Eugene pressed one hand over his mouth to keep from throwing up. His stomach lurched wildly as his skin broke out in a shivering sweat. "What he did—"

"You buried it, didn't you? Under years of drugs and denials, telling yourself it was just a bad dream, until you couldn't remember what you really saw."

"An exorcism," Eugene said shakily. "He was trying to drive you out of her."

"He never believed in me."

Father Latimer's hands bunched up in her dress, tearing the stitches— The catch in his voice when he said her name, her soft skin under his grasping fingers— The line of her neck—

"He was after her for months, but she wouldn't let me kill him. Like I had any other purpose. Like anyone else was going to step in to save her. He strangled her, in the end. Do you remember? He had his hands around her throat while you watched from the doorway."

"No," Eugene said desperately. "No, he was holding the cross. I ran to get help—"

"He choked the life out of her while she waited for you to help her. You could have stopped him, if you tried."

"I went to find you! Why weren't you there? Why didn't you kill him then?"

"Because she sent me away."

Eugene stared at him. There was no remorse in his expression, barely anything human at all.

“What have you done?” Eugene whispered through his fingers.

"I loved that little girl as much as I resented her for tying me down. I'd have done anything she asked. I'd have given her that priest's head on a spike the first moment he looked at her, if she'd let me. I gave her this town." The creature that called itself Johnny Walker nodded to the back door of the church. “She’s calling for you, Eugene. Will you go to her?”

Shoving down the dizzying nausea, Eugene stumbled to the door, the world rushing around him in a deafening hum, darkness sweeping up to cloud the edges of his vision. The earth was unsteady under his feet. He threw himself into the courtyard, where the flagstones were already underwater, and the moss sucked at his shoes with every step. He ran.

XVII.

He heard the bayou before he reached it. The humming rose up all around him like a terrible choir, peaking in waves. He couldn’t understand the words, but he caught his name as if whispered on the breeze by some long-dead tongue. Where the church land had once sloped toward the trees in a gentle path, it was now a wetland, a ruthless tangle of weeds and vines and roots. The greenery vied for life beneath the seeping lake that spread out from the bayou like it had a mind to bring the world to its knees. With every step, Eugene sank deeper into the water. The chestnut trees stood like skeletons, reaching their great arms out wide over the town, and the cypresses speared into the clouds like twisting knifepoints. Eugene shut his eyes and walked into the trees' embrace as the water came up past his waist, and he could no longer see where he stepped.