by Gord Rollo
“Heeeey!” Rich screamed as he fell, trying to reach out for anything that might help stop his descent, but there was nothing to grab. He landed hard on a dirt floor about ten feet below, knocking the wind out of his lungs and scuffing his left knee a little but otherwise he was luckily okay. He was surrounded by darkness, the only light in the small chamber coming from the jagged opening above his head. Dan’s head appeared in the space.
“Jesus, Rich. You okay?”
Rich could hear the girls screaming outside, wondering the same thing. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. “Just bruised my ego. Fuck, what an idiot. I knew the floor was rotted in spots. Serves me bloody right.” Rich stood up and dusted himself off. Reaching up, his fingertips were only about two feet below the floorboards. Dan reached down and they could shake hands but when he tried to yank Rich up toward the hole, the entire porch started to creak and moan as if the entire platform might collapse. Dan dropped Rich back to the ground, not wanting to chance it.
“No worries, Rich. We’ll get you out. Just need a rope or something. What’s down there anyway? Can you see anything?”
“Not much. It’s pretty dark down here. Toss me down a flashlight.”
“Okay. Just a sec…”
Dan looked up and spoke to the nearby girls, who by the sounds of it were running to the foot of the stairs. “He’s fine, Lizzy. Relax. We’re gonna need a light here though. Can one of you go get it…or get Pat to move his lazy butt and help out?”
A few minutes later, Dan handed down a long metal flashlight and Rich immediately clicked it on to take a better look at his surroundings. He’d dropped into a long, narrow space beneath the stairs that could have easily been used for storage but for the most part was empty. There were a couple of thick oak planks under the slope of the stairs that looked like extra wood from when they’d originally built the church, but that wasn’t what caught Rich’s attention. “Wow!” he said. “Look at that!”
“What is it?” Dan said, trying to peek in the hole from above.
“I can get inside the church from down here. There’s a door built into the foundation wall that should lead into the basement.”
“Really? Probably locked from the inside though.”
“Doesn’t matter. The foundation wall has crumbled a bit around it. There’s a gap in the wall right by the door frame. It’s not huge, but it looks big enough to get inside. Maybe I can find the stairs up the main floor and try to help get the doors open from the inside?”
“Great idea. Solves the problem of getting you out of this hole anyway. You okay going inside alone?”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be? The boogeyman gonna get me? I’ll be on the other side of the front door in a few minutes. Keep the peace.”
“Okay. I’ll keep hacking away from up here. Be careful, all right?”
“Will do, boss. Here, grab these first.” Rich handed up the pair of oak planks lying under the stairs. “Lay those across the hole to reinforce the platform. We don’t want anyone else falling through. I’ll see you soon.”
Rich moved to the wooden door but just as Dan had suspected, it was locked tight from within. Moving over to the gap in the fieldstone foundation he shone his light back and forth around the basement. It smelled musty beneath the church, but not in a damp, rotted way. It was more of a stale, stagnant smell like dried flowers and dead leaves. Cornstalks grew up from the dirt floor and filled half of the basement, monstrously large and growing right up through the floorboards above on the main level. There wasn’t a whole lot else to see other than a large room with several doorways opening up into other presumably smaller rooms. On the east wall, a staircase headed up to the main floor. Covered in a thick layer of dust were several half-constructed church pews and maybe a dozen wooden crates lined up against the far wall but from here there was no way of knowing what might be inside of them.
He had to hold his breath to wiggle into the tight opening, but Rich squeezed through and was soon standing on the dirt floor. He moved quickly to the crates, hoping for a miracle he’d find Reverend Miller’s treasure as easily as that but deep down knowing nothing was that easy, especially something so valuable.
