Chapter 50
Garron
The church looks smaller at night. A squat box with its crooked steeple pointing into a sky that doesn’t care. The air is crisp, fall biting at the edges of every breath. No sound of sirens in the distance, no engines wailing. That means the house is still burning.
We leave the bag from her parents in the car. That one is used up, dirty and depleted. Corwin pops the trunk and pulls out the other bag, the one we packed for this place.
We walk together, shoes tapping on the cracked church sidewalk.
The double doors are tall and dark. As suspected, the doors are locked.
Of course they are. Also, as expected the light in Williams’ office is on.
It’s the one part of the church I didn’t see upon my visit, but Agatha knew where it was. The corner office upstairs.
I pull my phone out. My fingers are steady, but my chest feels like a drum. I dial the church number and hold it to my ear. It rings three times.
“Christ Redeemer Community Church,” comes his voice, full of performance. “This is Pastor Williams. What can I do to bring you closer to our Lord?”
“It’s Garron,” I say, quick, like I don’t want to be caught.
“We met yesterday, downstairs. I—I’m out front.
” I let my voice break, shaking it until it sounds like I’m coming apart.
“Shit—I mean—shoot, I hope that’s okay. I just…
I sinned. I sinned, and I need to tell someone what I’ve done. Oh God, please forgive me.”
I make myself sound small. Panicky. I make myself sound like the sheep he thinks he can lead.
On speaker, they hear it all. Evander raises his brows. Corwin smirks. Agatha presses her lips tight to hide her grin.
“Don’t worry, son,” Williams says. “I’m coming down and we can talk. It’s going to be alright. You’re in the right place.”
The line goes dead.
Corwin and Evander slide to one side of the doors, hiding in the shadows. Agatha moves to the other. She told us earlier she wanted a dramatic entrance.
“I’ll wait for my cue,” she said. And because we’re already whipped, we let her.
The heavy wooden doors crack open. Light spills out. Williams steps forward, a smile plastered on. I don’t give him time to think. My hand shoots out, clamps around his throat. I drive him backward through the doorway, into the glow of his perfect little sanctuary.
“The sinning is just getting started, Pastor.”
His eyes bulge wide. He claws at my wrist, but I shove him harder.
Corwin and Evander slip in behind me. Agatha lingers outside in the shadows, waiting for her grand reveal. Her words, not mine. But I get it. If she wants the spotlight, she’ll have it. Tonight is hers more than it is ours.
Williams gags in my grip. My teeth bare in a smile I don’t feel. Inside, the pews gleam under fluorescent light, the crosses hang heavy on the walls, and the smell of bleach cuts my nose again.
I haul him across the carpet, past rows of polished pews until the moonlight from the stained glass windows slices his face into hard planes.
The big gathering room smells like lemons and old hymnals.
At the front, bolted like a relic to the wall, is the cross—stout, wood gone gray at the edges, a gap between it and the plaster wide enough to thread rope.
We pull him up, secure him to the cross, back pressed to the wood.
The straps cut into his brown button up, the cheap fabric bunching.
A strip of duct tape seals his mouth. We work fast, fingers practiced, knots snapping tight.
He thrashes, trying to twist away, but Corwin wrenches his wrist up, stretching it to the angle we want.
I force the other arm out, levering it until the joint creaks and he has no choice but to keep it there while I bind him.
Evander crosses his ankles and wraps them, cinches them so the man can’t shift his feet.
I pick up the Bible resting on the podium.
It’s thick, leather swollen from years of hands and hymn marks, corners soft.
His Bible. For a second I consider the sermons he used it for.
Then I bring it down once, hard, across his cheek.
The sound of the smack cracks through the stillness.
He jerks, eyes wild and surprised, like a man who thought the book would protect him and instead found it used as a weapon.
“I hate how polite this place smells,” Evander whispers.
Williams hangs there, chest rising and falling, arms spread like a warped crucifix. Suddenly his eyes widen, and he releases a muffled whiny sound. We turn to see what caught his eye, and a grin finds my face.
Agatha steps into the doorway. For a minute she just watches him.
Then she starts forward—hips rolling, every step a strut that owns the aisle.
Slow, deliberate, like she’s on a runway no one else was invited to walk.
She’s got something in her hands. At first, it looks like a notebook, but then I see it in full.
It’s a laptop.
“Oh boys,” she sings. “Look what I found when I did a little snooping in Pastor Williams’ office.” Her voice lilts, the kind that means she’s enjoying the moment too much. She turns the screen to face us, taps the pad and the page scrolls, revealing favorites and watch history like a secret diary.
There, in the center of the browser, is a page I know better than any preacher’s hymn. Her profile. Her cam name for the Behind the Lens site.
“Seems like good ole Pastor Williams is User259. I do believe I've even seen you in my comments and live feed."
