Read Online The Overseer by Conlan Brown - Free Book Online

size of two phone books off the seat of the nearest chair. To the casual eye, Jerry’s office looked like a mess, but he always assured people everything was in exactly the right place. The floor was filled with boxes, and the windowless walls were covered in charts with strings attached to pushpins.
    Jerry moved the thick stack of documents on top of another thick stack of documents, evening up the edges as best he could before taking his own seat at his desk. Jerry swiveled his chair toward John and smiled. “Would you like a Diet Coke?”
    John couldn’t help but let his smile show. “Diet Coke?”
    “I love the stuff.” Jerry reached into a drawer and pulled out an empty can, crushing it in his hand before throwing it into a green recycle bin, where the can clanked as it landed among its fallen comrades.
    “No, thanks,” John said.
    “Do you mind terribly if I have one?” Jerry pointed at a mini fridge at the opposite end of his desk.
    “Knock yourself out.”
    “Thank you.” Jerry removed a diet soda. He cracked the seal with a spray of minute vapor and took a swig. “So, how can I help you today, Mr. Temple?”
    “I’m interested in the Thresher,” John said with a bit of a shrug. “What do you have compiled on that?”
    Jerry whistled, pointing to the corner. “See that filing cabinet? That’s all Thresher stuff.”
    “Wow,” John said, slightly stunned. “I didn’t know there was that much stuff. I mean, Vincent Sobel and I used to stay up late in college, and he’d tell me stuff about the Thresher he’d learned from others. But it was mostly just ‘friend of a friend’ kinds of things. More ghost stories than anything.”
    Jerry nodded jovially. “And I’ve got a filing cabinet filled with ghost stories. You know how it all started, right, with Alessandro D’Angelo?”
    “Sure,” John replied. “Italian monk in the Dark Ages. Founded the Firstborn. Right?”
    “Actually,” Jerry corrected hesitantly, “he would be considered late medieval, early Renaissance. Especially since he was Italian, and the Renaissance started in Italy first around 1250 or so, depending on who you—”
    “Jerry,” John said as a friendly nudge to get him back on topic.
    “Right.” Jerry gave another of his noises, a swishing sound this time. “D’Angelo—who had all three gifts—was betrayed and stabbed on Ash Wednesday 1441, but he didn’t die until Easter, six weeks later.”
    John nodded, trying to hurry things along. “And it was during those six weeks that he made his biggest prophecies.”
    “Right,” Jerry agreed. “He died very slowly, so nobody really knows how many prophecies he made in that time.” Jerry pointed to a place on his rotund side. “As far as I can gather, he was stabbed right about here. His friends were able to stop the bleeding, but I’m pretty sure it got infected. Maybe gangrene or something like that got into the wound and caused him to slowly—”
    “Thresher.” John interrupted gently, nudging Jerry back to the topic at hand.
    “Right.” Jerry raised his hands apologetically. “He started making prophecies about Thresher while he was dying—that the Thresher would eventually destroy the Firstborn.”
    “But?” John asked in anticipation.
    “But we don’t have most of those prophecies. The vast majority of them went underground with D’Angelo’s friends when the Inquisition against them heated up.” Jerry morbidly laughed to himself. “No pun intended.”
    John was confused. “What?”
    “They burned them at the stake. Get it? When things ‘heated up’ for them?”
    John didn’t laugh.
    “Anyway”—Jerry waved off his failed joke—“when D’Angelo’s most trusted people decided to go into hiding, they took that stuff with them. Some of it has surfaced. But we still have only maybe an eighth of what they wrote down. So we really probably don’t have a full picture on the whole Thresher thing.” He shook his head as if it were all too