The ultimatum was set and the room was weighed down by it. No one spoke, or even looked at each other. Each member was helplessly drowned by their own torrential thoughts.
Angela’s mind took an odd detour – a break from the carnage – and noted how the sunlight in the room remained indifferent to the goings-on, spreading an optimistic radiance throughout the sanctuary, despite what else was inside of it. Fuck you, Mr. Sun, she thought to herself.
Two palms slammed loudly against one of the pews. Everyone turned at the sudden commotion. Sandy stood and shook his keyboard-stretched finger in Rick’s direction.
“I know my God,” Sandy declared, “and he’s a God of love, not blood. You can’t threaten us. You can’t keep us here.” He spat at Rick’s feet and just like that, he stormed out of the room. Rick offered this slight no response; he did not even seem to notice.
The sound of Sandy’s footsteps punctuated the stark deadness of the room. It was easy to tell that Sandy was headed for the front door.
After surveying the shell-shocked faces of her fellow churchgoers, Angela took a deep breath and hurried after Sandy. She was not sure if she was going to follow him outside or try to talk him out of it. All she knew was she did not want to spend another second near the stench of blood.
CHAPTER 19
“Sandy, wait!” Angela yelled as she charged into the mess hall. She was too late. The front door was already closing. A brief glimpse of Sandy’s work boot was all she caught, and then the room was sealed like a tomb.
She paused there for a second, only three feet into the mess hall, and waited to see if Rick would come chasing after her, but no one came. No one even stirred, so she pressed on.
Her feet carefully tested each floorboard before committing to the step. Her muscles remembered how to be discrete, to change footing, when to hold position and regulate breath. It came naturally. After all, she had many years of practice tiptoeing around terror.
How quickly things can spiral into chaos, she thought. One minute, you can be in love, the next you are married to a man who terrifies you, who answers you with his fists. You can be seconds away from a new life, and then find yourself trapped with the very devil you were running from. Like a car wreck on the way to prom, futures can crash, dreams shatter, and it can all happen in an instant. You compliment your friend’s dress, and then there are bloody champagne bottles rolling down the road.
Yet, there was an odd wonderment to be found in all that grimness. Rick had clearly demonstrated there was magic in the world. Some force at work that was beyond Angela, perhaps even beyond God. She found comfort in the way this minimized her.
As quickly as these thoughts came, they were dashed away by the sound of the creaking floor behind her. Someone had stepped into the room and was either doing a bad job of masking their approach, or didn’t care if Angela heard them.
She abandoned her stealth and charged toward the door. If she slowed even slightly, Rick would overtake her. And what punishment would come then? Maybe he’d remove her eyes like Flora’s, so she could never see their son again.
Angela reached a full run and the footsteps struggled to catch up. She was only a few seconds away from the door when she realized her speed. She gripped the doorknob and tried to stop, but she overestimated the traction between the old wood and the worn rubber soles of her shoes. She slipped right past the door and into the coat rack. The eclectic assemblage of puffy jackets saved her some bruises, but also slowed her recovery time.
She scrambled to her feet, armed with one of the wire hangers and swung. The thin metal hook came within inches of Dorothy’s bunched face.
“Dorothy!” wheezed Angela.
“Yes!” she yelped.
“I didn’t know who you were.”
“Now that you do, honey, you mind putting down the hanger?”
Angela dropped the flimsy metal wire just as Gary and Tina trickle out of the sanctuary after Dorothy.
“What’s everyone doing?” Angela asked.
“We wanted to see, too,” replied Gary nervously. “Did he make it?”
“I don’t know.” Angela admitted.
“I can’t hear anything bad. Maybe he made it to his car,” Dorothy observed optimistically.
“If he did, then there shouldn’t be silence. We should be hearing the motor, the wheels.” Angela leaned closer to the door, but the thick wood obscured the sounds on the other side. She listened carefully for footsteps or voices—any sign that Sandy was still out there.
“Does he drive a hybrid? Those don’t make as much noise,” Gary added. His comment earned another worrisome scrunch from Dorothy’s face.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Tina finally spoke up. “You all saw what Rick did. We should be in the sanctuary with the others. He said no one leaves.”
“And you’re just going to accept it? Just like that?” Angela questioned.
“Just like that? I just saw Don’s face taken off. Don’s face! So, yes, just like that, I’ll accept it.”
“You go back then,” Angela snapped.
“Sandy was right, Tina,” Gary intervened. “We have to try. We can’t just stay in here. That’s not an option.”
Tina shook her head and stepped away from the group.
“You will be slaughtered.” She spun around dramatically and darted back to the sanctuary. Gary watched her go, but said nothing. Tina was a stubborn person, he accepted that, and he also accepted that the only person who could change Tina’s mind was Tina. But, he had his own convictions to follow. Eventually, time would bring her back, it always did. He brushed his fingers through his thick, hanging mustache and returned his attention to the door.
Both he and Dorothy nervously watched while Angela’s hand slid down the carvings of the wood to the metal handle. Angela was surprised to find her strength wane when she tried to grip the doorknob. Her brain and hand entered an argument over who was boss. She commanded her fingers to clench, but they had doubts.
