part0007

“Yeah, I’m sure.” The long-haul truck driver sported more than a day’s worth of salt-and-pepper stubble, and his hair held the impression of the band of his gimme cap. “Don’t think it had a license plate, either. You’d think the cops would pick up on that.”

Travis suspected that whoever was inside the black truck wasn’t worried about mortal police. “Anything else that you noticed? Even the smallest thing might matter.”

Chuck Davis, the driver, shifted in on the vinyl diner seat and took a sip of his ice water. “I told the police—I saw the girl standing on the sidewalk, and then she was gone, and then the truck drove away, but I didn’t actually see her get into the pickup.” His tone was solemn, as if he were already on the witness stand. “Only other two things, probably don’t mean anything, but they struck me wrong. The lights dimmed, right before the truck left, and there was a strange smell in the air that I ain’t never picked up around here before.”

The conversation paused as the waitress refilled their coffee, pouring the dark brew into hard-used white stoneware. The Barkeyville truck stop was one of a chain of outposts along Interstate 80, the highway that cut across the top third of Pennsylvania. Good road, but treacherous in the winter with the altitude, and long stretches cut through remote, trackless forest, dotted by tiny, forgettable towns where the exits were few and far between.

“Tell me about the lights,” Travis pressed, with the sense he was finally getting a break.

“Wasn’t much, just that they all dimmed a bit, then came back,” Chuck replied. “Didn’t go out or nothin’, but it was weird because there wasn’t a storm.”

“And the smell?”

“Sort of like rotten eggs,” Chuck answered, and his lip curled as he remembered. “Figured someone was burning garbage, but it was strange because I hadn’t smelled it earlier and it went away after the truck was gone. But for a moment, I thought I’d lose my lunch.”

“Thank you,” Travis said. He put down a twenty to cover their coffee and a generous tip for the server. They had kept the table tied up for almost an hour as he coaxed Chuck through his story, even though the police already had his account on record. Travis withdrew a business card and slid it across the table. “If you think of anything else, or see that truck again, please call me.”

Chuck met his gaze, his light blue eyes unwavering. “If I see that truck again, imma run the other way and not stop ’til I get to the next county. It gave me the creeps.”

Travis left the truck stop and drove across the intersection to the all-night convenience store. Angie, the clerk, looked up as he walked in. Her blond dreadlocks were caught back in a thick ponytail. The style made her face look fragile in comparison, although the pierced eyebrows and the snakebites on her lips suggested defiance, and her flinty gaze challenged anyone who might want to make an issue about her choices.

“Travis. What brings you here?”

“You’re the pre-cog. You tell me.”

Angie glanced around the store. Its aisles were laid out to make it easy to see anyone lurking or shoplifting, and the cameras and mirrors made sure there were no blind spots. She and Travis were alone.

“You want to know about the black truck.” She made it a statement, not a question. “And you’re the second person today to come asking.”

Travis swore under his breath. “Let me guess. Tall, beefy guy, short blond hair, ex-military, looked like he’d been in a fight?”

“That’s him.” Her reply confirmed that Brent hadn’t given up his dangerous game.

“Forget about that guy. Have you seen the truck?”

She gave him a look. “Seen or seen?”

He shrugged. “Either. I’m not the cops. Your word is worth a photo to me.”

“Good to know.” Angie pulled out her vape pen and took a long drag. “Seen ,” she clarified, tapping a finger to her temple. “First time, I didn’t know what to make of it. I mean, lots of trucks come through here. Black’s a popular color. But the truck I saw in the vision was scary…I don’t know why. It just was.”

“And after that?” Travis stayed where he could see out both side doors to the small store, so they wouldn’t be surprised by newcomers.

“I heard people talking about a little girl who disappeared. Sherry. And a black truck.” Angie inhaled the fruit-flavored mist and blew out a smoke ring. “So I started paying attention. I didn’t get a bad vibe off any of the real trucks that came through here. Then I saw the creepy truck again in a vision. And, bam! Next day, everyone’s talking about a woman who went missing down by Knox. Alicia something. Black truck again.”

“Anything special about the truck, other than being freaky?” Travis asked. The fluorescent lights made Angie look dead pale, and leeched the color out of everything around her. The store was hard used, overdue for remodeling, and crammed full of merchandise to take advantage of every inch of space. The overcrowded shelves looked like they might collapse, burying Angie beneath them.

“I don’t see windows tinted like that very often.” Angie took another puff. “Didn’t think it was legal up here. Didn’t see a license plate on it either, and I know that’s not legit.” She shook her head. “Otherwise? No dents or scratches or damage that I could tell. Just…spooky as fuck.” She hesitated, and Travis waited out the pause, knowing she had more to say.

“I saw it again, in a dream, night before last.”

“A regular dream?”

“No. It was a vision. So if that truck’s got something to do with people going missing, then someone’s either gone, or they’re gonna go soon.”

“And you didn’t get any sense of where or when?” Travis pressed.

“Uh-uh. People don’t believe me when I tell them this psychic stuff doesn’t work like in the movies,” Angie replied. Outside, two cars pulled up to the gas pumps, and Angie watched the video cameras as the drivers slid their cards and started pumping. “If I’d had something solid, I’d tell you. It’s not like I can call the cops. They won’t believe me, or they’ll think I had something to do with it.”

Travis knew Angie was right. His own ability to talk to ghosts was inconsistent and never seemed to work when he wanted, or it fired up at the most awkward times. “Thanks,” he said, sliding a twenty across the counter as one of the gas pumpers headed toward the store.

“If I get something you can use, I’ll let you know,” Angie said. “You didn’t say if you’d heard anything.”

Travis’s smile was sad. “Your mom said to say hello,” he replied. “She wishes you’d stop smoking.” Angie’s mom had been dead for five years.

Angie waved the vape pen. “Tell her I’m working on it.” She turned her attention to the customer, who wanted cigarettes and lottery tickets, and Travis headed to his car.

It didn’t take long to go from the bright lights of the Barkeyville service plaza to an endless ribbon of darkness on I-80. Travis headed east, away from Pittsburgh, deciding to drive the stretch to the next exit in case anything caught his attention.

