“You don’t have to worry about me slowing you down. If we see something—anything—then I’m going to make you look like the slowest person on your track team. You got that?”
I smile. “Sounds good to me.”
We keep walking, listening to our steps in these silent woods, while the light continues to drip away into the evening.
79. In the Middle of Nowhere
I smell them before I see them.
And the fact that I’m using plural is not good, not in this case.
If it weren’t for the stench, I don’t know if we would have spotted them.
I’m already using the flashlight because there’s maybe ten or fifteen minutes left of light in the sky. The beam is bouncing over the trees in front of us when I hear Poe moan.
“Do you smell that?”
A few steps later I do. It reminds me of the garbage in the back of a restaurant back home where me and a few buddies would hide out and drink beers. The dumpsters were full of rotting food that baked in the sun and ended up smelling worse than vomit. We held our noses but went there anyway because we knew nobody else would be around.
Somehow, what I’m smelling here is even worse.
If smells can produce pain, then I’m in agony.
I think of the trip to see Aunt Alice and of the poor groundhog that I saw on the road
and also saw in the bathtub don’t forget about that!
and I remember that stench.
I suddenly start sweeping the ground in front of us with my flashlight.
“It’s getting worse.”
It almost feels like we’re stepping into a pile of animal carcasses. But there’s nothing unusual on the forest ground beneath us.
I hear the buzzing of flies near my head and swoop my hand to make them go away. That’s when I see it. The thing near my head. The thing hanging on the tree.
Poe screams.
I bolt backward and fall to the ground, all while aiming the light at the furry thing in the tree. It’s gray and black, and I swear it’s getting ready to spring.
“That’s a cat!”
I see beady eyes reflecting the light. Poe’s right. It’s a cat.
A cat that isn’t springing anywhere anytime soon. It looks—attached to the tree.
I don’t even want to know how.
“It’s dead oh gross it’s so dead.” Poe curses and comes behind me as I get up and try to act like the brave guy again.
“How’s it just hanging there?” I get as close as I’m going to get and examine it. It’s attached by its chest, which seems to be nailed into the tree.
“That was done recently,” Poe says.
“Yeah.”
Thanks for the obvious and for adding to the nightmare.
I glide the flashlight around and examine other trees. I think I spot at least three more dead animals.
“Let’s go,” I say. I don’t want her to see any more.
“Go back?”
I shake my head. “No. We’re far enough out here. Whoever did this—there might be a reason why.”
“I don’t think I want to know a reason. I can think up a few myself.”
“Come on.”
We keep walking and we reach a small hill with an old, crumbling wood fence at the top. I kick it in, and the wood disintegrates. Then I look ahead and see the opening.
Even in the shadows I can see the outlines of what used to be buildings. Old houses, cabins, small one-story log cabins that now only seem like massive and grotesque building blocks in the evening light.
“This is it.”
I nod at Poe and grab her hand and hold it tight. I think I just want to make sure that I have something real and normal to hold on to. Her grip is tight as we walk down what appears to be an old street, now overgrown with brush and weeds.
A handful of half-erect buildings are on each side of us. Small trees and weeds the size of me fill them in. The flashlight reveals the scarred black on the building, a kind that can only come from fire.
I see the building in front of us before Poe does. The shape is what first gets my attention. It’s a rectangle, a couple of stories tall, intact. Then I see something that chills me even more than those dead animals. It’s a sharp steeple pointing high in the sky.
This building is wood and stone, and it looks brand-new.
“What’s a church doing here?”
The road we’re on has suddenly become flat and clear, as if vehicles have driven over it recently. We see sawdust and mud and tire tracks and ruts in the ground.
“Who’s building a church here?” Poe asks.
It’s crazy, because we thought we were in the middle of nowhere.
The windows aren’t in, but the roof and the walls are solid and stable. I can’t see anything inside except darkness.
“You think Pastor Marsh is building this?”
I nod. It makes sense. At least as much as anything else makes sense in this crazy town.
“But it’s right next to his church.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a door on the front, even though the main entry is still only dirt. My flashlight shows the cross on the door.
It’s inverted.
“I’m not going in there,” Poe says.
“We have to.”
“No way. Uh-uh. You see that?”
“Nobody’s here.”
“How do you know?” she asks.
“I have to go inside.”
“So go. I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want anything to do with that.”
We’re already way out here, so there’s no way I’m not going in. I press Poe a couple more times, but she backs away from the church and folds her arms. I know her well enough to know there’s no way I’m getting her to budge.
It’s dark and it’s cold and this is probably a very bad idea.
“Okay, just—stay there.”
“I’m fine.”
I scan around the church. There are woods on all sides. I can’t tell where the road that we’re on leads, but it’s got to be a main road where trucks can come for building and supplies and all that.