“Beyond this door is just a sunny day. Right?” Angela asked aloud. Neither Gary nor Dorothy knew if it was rhetorical, but Dorothy decided to answer anyway.
“That’s right,” she said and pulled at her polka dot dress, which had bunched in weird places from her hunching.
The handle squeaked as Angela turned it. Its pained cry resonated through the room like the warning call of a frightened bird. Then, she stopped.
“What’s wrong? What is it?” asked the skittish Dorothy.
There was a subtle vibration from the other side of the door. It was weak and came in pulses, suggesting there was some form of intelligence behind it. It developed into an unnerving scratch, like a desperate animal clawing its way in.
Angela let the doorknob fall back into place. She felt safer with a secured door between her and the phantom scraping. She stepped back to add some distance for good measure.
“What’s making that noise?” Dorothy pestered.
“I don’t know.”
“Should we open the door?”
“I don’t think so.”
At that moment, the frightened bird’s squawking returned as the doorknob began to twist.
Angela grabbed the metal handle before it finished revolving. This time, her grip had no pesky trepidation. All parts of her were in agreement; whatever was outside should remain outside.
“Help me!”
Gary joined Angela and the two of them pushed against the door.
“What are you doing, what if it’s Sandy?” Dorothy said with her hands fluttering.
The scratching Angela had felt did not suggest Sandy. It was the noise of a beast. Sandy would not paw at the door like a dog, he would have knocked, he would have kicked, he would have asked for the door to be opened.
Angela braced herself against the wood, but when Gary shifted into a new position for leverage, the handle slipped out of Angela’s grip. The door cracked open.
A hand, soaked in dark red, snaked around the edge and into everyone’s
view. It emerged from the harsh spotlight of the sun and reached into the shadows where Angela, Gary and Dorothy were hiding. It slapped against the door in an attempt to swat them away.
The fingers, despite their bloody drips, were recognizable to Dorothy. They were the ones she had watched play all her favourite hymns for the past fifteen years.
“Move! It’s Sandy for Christ’s sake!” yelled Dorothy, as she pulled Gary away from the door with unexpected strength, allowing the door to swing open.
There stood Sandy, or at least most of Sandy. He wavered in the doorway with the overpowering daylight bursting all around him in iridescent yellow beams as if he were Mary Magdalene. His bottom jaw was missing, as was most of the muscle from his torso. His organs heaved in and out, pulsating under the confines of his exposed ribcage. It looked as though his flesh had been torn away in one powerful swipe. His head was turned upwards toward the ceiling, but his eyes peered down over what was left of his cheeks at the three of them. One of his hands reached for help, while the other kept his guts from spilling out of his body.
He took one wobbling step inside and collapsed. When he hit the floor, everything came tumbling out. His bowels scattered messily across the wood like a demented game of curling, bumping and sliding over each other. The life in his eyes vanished as his pupils dilated and rolled back into his head. His eyelids did not close but allowed only a limited view of his dead white globes.
During the course of Sandy’s sublime entrance, Dorothy’s lips had bunched and tightened, holding back both screams and vomit.
Angela hurried to the door and slammed it closed. The bang of the wood echoed in the church like the clang of a jail cell. She knelt down next to Sandy’s body and rested her hands on his back. He was still warm.
Gary had turned away as soon as death stumbled in. He did not see Sandy fall, or the aftermath of his spill, he only heard the wetness oozing out – but that was enough. He looked back to the sanctuary and saw that a group of congregation members had gathered at the door, including Tina.
“Angela...” he said, motioning to the growing crowd.
“Christ... don’t let them see.”
Gary took the order happily as an opportunity to leave. He blocked people’s view and herded them back inside the sanctuary.
“Dorothy,” Angela said, “get a sheet. We can’t let them see this.”
There was no response.
“Dorothy! For fuck’s sake, get a sheet!”
Dorothy snapped back into the moment. She grabbed a tablecloth and the two of them lowered it over Sandy’s remains. Angela had to nudge a few of Sandy’s more overreaching innards toward his body so they would all fit.
The grey fabric inadequately hid the contortions of his mangled form, and as the red soaked through in dark patches, Angela thought it looked like a cloud, only one that rained blood.
“Did he have any family here?” Angela eventually asked.
“No. Not at the church at least.”
Angela, in a rare moment of childlike neediness, grabbed hold of Dorothy’s hand. Dorothy grabbed back. The two found comfort in the warmth of their respective touches. On a basic level, they needed to be reminded that flesh could do more than bleed; it could also be gentle and offer comfort, it could heal and protect, it was not just there to suffer abuse and be shredded. Two hands locked in a tender touch; this was also the natural state of things.
“What are we going to do?” whispered Dorothy.
“Whatever we can.”
“And what exactly can we do?”
“I don’t know yet, Dorothy. I don’t know.”
