by Lani Lenore
“You’ve finally made it. I was expecting you days ago,” he said, approaching them. Not one among them recognized him—this red-haired man with good posture who addressed them with a confident voice. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said with a gracious smile, eyeing them all before he offered to shake their hands. “I am Hugh LaCroix. Welcome to my home.”
The men were puzzled, having expected to be taken to Irving, who they knew to be the head of the house.
“Hugh, you say? We were expecting Irving.”
“You must be one of his brothers,” one of their number assumed.
“Yes,” the young man said with a great deal of satisfaction. “I’ve always been told we resemble each other. But please, I won’t keep you from why you’ve come. Irving is waiting for you.”
Hugh moved through the midst of them and out into the hallway. They followed along behind him, anxious for what they would find. The maid who had stepped to the side fell in behind them as they moved to a stairway that led downward into a dark passage lined with stone, lit only by candles along the walls.
“Forgive me for the distance we must go,” their host said, taking his own lantern from the table nearby, “but we’ve resulted to keeping her in the chapel, which is connected to the house by an underground passage.”
With that said, he went forward and began to take the steps downward. The Brethren followed him, mystified, but feeling no notion of danger, even to be led down into the passage. The maid took up a lantern as well and followed silently behind them, her head lowered reverently. While they walked, the men could not help but press him with questions.
“Celia is the name that you have given to the girl, is that right?” asked one of the men.
“Yes, that’s right. That’s the name my uncle gave her.”
“And where is he? Baltus, isn’t it? We’d very much like to talk with him as well.”
“Oh, he is there with her. She’s sensitive at times—can hardly stand to be alone. He spends much of his time with her.”
“And you are sure that she is pregnant with the Hallowed child?”
“Haven’t you read over the reports of our progress?” the host asked, mildly insulted.
“Every page, we assure you, but I also noted that you were vague about many of the methods used.”
“Only to keep the secrets of this success as our own. We will share it with you once we are done. You will see for yourselves.”
That silenced the Brethren for a time and they followed the rest of the way down the passage without further questions. When they reached the doors of the chapel, their host made a show of unlocking them and then pulled them open and stood away to let the men inside. They saw that the chapel the LaCroixs had built was as spectacular as the letters described. It was akin to their own, complete with the faceless statue at the front, ready to accept the face of the Hallowed.
“I believe this is what you came to see,” their host said, motioning toward the front of the chapel, and after their eyes were drawn, they saw a young woman sitting there.
When they saw her angelic face, they were very much impressed. If this was the female that the LaCroixs had managed to create, she was worthy of praise. They had seen other attempts, many gruesome and patched together from other human or animal parts, but this creature was a worthy accomplishment. They were uncertain, for a moment, whether or not they should speak to her, but to their luck, they did not have to use words to coax her forward.
She stood slowly, bracing herself against the back of the pew and when she was upright, the men were met with a surprise. The woman was thin—clearly barren. There was no way of confusing it. It was impossible that she was pregnant or that she had recently been.
“Do you mean that this is the female you have called us here to see?” they began to demand in anger.
“Yes, you are right,” their host assured them in a calm voice.
“What is the meaning of this?” one of them demanded to know.
“Where is Irving?”
“This is absurd! Why did you waste our time by bringing us here?”
The young man held his hands up to quiet them. “Relax, gentlemen. Celia was created with extreme care and precision—just look how beautiful she is—but apparently there was a miscalculation. Not all things can be known from the start, correct? Why should it be expected that she would give birth in the same amount of time as a human woman?”
The men were confused a moment, but then realization dawned on them slowly.
“Do you mean that a child you claim to be the Hallowed has already been born?”
The red-haired man smiled. “Well, I suppose you should see for yourselves.”
Raising his hand, he directed their attention to the front of the chapel and past the woman who stood there. Out of the shadows came a figure, walking upright but very small. As it came into the light on uncertain legs, the men could see that the child was wearing a mask and a wig over its head, but when it reached for the young woman’s awaiting hand, its skin was as black as the darkness that it had stepped out of. The toddling creature stood there before them, grasping its mother’s hand, and the men were not sure whether to bow down or to turn away in fear.
“I can see that you are unsure, so allow me to clarify,” Hugh LaCroix said. “This is the child that was born, but there is no need for you to worship it. It’s simply not what you were hoping for. This child is no god.”
The men of the council seemed even more baffled by this. “How do you know that what you say is true?”
“I’ve had a good look at the child, and while it has grown rapidly and is completely sexless, I don’t believe it has any greater ability than I have. It’s nothing more than what its mother is—a simple mockery of the human form, created by those who had no business perverting life in the first place.”
“What you say is blasphemy,” the men began to warn him. “There must have been something wrong with your specimen—the mother.”
Their host grew intolerant at that. “No, she was created in just the same way as I was, by a confused group of men who thought that the words of some obscure prophet could be true!”