He didn’t mind passing along messages from Angie’s late mother; in fact, seeing what it meant to Angie helped to validate his gift. Growing up in a deeply religious family, he had been taught to feel shame and guilt about his mediumship, and anything else that didn’t conform to their traditional views.

Travis had thrown himself into his studies, doing his damnedest to repress anything that might have made him suspect to the priests. But the dead never stopped talking, no matter how he tried to hide or send them away. Once he was ordained, he finally relented and held midnight confessional for the restless ghosts, giving them Last Rites and sending them on.

He’d served a small, elderly congregation on the North Side in a decrepit church that was a holdout from the neighborhood’s post-war days. By the time he got to St. Eligius, named for the patron saint of metal workers, the surrounding streets belonged to the gangs and the dealers. Travis brokered a deal with the ghosts who weren’t ready to move on, and they gladly “haunted” the area around the church. That at least meant Travis didn’t have to sweep bloody needles, empty dime bags, and used condoms off the church steps each morning.

The ghosts couldn’t stop the demon.

Travis had hosted four seminary students for a weekend retreat and neighborhood outreach. The demon caught them late at night, intent on destruction and defilement, as they were finishing setting up for the soup kitchen in the parish social hall. One of the students died before they even knew what stalked them. Travis had gotten the others to the safety of a small chapel, where the combination of holy ground and blessed relics, along with their desperately chanted prayers, kept the demon at bay until sunrise. Travis had fought the creature back with a silver candlestick and a monstrance, saving the lives—if not the sanity—of the other three young men.

Two of the students dropped out of seminary. One checked himself into a psychiatric hospital. And Travis had found himself recruited by the Sinistram, which didn’t give a shit about him being a medium—as long as he fought the good fight, as they defined it.

He’d kept up his part of the bargain until his health, his faith, and his sanity were in shreds. When he walked away, his handler at the Sinistram told him that the priesthood, and demon hunting, were things you only quit when you were dead. Travis proved him half right.

That was four years ago, but it seemed like another lifetime.

Now, Travis drove his old Crown Victoria down a desolate stretch of dark highway, listening for the whisper of ghosts. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to find, but he figured he’d know it when he heard it.

At first, the voices were so quiet he almost missed them. They grew louder, though still at the edge of his awareness. Travis pulled into the next rest area, which was deserted at this hour. He left the engine idling and made sure the doors were locked. Then he took a deep breath and opened himself to the ghosts.

Wisps of fog crept across the parking lot until each of the security lights overhead was encircled by a glowing nimbus. The rumble of voices sounded closer now, and as the fog grew thicker, Travis spied forms and faces that shifted with the wind. Restless spirits haunted the highway like spectral hitchhikers, unable to go home, and unwilling to move on. On more than one occasion, Travis thought he’d witnessed a horrific wreck, only to realize it was a repeater, a ghostly image replaying the last, tragic moments of someone’s life in an infinite loop.

Repeaters weren’t sentient. These ghosts still knew who they were, and how they died. The temperature in the car plummeted, and frost formed on the windows although the night was mild for October. Some of the spirits had died in accidents; others by violence along this lonely stretch, or at their own hand. But they flocked to Travis’s power like moths to a flame, anxious to gain his help.

“I will hear all of you,” he promised. “And help you pass over. But please, before I do, tell me what you know of evil in a black truck.”

Travis felt a shudder and realized that his question had managed to frighten the dead. Not mortal, then , he thought, confirming his worst fears about the driver of the mysterious vehicle. He reached out with his gift, trying to bridge the gap between himself and the lost souls who milled about in the fog.

“He’s kidnapping people, women and children. He’ll kill them,” Travis said, something he couldn’t prove yet but felt certain of, bone-deep. “I want to stop him. But I need help.”

Ghosts seldom spoke words, and even less often sentences. Images seemed to transcend the Veil more easily than language. Travis saw a barrage of fleeting images that flickered almost too quickly for him to process. The black truck, with dark tinted windows. A child with black hair done up with a pretty bow, crying. A blond woman, screaming and fighting, trying to open the door to escape. But of the driver, nothing but a dark, featureless form and an awful sense of wrongness.

“Where did he take them?” Travis asked the dead. But one by one, they shook their heads. Tragedy bound them to this stretch of road, and when the truck left their boundaries, they could not follow it. Yet if the entity behind the abductions killed his victims, their bodies hadn’t been dumped near here, or their spirits would have heeded Travis’s call.

“Can you tell me anything?” he begged.

Cooper City. The distant voice echoed as if it carried down a long corridor. The words were clearly spoken, but not repeated, and although Travis strained for more, the spirits fell silent.

“All right,” he said. “Thank you. Come closer, and I will help you pass over.”

Travis felt certain that not all of the ghosts had been Catholic in their lifetimes, but the core of Last Rites—confession, absolution, and blessing—was universal. He supposed that the trappings of faith mattered little to the dead, and that intent alone sufficed.

He withdrew the thin stole he kept in the glove compartment for emergencies and draped it over his shoulders. Guilt stabbed at him, that he had no business saying the words since he had renounced the priesthood when he renounced the Sinistram. But Travis knew clergy of many faiths, and each of them had a litany for the dead, so if he and the ghosts found comfort in familiar words, he refused to beg forgiveness because of a technicality. If this was sin, he had done far worse.

Travis didn’t know who took more comfort in the rites—the ghosts or himself. His psychic gift communicated with the souls of the dead even as his physical voice lifted up the words of the benediction, and the ability to sense their passage felt equally as sacred as the mystery of the Eucharist.

When the ghosts were gone, and the litany complete, Travis opened his eyes. Both the fog and the frost had vanished. He paused for a few minutes to regain his composure, then pulled out of the rest area, drove to the next exit, and reversed course, heading back to Pittsburgh, deep in thought.

Something inhuman was behind the abductions, an entity able to frighten the dead. Travis didn’t know why “Cooper City” was important enough to be shared from beyond the grave, but tomorrow, after he’d managed to catch a few hours of sleep, he had every intention of finding out.

