“No. He’s much, much older. There is no Colchester family. It’s just him. He’s been living here for more than a century, but I think he came from someplace else. He started out making guns, selling them. They were all touched by his rituals: every person that they killed, every life they claimed, was like throwing snacks to something inside a cage. Everything he’s ever done since, it’s the same exchange. In return for our pain here, he gets power. And time. He lives a little bit longer.”

“And what does he have to do for this magic Viagra?” Danny asked.

Eric gave him a look that said he was getting tired of Danny’s attitude. “He’s going to open the door to the other side, Danny. Where all the nightmares live.” His tone said, You dumbass. “He’s going to bring about The End.”

“The end of what?”

“The End. Of everything,” Alana said. “That’s what Colchester worships. That’s his god. My mother saw it. She told me. Imagine the opposite of all that we are. It’s a void that consumes everything it touches, and replaces it with more hunger and fear and despair. It’s been crawling around on the underside of the universe since creation. It seeks out any life it can find and corrupts it. She ran from it and came here because it destroyed everything she ever knew. It ate her world. Believe me. You don’t want that to happen.”

“You’ve heard stories. But you never saw it.”

Alana leaned forward, closer to Danny. “You saying my mother was lying?”

Carrie kicked him under the table again. Danny didn’t know why this time. He was only asking questions.

“Not lying, exactly. Maybe a little crazy. I mean, she abandoned you, didn’t she?”

Alana’s fists clenched. Danny realized he’d gone too far — somehow — but Carrie saved him by speaking up.

“I’ve seen it,” she said.

They all looked at her. “What?”

“‘The End Is Near.’ I’ve seen the graffiti all over town. Along with this.” She took out her notebook and drew the symbol she’d seen scrawled in blood in Goodson’s hotel room.

“This is the symbol of the Followers.”

“Who?”

“The same people who tried to kidnap everyone who sold the candy bars. The same ones who killed that guy. Whoever he was.” Carrie shuddered, then pushed on. “I’ve done some research on them. It’s a cult. They’ve been around since at least the 1920s. They worship the Good Man, the one who will bring them to the end of the road. They think he’s going to deliver them into some kind of paradise where they rule over the rest of us. It’s like turning Christianity on its head. They want to bring about the Apocalypse so they’ll get to their idea of Heaven quicker.”