He was right. Inside the crates were full of junk, crammed with broken carpentry tools, balls of twine, sacks of rusty nails, jars of dried-up glue, and two crates full of ratty covered old hymn books and King James Bibles. Disappointed, but expecting as much, Rich moved on and quickly checked some of the smaller rooms off this main chamber. Some were empty, but most were being used for some type of storage, the most interesting of which had shelves and baskets full of what had once been vegetables, bread, dried fruit, and some hanging smoked meat. There would be time to hunt through all these rooms more closely later, but right now Rich knew he should stop investigating and get his butt upstairs to help Dan open those front doors.
Heading for the stairs, Rich noticed one more door directly under the wooden steps. It was a little smaller than the other doorways, but what really caught his attention was that this door was made of metal while nearly everything else inside the church was made of wood. On closer inspection, it was just a wooden door coated in a layer of metal sheeting, but there was also a big sliding steel dead bolt attached to the door frame with the bolt firmly set directly into the fieldstone wall. Curious, and also thinking this door looked fortified and a little like the opening of a homemade bank vault, Rich moved under the stairs to have a closer look. The sliding dead bolt was rusty and hadn’t been moved in decades but Rich leaned on it hard and shoved it to the side. Adrenaline pumping through his veins, he yanked on the handle and the door opened toward him, its ancient hinges screeching their protest all the way.
The smell of death enveloped him, and Rich backed up a few steps, gagging. Not the coppery smell of fresh blood or the evacuated juices and excrement of the recently dead; this was more a sulfurous gas, a dry, cloying stench of meat left to rot and spoil for many years. It was more the memory of death than the smell of death itself, the air inside the small room trapped, festering for decades and becoming nearly toxic like the air within an excavated Egyptian tomb. Rich let the air clear for a minute, then moved in closer to have a look inside.
That was when he screamed.
Inside the small chamber were three long-dead corpses, and although it was difficult to tell by the state of their bodies, the way they were dressed told him he was looking at two men and one woman. They were all chained to the walls through steel loops set into the stone, and by the frozen screams permanently etched onto their leathery faces, their deaths had been horrible and the trio had suffered for a long time. Rich shone his light over the dead men and woman and was amazed at how well preserved they were. Their hair was long and scraggly, and they were dehydrated from the dry heat inside the church, but essentially they still looked human. Much older and desiccated than they had looked at the times of their death, Rich was sure; mere husks of the young men and woman they probably had once been.
“Fuck me!” Rich whispered, his voice echoing inside the room of death. “They’re like mummies! Juices sucked right out of them!”
For a moment, Rich couldn’t fathom what he was looking at here, or how something horrendous like this could have taken place inside a place of worship, but then he remembered Kelly’s story and realized he was probably looking at Joshua Miller’s followers—the last of the reverend’s faithful flock who’d stood with him on the night the village elders had come to put an end to Joshua’s wicked ways.
Cool! he thought. Weird and freakin’ crazy, but definitely cool!
Closing the door to the makeshift crypt again, Rich returned the dead bodies to darkness and ran up the stairs to try and locate the front door. He could hear the faint whack of Dan using his hatchet and wondered if anyone outside had heard him scream like a little girl downstairs. He hoped not, but in the end didn’t really care. Seeing three dead bodies wasn’t exactly a common event for anyone and Dan and Pat would have reacted the exact same way.
At the top of the stairs, a door opened into a large room with benches lining both sides. There were windows on the west wall, all boarded up tightly but a few slivers of light were sneaking in the cracks and making it easier to see up here than downstairs. From the setup of the room, it appeared to be a reception room or a common area where the villagers probably gathered before and after sermons. There was another secondary room that was long and narrow and was likely a coatroom. Making his way toward the sound of Dan working, Rich passed a set of double doors leading into the sanctuary but he didn’t want to go inside there yet. He had a pretty good idea what he was going to find inside that room and after seeing the bodies of Reverend Miller’s followers he had no desire to rush in and see what was left of Joshua. Not yet anyway. That was a treat best saved for when he had some company.
