by Jason Brant
“You think Danver’s friends were killed by something that came through a thin spot in the church, don’t you? You actually think that a ghost killed all of those people, and Danver managed to escape.”
Katie didn’t reply, only looked at him briefly before continuing to look over more books.
“That’s not possible though, right? I mean, a ghost can’t actually kill someone. They just rattle the chandelier and blow on the curtains, right?” Kyle looked around the room with nervous eyes, glancing at every shadow. The light flickering from the candles on the table suddenly made everything look ominous.
“I didn’t say that. There’s a lot going on here that I don’t understand.”
Bryan turned and walked toward the hole, having heard enough crazy talk. “Why did you call us in here? Just to tell us that? Anything else you feel like sharing, or do you want to keep playing games?”
“Keep your eyes open and your ears at the ready. With any luck you’ll record even more evidence that there is something else out there, beyond our perceived existence.”
“I’ll make sure I’m ready if Bigfoot shows up.” Bryan ducked his head and stepped through the hole, wondering who actually used the phrase ‘perceived existence’ in real life.
Once again, the smell shocked him as he stepped into the chapel of the church. He knew it would be there, but it seemed to get worse every time he came back into the main room. Pinching his nose with his fingers, he watched as Joey and Travis slowly circled the altar.
Their barometer and EMF readers sat atop the large oval stone, and they had set up a fifth camera with a dim light pointed at the center of the chapel. Both men held flashlights, which they were shining all around the base of the large stump. Ben, as always, sat at his workstation, monitoring the audio and video feeds.
“What are you guys doing?” Bryan asked, his voice nasal because of his pinched nose.
“We’re trying to figure out how you recorded that,” Travis said. He grabbed a can of beer sitting on the altar, took a sip from it, and set it back down. “It’s a very interesting sound and we’re either going to recreate it, or find its source.”
“Our viewers love watching us try and debunk crap. Usually we fake something and then show that it’s not paranormal,” Joey said. His tight shirt lifted as he bent down to inspect something on the floor, exposing his large tire of fat.
Bryan let go of his nose, trying to acclimate once again to the stench. He knew that they had somehow tricked him into recording that sound, and were now adding layers onto the fraud to make it look authentic for the show. Despite knowing that, he didn’t feel like arguing with them anymore.
The conversation he’d just had with Kyle and Katie had exhausted him. Just a few hours ago, he’d found her very interesting and thought they’d shared a moment or two together. Now he wasn’t entirely sure that she was sane. All the talk of the spirit world, ghosts, and celestial alignments was ridiculous.
Realizing that she suffered from the same obsession that Charles Danver went through in the years prior to his death didn’t make him feel particularly comfortable about being stranded in the middle of nowhere with her. Danver became consumed with this location, and had fallen off the grid. Katie Upshaw, famous horror author, seemed to be suffering from the same fate.
Travis dropped his beer, spilling the amber liquid down the front of his shirt and pants, making it appear as if he wet himself.
“Shit! Now it’s going to look like I pissed my pants,” he said, brushing at the front of his trousers. “Ben, everything with me in it for the next hour has to be edited out.”
Ben smirked from his position behind the monitors, but didn’t reply.
The can of cheap beer rolled across the stone floor, the fluid inside making it loll heavily back and forth, its contents pooling underneath. Travis kicked at it, a nonstop stream of obscenities flowing from his mouth as he did so.
The sole of his shoe swept away the layer of dirt and soil that had been loosened by the beer, leaving a swath of exposed stone. Travis spotted something on the floor as he continued to whine about his shirt and pants, and bent down to inspect.
“What’s this?” He brushed away more of the debris with his hand. “Joey, look at this shit.”
Joey stood up and walked around the altar, his love handles jiggling as he went, and hovered over Travis. “Is something carved in the stone?”
They both pointed their dim flashlights at the floor, turning their heads slightly from side to side, trying to get a better angle.
“It looks like it goes the entire way around the altar,” Travis said. He resumed kicking at the dirt, slowly moving to his right as he did. Joey did the same, but moved to the left, clearing away debris as he went.
Bryan wanted to go to sleep on one of the benches, but felt slightly curious and walked over to where they were working. He lifted the candle from the stone top of the altar and held it in front of him, trying to make out what they were seeing.
Deep grooves had been carved into the stone of the floor. Though it wasn’t completely cleared yet, Bryan could make out two circles, one inside of the other, around the tree stump base of the altar.
Placing the candle on the floor, Bryan got on his knees and began brushing at the dirt covering the circles with his hands. A symbol appeared between them as he cleared more dirt away, showing two lines that connected to look like a snake, or an S with an elongated center.
“There’s some kind of symbol or insignia here,” he said to no one in particular.
He moved a few inches closer to the altar and began cleaning above the two circles. More grooves appeared as he worked, with two hard lines coming to a point at the edge of the inner most circle. Even more designs became apparent between those two lines, but Bryan couldn’t tell what pattern they created.
