The Falling Away by Hines Page B

exorcism: you’ve been carrying around your guilt and your pain and your suffering and your longing for your mother. Those are all symptoms of a spiritual disease. People get coughs and aches and pains, they’re perfectly willing to take medicine to heal their physical bodies. But when they start having symptoms of spiritual disease, they ignore them. Because the world believes the lie that there’s no such thing as spiritual disease.”
    â€œSo how do you get this spiritual disease?”
    â€œIt’s from the evil that’s leaking into our world. It’s from demonic activity—which is why I’m talking about exorcism.”
    â€œSo I was possessed by demons?” She laughed; she couldn’t help it.
    â€œNo. Possession is a whole other level. I’m saying the disease is spread by demonic activity. The demons are the source of the original infection, but they don’t hop from human to human, possessing them. That’s not the way it works. Especially because humans themselves are so good at spreading the infection.”
    â€œSo you’re saying demons are all around us.”
    â€œNo, I’m not. I’m telling you we’re surrounded by the spiritual disease they create. People think of angels versus demons as some kind of war going on, and that’s not right at all. It’s more like a virus, and you can be infected without ever coming into contact with a demon itself.”
    â€œI’m not buying.”
    â€œIt’s a lot to take in, I’ll give you that. It seems so foreign, so wrong, so unbelievable. But that’s because we live in a world that doesn’t want to believe those things are possible. Which makes the disease so easy to spread.”
    â€œI think you’ve taken your germophobe thing to a whole new level. You need to talk to a psychiatrist or something.”
    â€œSee, that’s why I’m talking to you.” He held up his gloved hands again. “These gloves, the germophobe thing you talk about—that’s my compulsion. That’s how I control the thoughts that try to take hold. That’s how I ward off the disease. And you’re the same. But you don’t wash to relieve the pressure. You cut.”
    â€œI’m not immune; you just said it.”
    â€œNo one’s immune. But you can learn to control it, like I did. All of us in the Falling Away, we have these compulsions that help us filter out the evil, once we learn how to use them. It’s that odd dichotomy, really: we’re almost magnets for pain and suffering, but because we have ways to control it, there’s a design to it all. Think of yourself: You’ve been homeless for four years. Your father walked out on you and your mother, and then your mother disappeared. That’s more pain than most people go through in a lifetime. But once again: you’re a magnet for it, because you were built to handle it. It might seem impossible, but—”
    â€œBut with God, all things are possible. Blah, blah, blah.”
    Paul smiled. “Matthew 19:26. And you said you never read the Bible.”

18
    Dylan found the phone, a giant JOE SUX scratched into the black metal of its faceplate, and dialed his contact number for Krunk.
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œKrunk. It’s . . . uh . . . Dylan.”
    â€œDylan. Where are you?”
    Dylan closed his eyes, leaned against the cold metal surface of the phone. Was there an edge in Krunk’s voice, or was he just being paranoid?
    Probably just being paranoid. And OCD.
    The plan had been for him and Webb to call Krunk when they were an hour outside Billings and arrange delivery of the drugs. Of course, that plan had been shot full of holes since it was made. Literally.
    â€œI’m sorry, Krunk, but I’m having to improvise here.”
    There was a pause on the other end of the line. Dylan thought he could hear Krunk breathing, but it might have been the static of an