by Gord Rollo
“Sorry to ruin the moment but what the heck is that thing shining up there?”
“Shining? Where? What are you blabbing about?”
“Up there at the top of the ladder. You can only see it from on your back. See?”
Rich rolled over and looked up. His eyes followed her outstretched finger and he too saw the light catch something hanging over the edge of the top rung. He removed his shirt from on top of the flashlight and was rewarded with another bright flash of color from above. “That’s strange. It almost looks metallic, the way the light dances off it.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking too. To be honest, with how shiny it is, it looks like something made out of gold. Maybe a ring or something?”
“Yeah…or a coin.”
Rich and Lizzy looked into each other’s eyes, an unspoken excitement building in both their minds but neither wanting to say it out loud. Eventually, Rich had to ask, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Part of Joshua’s treasure,” Lizzy said, a statement rather than a question.
“Maybe more than just part, sweets. Nobody ever did climb up there to have a good look around. We were worried the ladder wasn’t safe and just presumed the reverend would never risk stashing his gold in the church because it was too public of a place.”
“Not up there it’s not. Nobody would bother going up there.”
“Exactly. Which is why we should have checked it.”
“It’s not too late. Get your skinny little ass up there.”
“You always did know how to sweet-talk me,” Rich said, leaning over to kiss Lizzy on the lips before getting to his feet. “Okay…you hold the flashlight from down here. I just hope these old ladder rungs hold me.”
“Me too. Go slow and be careful.”
Rich took a moment to pull on his T-shirt and boxers, not wanting to climb the rickety ladder in the nude. Semi-dressed, he rubbed his hands together for luck and started up the handholds attached on the wall. The old wooden rungs creaked and groaned under his weight but felt secure enough that they weren’t going to break. Nearing the top, he could have reached over and felt the cast-iron bell but it held little interest to him tonight, his attention narrowed down to the small metal circle sitting half on and half off the top rung. He gently picked it up and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, surprised by how heavy it felt.
It was a solid gold coin.
A 1929 five-dollar Indian head coin to be exact, with a headdress-wearing native on one side and an American eagle depicted on the opposite. Despite its obvious age, the coin was in mint condition and could have passed casual inspection as brand-new.
“Enough with the suspense,” Lizzy said from the ground. “What is it?”
“Have a look for yourself.” Rich tossed the coin down to his naked girlfriend and watched as her face lit up with excitement.
“Oh my God! It’s gorgeous! What do you think something like this is worth?”
“No idea…but it’s a shitload more than the five bucks it was worth back then.”
“Are there any more of them up there?”
Good question. When Rich turned his attention back to the wall, he finally saw the horizontal gap in the first wooden plank above the ladder and followed it with his eyes until it joined another gap heading vertically. Holy shit! he thought, realizing what he had found. “You’re not gonna believe this, but I think there’s a hidden doorway up here. It isn’t huge, but it’s big enough for someone to crawl inside.”
“Maybe it leads out onto the roof.”
“I don’t think so,” Rich said, pushing on the center of the cut-out area and watching in nervous anticipation as the door swung out of the way on hidden hinges, revealing what appeared to be a secret room but it was too dark inside to tell. There was a crude unfinished wooden floor and he could just see the hint of roof rafters above, but unfortunately everything else was shrouded in darkness. “Can you throw me up the flashlight, hon?”
Lizzy did as she was asked, and as soon as Rich shone the beam of light into the newly revealed room his heart started to race, adrenaline pumping through his veins at the unbelievable sight he was staring at. There were gold coins everywhere. Four or five bags of them. Silver coins too. Even two large bowls filled to overflowing with diamond rings and pearl necklaces and many other pieces of expensive jewelry.
They’d done it. They’d found Joshua Miller’s treasure stash, all the money and valuables he’d hoarded away from the starving neighboring communities, charging outlandish fees for the privilege of eating their plentiful corn crops at a time when no one else was able to grow food of their own.
“Well?” Lizzy asked, the suspense driving her crazy. “What do you see?”