The men were shocked to silence, and a jolt a fear ran through them when they understood what the man was claiming. He said he had been created, which meant that he must have been the father of the creature that stood at its mother’s side. That led them to wonder what had really happened to Irving LaCroix and his family, and also how they would get out of this situation themselves. Finally, unable to contain his fear, one of them burst.
“Your claims cannot be true! Why did you bring us here?”
Their host was calm as he spoke. “We brought you here to disprove your religion. To tell you that everything you’ve believed in is false. Perhaps it is possible for man to create man, but there is no such thing as the Hallowed.”
The Brethren—and so many others like them—did not have to consider why the proposed religion of the Hallowed had appealed to them. The entire basis was an endeavor for their scientific minds, to create something material which they could comprehend, and produce a God that they could see with their eyes. Because of the sort of men that they were, they did not know how to admit that they may have been wrong.
“I’m a good mother,” Celia said abruptly, speaking up for the first time. “We already have many children. We can create as many as we want—thanks to this.”
She held up a book for all of them to see.
“What is that?” one of the men questioned, though it showed on their ghost-white faces that they all wanted to ask.
“This is the journal of Baltus LaCroix,” she said. “Within these pages, he recorded everything concerning us—including a detailed explanation of all that he did to create us. He gave us life, and we have done the same with what he left behind.”
To the surprise and horror of the council, many small figures began to come out of hiding within the chapel—hunched figures with skin the color of night, wea
ring wigs and masks on their faceless heads. Some wore the skulls of animals for faces, many with antlers or horns, and they crawled out from every corner of the chapel. There were more than a dozen of them.
“They are still growing,” the woman said, her face aglow with pleasure as she looked over her children. “But eventually we will learn how to make them as well as we were made. They will be covered in skin and will look just like us—like you—and the world will know no different.”
The men were shocked, watching as the man who had welcomed them into the house moved toward the woman and put his arm around her waist.
“Who are you?” one of the Brethren asked him.
“My name is Adam. And so now you see why we wanted you to come here. To show you this—exactly what you have made. Initially, it was my wish to tell you that I was going to make it my duty to hunt down every last one of you and wipe this cult from the face of the earth, but after thinking it over, we’ve decided that would be the wrong choice.”
The two of them—Adam and Celia—smiled at each other, exchanging a look of knowing and satisfaction.
“What we are going to do is send a copy of this book to every sect of you we can find,” Adam said, taking the book from Celia’s hand. “Once we pass this along, then everyone will know. And how could they resist using it themselves? Then more of us will be born—many more. Through this, we will have children throughout the world—more than any human could count. And it’s all your own fault. Men cannot help but to make monsters, isn’t that right?”
The men of the council looked around them, finding that they were surrounded by the strange featureless children, and they realized that they were not intended to leave. The maid with dark hair was standing near the door, smiling mischievously as she watched. Adam drew Celia nearer and they gazed at each other with no regard for the rest of the world. The men knew fear then, but they did not make a sound. They knew that by stepping into this house they had come into a different world—but it was one of their own making. The rules were bent here, and they knew that for all they had done, they had failed.
As her children closed in on the ignorant gentlemen who had set foot in her house, Celia turned her back on the scene. She looked up at the faceless statue that loomed over the chapel with indifference, knowing that it would never have features, but she was content with that. She liked it better this way. The statue was no one. It was all of them.
She felt a hand on her shoulder as Adam stepped up next to her.
“How do you feel?” he asked into her ear. The breath of his voice sent waves of excitement through her.
“Satisfied,” she replied to him, and she meant it. They had lured the Brethren here, just as they had planned, and their revenge was just as sweet on a broader scale. Behind her, she heard the men threatening her children to stay away, frantic, but she denied her instinct to protect them. She knew they could take care of themselves. They were still growing, after all. They needed to feed.
“I was thinking of remodeling the music room,” Adam commented. “I hate the color of the walls.”
“Probably a good idea. The house should look nice when we have guests in the future.”
The commotion grew louder as the self-important men protested, the breaking of their bones and ripping of flesh overtaking even their screams. Celia heard the dripping of their blood onto the floor. She began to hum quietly to herself.
This is all that anyone needs, she thought. To have a house and be surrounded by family. There is no need for old memories when there are new ones to be made.
They needed to make a few more copies of the journal, but once it was distributed, Celia would have more family than she could ever desire—more than she could have if she’d been the human they’d promised she was.
Adam drew her close, leaning toward her ear as the sounds of the massacre quieted behind them and the air in the chapel became still.
“Let’s have another baby,” he purred. Celia smiled.
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed THE HALLOWED, please leave a review and rating to let others know how much you enjoyed it!
You can get more works from Lani Lenore on her Amazon page.
About the Author
Lani Lenore is a writer of gothic horrors and dark fantasies. In addition to rewriting well-known fairy tales with a twist, she also writes original stories in a style she calls ‘dark fairy tale’, which uses fantasy elements to build horror stories. Most of her tales, though horrific at times, have a subplot of romance. She loves to keep readers on the edge of their seat, spook them, and immerse them in worlds of beauty and terror.
She currently lives in Tennessee with her husband, two dogs, and a few too many cats.
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