CHAPTER 20
Flora Thompson never asked for much. She had resigned herself years ago to the encroaching decay of her eighty-five year old body. It didn’t seem a terrible fate to her, to allow the natural progression of life, as God had designed it, to slow one down. It was true, she had lost the ability to do many things she loved, such as boisterous nights at the Willow Creek Dance Hall or ice fishing the way her father had taught her, but out growing the frivolities of youth was just a part of getting old. The rule was: if she could no longer manage it by herself, then that was the end of it. Even attending the service at St. Paul’s United Church, when she could no longer make the trip up Highway 7, was on the chopping block. The preservation of her impressive church attendance was not her idea; it was Matthew’s. She would never have burdened her grandson with lugging her weary bones twenty minutes out of town just so she could enjoy the comfort of her religion. But, he had insisted and he was persistent.
As Matthew stood over her eyeless body, which had been laid across the back pew in restless slumber, he condemned his own tenacity. He should not have brought her; he should have just let her be. Now, because of his meddling, she had lost both her eyes and fallen into a feverish coma. Periodically, her limbs would shake and tease Matthew with the promise she might awaken, but thus far, they turned out to be nothing more than the jittering of nerves.
He sat down next to her and propped up her head on his leg. She seemed to breath easier that way. He brushed the thin, grey hair from her face, which was beaded with sweat.
Chris approached from the other end of the pew with a cup of water and a cloth. Matthew remained hunched over Flora’s head, his attention transfixed on her breathing. Chris kept a distance between them, keenly aware of their personal space. He waited patiently, but not intrusively, till Matthew was ready to receive him. Finally, he looked up.
“Here,” was all Chris said, and offered the water and cloth.
“Thanks,” Matthew replied and accepted both.
Neither was certain exactly how to react to the other, though, in Matthew’s case, he didn’t much care at that exact moment. Chris, on the other hand, knew he hated seeing Matthew in pain and wanted to help.
Matthew soaked the cloth and gently spread the cool liquid across Flora’s forehead. It looked as though it eased her.
From the doorway of the sanctuary, Angela and Dorothy stepped in. Each carried with them more grey tablecloths, bunched in their hands like dreary bouquets. Everyone watched as the two of them marched up the aisle and unfolded the sheets over Don’s body. They covered his disfigured corpse as ceremonially as possible, not only to relieve everyone of the sight, but also to reintroduce some order into the chaos. Messes needed to be cleaned and the dead honoured for the sake of sanity.
After the sheets were tucked around Don as neatly as possible, Angela noticed someone was missing.
“Gary,” she asked with a grave tone, “where’s Rick?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s gone,” Tina interjected.
“Gone? What do you mean? Where did he go?”
“He didn’t really go anywhere. We were in here, with him. He started pacing and then he was just gone.”
“I don’t understand. And Bruce, what about Bruce? Where is he?”
“He’s gone, too.”
“Tina, you’re not making sense.”
“What part of this makes any sense?” Emily barked, stepping out from the silent crowd and strolling down the aisle toward Angela.
“Somebody had to see where he went.”
“Is that so?” Emily prodded.
“Yes. He couldn’t have just vanished.”
“You’re right. Maybe he turned into a moth and flew away, or maybe a snake and slithered out the vents. Honestly, after everything I’ve seen today, I wouldn’t be the least bit shocked. You think Rick is still just a man? Are you really that ignorant?”
“I think something is happening that we don’t understand... That I don’t understand. But whatever it is, it has to be bound by some rules.”
Emily stopped right in front of Angela with Don’s body dividing the space between them. She was a good half a foot taller than Angela, which added to her intimidation – not that she needed the help.
“You don’t understand? Then let me make it simple. We were touched by God today and He’s pissed.”
“Emily, that kind of talk is not going to help. It’s just going to frighten people,” added Dorothy, as she got up from Don’s body and took a stand next to Angela.
“They should be afraid. Are you going to tell me you’re not?”
Dorothy didn't answer. Instead, she averted her eyes to the faceless, human-shaped sheet that was sprawled at her feet. Its dehumanizing anonymity haunted her and sent her into retreat. She took a seat in a nearby pew. Angela, however, stood her ground.
“Tell me, Angela,” Emily continued her assault, “where do you think Rick went? Or Bruce? Or explain to me, how did Flora’s eyes end up in someone else’s head? We all saw it. Tina and I have been racking our brains, but we can’t figure it out. Maybe you can. Go ahead, explain it.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t.” Emily glanced back at Tina who remained buried in the congregation. The two of them encouraged each other with a satisfied look.
“Um, excuse me...” Susan’s polite voice barely garnered the attention it sought. “I just wanted to say, um, is this helping?”
“That’s right. We’re wasting time. We should be talking about what we’re going to do, not arguing,” said Gary in an effort to bolster Susan’s message.
“Okay,” Angela agreed. “So, what do we know?”
“There’s something keeping us here, something powerful.” Chris decided to join the conversation. If fates were to be discussed, he wanted to be a part of it.
“Not something,” Emily corrected him.
“Yes, something. We don’t know what it is,” said Angela forcefully.
“We do know, we just don’t want to admit it.”
“What is it then, Emily? God?”
“Do you know of anything else that can do that?” she said and pointed to Flora’s crippled form. “If we don’t start accepting what has come upon us, then we really are doomed.”
“Fine, then lets say it is God. Where does that leave us? Where do you suggest we start?”
“We’re being punished, Angela. Just like Rick said.”
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