“Something beautiful,” Rich said, not trying to be vague, just being totally honest. The treasure was indeed beautiful, the answer to all of their hopes and dreams. With this kind of cash, their money troubles were over. He and Dan’s business could get back to being fun again, Kelly could open up her restaurant, and Lizzy would finally be able to start her own hair salon. Both couples could probably start to seriously discuss getting married soon too, and with thoughts of a grand double wedding ceremony in his head, Rich reached into the room to pull out one of the bags of gold coins.
A giant hand shot out of the darkness behind the door, latching onto Rich’s wrist and pinning his arm to the floor. The hideous mummified leather face of Joshua Miller came into view, his foul breath whispering only inches away from Rich’s ear.
“The eighth commandment, boy?” the reverend said. “Thou shalt not steal!”
“What the fuck…” Rich said, terror gripping his body but having enough desire to get away that he pulled back his trapped arm as hard as he could. He managed to break free, but his momentum carried him backward, toppling him off the ladder and sending him pinwheeling toward the ground. In his panic, he let go of the light.
From below, and having no idea what had just happened, Lizzy managed to catch the dropped flashlight but not the body of the man she loved. Rich dropped to the hard wooden floor, landing heavily on his back. Lizzy was sure he’d be dead or paralyzed, but within seconds Rich was struggling to climb to his feet. It all happened so fast, she hadn’t even had a chance to scream, but that all changed when she looked up and saw the monstrous creature crawling out of the secret door at the top of the ladder. It was part man, part plant, and all nightmare, with sharp teeth and sharp claws, clinging to the wooden ceiling with its long, spindly arms and legs.
She watched in horror as the scarecrow-thing dropped to the ground beside her and only then did she recognize who it was that clamped one of his dirty hands over her mouth to stifle her cries. Rich had miraculously made it back onto his feet, however unsteadily, and charged at Reverend Miller’s exposed back, but he was too slow. Lizzy was forced to watch as Joshua let go of her long enough to grab Rich, reach into the air, and snag the bell rope as high up as he could, then loop it several times around Rich’s throat in one smooth motion as he tried to save her. When the reverend let go of the cord, it hoisted Rich’s body into the air, dangling him several inches off the ground and cutting off his air supply. Rich immediately started to choke and gag, unable to draw a breath and the more he struggled to breathe, the tighter the rope knotted around his throat.
The church bell started to ring, deafeningly loud inside the quiet room.
“Let him down, you bastard,” Lizzy yelled at the man she thought had died seven decades earlier. She took a swing at his head with the flashlight, trying to fight him off and save Rich, but he caught her hand easily and laughed in her face. Behind them Rich’s face was turning blue and his eyes were starting to bulge out a little from the pressure. “Stop! You’re killing him!” Lizzy screamed.
“That’s the idea,” Joshua said. “Here, have a closer look at the wages of your sin.”
He lifted Lizzy off her feet and held her up face-to-face with Rich, whose eyes were bleeding now, and he�
��d all but stopped struggling. For a moment, he recognized her, tried to move his lips to say something, but then he was gone, hanging limp on the end of the rope as his bowels and bladder let loose.
“Noooooo!” Lizzy cried out, unable to believe the love of her life was dead.
She tried to lash out at the reverend, to kick and punch and smash and scratch, and pull out his long, greasy hair—anything that would inflict pain to this hulking man-monster holding her off the ground easily, as if she were a child. Nothing she did had much of an effect on him though, and her will to fight back was running out. Without Rich, what reason did she have to live? Murdering her would be a blessing.
The scarecrow drew her closer, smiling down at her misery, letting her get a good long look at his rotted black mouth. The flashlight slipped out of her quivering hand and dropped to the floor, breaking the bulb and snuffing out the only light in the room. Lizzy was shocked to realize that the reverend’s eyes somehow glowed in the dark, two small green fires in the gloom, but thankfully he closed them when he leaned in for the kill. Apparently he didn’t need to see the look of terror on her face anymore.