He continued forward, continually sweeping closer to the altar until he’d cleared the entire area in front of him from the outer most circle to the edge of the tree stump. He kneeled on his haunches, hearing his knees creak as he did, and looked at the progress Joey and Travis had made.
Around the shrine they had cleared away enough to see that the circles were an equal distance apart the entire way. More lines seemed to intersect, crisscrossing in a yet unseen pattern.
Bryan jumped when a hand clapped on his shoulder, making his head knock against the stone slab above him.
“What are you doing?” Kyle asked.
Bryan rubbed his head as he backed out from under the overhang of the altar and stood beside his friend. “There’s some kind of pattern carved into the stone around the altar. The dirt around it was so thick and packed that we couldn’t see it before.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know yet. Help us clear everything away.”
Travis and Joey didn’t bother looking up, but kept sliding their feet on the floor. After another ten minutes of cleaning, the area surrounding the altar had been cleared enough that they could see all of the lines.
Bryan stood back and tried to take the entire image in at once. The outer most circle had a diameter of roughly ten feet, making it difficult to put all of it into perspective.
“Is that a star in the middle?” Joey asked. His head was cocked to the side as he looked at it.
“Ben, beer me!” Travis yelled from beside him. A few seconds later Ben threw a can across the room, which Travis caught and promptly popped open. Foam erupted from the can, spilling over the sides and covering his hands. He didn’t seem to mind.
“Looks like the Star of David or some shit like that,” he said, and then drank down half the can. Sweat covered his brow from the small amount of work they had put in to cleaning the floor.
“What are these little symbols at the point of every star?” Kyle asked.
Bryan backed up several steps and hopped onto one of the nearby benches, giving himself a better angle of the entire image. A five-pointed star sat in the middle of the inner circle, with small squiggly symb
ols residing at the end of each point. Small designs sat inside of each section of the star, but Bryan couldn’t tell what they were.
The base of the altar covered the center of the carving, keeping him from seeing the image in its entirety. Even still, he thought he recognized it.
“I’ve seen this before,” he said. “I think it’s the symbol used for Satanism. A pentagram or whatever it’s called.”
“And it has a sacrificial altar sitting in the middle of it,” Kyle said. “This is insane.”
Joey looked back at Ben. “Do you have a good shot from Bryan’s helmet cam?”
Yeah, it’s pretty dark, but the candle on the floor is making it look spooky as hell.”
“OK, we’ll run a voice over on top of it later on. Make note of the spots where Travis pissed himself.”
Bryan hopped from the bench and walked over to Kyle. “Do you think we can knock that altar over and see what’s under it? That stone has to be really heavy.”
“No problem,” Kyle said, a large grin spreading across his face. He tossed the barometer and thermometer to Joey and Travis, and then put his hands under the stone slab. “This might break if I push it over.”
Travis shrugged his shoulders and drank more beer.
Kyle bent his knees, straightened his back, and heaved against the underside of the altar. Cords stuck out of his neck and his face turned a bright red as he slowly slid the large piece to the right. Bryan moved to his left and put his shoulder against the edge of the stone and pushed, feeling it give several inches.
Bryan felt it reach the tipping point, where it balanced precariously on the edge of stump. He stood up and let Kyle move it the last few inches, watching it fall to the floor, landing on its side and leaning against the base. They pushed against the bottom together and watched as it fell to the floor, smashing into several large pieces.
The stump in the middle showed no signs of decay, and had a glossy finish, as if it had been preserved by a resin. Kyle managed to flip it on its side, allowing him to roll it out of the way. It went another four feet unassisted before crashing against one of the benches and falling over.
The stones in the floor that had been under the stump were a different shade than the rest. The presumed bloodstains covered much of the area. The packed dirt that had covered the outside of the large symbol wasn’t present in the middle.
Eyes looked out at them from the center of the star.
“Yeah, this is definitely the symbol used by the Church of Satan,” Bryan said.
Chapter 13
“That is the symbol adopted by the Church of Satan, but it isn’t satanic in origin,” Katie said from behind them.
“Look what crawled out of its hole,” Travis said.
Katie ignored him and stepped beside Bryan. “That’s the Sigil of Baphomet.”
“What is the face in the middle, a demon?” Kyle asked. The front of his shirt was drenched with sweat from moving the altar and his breathing hadn’t returned to normal yet.
“It’s a goat. Baphomet, to be exact, and it’s a pagan deity.”
“What are these symbols at each point of the star?” Bryan asked. Finding the symbol carved into the floor did rouse his curiosity, much to his disdain.
“Those are Hebrew letters. Starting from the bottom point and reading them counter-clockwise spells Leviathan, which is a sea monster referred to in the Bible.”
“I saw that movie!” Kyle said. “It starred the dude from Robocop. It really sucked.”
Katie closed her eyes and bowed her head, taking a deep breath.
“You said the symbol in the first stained glass window meant Leviathan. Are you saying they both mean the same thing?” Bryan asked.
