That made me wonder though. Why hadn’t Pop found me yet? Didn’t he know I was out looking for him?

The skinny path through the trees had widened now, but it was still boatless except for us, everyone else escaped down other ways. We were lost and afraid. A giant cypress keeled over not ten feet from us, just like God himself had given it a yank, its roots writhing up out of the swamp water like some tentacled horror beast come slithering up to swallow us. I was scared. I thought we were gonna die.

A bright high sound cut through the storm, lovely and silvery amid the thunder rumbles, like it was the sound of the moon and stars themselves coming out.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Hush,” said Tally.

It was singing, a man’s voice calling out a hymn of mourning. It spooked me, drifting out in the rain and storm like that. An old building loomed ahead of us, crooked-roofed and half-sunk in the muck. It had a tall spire on the top in a cross shape. The windows that weren’t busted were multicolored, and candlelight shone out from them in strange warbles. The singing was coming from inside, an old sweet song, sad as could be. You could just barely make it out over the rain and wind and thunder.

“Is that a church?” said Tally.

“I think so. But who would build a church this far down in the swamp?”

“Bunch of crazy folks,” said Tally. “We ought to keep going. We ought not to stop here.”

We rowed by the church, the rain battering our boat, water rising in inches on the bottom. I stopped a second, shielding my eyes from the rain. I wanted a good look at it. I wanted to see inside. The church was burnt, yes, and the walls had been blackened and crumbled, and the whole thing looked like it could fall in on itself at any moment. But something seemed familiar about it to me, a memory long blurred and faded, just a scrap left in my mind. I had seen this church before.

I peered inside and saw an old man in priest robes singing, banging away on a warped piano. He was bald with a long gray beard down to his chest. A small dog swam down the aisle to the altar with his tongue out. He headed toward the priest, howling along to the song. The priest laughed, bent down, and petted the dog. He seemed to be crying, the priest did, and he went back to singing loud and sweet and sad, of strength in the trying times, of the happiness of the days to come. I guess I mean that he was singing about hope, which is maybe the best and saddest thing of all.

I don’t know, it got to me.

“Are you okay?” hollered Tally over the wind and rain. “You look like you’re gonna be sick.”

The priest looked up and saw us. He hopped off the piano bench and scrambled down the aisle, water up past his knees. He leaned out the door of the half-sunk church and called to us.