And his teeth could easily find their way to her throat in the darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The tolling of the church bell startled both Kelly and Dan awake out of a sound sleep, but it wasn’t until it had rung several more times that they were lucid enough to realize the loud noise wasn’t part of their dreams and start to wonder what the heck was going on. Kelly sat up, reaching over to feel for Dan beside her in their joined sleeping bags. It was pitch-black inside the reception area and for a moment she panicked, thinking he, Lizzy, and Rich might be gone and she was left here all alone. Thankfully her hand touched his warm, familiar chest and he sat up next to her.
“What’s happening?” Dan asked.
“No idea,” Kelly answered. “I just woke up to this too. Rich? Lizzy?”
When neither of their friends responded, Dan felt around and finally found his flashlight. Clicking it on chased the darkness away and showed them that Rich and Lizzy were no longer sleeping in the room with them, but it still gave them no answer as to why someone would be making such a racket in the middle of the night or who was doing it.
“You dressed?” Dan asked.
“Yep. Fell asleep with my clothes on.”
“Me too. Come on then…let’s find out what’s going on.”
Together they walked into the front room, hearing some commotion going on above their heads, but it wasn’t until they were just about at the foot of the stairs leading up to the bell tower when they heard Lizzy start to scream. Kelly had never heard her best friend make a sound like that before but it was undeniably her voice, and it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Deep down she knew it hadn’t been simply a shout of surprise or even a cry of fear; it had been a soul-tearing scream of unbearable pain and suffering and Kelly skidded to a stop, not wanting to move another inch up the stairs to find out what had happened. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.
“Come on, Kel. Move your ass. Sounds like she’s in trouble.”
Dan dragged her up the stairs as quickly as he could, flashlight probing ahead with one hand and Kelly slowing him down in the other. As they neared the top of the stairs, Rich’s head and shoulders were what came into view in the circle of light first. He was staring right at them but there was blood on his face and his tongue was oddly sticking out of his mouth. Something was obviously wrong with him.
“Rich!” Dan shouted. “What the hell are you…?” he started to say, but the words trailed away as they crested the stairs and the flashlight beam traveled down his body and they saw Rich’s feet were hovering four inches off the ground. It was only then that they smelled Rich’s evacuated bowels and noticed the thin rope wrapped tightly around their friend’s neck.
Kelly screamed her throat sore but the real terror didn’t set in until Dan heard slurping noises off to their left and slowly swung the beam of light in that direction. In the corner of the room a huge man was pinning Lizzy to the floor, with his head buried in her stomach, tearing huge chunks of flesh and muscle out of his way, trying to get into the sweet meat within her. Lizzy was already dead, a huge hole torn in her throat so deep they could see the bony coils of her spinal column glinting in the flashlight beam. When the light hit them, Lizzy’s killer lifted his head and smiled, his leathery face painted red from the eyes down.
“Sweet Mary, mother of God!” Dan said, unconsciously making the sign of the cross on his chest. “It’s…it’s him! Joshua Miller!”
“That’s Reverend Miller to you, heathen!” the scarecrow said. “Care for a taste?” He laughed and went back to his feast, burying his face into Lizzy’s belly again.
Kelly made a move to go after him, to somehow try and help her friend even though she knew they were too late to save her. Dan grabbed her arm though and pulled her in the opposite direction, dragging her back down the stairs. He had no idea where they could go but anywhere other than here seemed like a good place to start.
“Run, Kelly!” Dan shouted, taking the stairs two at a time and hoping his shocked girlfriend would be able to keep up.
“That’s it,” Reverend Miller shouted down the stairs after them, still enjoying his gruesome meal. “Go ahead and run, boy…but it won’t do you a lick of good. You hear me? Not a lick!”
Dan and Kelly heard him all right, but it wasn’t about to stop them from trying. The chase was on and giving up wasn’t one of their options. They planned on running hard and running fast, like the devil himself was on their tail.
And he was…
Chapter Twenty-Eight
At the bottom of the tower stairs, Dan suddenly pulled to a stop. Kelly tried to continue on out the front door of the church, to get as far of a head start on the monstrosity upstairs as they could before it finished feeding, but her boyfriend still had a hold of her hand and brought her to a halt with him.
