We shot the last two in the head and left their bodies where they fell. There was nothing we could do for the kid: she was dead when we got there, and that was probably for the best anyway. Simon had taken the jerry can of gas from the SUV and was in a hurry to burn the place, but I told him to slow down. We needed to look around some more, make sure we got them all, see what they were up to.
          Who gives a shit, he said. But Sheila agreed with me.
          As it turned out, we had overlooked something. Under the altar in the front room we heard a sort of squeaking. We pulled off the bloody linen and saw a manhole cover in the floor. We pried it off just enough to pour the gas in and toss in a road flare. Whatever was down there, it screamed and, I suppose, died like anything else would’ve.
          Meanwhile Sheila was looking through their book. When she was finished, it went down the manhole too. Then we let Simon torch all the rest of it.
          On the ride back to the city, Sheila was quiet. Something was eating at her but I couldn’t get it out of her that night. She didn’t want to say anything around Simon. Afraid of what he might do. Afraid of what he might do!
          We’d stopped the priests just in time, she told me at breakfast the next morning. Simon had already left for home, wherever home was for him. Sheila’s eyes were sunken and red; she ate eggs and toast like a sort of automatic machine that knows it needs fuel to live. A few minutes more and It would have arrived, she said.
          It?
          The thing is, she went on, they were calling It from ahead of us in time.
          From the future?
          Not exactly. From ahead of us in time, she repeated, as if that made it any clearer. The ritual was like a beacon, and the longer it went on the closer It came to the present day. I stayed up most of the night running the numbers. They almost got it here, she said, and by here I mean now. But we interrupted them before it got all the way.
          I didn’t see what the problem was, then.
          But they got It most of the way here, she explained. It isn’t going to just turn around and go back home.
          So where is It? I asked.
          2131, she said. Give or take a year.
          I set my coffee down. What does that mean?
          It means there isn’t any 2132, she said. Give or take a year. A hundred and seven years more. Then some period of unimaginable horror, then nothing else, forever.
          I almost shot her right then, but it wouldn’t have done any good. There isn’t any way to unhear.
          At least I won’t have to kill my kids. I can let them grow up and they’ll live and die and never have to understand. But their kids, my grandkids or great-grandkids if I should be so blessed, they might live long enough to die screaming when It arrives. Great-great-grandkids, not a chance. Everybody else’s great-great-grandkids, not a chance.
          Anything would be better than being here when It comes. I could imagine, sometimes I do imagine, when I can’t sleep, I imagine I could start going around and killing everyone I possibly can, for as long as I possibly can, just so they won’t live long enough to populate the world with more souls for It to eat. Other times I feel like going to the kitchen and finding something long and sharp to stick behind my eyeball into my brain, just on the off-chance I hit the right spot and forget it all.
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