The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [77]
It hovered into the attic room and surveyed the territory.
It looked upon Simon firstly, then upon Max.
Even from across the room, those eyes seemed to glisten like glossy windows to an eternity past.
And this was all Max saw until he himself faded into a deep dark abyss, the final seconds of delirium.
And peaceful, euphoric death.
20.
Matt McGregor Goes To Church
Matt McGregor had found his way to the Church on the Rock in much the same manner as Max had. When he spotted Max’s Mustang vacant and parked against the curb at the church’s adjoining intersection, he knew that Maxy had made it inside and was well into his investigative endeavors. Matt parked his Chevy Caprice a few vehicles away from Max and made his way towards the church, crossing at the intersection and heading towards the sanctuary’s front double doors.
Inside, the first handful of pews remained packed with prayerful worshippers, the worrisome recipients of the heartbreaking news of young Alice and her very late boyfriend Ben, or at least the ones concerned enough to hold themselves after service hours in diligence to the Lord.
Matt vaguely recalled what Bradshaw looked like from diverse television spotlights on the news and on Christian Broadcasting while flipping through late night channels and it appeared as if Max and the pastor were both elsewhere. Matt wondered if Max had even located the pastor at all.
He went outside. No sign of the officers he’d sent there earlier to ask questions and to inform the immediate family and to look around. He assumed their task was short as it was simple and the last of them had vanished while he’d been cruising their way down the freeway.
He stepped around the building and made his way leisurely down the side walkway until he spied an open door to his right. He went up to it and as he did so his eyes caught sight of a spent cigarette butt at his feet just outside the door. In a fleeting thought he figured it odd that someone had been smoking just inches away from a church; two thoughts then…either it had been discarded by a homeless person, and there were many who attended here, though they didn’t appear as such with thanks to the pastor and with double thanks as to how they were no longer exactly homeless (the church was by no means a soup kitchen, no raggedy derelicts pushing shopping carts here), or it was discarded by Max. And there didn’t at this point seem to be any people around.
Then again, no big deal. It was only a cigarette butt.
He peered inside through the open doorway and into an empty office.
“Excuse me, my brother,” a voice startled him from behind. “You lookin’ for Pastor Jacob? He ain’t back yet."
Matt spun around to find himself facing a black gentleman staring resolutely back upon him, garbed in a slick yellow sports jacket and tie, slick for the seventies to say the least, the seventies painstakingly itching to catch up to the nineties.
“Yes,” Matt responded. “When will he be back? Did you see him with anyone?”
“I saw him with some guy. He your partner?”
“Yes, in a way he is. Hair kinda slick, dark—skinned, Italian-looking, in his forties, maybe dressed nice? Where did they go, do you know?”
Mr. Yellowjacket nodded. “Yeah, that’s him. I think I saw them go back inside. I think they went up to see Simon.”
Matt was intensely intrigued, and this was even more an understatement than Mr. Yellowjacket’s clothes. “Simon BoLeve?”
Mr. Yellowjacket took an awkward pause to think. “I suppose that’s his name. He’s always been just Simon to me. He fixes things around here. Fixes all kinds a things. I’ll take ya to him.”
With anticipation, Matt followed the man up the side walkway and away