“Why are you stopping?” she asked. “We have to get the hell out of here!”
“Hold on a sec,” Dan whispered, trying to remain calm and think. “Running outside’s exactly what he’ll expect us to do. Come with me…and be quiet.” He shut off the flashlight to hide their movements.
It was incredibly hard not to run outside into the open air to hide in the cornfield or try making it all the way over to the woods, but Kelly trusted Dan to take care of her and as quietly as they could they stepped away from the doorway and silently slid inside the large coatroom and closed the door. It was hot and dark inside the walk-in closet but there was nothing they could do about that. They couldn’t open the door and there was no way they could risk turning on the flashlight. Not yet, anyway. Dan held Kelly in his arms and they silently waited to see if their ruse had worked.
Moments later, they heard heavy footsteps coming down the stairs and for a few excruciatingly long seconds Reverend Miller stopped in the doorway, probably trying to decide which way they’d gone. The longer he just stood there doing nothing, the surer Kelly was that he knew they were still inside the church. At any moment, she expected the coatroom door to be yanked open and the creature who had once been a man to charge inside and start ripping them limb from limb. She pictured poor sweet Lizzy lying upstairs covered in bite marks and nearly lost it, biting her cheek to hold in the screams that fought to get out.
Just when the tension hit unbearable levels, they heard the reverend curse and run outside. He stomped down the stairs and headed off into the night, finally allowing Dan and Kelly a chance to breathe. They were safe for the moment, but they both knew that wouldn’t last for long. If Joshua didn’t find signs of them outside soon, he’d backtrack and eventually realize they were still inside the church.
“What’s happening, Dan?” Kelly asked. “How is that awful thing alive? Joshua Miller had to have died seventy-four years ago. None of this is possible!”
“Shhh…Kel, quiet down. I don’t know what the fuck’s
gong on here either but we can’t worry about all that right now. If we panic, we’re dead.”
“But what are we gonna do? We can’t stay in here. He’ll come back and find us…you know he will.”
“We’ll be gone before he gets here. We’re just gonna give him a minute to get into the fields or go over by our tents or whatever, then we’re going to sneak off in the opposite direction.”
“How are we gonna know which way he went? We might run right into his arms.”
“Hopefully we’ll see him out there. He’s not the one hiding, right, so he should be easy to spot. That’s why I wanted to give him the slip like this. Our odds are far better if we’re behind him than out front…if we’re the hunters instead of the other way around.”
Kelly took a deep breath and tried to relax a little. If she had any hope of getting out of this field alive she knew she needed to stay as calm as possible and do exactly what Dan told her to. She backed up a step to lean against the wall, and when she did her hand brushed up against something soft. Confused, she felt around a little and traced her hand down a length of fabric until her fingers touched skin to skin with what she was sure were the fingers of someone’s cold hand. Too cold. Kelly was too frightened to even guess who this might be, but through her mounting fear she was coherent enough to realize there were only two possible choices.
Don’t scream…don’t scream…don’t scream, Kelly thought.
“Dan?” she said softly, barely able to breathe.
“Just thirty more seconds, honey…promise.”
“Dan?” she tried again, frozen in fear on the spot.
“What?”
“Turn the light on please. I don’t think we’re alone in here.”
Without a word, Dan pulled Kelly toward him and turned on the flashlight. He kept it pointed to the back of the coatroom so as little of the light would seep under the closet door as possible but there was no doubt he was giving their position away if he left the light on for long. Turned out he only needed the light on for about three seconds, more than enough time for them to see their friend Pat’s body hanging upside down from one of the steel hooks on the wall normally used to hold parishioners’ jackets. Pat had been beaten to death, the exposed skin of his arms, neck, and face swollen and bruised black and purple to the point it was difficult to recognize him anymore. His skull was deformed, violently crushed like a fragile eggshell beneath a great weight and there was a puddle of dried black blood pooled on the hardwood floor beneath where he hung.
