My old friend looked genuinely surprised. “Why the path to enlightenment, of course.”

Trying to look casual, I braced myself and then shot up. I knew from my struggle down the length of the tunnel that he was somehow too strong for me to fight, but my hope was I might escape if I caught him by surprise. I hadn’t made it to the edge of the room before I felt an iron grip clamping down on my shoulder and spinning me down onto the ground. Oscar towered over me, his eyes dead as he met my gaze.

“Enlightenment, as you might be figuring out, is mandatory.”

****

“How do I stop it?” I was tensed and ready to go, and while I realized I needed to know what the little creature was telling me, I could feel time ebbing away. And my chance to help, to save Jack and Oscar, might be ebbing right along with it.

The spokesman lowered its head slightly, and when it spoke next, its tone was sad. “You can’t. You can’t kill it and you can’t stop what’s coming. But you can stop its progress here. For it to develop real power in a place, the Rot has to cultivate and enure anchors there. It had attempted to use a mentally ill woman who had taken shelter in one of the houses. It made progress until we found her and stilled her suffering. Unfortunately, your friend Jack walked in on that, be it through coincidence or the Rot’s artifice.”

“For it is a terribly clever thing, and it had already planted the first seeds in the three of you as well. With Jack, he resisted the corruption to the point it made him physically ill for days, thought the Rot would still take him in the end. Oscar succumbed to the enurement very quickly, but hid it very well until recently—when it was too late to stop it.”

I interrupted. “So you can stop it? Stop it from fucking us up, I mean?”

The creature let out a small sigh. “You? Yes. Your exposure has been minimal, all things considered. Jack? It remains to be seen, but we will cure him if he survives and he is not too far gone. As for Oscar…no. He is wholly tainted now, a true anchor of the Rot in this place. It is through him its power is most concentrated here and it is by his destruction its power must be quelled.”

I wanted to argue, but I knew it would only be a waste of time. I didn’t think they were lying or trying to trick me, and I was too ignorant to know even if they were. So I just had to decide if I would blindly trust these things—these creatures that seemed to be offering the only explanation and solution to end this nightmare.