Walter noticed that all business in the bank had stopped. Although he hadn’t seen anyone move, the other employees seemed nearer than they had been, as though they were closing in on him. He suddenly felt nervous. “That’s all right,” he said. “I’ll talk to him later.”

“You don’t understand. You won’t be talking to him at all. He has no more use for you.”

They were closer.

Walter glanced behind him toward the door and saw that it was blocked. A huge bald man with blue lines tattooed across his face stood next to a short monkeylike woman, both of them positioned in front of the doorway.

Deliver me from evil, he silently prayed.

“Why don’t you pull down your pants, rev,” the scarred man said. “Show Hester here your penis.” He drew out the word with a mocking drawl: peee-nis.

There were rough chuckles all around. Walter suddenly noticed that the teller closest to him was not writing something down with a pen, as he’d originally thought, but was carving something unseen on the counter with a scalpel. And he saw that a woman seated behind a nearby desk had no teeth in her beaklike mouth. In the darkness of a far corner, a tall man with his pants undone was squatting down and appeared to be defecating.

Lord give me strength.

Walter turned and made a beeline for the door. He strode briskly, staring straight ahead. His pulse was pounding, and he fully expected to be stopped by the bald behemoth or the monkey woman, but he kept his eye on the prize, pretending they weren’t there, and when he reached the pair, they parted to let him pass.

“Y’all come back now! Hear?” someone called out behind him, followed again by that rough laughter.

Sweating profusely, his heart thumping so loudly he could hear it in his ears, Walter pushed open the glass door and walked out of the gloom into welcoming sunlight. Maybe this was a sign that it was time for him to give up gambling. It had been stupid of him to come here. He knew that there was something off about Pickering and the bank—and he hated what they had done to his church—but his addiction had so clouded his mind and commandeered his focus, that coming here to get access to a website reinstated had seemed like the only logical action under the circumstances.

That delusion had been scared out of him.

He was going back to his office to do what he should have been doing all along, crafting the best sermon he could for this Sunday and making himself available for parishioners in need of spiritual guidance. He had learned his lesson. He was not going to allow himself to even check FreshBets to see if he had again been granted access. He was through with gambling.

He’d give two to one odds on that.

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