The next day, one minor crisis after another kept Travis’s mind on St. Dismas, instead of fretting about a troublesome hunter-wannabe, or the next moves of what he had mentally dubbed the “Silverado Killer” after the make and model of a very popular black truck.

“Okay, we got the shipment of ground beef, tomato soup, cabbage, and rice the soup kitchen needs to do stuffed cabbage tonight,” Travis said to Jon, “and the overdue medical supplies Matthew ordered finally came in. Any news on the water heater?”

Travis and Jon had spent much of their time directing the halfway house’s small staff through a day that seemed to go from bad to worse. The aforementioned water heater stopped working, the office printer was failing, and one of the ovens in the commercial kitchen was finicky enough that the cook not-so-jokingly asked if an exorcism was a possibility.

“Got a repair scheduled. Had to pay emergency rates because we can’t do without,” Jon reported, then took a big swallow of strong, black coffee. Travis had a cup of his own and felt certain the caffeine was the only thing keeping him on his feet after a late night.

“Good. And the van?” Travis asked. St. Dismas had a decrepit shuttle to take its temporary residents to any medical or social service appointments that couldn’t happen on site.

“The repairs were more expensive than we expected, but at least we’ll get a little longer out of the junker,” Jon replied.

St. Dismas operated on the patched-together support of grants, donations, and nominal help from the Diocese. Travis, Jon, and Matthew, as three of the most visible faces of the organization, wrangled every connection and contact they had with local businesses to stretch their tight finances. Travis had spent half of the morning in an inter-agency meeting to coordinate resources, working closely with food banks, clothing drives, and volunteer organizations for medical, educational, and social services. Jon would cover for him at another event that night, while Travis went back to hunting.

“Can we cover the stipend for the Night Vigil?” Travis asked.

“As long as you don’t add too many more people,” Jon said, nodding. “That antique store owner in Charleston sent another large check earmarked for ‘special purpose resource development.’ It’s almost as if he knows what the Night Vigil actually does.”

For Travis, the Night Vigil was the intersection of St. Dismas’s mission and his own obsession to fight supernatural evil. Jon had once called them “halfway house heroes,” and he wasn’t far wrong. Most, like Angie, had some level of psychic gift, or like Travis, they’d had their own run-in with the occult. All of them carried a heavy load of guilt over misusing their gifts or failing to protect someone they loved. Many worked the night shift because they didn’t want to sleep when it was dark and because as sentries in the battle against evil, they needed to be alert in the hour of the wolf. They kept their eyes open for paranormal problems and fed that information to Travis. In return, they earned a small stipend, and Travis did his best to watch out for them. There was safety in numbers.

We’re the misfits and fuck-ups, unwanted by Heaven or Hell, Travis thought, looking for one last chance to atone for mistakes and missed chances, the pain we’ve caused others, the good things we were afraid to do, and the bad things we embraced with open arms. Might as well get the unfinished business dealt with before we cross over, so we don’t become someone else’s problem.

“Given that particular shop, I’d bet on it, although I don’t know how he gets his information,” Travis said. “They handle any cursed or haunted items we come across and neutralize them.”

“Nice,” Jon replied. “You think you got a lead?”

“A slim one,” Travis admitted. “Not sure what to make of it.”

His phone buzzed, and Travis frowned as he saw the number, then put the call on speaker. “Father Ryan. It’s been a while.”

“It has indeed,” the other man replied. “And I wish I were calling under better circumstances. Is there any chance you could meet me for dinner tonight? I’ve got a problem that I think is up your alley.”

Travis checked his watch. “It’s gonna take me about two and a half hours, assuming I don’t hit construction.” The fact that Father Ryan lived in Cooper City, the same place the highway ghosts had mentioned, had not escaped Travis’s notice.

“It’s important,” Father Ryan replied. “I wouldn’t ask you to drive out if it weren’t…unusual. I’ve got a widow who is refusing to bury her husband’s body—and she’s the third family member this week who won’t part with a corpse.”

Jon and Travis exchanged a look. “You’re sure it’s not just extreme grief?” Travis asked.

“I’ve been in this business for a while,” Father Ryan replied. He had been one of the younger priests when Travis was in seminary, maybe less than ten years older. Travis remembered the last time he’d seen Ryan. Being a small-town parish priest seemed to have aged him another decade, reminding Travis that if the big city didn’t kill you, it kept you young. “I’ve buried a lot of people, seen a lot of bereavement. But this…it’s like that Faulkner story.”

Travis shuddered. A Rose for Emily was probably the only story he remembered from his college literature class, and it never failed to creep him out just thinking about it. “Okay. I get it. I’ll be there.”

“Plan to stay over. You can have the guest room at the rectory. I think you need to see what I’m dealing with.”

He ended the call and turned to Jon. “Are you okay if—”

Jon waved him off. “Go. Sounds like the good father needs some help. I’ll get one of the volunteers to help me pick up the coat donations from the radio station.”

“I’m planning to be back tonight, but if that changes, you’ll be the first to know,” Travis assured him. He grabbed the duffel he kept packed for this kind of thing, and his laptop, just in case, and headed for his car, trying to remember where Cooper City was. The app on his phone gave him directions, and he saw that at least part of the route was on I-80, farther east than he had driven the night before. Interesting. I wonder if there are any new ghosts who know something about the truck?

October turned the forest bright red and orange, and the afternoon sun made the mountains ablaze with color. Travis tried to focus on the natural beauty to de-stress but found his thoughts cycling back to the disappearances, the black truck, and Father Ryan’s problematic widow.

Could they be related? he wondered. Cooper City was almost in the middle of the state, while the missing people had vanished from farther west. Travis couldn’t quite envision a common thread between the disappearances and the grief-fueled irrationality of Father Ryan’s mourners. And yet the incident in the small town right on the heels of the message Travis had received from the I-80 ghosts about the same city seemed like too much of a coincidence.

Travis tried to remember who among his Night Vigil contacts were located mid-state. He couldn’t recall off-hand but vowed to check his phone when he stopped. Even if the two situations were unrelated, it wouldn’t hurt to have his network keep an ear to the ground, or use their abilities to uncover connections.

Just as Travis finally shook off his bleak mood, the phone buzzed. He recognized the number, seriously considered just letting it go to voicemail, then resigned himself to dealing with the caller.

