If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe (John Dies at the End, #4)

by Jason Pargin

Those repeated attempts were the ritual. It required more spiritual suffering than was available on the planet. So, it created a cycle, to repeat this same loop of time, the same cult getting started in each one, like an Old West evangelist hopping from town to town, leaving behind a new church in each. Only instead of towns, it’s parallel timelines. Looping the process over and over, planting the same seed that would grow into the same movement in each. Us and the Time Idiot were, unwittingly, part of the mechanism, reaching that crisis point and asking for another chance, again and again and again. The result was that the same minds and souls were getting enslaved across hundreds of possible variations of their lives, and they all counted toward the ritual. All of those shackled minds, all of those collected faces, all of those nightmare timelines running in parallel. That’s what Xarcrax is, this cycle of pain looping until it reaches critical mass. Until Kaplan was killed in John’s bedroom wall, finally stopping the loop, breaking the mechanism.”