Everything is silent.
Too silent.
“Just wait. I’m going to check it out.”
“You’re crazy,” she says.
“Yeah, maybe.”
I go to the door and turn the handle.
It opens with ease.
As if whoever built this has been waiting for me to come on in.
80. Upside Down
It’s dark outside, but it’s black in here. It’s strange because even though this place is really unsettling, it has the smell of a new home. The smell of freshly cut wood as opposed to the kind that’s rotting away in the forest. The whiff of sawdust instead of the gasp of dust and cobwebs. The boards underneath me don’t creak like they do in spooky haunted houses.
Yet this does nothing to make me feel better.
Why are they building a new church here?
I go through what appears to be an open area that will serve as the welcome area. A wall separates it from the main sanctuary, but there’s no door in the open entryway.
This isn’t bigger and better than New Beginnings. So why?
There are no pews in the church, at least none that I can see. I see tools and a couple of table saws, some stacks of wood, some stone, some drywall leaning up against the wall.
My flashlight moves over these things quickly because I keep imagining that someone’s going to come out of nowhere with an ancient face and hollow eyes spitting out spiders and sickly insects.
In front of me is a roped-off area where the pulpit should be. They’re building a platform around the ropes, but standing ten feet tall is a statue of something. It looks like a stone sword coming out of the earth, the handle near the bottom and then the blade going up and ending in a spire.
As I get closer to the structure, I realize that it’s not a sword.
You don’t need any more proof this i
s it this is all you need Chris now get out of here.
Yet I keep walking.
I keep walking as if I was always meant to find this.
Of course you were, people have been pointing you in this direction for some time.
I feel cold and heavy, like the air is thick. I also feel something that’s starting to overpower the fear inside of me.
I feel like I’m falling. No, not falling, but sitting in a roller coaster flying.
Rushing.
I can feel my heart racing and yet I also feel so deathly cold, like I’m in the middle of subzero temperatures with no clothes on. My arms begin to shake and I rub them but can’t stop the tremor.
I get to the structure and know that it’s no sword.
It’s a cross. An upside-down cross.
It’s also old. It’s made of dark stone that looks worn with time.
The ropes stand about five feet away from the stone structure on each side. I shine the light on the ground in front of me and see a plaque of some kind firmly cemented into the floor of the church.
This is a gravestone. This thing, this tall upside-down stone cross, is a gravestone.
I get closer to see what the plaque says.
Louis-Henri Clérel de Solitaire
1736–1842
And then, in a much smaller font that I have to squint to read, is something written in French. Identifying the language is the best I can do. Even if I weren’t doing so horribly in French, I still bet I wouldn’t understand a word of this.
Quand on parle du loup, on en voit la queue.
I wish I had a phone to take a picture of the inscription, because there’s no way I’m going to remember it.
“Yesssssssssssssss.”
I drop the flashlight and turn around and shield myself, since the voice coming out of nowhere sounds like it’s two inches away.
“Chrisssssssssssss.”
The voice, low, hungry, grave, sickly …
“Now,” it says. “Right now. Now.”
I reach over and scrape the floor and find the flashlight. Then I scan the area around me.
That’s the voice you heard in the passageway.
I think about the time they blindfolded and gagged me and then threatened me.
“Who’s there?” I shout.
I don’t see anybody. But I can hear the laughter. Laughter like a razor blade scratching against skin, taking little chunks with it.
“Who’s there?” My scream echoes off the walls. “Who are you?”
“The one who knowsssssssssss. The one who can set you free.”
I feel like I’m in one of those theaters with the deep roaring bass that’s just thumping and throttling.
That’s how this voice sounds.
That’s how my heart feels.
Then I see something bright blistering through this dark mess, and I squint and fall to my knees, knowing I’m in trouble knowing I’m dead knowing the end is here.
“Chris.”
It’s Jocelyn.
She’s come to save me.
81. Echoes
I see her outline lit up by something behind her. She stands at the edge of a doorway in the back of the church.
“This was a mistake.”
I pause for a moment. It’s her voice—I can hear her and see her. Yet I don’t understand what she’s talking about.
“Jocelyn?”
“You don’t want to be with someone like me.”
What’s she saying?
“Joss—”
“Don’t ruin yourself. I’m used goods.”
I keep walking toward her. She’s looking down, not at me.
“Jocelyn, it’s me.”
“You strip this away, and there’s nothing down inside.”
Then I remember. She said that once to me. Yet I can’t remember when.
“God did this.”
I keep walking toward her without answering.
“Ultimately God let my parents down.”
What’s she saying, what am I hearing?
“If—and I mean if—God is up there, then why?”
These are things she said to me once, but …
I reach her, and she looks up at me and smiles.
But the face looking at me and those eyes looking into mine and that smile don’t belong to Jocelyn.