“Travis. This is Father Liam.”

“The answer is still ‘no.’”

Liam’s cold chuckle irritated Travis. “You can’t run from your vows, my son.”

“I’m no son of yours.” Travis fought to keep his voice even, but his hands clutched the steering wheel white-knuckled.

“You are all my spiritual children,” Liam said, with the cocksure confidence that had always set Travis’s teeth on edge. His old Sinistram mentor was a man Travis knew could have easily done just fine for himself at the CIA—or the KGB—if he hadn’t sworn his oath first to the Church.

“Get to the point.”

“The point is, you need to return to the fold. There’s work to be done.” A hint of irritation added an edge beneath Liam’s words.

“I’m out,” Travis replied. “Out of the priesthood, and out of your little viper pit.”

“Really, Travis. You’re never really out. Or have you forgotten? ‘Thou art a priest forever,’” Liam quoted, with the sanctimonious tone Travis had always resented.

“Tell me why you really called, or I’m hanging up.”

Silence stretched long enough Travis thought the call might have dropped. “We’ve lost three more operatives,” Liam said finally. “One to a vetala, another in a car accident, and the third to a gunshot wound.”

“As usual, there’s something you’re not saying,” Travis snapped. “Was the wreck a DUI and the bullet self-inflicted?”

The Sinistram was an ancient cadre of warrior-monks fighting dark magic and demonic forces, with a tradition of rigor and asceticism that drove men to an early grave. If the Knights Templar were the Marines of the Vatican, the Sinistram was its Black Ops. Between the horrors faced on the job, a pitiless culture that made a fetish of suffering, and the loneliness of the work, most Sinistram operatives never made it to their forties. Those who did were usually broken in mind and body. Alcohol blurred the memories, and when that failed, suicide ended the pain.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” Travis said when Liam didn’t deign to reply. “You know, maybe you should ask yourself why so many of your men would rather commit a mortal sin than keep doing the work.”

“The flesh is weak,” Liam answered smoothly. “And in a moment of weakness, the Father of Lies prevails.”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Couldn’t possibly be your ‘real men don’t show fear’ bullshit.”

“Language, Travis.”

“You want language, Liam? How about this? Lose my fucking number. I’m done with you, and I’m sure as hell done with the Sinistram.”

“Hell is closer than you think, Travis. Don’t be too quick to burn bridges. You might need a fire escape.” The call ended abruptly.

Travis swerved to take the ramp to the next rest area and pulled into a spot far removed from the other cars. He closed his eyes, taking deep breaths, trying to regain his composure and let his thudding heart return to normal.

Damn Liam, damn the Sinistram, and damn the rot that lets snakes like him make a mockery out of everything the Church says it believes. His faith had been as much a casualty as his mind and body, and while part of him longed for the comfort of certitude, he knew from bitter experience that not only was the devil in the details but within the shades of gray.

He leaned forward, resting his forehead on the steering wheel, wishing that just the sound of Liam’s voice didn’t trigger him. His stomach knotted hard enough that he thought he might throw up, and he knew if he lifted his hands from the wheel they would shake.

It’s been four years. He doesn’t control me. I’m out. He can’t make me do anything, not anymore. But deep in his heart, Travis knew that wasn’t completely true. Like the CIA and the Mob, the Sinistram knew how to work people like puppets, and neither extortion nor threats were off the table.

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” Travis quoted to himself, and the irony of the appropriateness of a line from a Mafia movie was not lost on him. “Not this time. Never again.”

It took the rest of the drive to Cooper City for Travis to calm down after the phone call. He tried to keep from going over Father Liam’s smug remarks, but just thinking about the Sinistram made his blood boil. He’d already paid too high a price in blood and nightmares and seen too many good men pushed to the breaking point. Now, Travis intended to wage the fight on his own terms.

He parked in the lot beside Our Lady of Sorrows church and walked up the steps to the rectory. Father Ryan swung the door open and greeted him with a hug and a smile. “Travis. It’s been too long.” The priest stood aside so that Travis could enter.

“Homey,” Travis said, glancing around the snug living room. He set his backpack down inside the door. The old brick house was across the parking lot from the church and had housed innumerable priests in the century and a half that the parish had served Cooper City.

“It’s more than I need,” Ryan said with a shrug. “You know us priests. We travel light.” The sturdy-but-comfortable furnishings were actually the property of the parish.

“Hey, if you’ve got a coffee maker and a TV that can stream movies, what more do you want?” Travis couldn’t resist teasing his old friend.

“That, I have, as well as a couch to watch them on, and a cat for company,” Ryan replied. On cue, a gray tabby appeared from beneath an armchair and wove in and out around his ankles. “Come into the kitchen. Dinner’s in the oven. I figured this way we could speak privately.”

Travis followed him into the dated but functional kitchen. It had obviously been remodeled over the years, but this incarnation appeared to be from the 1980s. No avocado and gold appliances, but the room’s cabinets and tile looked well-worn. “Whatever you’re cooking, it smells good.”

Ryan smiled as he reached for an oven mitt. “You can thank Mrs. Kowalczyk, the housekeeper. Her motto should be ‘feeding priests since 1976.’” He pulled out a tray of stuffed peppers, and a baking dish full of mashed potatoes, perfectly browned on the top. “Although I’ll take credit for warming up the canned green beans, and I picked up the cherry pie from the grocery store myself.”

Travis helped to get drinks and set the table. The rectory had the comfortable feel of a well-loved home, in stark contrast to his own apartment at St. Dismas. Although he was no longer a priest, he’d gotten out of the habit of needing a lot of stuff. Still, he thought, looking around, it might not hurt to make his place a bit more welcoming.

“So how goes the halfway house business?” Ryan asked as they sat down to eat.

Despite the call on the drive up, and the unsettling reason Ryan had requested his visit, Travis felt himself relax. He had only a handful of people whom he considered true friends, unencumbered by conflicting loyalties or by being his coworkers. Even fewer had known him as long as Ryan or remembered him before he had joined and then given up the priesthood.

