AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Let’s walk. Come on. I want to show you something.”
I wanted to lie there on the grass until it grew over me, until I became like the fallen pine covered in lichens and little patches of moss. But Victoria was pulling me up, so I took her hand and trudged with her, deeper into the woods.
The sun had set. The light was gray, and clouds were filling the sky. I looked at my watch, for the first time in forever, but the numbers didn’t make sense. They were just digital marks on a screen, hazy and oddly three-dimensional, as if I could stroke my fingers along the edges of them. I put my wrist down hurriedly, and the moment I did, I saw where Victoria was leading me.
“We’re not supposed to be here,” I said as the old spires of St. Thaddeus cathedral loomed ahead, towering amongst the trees. Sober, I never would have been afraid of this place. The legends surrounding it were just that: old stories, made up. The paint had faded from its exterior long ago, leaving the wood dark and stained with the damp. Lichens and fungus grew from the old boards. Beneath the three spires that adorned its front, a massive stained-glass window depicted a woman standing beside the sea, her hand upstretched, holding a dagger.
This place had a story, like everything else in Abelaum. It was close to White Pine, the deep mine shaft where rescuers were once able to pull the only survivors of the mine’s cave-in back up into the light of day. It was said the three rescued miners stopped here, and dedicated the cathedral to the God they claimed spared their lives in the deep, dark, flooded depths.
The Deep One, they’d called it. Every now and then, you’d still hear the old folks mutter about it. But to our generation, it was just a creepy story. Like Big Foot, or the Jersey Devil.
History and myth intertwined in this town, utterly inseparable from each other.
The old church should have been dead, like bleached bones, but the air around it rippled like heat off the roof of a car in summer. I stopped abruptly, tugging back against Victoria’s hand, and she stared at me with wide eyes.
“Why not?” she said. “You’ve been in there before, Juni, we both have.” She shrugged. “It’s the same old church.”
“Not...not now,” I said, and tried to pull my hand from her grip, but either I was weaker than I thought or she was gripping hard. “Not when we’re tripping. Let’s go back. I want to go back to the trees.”
Victoria shook her head. “Just a little while. Please? I just want to walk through it.”
Something felt so unexplainablywrong. I could smell smoke, like a campfire. As the darkness around us deepened, and we got closer to the cathedral, I could see a glow within the grimy window. The crickets should have been chirping, but the woods were so silent.
But Victoria was my best friend.
The cathedral’s front doors weren’t chained shut like they usually were. When Victoria and I had been there before, to drink or smoke or do whatever our little rebel hearts desired, we’d had to break in through a back entrance. But the chain was gone, and right before Victoria pushed the doors open, I knew we weren’t alone.
Someone was inside. Someone was waiting.
For the first time in my life, from behind me, from the woods, I heard a whisper.
I heard the woods call my name.
I wish I could forget the things I remember.
I wish the nightmares would stop.
I wish I could erase that night.
That night, when something called my name, I learned why I should have run.
The church’s roof had caved in years ago, forming a gaping hole that streamed moonlight onto the pile of rubble below. But the pews still stood in their places, in nice neat rows, waiting for congregants to fill them.
As Victoria pushed open the doors, I realized the pews were filled.
Two dozen pairs of eyes turned to watch us enter. Two dozen familiar faces stood as we walked inside. I looked at them in utter confusion, wide-eyed, convinced the acid was making me see things all wrong. They were all wearing white robes, and as I walked past, row by row, they placed masks shaped like stag skulls over their heads.
Mr. Thorne was there, and so was my history teacher, Ms. Malcolm. Mike, who worked at the gas station. That weird old lady, Mrs. Kathy, who lived by the university. A massive bonfire had been built in the center of the church, and Victoria led me around it. I felt like I was stuck on a bizarre amusement park ride, watching the oddities around me with detached fascination.
Until we rounded the fire and stood in front of the pulpit.
Kent Hadleigh stood before us, dressed in white, hands clasped in front of him. Meredith stood off to the side, and Jeremiah beside her. The woman who stood next to Kent was familiar, but I couldn’t remember her name.
Until, in the shadows behind the pulpit, I spotted Everly.
The woman standing beside Kent was none other than Heidi Laverne — Kent’s receptionist, his mistress, Everly’s mother.
I frowned. Victoria let go of my hand, and went to stand beside her mother and Jeremiah. She smiled at me, but the acid in my brain warped her expression into something sinister. I could measure time now in heartbeats.Ba-dumb, ba-dumb.Every throb in my chest hurt. Every beat tried to push adrenaline into my limbs. Half my brain was convinced this was all a hallucination. This wasn’t real. This was just another wave.
