was mine.

There was only one last thing he needed to see, the jarring evidence of the demons that haunted us all.





JACOB


The smooth wooden handle of the shovel was gripped against my palm, the heavy metal lodged against the concrete floor as I stared into a small room that I hadn't stepped foot inside in over twenty years. The door was plain and unassuming, the dirt floor torn up and heaped in piles as I peered down into the hole I'd dug.

It hadn't been hard to find where the ground was last disturbed, the dirt smoothed over my whatever tool my father had used to bury the confession I assumed was hidden in the metal box I found. With sweat dripping down my temples and my teeth so tightly clenched they were aching, I couldn't bring myself to reach inside that hole and extract the box my father had buried before he died.

I wasn't sure why Father Timothy's carefully spoken words had echoed in my head the moment I reached this room. Perhaps it had been divine guidance, or some subliminal understanding that I hadn't directly recognized, but I knew as soon as I opened the door that if my father had truly confessed to anything, his words would be contained in this space.

The guilt alone was an insufferable blanket smothering me and stifling my breath, weighing on me with each step I'd taken down into the basement. I hope he died suffocating on that guilt, hope it became a knot in his throat that choked him and stole the last breath from his lungs.

If it had just been about me, I would leave that box in the hole, allow it to rust and rot away without relieving my father of the guilt he carried into death, but my need to understand Jericho had me kneeling down, had me trembling as I reached to extract the confession from its hole.

Knowing what my father had confessed, reading the words and reliving the horror would certainly destroy me, but I was falling down an endless dark tunnel, writhing and scrabbling for some truth - some honest reason - why two boys that were genetically the same, who lived the same lives, the same horrors, had turned out to become opposites.

Nature versus nurture certainly couldn't explain it. We were identical in every way, had lived the same lives, the same traumas, yet in the end, I had walked away only slightly scathed while Jericho had lost his mind.