“Well, we’ll never be obsolete,” Travis observed. “There’s so much need, and nowhere near the resources to do what needs to be done.”

“You’re doing all that you can, and that makes a difference,” Ryan replied. “Not to mention your extracurricular activities.”

Travis rolled his eyes. “Yeah, good thing I don’t need much sleep. How about you? Small town life looks like it agrees with you.”

He and Ryan were a decade apart in age, with Travis in his early thirties. But where fighting monsters and unloading truckloads of donations kept Travis toned and fit, Ryan’s routine of liturgies and committee meetings meant he’d gone a bit pudgy. His thinning hair and wire-rimmed glasses made him look comfortingly avuncular, but Travis knew that behind Ryan’s mild veneer lay a sharp mind and a keen sense of humor.

“It’s what I signed up for,” Ryan replied. “As parishes go, it’s as drama-free as you’re ever going to get. No one’s trying to stir up trouble, at least, not usually. This is a small town with an aging population. People just want to collect their pensions, play some bingo, watch a little football, and go about their business.”

“Sounds like a nice gig,” Travis replied.

“I imagine it seems boring to you.”

Travis let out a long breath. “That depends on your definition of excitement. We help people fight their metaphorical demons all day long, and then after dark, I go after the real ones. Excitement is overrated.”

They ate in silence for several minutes. “Has your Night Vigil had any news about what’s going on out here?” Ryan asked after they had both done justice to their food, and helped themselves to seconds. He got up to clear their plates.

“I was just thinking that I need to see who’s this far east,” Travis replied, leaning back and enjoying a full stomach. “Most of what I’ve heard has all been about people going missing from truck stops on I-80. It feels hinky, like there’s more to it than just human evil.”

Ryan cut them both generous slices of pie, then returned with the pot of coffee and two mugs. “I’ve learned not to underestimate what people can do. Sometimes, I doubt we actually need the Devil, since people come up with horrors on their own.”

“Don’t let the folks in Rome hear you,” Travis joked.

“Speaking of which,” Ryan replied, “I gather that your…friends…there haven’t persuaded you to pick up where you left off.”

Travis sipped his coffee, suddenly wishing it had a slug of whiskey in it. “No,” he answered with a bitter edge to his voice that he knew Ryan would understand. “They keep trying. I keep saying no. Officially, they can’t force me, but we all know that some arms of the Church follow the rules more closely than others.”

Ryan was one of the only people aside from Jon and Matthew, and Father Pavel, Travis’s confessor, who knew about his past with the Sinistram. Like many secret organizations, the group considered itself above both secular and Church law and employed tactics that officials disavowed in the light of day.

“Good for you,” Ryan said, making short work of the pie. “Keep saying no.”

Travis grimaced. “Easy for you to say. If I disappear someday, send someone to the catacombs to find me.” He stared at the pie crumbs on his plate. “So tell me about what you’ve got going on here.”

Ryan poured himself another cup of coffee. “Honestly, I debated whether to serve you dinner before or after we go visit Mrs. Laszlo,” he replied. “Either way, it’s bound to spoil your appetite.”

Ryan nodded. “I’ve dealt with a lot of pretty awful situations, Travis. I don’t recall if I told you, but I spent a couple of years as an Army chaplain in Afghanistan, went on aid missions to Haiti and Puerto Rico after the hurricanes…I thought I’d seen everything grief could do to people. But this…” He shook his head.

“Since you called me, you must think there’s more to what’s happening that normal mourning.”

“Come on. I’ll show you. It’s not really something I can explain.” He handed Travis a bottle of anti-nausea pills. “Better take a few, just in case.” Then he shared a small jar of menthol rub. “Put a little in each nostril. It’s a trick I learned from a cop. Helps with the smell.”

They walked outside the rectory, and Ryan sniggered when he saw Travis’s Crown Vic. “I hope you got a good deal on that gunboat.”

“It’s a police interceptor model that didn’t get neutered for civilian use. Bigger engine, higher speed. And room for more than one body in the trunk.”

Ryan nodded. “All good points. I stand corrected.”

They drove Ryan’s small SUV, and Travis took in Cooper City. The town looked like most of the other central Pennsylvania communities Travis had seen, and much like those on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. Most of the houses dated from World War II or before, and while adequately maintained, showed wear and age. Few cars were new, fewer still were foreign or luxury models. Dollar stores and thrift shops outnumbered other merchants, although Travis had passed a Walmart on the way into town. He’d be willing to bet deaths outnumbered births, and that the average age was over fifty.

Decades ago, Cooper City and its neighbors relied on mines, timber, and small, local manufacturing jobs. When those dried up or shipped offshore, nothing took their place. Young people moved; old people stayed. The town’s slow death was etched in its cracked sidewalks and potholed roads, in the shabby cars parked at the diner and in the peeling paint of its post office.

“This is the place.” The trip had taken less than ten minutes. Ryan parked at the curb in front of a modest two-story frame house that had probably been built to welcome the troops home from Germany. The paint had grown chalky, and the picket fence was missing a few slats.

“No one’s mowed for a while,” Travis observed, taking in the overgrown yard.

“Mr. Laszlo has been indisposed,” Ryan replied. “Let’s pay a visit.”

The smell hit Travis even before they rang the doorbell. Even on the porch, he caught the sickly sweet odor of advanced decomposition, despite the menthol and eucalyptus gel. “Jesus,” Travis muttered as much a prayer as an oath.

A thin, hunched woman opened the door. Mrs. Laszlo looked to be in her late eighties, thin enough to blow away in a stiff wind. Her gray hair framed her face in a curly perm that went out of style in the Carter administration. Travis noticed that her housedress and sweater looked clean, although the smell that assaulted them from behind her would certainly permeate everything she wore, no matter how freshly laundered.

“We just were in the neighborhood and thought we would pay a visit,” Father Ryan said. Travis recognized the tone as his “conciliatory pastor” voice, used for coaxing good behavior from contrary parishioners. “I brought you cookies,” he added, producing a bag he must have had stashed in the SUV.

“Why isn’t that sweet of you!” Mrs. Laszlo said. “Please come in. I’ve just gotten Henry settled after dinner. He goes to sleep so early these days,” she added.