Rich easily located the front door, noticing there was also a staircase heading upstairs in this room as well. Probably the stairs leading to the bell tower, but that was an adventure for later as well. Right now he needed to get this door open and let some light, not to mention fresh air, inside. It was a lot warmer up on the main level, shockingly so, oven-hot almost, and Rich had sweat running down his face already and he hadn’t even done anything yet. If he were stuck inside here for too long, he would likely pass out from heat exhaustion within the hour.
“Made it, Dan,” Rich shouted, banging on the inside of the doors to get his friend’s attention. “It’s hotter than hell in here, buddy. Let’s get these damn things open. How you making out?”
“I got another two off but it’s tough slugging.”
“What can I do to help?”
“I don’t know. Will the original doors swing open from inside? If you can open them, at least all we have is the nailed-on planks to deal with.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Rich turned the handles and pulled backward but naturally it wasn’t going to be that easy. He set down his flashlight and grabbed one of the handles with both hands and yanked with all his might. He was rewarded with the door on that side creaking against a hundred nails and actually moving an inch inward. Getting his fingers in the crack, he heaved again and managed to move the door another inch. A shaft of light and a cool breeze blew in through the crack and felt wonderful on Rich’s face. He sucked in the fresh air, savoring the moment before exerting himself again on the door. No matter how much he pulled and yanked though, he couldn’t seem to get the door to budge any farther. Getting down on his knees, he could see outside where Dan and he had already removed the outside planks, and he had an idea.
“Hey, Dan, hand me one of those loose boards. If it will fit through this opening, I think we can use it as a pry bar to lever this sucker open.”
Dan slid the oak plank on its edge through the two-inch gap and when it was approximately halfway inside, both guys pulled from their respective ends, leaning their weight on the sturdy wood like boys on a rich prep school rowing team, bending it under the strain. Just when Rich was about to stop pulling and have a rest, a bunch of nails must have let loose and the left-hand door into the church popped open with a loud tearing and splitting noise that sounded like gunfire inside the sealed room.
“Yes!” Dan screamed from outside. “We did it!”
With five boards off now, there was a sizable gap more than large enough to crawl through to get inside but for a minute Dan and Rich just stared at each other with big grins on their faces, happily catching their breath.
“See anything in there on the way up here?” Dan asked.
“Yeah. Lots. No treasure yet but there’s dead bodies down in the basement. They’re not very pretty either so we might want to keep the girls out of there, but one way or the other I’d say it sure looks like Kelly’s grandfather knew what he was talking about.”
“Did you find Reverend Miller?”
“Nope. Haven’t looked in the sanctuary yet. Figured I’d save that treat for everyone. We gotta get some air flowing though. It’s way too damn hot in here.”
“We’ll open some windows or something. First I gotta see if Joshua’s there though. It’s been driving me crazy wondering if he’s really still in there.”
“Get Pat and the girls then. They’ll wanna see this too, I’m sure. Tell them to bring more flashlights. It’s pretty dark in here.”
Kelly was the last person to creep through the gap and enter the church. She wasn’t claustrophobic but there was something unsettling about getting on her hands and knees to voluntarily crawl into a dark, mysterious place. The heat hit her like a physical blow, worse still when Dan helped her to her feet. There was a stench to the church but it wasn’t overpowering or for that matter necessarily bad. To Kelly, it just smelled old and dry, like a well-used woodstove badly in need of cleaning.
The mood of the group was quite tense, everyone on edge and probably more uneasy than anyone wanted to admit. After all, this was a place of death, a house of torture, and it was difficult not to let their imaginations run wild on them. One by one they turned on their flashlights though, which helped dispel the gloom considerably, and once everyone realized there were no pointy-tailed devils or evil preachers lurking inside ready to devour them for daring to enter, they calmed down.
“Oh well, I’ve seen enough. There’s no treasure here, so let’s go!” Lizzy said, and everyone started laughing.
“You’re not getting away that easily, sweets,” Rich said. “Come on, the sanctuary door is over here.”