Up close now, I know it’s not her.
The eyes are empty and black and the gaze is needy and obsessed and the smile is hateful and wanting.
“What—who—who are you?”
She moves to kiss me, and I see her smile that’s transformed not into brilliant white fangs wanting to bite but rather blackened and oozing gums wanting to suck.
I scream and then see those eyes shrivel up to nothing. Nothing but emptiness. Nothing but rotting black holes.
“We don’t have to die, Chrissssssssssss.”
But before the rotting, sickly old man in front of me can reach over at me, I swing my flashlight and strike something hard. I think it might be his jaw or the side of his face.
I tear out of there before whatever this is can touch me.
Then I’m outside, sucking in air and sweaty and trying to find Poe to tell her to run, and I realize that I’m alone.
Poe is gone.
82. Things in My Head
I’ve lost someone else.
This is what runs through my mind as I’m calling out her name and directing my light in a hundred different spots trying to see her.
I’ve let someone else I care for get taken.
And still out of breath and still in a state of shock, my voice cracking because I’m losing it, I hear a ghost call out my name.
“Chris.”
Of course, it’s not a ghost. It’s Poe standing at the edge of the woods we came in from.
I reach her, and she clasps on to both of my arms.
“What’d you see in there?”
“Nothing. Just—my imagination is playing tricks. I just thought—when I came out and you were—”
“I felt weird standing by the empty church.”
Oh but it’s not empty not at all Poe.
“Did you find anything inside?”
“Let’s go.”
“Chris?”
“It’s already too dark, and I don’t want to get lost.”
“That’s why I’m standing over here,” she says. “To make sure we know which direction to head.”
I want to tell her that it’ll be a miracle for us to find our car again.
Yet just a few minutes later—ten or twenty or maybe thirty, I can’t tell because my mind is too full to compute time—we’re getting into her car.
“What happened?” she asks before starting it up.
“That church is like a shrine to somebody.”
“What do you mean?”
I tell her to start the car and go. As she drives, I tell her what I saw.
“What did the French say?”
“No clue.”
I would’ve forgotten even if I hadn’t seen whatever it was I saw.
“We need to go back.”
“Maybe in broad daylight,” I say. “With others.”
“Okay, fine. But this person, maybe he has something to do with everything that’s going on.”
“I sure hope he doesn’t. Since he’s, you know, dead.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Yeah.”
But maybe you’re right, maybe he’s still around and haunting this place.
“Why would they stick a gravestone in the middle of a church?” Poe asks.
I don’t want to tell her what I’m thinking.
But I’m thinking …
No, stop thinking. Stop thinking and leave it alone.
“Chris?”
“I don’t think we want to know the reason.”
“Yeah, maybe not.”
The drive home seems long and quiet and troubling. I tell Poe I’ll see her tomorrow.
I don’t
say all the other things in my head.
Things like Make sure you lock your door tonight.
Things like Tell me tomorrow if Jocelyn comes to you in your dreams and suddenly turns into an old, dying man with really bad dental hygiene.
Things like
Enough, Chris.
The voice shutting me up sounds like Mom or Dad but is obviously my own.
This whole haunting and creeping and nightmaring business sure helps a boy grow up.
83. Not Watching Anymore
Hatred doesn’t forget. The longer it waits, the more it grows like some grotesque fungus.
I learn this the hard way one April day.
The end of school is not too far away, and summer is within reach. The sun is drying out the winter’s harsh bite and making things seem halfway normal.
But on the day of our track team’s big meet versus Hendersonville, I’m faced with the reminder that anger isn’t a good thing to store up. Like perishable food in a pantry, it’s going to go bad fast.
It’s the end of art class, and somehow the hippie teacher Mr. Chestle has disappeared before the bell rings for us to leave. Students file out, and I’m chatting like always with Kelsey when I see her stop in midsentence.
“I was just kidding,” I say, not really sure what I said that got to her.
Kelsey shakes her head, glancing toward the door.
I turn to look and see Gus coming in. And behind him, the rest of his crew.
The rest of the kids in the room quickly decide it’s smart to leave.
Gus walks over to us. Kelsey’s yellow painting that she’s worked on for over a month is in front of her.
“Isn’t that pretty?” Gus says, looking at me.
“What do you want?”
He only smiles, then looks back at the door. Riley closes it.
“We haven’t had a chance to talk lately,” he says.
“Cut it out, Gus. We have classes to go to.”
“What’s your name again?” he asks Kelsey.
I stand between the two of them as he sneers like a bull spotting red.
“I never did get that apology I’ve been waiting on since you attacked me in the hallway,” Gus says.
I look at the pockets of pimples on his face, the way his hair sticks up like a Chia Pet, the big forehead that needs a nice rag to sop it up.
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