“The symbol in the glass, much like the Sigil of Baphomet, wasn’t meant as a satanic symbol, but was adopted as such within the last fifty years. The pattern in the window is the alchemical symbol for Sulfur. Both have come to stand for Leviathan in the last century or so.”
Joey sniggered again. “I guess old man Danver had a fetish for big fish.”
“Why have all these pagan and satanic symbols? What were they trying to accomplish here?” Bryan asked. While he wasn’t that interested in the symbols themselves, he was curious as to why they were scattered about, and what the motivations behind them were.
“I’m not sure. Like I said, these are now considered satanic, but they weren’t always. Who knows in what context Danver’s people were using them.”
Travis continued to glare at her over the top of his beer. Bryan didn’t understand why there was such a tension between the two. Perhaps they were both accustomed to being the alpha in any given situation. He hoped they wouldn’t start slinging feces at each other soon.
“What are you doing out of your hideout anyway?” Travis asked.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but it’s hard to concentrate when giant stones are being shattered in the next room,” she said, gesturing to the broken altar top.
“You know what would make a great shot?” Ben asked from across the chapel. “If you got some of those candles from the library and put them around the Sigil of Barf-and-stuff. We could use that in the commercials and really pump up the ritualistic murder angle.”
Joey and Travis shared a short look before giving each other a nod.
“Not a bad idea,” Joey said, rubbing his chin.
“I need those to continue my research,” Katie said. Her hands had found their customary positions on her hips.
“Just use that ridiculous spotlight you’ve been carrying around,” Joey said. He motioned to Bryan and Kyle. “Go grab some of those candles – get four and we’ll put one at the end of every point of the star.”
Bryan thought it was a pretty good idea too, surprisingly, and headed back to the hole in the wall. He could hear Kyle lumbering along behind him, his height and musculature sapping his body of any grace.
They both climbed through the opening and had just started toward the desk at the back of the room when they heard something move ahead of them. They stopped in midstride, listening.
“Did you hear that?” Bryan asked. “Like something sliding?”
“Yeah, I heard it.”
Bryan found himself wishing for a flashlight yet again. Though several candles on the desk were lit, they didn’t provide enough light for them to see anything in great detail. The sound had been brief and unexpected, not allowing them to pinpoint its origin.
“Where did it come from?” Bryan squinted against the darkness, looking around the room.
The shifting sound came again, but this time they saw the open book on the desk slide a few inches.
“Did that book just move?” Kyle asked. His breathing had picked up and was coming in short, ragged bursts.
“I thought I saw it too, but it maybe it was the light from the candles playing tricks on us.”
Bryan started to step forward when he heard Ben yell from his workstation in the chapel.
“What is that in front of the desk? I can’t really see it through your helmet cams.”
“It’s a chair, genius,” Kyle said, rolling his eyes.
“On the other side of the chair, asshole. It’s standing against the wall.”
Bryan considered flipping off the camera, but decided to leave such pleasantries to Kyle, who had more skill at being profane. Nothing could be seen beside the chair except for the stone wall. Bookcases stood on either side, but nothing else.
“Right there - what the hell is that?”
Kyle turned toward Bryan and moved his finger in a circle around his temple. Bryan was thinking the same thing.
“Oh my god, you're freaking retarded. For the last time, you are wearing helmet cameras. I can see everything that you can. If you look at each other and one of you mimes that I'm crazy, I can see it too.”
“Maybe we wanted you to see it,” Kyle said. “There's nothing over there but some old ass books. And we can hear you just fine if you speak up – stop screa
ming.”
“Whatever,” Ben yelled, not listening. “There really is something hiding behind the chair.”
They both squinted toward the corner, looking at the empty space beside the chair. Kyle pulled his cell phone from his pocket and used the flashlight application once again, angling the light at the chair.
“We can't see anything,” Bryan said. “If this is another lame attempt to scare us, it's pretty pathetic.”
“It looks like... it looks like a man. Kyle, take a few steps to your right. I need a better angle into the corner.” Ben’s voice was faint despite his yelling, hard for them to hear from the other side of the wall.
“You better speak up, we can’t hear you after all,” Bryan said.
With an aggravated frown on his face, Kyle sidestepped slowly, sneaking to his right. Bryan could see that his patience with Ben had completely evaporated.
“There! That's definitely a man. Why is he hiding by the desk?”
“Dude, for the last time, there's nothing over there.”
“Stop dicking around. Who is that? Did someone sneak in while we weren’t paying attention?”
Bryan moved over beside Kyle, wanting to make sure he wasn't missing something. The light from the cell phone wasn’t overly bright, but he could still make out the empty space they were talking about.
“Ben, we're fifteen feet from the corner with a clear line of sight. What are you smoking out there?” he asked.
“You're telling me you can't see the guy hiding behind the chair?”
“What in the shit are you guys doing in here?” Travis asked.
Bryan turned to see Travis’ head sticking through the hole, looking over at them. “It’s not us, it’s your boy Ben out there being an idiot and trying to scare us. Do you see anything in the corner?” He gestured toward the desk and stepped to the side to give Travis an unobstructed view.
