Vickie was waiting for him when Erik got home. “Where have you been?” she asked. “I was so worried. “It’s almost ten o’clock.”
“I ran into Pastor Mark and we went for coffee,” he explained. “I’m sorry, Vic. I should have called.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “But with all that’s been going on, I was worried about you.”
“Thanks,” he said, giving her a hug. “It’s nice to be worried about. But I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She smiled at him. “Todd was worried too, for a little while. Then he said it was ok, that you were all right. It’s like he knew.”
“Is he sleeping?”
“He’s in bed. Sleeping? I don’t know about that.”
“I’ll go check on him.”
Erik found that his son was still awake, but at least he was quiet and in bed with just a nightlight on. He wouldn’t go to bed without it any more.
“You doing ok, Sport?”
“I’m ok, Dad. But that missing girl’s dead.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t know how. But I know. I could just feel it. But I knew you were ok.”
Erik nodded. Even though it didn’t make sense, it made sense. “I talked with Johnny Dovecrest and Pastor Mark about that rock,” he said. “And we’re going to put a stop to what’s going on.”
“I’m not sure you can do that, Dad.”
“I’m not sure I can do that either. But with the pastor’s help, and Dovecrest, I think we can.”
Todd didn’t look too convinced as Erik studied his face by the dim light of the nightlight. And Erik admitted to himself that he wasn’t very convinced either. But they had to do something.
“It’ll all work out fine,” he said, and he kissed his son goodnight. “Just don’t tell your mother about any of this yet. It would only upset her.”
“I won’t, Dad. There isn’t anything she could do anyway.”
Erik nodded. It was really quite funny how quickly his whole world had turned upside down, he thought. He’d woke up this morning living in a normal, mundane world, and now, just a few hours later, he was having no trouble at all believing in demons and magic. Some small part of his brain still wanted to be skeptical. That would make it easy-he’d be able to just bury his head in the sand and ignore it, and it would all go away, would never have existed.
But in his soul, he knew the truth, and his son knew it too. His son felt it. Todd had almost become the thing’s first victim. He’s experienced it, and that made him somehow closer to it.
“Good night,” Erik said, and wandered back downstairs to spend some time with his wife. He thought he’d better take advantage of a few quiet moments while he could, because he had the feeling that things were going to get extremely wild in the days to come.