“Do we really have to?” Pat said, sounding a bit grumpy. “I mean, whether he’s in there or not, what’s the point?”
“The point is we’ll know for sure that we’re not wasting our time,” Dan said. “Jesus, Pat, did you walk all the way out here not to see him?”
“Oh he wants to see him,” Rich joked. “He’s just worried Joshua will look better than him still and he’ll be sleeping with you again.”
Everyone laughed, except for Pat, of course. Kim walked over and put her arm around her new boyfriend in a show of support. “No worries there, big guy. Tonight you’re all mine.”
The gang whooped and cheered at that comment, slapping Pat on the back and trying to cheer him up as best they could. For some reason he was in a bit of a funk but Kim’s promise definitely had put a smile back on his face for the time being. Hopefully he’d snap out of his bad mood for good.
“Here’s the sanctuary, guys,” Rich said. “Let’s check it out before Pat cums in his pants over there.”
“Fuck you, buddy,” Pat said.
“Sure, but I think you just got a better offer.”
Even Pat enjoyed that one, and they all joked and laughed their way inside the true heart of the church, moving inside a few feet but suddenly coming to a halt. A hush settled over the group, the fooling around instantly over as they walked a few tentative steps farther into the sanctuary. Whether it was from respect for the dead or from fear of the unknown, Kelly was unsure, but without any of them having to voice their thoughts, they’d all simply gone quiet as if on cue, the desecrated church returning to the silence it had enjoyed for decades. The temperature in here was rising, the smell of stale vegetation and dry-rotted wood even worse than in the other rooms. Dust motes danced in the air, as several flashlight beams tentatively crisscrossed the dark chamber before eventually all focusing in on the towering altar cross at the far end of the room.
Kelly only gasped, but Lizzy let loose the first scream and buried her head in her boyfriend’s chest.
“Unbelievable,” Rich said, stroking Lizzy’s hair. “It’s actually true. The freakin’ story’s true, Kelly. They really did crucify their preacher and leave him here to die.”
Kelly didn’t know how to respond, a mental and physical numbness akin to shock creeping over her body, leaving her at a loss for words as she stared up at the monstrosity that had once been a man. It was well over a hundred degrees in here and suddenly she felt chills, the tiny hairs on her arms standing at attention.
Joshua Miller’s corpse hung above them, his long arms still lashed tightly to the cross post with thick, braided ropes and his legs tied together and similarly strapped to the center beam. He was wearing a tattered brown robe, moth eaten and open at the chest, mottled with black bloodstains where he’d long ago torn his flesh frantically trying to struggle free of the ropes that bound him in place. His exposed skin was withered and pulled taut, a husk of dead gray flesh that looked as dry as beef jerky and thin as onion paper. As incredible as it seemed, Joshua Miller had been mummified on the cross from his lengthy stay in this smoldering hot crypt, the stifling temperature slow-cooking the poor man’s life juices out of him over the years.
The preacher’s head slumped forward toward his chest, his long black hair hanging in a tangled ruin mercifully covering up most of his leathery face and whatever pain-filled expression death had frozen his features in. Strangest-looking of all, and something that happens to all people when they die, Joshua’s nails had continued to grow after his final breath, his fingers now tipped with long black talons, his toenails shredding the ends of his homemade leather shoes and curling a full two inches beyond. Below him, some of the floorboards had caved in and more of the massive green cornstalks had pushed up through the old boards and intertwined around his desiccated legs, unnatural fingers reaching up from the strangely fertile earth to claim their grisly prize.
Even in his emaciated state, it was clear to everyone that in life Reverend Miller must have been a massive man. Although skeletal, his frame was huge, his arms stretched out like the wings of a giant bat, his legs seemingly endless, the segmented limbs of a monstrous spider. Just looking at him now in this pitiful state was enough to make Kelly tremble. She couldn’t imagine how intimidating this man must have been back in her grandfather’s youth.