“You sick bastard,” Corwin spits. “He tried to beat you into being a good little girl with God, and then jerks off to you when no one’s looking.”
I laugh. “Hypocrisy with a rosary.”
“This is golden,” Evander says. “He calls it ‘spiritual guidance’ then slides into her chat to watch her live.” He grinds his teeth. “The whole time he was preaching about sin and obedience, he was tracking our woman’s feed.”
Williams makes a sound behind the tape, urgent and wet. His eyes flick from the screen to Agatha, I’m sure trying to find the words to save him. There aren’t any. There’s just the glow and the photos and the mess he made.
I move, digging in the bag we brought and pulling out a hammer, blunt metal stakes the length of my forearm, and a can of lighter fluid. Evander lays out gloves and a set of heavy zip ties.
“Hold him steady,” I tell Corwin.
I lift the hammer and test the weight. Hitting the stake with a single measured blow, driving it into Williams’ hand and the cross until it sets with a small, angry thud. The sound echoes.
Williams screams, the sound raw and animal and muffled by the tape. It jerks his whole body, making the ropes pull tight. He gags and claws at the air, eyes wild and rolling.
The stake sits there like a punctuation mark.
I don’t wait for him to recover. I step back and wipe my hands on my jeans. Corwin watches Williams through slitted eyes, and I can see the contempt working under his skin.
“You built an army out of boys with shame.” I glare at him. “You feed on the weak, preacher. You train men to make their wives bow and hush their daughters. You taught them how to take a Bible in one hand and a belt in the other.”
Evander’s jaw tightens. “You taught them how to look for a promise where there was abuse and call it salvation. You gave them rules so they could hide their hurt behind scripture.”
For a second, Williams’ eyes almost look pleading, but I ignore it, moving to the other side of the cross and driving a stake through that hand too.
He sobs, and his body shakes as the pain fills every molecule in his pathetic body.
Corwin leans in so close his mouth is a breath from Williams’ ear.
“You set boys loose on girls and called it discipline. You told mothers their place was silence and took their children for lectures in the dark. You taught men to think a tightened jaw was obedience, and a bruised child was proof you were right.”
Evander’s voice cuts in then. “And every time some poor thing came to the altar, you smiled like you were the only honest face left. You’re the one who made people afraid to notice the bruises around them.”
I stand in front of him and bend to remove his shoes so I can nail his ankles to the cross. He can mimic the God he made people fear. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Agatha come up the two steps to the cross and stand behind me.
In my mind, I expect her to slap him or even yell, but she doesn’t.
She puts her hands on her hips and talks in a steady, brave voice.
“User259. Watching me when you were telling people to look away. Praying on your knees in the morning, scrolling my feeds at night. Playing shepherd while you fed on your flock. The biggest sinner in your flock is you.”
Williams’ head shakes back and forth.
Evander smiles. “We should leave proof. People will get to choose. Make sure the town knows who led them wrong.”
“Do it,” Agatha says. “Get it all. Pictures, files, names. We’ll drop it on doorsteps throughout the town so no one can cover it up. We make sure those men who follow him have to explain themselves.”
Williams stares, eyes glassy, and for a second there’s something like panic that used to be power in his face. Now, it’s just the look of a man whose power has been taken away.
I draw my hammer back with one hand and hold a stake to his foot and pound it to the cross. It takes a few more hits than his hands did, and yet, by the time I stand up, both feet are nailed to the cross.
Agatha and Corwin head back to his office to gather ledgers, photos, and paper copies of all his victims. Evander moves as he always does when he’s decided something: steady, efficient, no wasted breath. He finds a bottle and the cloths we brought and lifts them like a surgeon prepping.
He pours the liquid onto Williams’ face, and his eyes flutter as he tries to blink it away.
The sound he makes is animalistic and desperate.
His hands jerk at the stakes, but he holds steady to the cross.
The Temple Tincture is seeping into his eyes and irritating his face; we can only hope it’s burning his eyesight away.
A quick Google search told us exactly what it was they poured on our girl. Burdock root, milk thistle fruit, chamomile flowers, ginger root, and cane alcohol.
I yank the duct tape away from his mouth then, because a man who taught other people to beg for mercy doesn’t deserve the safety of silence. His scream comes out raw and ragged and fills the sanctuary like an alarm.
With his eyes closed and mouth open, I grab the second bottle from Evander and shove it into Williams’ mouth, holding his jaw with my other hand so he can’t spit it out.
The murky brown liquid pours into his mouth as he gags and tries not to swallow, but he has no choice. When the bottle is empty, I pull it from his mouth and watch as he spits and cries, but his voice is ragged, his airway, I’m certain, is burned and swollen.
He starts to cough and sputter, his face turning a shade of reddish blue, then the vomiting starts and we sit down in the front pew and watch for thirty minutes while he dies slowly from the poison we pumped into his body.