Many miles from the room where Jonathan and the others were struggling with their demonic attacker and even further from the cabin where The Vessel was preparing for its dark work, Pastor Fredrick Gloval was fixing a sandwich. Even after three years the reverend found the task of piecing together his lunch still felt strange to his wrinkled hands. For 47 years his sweet wife had made his sandwiches, washed his clothes, and so many other chores that now fell to him in her absence. Many women would probably have balked at the idea of such servitude, many would have felt taken advantage of perhaps, but Elizabeth had been anything but ordinary. The woman had possessed a servant's heart. Nothing had pleased her more than to see to Fredrick's needs. "Freeing him up" she had called it, and always with a smile. She had been quick to serve others as well, often visiting the sick in their congregation (hot casserole in tow) or running the vacuum through the living room of a shut-in. Even in the last weeks before the cancer finally stole her life away, Elizabeth had been writing cards of encouragement from her hospital bed to the many families who's lives she had touched. Then she was gone, and Fredrick's world had grown lonelier without her. Now he stood in the parsonage kitchen, pulling deli meat from a ziplock bag knowing that no matter how he tried he couldn't arrange those ingredients in a way that tasted the same as her's had. Three years and still his heart could break freshly over a partly assembled lunch. His appetite suddenly gone, the pastor returned the half-made sandwich and remaining deli meat to the fridge and entered his study. He hadn't allowed the house to get dusty (Elizabeth would have hated that) but it had become less organized since her passing. Books were stacked haphazardly about the room where he'd pulled them from their shelves but not returned them. Sermon notes littered his mahogany desk, some resting under empty coffee mugs that had accumulated on the desk rather than in the sink to be washed. Once every month Fredrick would straighten the room but within days it would revert back to its current state. It seemed that along with irreplaceable parts of his heart, Elizabeth had taken much of his structure with her as well.
Fredrick eased into the leather desk chair with a sigh and massaged his temples for a moment. His Bible lay open on the desk before him, highlighted and notated a thousand times over, nearly bursting with markers and old bulletins. He'd been working on a sermon for the upcoming Sunday morning service, writing his notes by hand with a number 2 pencil as he always had. Through the years his children had tried many times to convert their father into a computer-savvy man. Telling him how much easier it would be to catalog all his messages into neat folders and call them up with a click of a button and so on and so forth. He'd jokingly call them "Evangelists of the First Church of Google" and they would chuckle and let the point drop for a time. Now he stared at the pencil scribblings that covered the page of college-ruled paper in his hands and found he could make no sense of them. As he struggled to retrace his mental steps and recapture the idea that had sparked this particular sermon the doorbell rang.
He stumbled through the parsonage to the front door and opened it to find a very odd man on the other side. The man was tall and slender, dressed simply in brown slacks and a white buttoned dress shirt. His face was almost porcelain smooth and his eyes were an intense golden color where they were placed arrestingly above high and pronounced cheekbones. It took a moment for Fredrick to figure out what it was about the stranger on his doorstep that seemed so odd. Then suddenly it was clear. The man was hairless, not just bald but hairless. He had no eyebrows, no eyelashes, near as the pastor could tell the man before him didn't even possess pores! Even the stranger's hands and forearms (as much as they protruded from the white fabric of his sleeves) were completely smooth. Who was this man? what was he? "Do not be afraid, Shepherd Fredrick Gloval." the man spoke. His voice had an odd quality to it, as though it were layered many times over. The phrase 'like the sound of many rushing waters' came unbidden to his mind. The man spoke again in his queerly layered voice. "We have much to discuss Shepherd and little time." Though the pastor couldn't find his voice he did manage to step out of the way and wave the stranger into the house with a trembling hand. It wasn't until the figure entered the room and silently crossed the usually creaky hardwood floor that Fredrick noticed an astonishing thing. The man's steps made no sounds at all because his feet were not touching the ground.
Fredrick closed the door gently and followed the hovering being into the house on legs that suddenly felt very weak. "An angel... you're an angel aren't you?" The stranger turned toward him and instead of answering the pastor he extended a line-less hand toward the old man with one finger extended. In the moment before it touched him Fredrick could see the angel had no fingerprint. He had a moment to think 'I wonder if this is how Daniel may have felt...' then the oddly smooth digit pressed against the lined and freckled surface of the pastor's forehead and immediately there was nothing but intense pain and then the parsonage was gone. He stood with the angel in a dark place. 'FOLLOW ME' the angel said only this time the voice (rushing waters) echoed in Fredrick's mind. He followed. The angel led him through horrible corners of the abyss, through hellish chambers that would have shattered his mind had the presence of the angel not provided an assurance of safety. The suffering and the terror was seemingly never-ending and through it all the angel's voice reverberated in his head like the tolling of an enormous bell. He was led through the chamber where the dragon, Lucifer himself, was once held and felt unspeakable despair when he saw the empty chains strewn about the floor like the roots of enormous ancient trees. The angel led Fredrick to the darkened basement where the monster that had once been a man had tortured, killed, and played. Then they were in the presence of the Vessel itself. The figure was swollen as though about to burst. Fredrick saw that the man's skin now seemed to fit poorly like a shirt three sizes too small. In fact, as he looked closer, he realized that portions of the figure's reddened, patterned skin had actually fallen away now to reveal shining black scales throbbing beneath. There was an intense grin on the Vessel's face made more terrifying by the fact that in some place his teeth had been forced from their original positions, pushed aside by yellowed fangs. The Dragon was coming through. 'HE MUST BE STOPPED. I CHAINED HIM AND I MUST CHAIN HIM AGAIN BUT THE LORD HAS CHOSEN YOU TO PLAY A PART.' Fredrick stammered a response. "How can I do anything to stop that? What can I..." The angel was gone, as was the cabin. The darkness was dispelled and in its place: warmth and light. Then from out of the light a brighter form emerged, too radiant to look at directly. And when this new form spoke the pastor wept.
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