They followed the woman through a tidy front hallway. If Travis had been expecting the clutter and piled junk of a hoarder, he would have been proven wrong. The house reminded him of his grandmother’s, a neat, working-class haven filled with slipcovered chairs, dated draperies, and neatly hung decorative china plates on the walls.

Except for the corpse in the recliner.

Henry Laszlo’s skin showed mottling where the blood had settled. He’d moved from pallid to greenish as rot set in, and his bloated belly strained at the tie of his bathrobe and elastic waistband of his pajama pants. His eyes were closed—a small mercy—but his mouth gaped open. Flies swarmed around the body, buzzing loudly enough to be noticeable even from a distance.

On a TV tray next to the recliner, sat an untouched plate of food. “Henry’s appetite hasn’t been so good lately,” Mrs. Laszlo fussed.

Travis had to swallow, hard, not to puke. His eyes watered from the stench. He noticed that Mrs. Laszlo seemed inured to it.

“Have you noticed anything different with Henry lately?” Father Ryan asked.

Mrs. Laszlo sighed. “He doesn’t get around so good anymore, with that bad knee of his,” she tutted.

While Ryan kept Mrs. Laszlo talking, Travis closed his eyes and grounded himself, then opened his gift and called to Henry’s ghost. Travis had felt off-kilter ever since he’d been within fifty miles of Cooper City, an odd, jangly feeling that made his leg jiggle and his fingers drum, the sense that something wasn’t right. Even without fully reaching out to his mediumship, he had felt a primal discomfort as they entered the Laszlo home. Now, just feet from a rotting corpse, his intuition was screaming for him to run.

Instead, Travis rooted his power and said a prayer of protection. The horrors of what he saw at the Sinistram might have left his faith in tatters, but he still took solace from the familiar words, and they proved valuable as he envisioned wrapping himself in a shield of white light against the horrors that sometimes prowled on the other side of the Veil.

Travis stifled a gasp as his inner sight flared. He saw Henry’s spirit, but the ghost was covered with a quivering mass of what looked like black maggots that burrowed into the spirit’s form and wriggled beneath its “skin.” Thousands of the black worms bedeviled the revenant, and Henry’s panicked gaze sought Travis with a silent plea for help.

The awful image made Travis recoil, but it did not break his connection to the Other Side. He felt the gaze of dozens of spirits, a cloud of witnesses, just at the edge of his perception. The emotions he picked up from the ghosts was a tangle of suspicion, terror, judgment, and guilt, so tangible that it made his stomach twist and his throat tighten. Before the specters could come closer, Travis strengthened his psychic shields, unwilling to be overwhelmed before he even had the chance to find out what tormented the dead and caused their unquiet rest.

He forced his attention back to Henry and knew what had to be done. With effort, Travis roused himself from his trance. Father Ryan was still chatting with Mrs. Laszlo as if sitting in a living room with a corpse was the most normal thing in the world.

Travis feigned a cough. “Can I trouble you, please, for a glass of water?” he asked Mrs. Laszlo, in a raspy voice.

“Oh, my dear! Certainly. I’ll be right back, and I’ll bring one for Father, too,” Mrs. Laszlo said, bustling off toward the kitchen.

Ryan wasn’t fooled for an instant. “What?”

“Not sure, but I think it’s some kind of low-level demonic infestation. He’s going to need an exorcism and Last Rites.”

“I’m not cleared to do exorcism,” Ryan replied.

“No, but I am.” Travis gave a bitter smile. “And while I gave up the collar, the Sinistram says ‘once a priest, always a priest,’ so I consider it a loophole.”

Ryan returned a conspiratorial grin. “You dissemble like a Jesuit.”

“I learned from the best.”

They heard Mrs. Laszlo shuffling back from the kitchen. “What’s the next move?” Ryan asked.

“Restrain her,” Travis replied. “Keep her from breaking my concentration, but stay close, and pray like your soul depends on it. It might. I don’t think the things that are eating Henry Laszlo are going to give up easily.”

Mrs. Laszlo came into the living room with a glass in each hand, trembling enough that the water sloshed and nearly overflowed. “Here you go,” she said, setting them down on the coffee table.

“I was wondering, do you have a cat?” Father Ryan asked.

Mrs. Laszlo gave him a puzzled look. “A cat? Dear me, no. Why?”

“I thought I heard something coming from the closet,” Ryan replied. “And I didn’t want the poor thing to be locked inside.”

Mrs. Laszlo frowned. “The closet? I can’t imagine. Let me look.” She headed for the coat closet, and Ryan followed her. The door opened, revealing a shallow cubby with a few winter coats and boots. “I don’t see anything—”

“Sorry,” Father Ryan murmured, giving her a nudge and closing the door, then leaning against it with his full weight. “Travis, go!” he cried, then began to chant the Hail Mary, resolutely ignoring Mrs. Laszlo pounding on the other side of the door.

Travis had already grounded himself, expecting Ryan to act. He rose and turned toward Henry’s putrefying corpse, and experienced a kind of double vision, his inner and outer sight overlying one another so that he could clearly make out the writhing demonic maggots superimposed over the dead man’s body.

“Exorcizamos te, omnis immundus spiritus …” Travis began, gathering both his authority as a medium and the spiritual power of the ancient litany. He might no longer have faith in the Church and its leaders, or in the doctrines he had been taught, but he clung to a ragged certitude that Light conquered Darkness, and it was that belief that empowered him to face the spiritual forces of evil.

“Omnis Satanicas potestas …” Travis continued. “Omnis incursio infernalis adversarii …”

Henry’s body began to quiver, and Travis’s double vision snapped into a single, unified view. Curls of black smoke, like hellish grubs, burrowed into the dead flesh, undulated beneath the skin, and massed in the chest and belly in numbers large enough to look as if the corpse breathed.

Father Ryan continued his prayers, and Travis hoped that his friend could make up for in faith what he lacked. The hell-maggots weren’t the worst demonic threat Travis had faced, but the staggering number of entities required his full concentration.

The idea of Henry’s physical body becoming worm food didn’t bother Travis; such was the way of all flesh. But the hell-maggots ate at his soul, feeding off its energy and the core essence of the dead man, and that was intolerable.

Mrs. Laszlo pounded on the closet door. “Let me out!”

Father Ryan leaned against it with his full weight, and chanted louder, offering Last Rites. Travis continued with the exorcism and hoped like fuck no one heard the old lady shouting and called the cops.

Travis’s magic anchored Henry’s spirit, as the sacred words exhorted the demonic parasites to depart and return to the Pit from whence they came. The dead man’s body became a battleground, a war between eternal energies. But as demons went, the hell-maggots didn’t have the juice that powered their more dangerous brethren.

Travis found that visualization helped to focus and amplify the currents that he channeled when he worked the sacred magic. Now he imagined himself surrounded by a field of glowing light, a sanctified bug zapper of sorts. As the litany pried the maggots loose, he saw the black smoke creatures vanish in glowing flares, first one at a time, and then handfuls of writhing curls. The flashes temporarily blinded him, turning his vision red with the afterimages.

A dark power fought him, pulling against the light that flowed through Travis, but gradually the resistance waned, and then stopped altogether. The abrupt end left him off balance as if his opponent had dropped the other end of the rope in a tug of war. Henry’s ravaged soul glowed faintly, free of encumbrances, then faded out, moving on.

Travis finished the exorcism as Father Ryan completed the Last Rites, and Travis joined his friend in the familiar and comforting words of the benediction.

Henry’s body was now a shriveled husk, a mummy in a stained bathrobe. The smell of sulfur and ash replaced the stench of decay. Travis nodded, and Father Ryan stepped away from the closet door. It swung open, and Mrs. Laszlo tumbled out, hair askew and eyes wild.

“Are you all right?” Father Ryan asked, managing to sound surprised and distressed.

“What happened?” She sounded genuinely confused, and Travis wondered if the hell-maggots created some kind of distortion that affected her mind.

“You went to get something from the closet, and the door slammed shut,” Ryan replied. That wasn’t exactly a lie. “It took a bit before I could get you out.” Again, technically true.

“Oh my, what is that smell?” Mrs. Laszlo said, nose wrinkling. “And what’s in Henry’s chair? Oh dear god—” Her knees buckled and Father Ryan caught her before she fell. Travis hurried over to help, and with one man on each side, they half-carried the distraught woman to the kitchen.

“Henry’s dead,” Father Ryan said as gently as he could. “I think that you’ve been so overwhelmed with grief, it didn’t really sink in until just now.”

Sadness and horror warred in Mrs. Lazaro’s expression. “He hadn’t been well for a long time,” she said, so quietly they could barely hear the words. “Felt like he was slipping away a bit more each day. I knew I was losing him. I just hope that he didn’t suffer.”

Travis looked away, remembering the parasites that ravaged the dead man’s soul, unwilling to provide false comfort since he felt certain Henry’s passing had been anything but easy.

“I’m sure he’s at peace now,” Father Ryan assured her. He frowned. “I’m sorry to ask this, but since I didn’t have the opportunity to hear Henry’s confession before he passed on…do you know if there were any sins that weighed heavy on his mind? Old failings, bad habits, those kinds of thing? I will ask for absolution on his behalf when I pray for his soul.”

Travis knew that Ryan’s promise was sincere—he would certainly remember both Mrs. Laszlo and Henry in his prayers—but he also was fishing for some clue as to why the infernal parasites had attached themselves to the failing spirit of an old man.

“Henry wasn’t perfect, but he was a good man,” Mrs. Laszlo said, wiping her eyes with a tissue she produced from the pocket of her housedress. “Never cheated on me or raised a hand in anger to the children or me. Paid every cent he owed in taxes. Didn’t drink to excess. Gave to the church,” she added. “He might have sneaked a smoke now and again, if he thought I wasn’t looking, and taken the Lord’s name in vain when he hit his thumb with a hammer, but if there wasn’t anything worse than that, Father, I never saw it in sixty-five years of marriage.”

Travis and Ryan stayed with Mrs. Laszlo until the mortician came to take the body, and a cop showed up to take their statements. The look the men exchanged with Ryan told Travis that it was not the first odd circumstances he had encountered. When the white van left with the corpse, Mrs. Laszlo laid a hand on Father Ryan’s arm.

“Thank you for waiting with me,” she said, including Travis with a glance in his direction. “But I’ll be all right. I’ll call my daughter, and she’ll come stay with me a while. We already discussed it. Henry and I had a good long time together, and I imagine we won’t be parted long,” she added with a sad smile. “I’ll see you at Mass in the morning.”

Travis and Ryan drove back to the rectory in silence. By this time it was dark, and despite the streetlights and the warm glow from inside the houses they passed, Travis still felt chilled to the bone.

Ryan’s cat, Lilith, met them at the door. They hung up their coats and headed into the kitchen. Ryan took down a bottle of scotch and poured them both a liberal draught. “Talk to me,” he said, sitting across from Travis. “What happened back there?”

Travis was quiet for several moments, then gave Ryan as much of an account as he could bring himself to put into words. “I don’t know why the rite still works for me,” he admitted. “Because I stopped believing when I left the Sinistram.”

Ryan shrugged. “The Eternal Power of Creation—call it by any name you choose—is not the same as the Church, and it’s heresy to say otherwise. Although that’s an unpopular opinion in some circles. You lost faith in a fallible human organization that often failed to live up to its ideals, and which, at its worst, hurt as much as healed. That’s as it should be. Blind faith is a recipe for exploitation.”

Travis took a swallow and let the liquor burn down his throat. “Better be careful who hears you say that.”

“You know me, Travis. I won’t say anything behind someone’s back I wouldn’t say to their face.” Ryan took a slug of his own drink. “Lucky for me, there’s a priest shortage.”

“Still doesn’t answer my question.”

Ryan met his gaze. “It works for you because the energy you’re calling forth in the rite belongs to itself, not to anyone else. You believe in it , so it doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in them . You don’t have to completely understand. Just accept it as a gift, like your other abilities, and use it for the right reasons.”

Travis wasn’t completely convinced, but it was the best answer he was likely to receive, and so he nodded and raised his glass in salute before knocking back the rest of it. He was surprised when Ryan refilled both their glasses.

“I should probably drink less,” Travis said with a sigh, regarding the amber liquid.

“Maybe,” Ryan allowed. “Then again, life is short, and we should take comfort where we can.”

“I don’t remember them saying that in seminary either.”

“Life taught me a lot of things they didn’t cover,” Ryan replied.

Travis sat back in his chair and toyed with his glass. “How did a low-level demonic infestation happen to pick a guy like Henry Laszlo? Do you believe his wife, that he didn’t have some awful, hidden sordid secrets?”

Ryan considered his answer before speaking. “None he ever confided to me,” he said. “And while no one ever really knows another person’s heart, I don’t think he was a serial killer or a secret rapist or a child molester. The worst I saw of him was his grief when the doctors diagnosed his wife’s cancer.”

Travis looked up, surprised. Ryan nodded. “They lost a son, last year, in a car accident. Henry took it hard. Then he found out Helen’s cancer had come back—stage four, this time, so there was little anyone could do about it—and he was inconsolable.”

“Was he desperate enough to do something like trying to bargain for her life?”

Ryan raised an eyebrow. “I really can’t imagine Henry Laszlo striking a crossroads deal. He was honest to a fault.”

“There’s got to be a reason why the hell-maggots picked him,” Travis mused.

“Not necessarily. Sometimes, random shit happens, and we wear ourselves out trying to make it make sense.”

“You said there’d been other cases like this?” Travis sipped the whiskey, savoring the taste. Ryan didn’t allow himself many luxuries, but the scotch was one of them.

“Yeah. But until I saw a pattern, I didn’t think it was more than bereavement. In the other cases, there was family to help intervene. They got a doc to give a sedative to the person who wouldn’t release the body, and then other relatives made sure the body went right for cremation.” He wrinkled his nose. “There wasn’t really any other option since the corpses weren’t fresh. In a few cases, we didn’t realize there’d been a death for quite some time.”

“Cremation, huh?” Travis replied thoughtfully, absently tracing the rim of his glass with one finger. “Purifying fire.”

Ryan nodded. “Which destroyed those particular infestations, but doesn’t solve the bigger problem of why it’s happening.”

Travis rubbed his temples. “When I get back to Pittsburgh, I’ll see what I can find at the Archives. Don’t worry,” he added. “I won’t blab to the Keepers.” The Archives was a secret repository of arcane knowledge deep in the underground warren beneath the Duquesne University seminary library. Travis retained access because of his history with the Sinistram. The Archive’s librarians, the mysterious Keepers, were monks who dedicated their lives to preserving the old—and often dangerous—occult tomes. Many Keepers had taken a vow of silence.

“Creepy bastards,” Ryan replied. “They’re probably ninja assassins.”

Travis grinned. “They’re all older than Methuselah. Unless the rumors are true, and they’re actually immortal.” Seminary students gossiped like everyone else, although no one would dare have said a word within the hearing of the fearsome librarians.

“I’ll keep my ears open,” Ryan agreed. “Maybe I can figure out a pattern. Do you think that these…hell-maggots…caused Henry’s death, or are they, I don’t know, some kind of demonic soul-scavengers?”

Travis took another sip of his drink. The whole concept was disquieting. “No idea. I’ve never even heard of that kind of infestation before. Sort of like satanic scabies.”

“Let me do some digging,” Ryan offered. “After all, I’m really only aware of what goes on in my congregation, unless something becomes newsworthy enough to get talked about down at the diner. Maybe there’s been more happening than I know. I’m also overdue to have lunch with Pastor Jonas and Reverend Harmond,” he added with a wink.

“That’s very ecumenical of you,” Travis replied with a wry smile.

Ryan shrugged. “Cooper City is a small town. Individuals may bicker, but behind the scenes, Jonas and Harmond and I—and some others—do a lot of collaborating on the food bank, the women’s shelter, that sort of thing. Doesn’t make sense to not work together. So I’ll see what I can find out from them. And I’ll ask Mrs. K,” he added, referencing his housekeeper, “and find out what the ladies down at the beauty shop are saying. They know everything that’s worth knowing in these parts.”

“And if you would, keep an ear open for anything about a freaky black truck,” Travis said. “Not that I think it’s related, but I-80 comes right past here. So might that truck.”

“You think there’s something supernatural going on?”

Travis nodded. “I’m not sure what, but I don’t think it’s as simple as kidnapping. As if that isn’t bad enough.”

“I’ve heard about the disappearances. I think people are edgy about them,” Ryan responded. “There’s talk. Nothing but a rehash of what’s been on the news, but I’ll tell you if I hear anything really interesting.”

Ryan made a pot of decaf, spiked with Jameson’s, and they finished the last of the pie, then retired to the living room to stream a recent superhero movie. Travis’s attention drifted in and out of the plot, but he enjoyed the rare camaraderie of being able to hang out with a friend without either of them feeling the burden of the collar.

He finally headed to the guest room around midnight, and the buzz of his phone surprised him. A glance at the ID puzzled him even more.

“Trece? Where are you?” Trece Baldwin was a long-haul trucker whose routes took him up and down the Eastern seaboard and back and forth across the heartland.

“Passing the exit for I-99 on I-80. I need to talk to you, man. I’ve been seeing shit, and you’re the only one who’ll believe me.” Trece’s far sight worked a little differently from Travis’s own sporadic clairvoyance. Travis caught glimpses from the past, present, and future, and saw distant happenings as they unfolded in real time, but usually without context or any ability to intervene.

“I saw a big black pickup stop beside a car pulled off on the side of the road.”

“Saw with your eyes, or saw with your gift?”

“With my gift,” Trece snapped, “else I wouldn’t have cause to call you about it, now would I?” He was quiet for a moment. “Anyhow, there was a lady in the car, and she had the hood up, so I guess she’d had trouble. The black pickup stopped, and then it took off again, and the woman was gone. I never saw anyone get out…”

“But?” Travis prompted.

“But I got a glimpse through the front windshield.” Trece’s voice choked with fear. “Couldn’t make out a face, but Travis, whatever was driving had glowing red eyes.”