you’re here anyway.”
I couldn’t hear the awkward shrug from Sawyer, but I could see it, as by then I’d opened the door just a crack. They were standing and talking in a loose triangle just in front of the altar, Noreen and Atterberry facing away from me. I knew Sawyer couldn’t see me behind the door, so I came out of the bell tower anteroom and waved at him, creeping across the narthex to the other side. He only vaguely acknowledged me, averting his eyes from the movement.
Luckily, Atterberry didn’t notice, and he nearly did, when I almost ran into a candelabrum because I wasn’t watching where I was going. I pulled the key out, boogied over to the other door like a ninja running the last five yards of a game-winning touchdown, stuck the key right into the old deadbolt lock, and turned it.
There was a faint click!, and my heart leapt in shock and fear.
I peered over the top of the rearmost pew to see if anyone was looking at me. They weren’t, so I turned and opened the door only to find myself face to face with a most opaque darkness. I literally could not see anything beyond the door’s threshold.
So, I walked right in and eased the door shut behind me.
_______
The musty void I’d hurled myself into threatened to consume me with dread. I knew only that I was standing on a staircase because the floor was extremely uneven. If I hadn’t been so nimble, I might have taken another tumble down the stairs, and those never end well.
I rotated slowly, feeling my way with my toes, and took my cellphone out, shining it all around me, illuminating my surroundings with an eerie blue glow. The walls of the stairwell were simple red bricks, dusty and draped with buntings of cobwebs that looked like black cotton candy. The stairs were ancient-looking and wooden, jostling side by side like an old man’s teeth.
Several steps down, they veered to the left and continued downward into a space under the nave. I followed them, creeping sideways, ready to charge back up the stairs at the first provocation.
I descended into some sort of a dirt-floored cellar. Tiny cockroaches scattered from the glow of my cellphone. I looked up at the ceiling just a foot above my head, and crouched out of fear. A few fat spiders lurked in the spaces between the joists of the narthex floor overhead.
I duck-walked away from them and saw an opening in the dirt wall to my right that continued deeper into the floor under the nave. I gazed inside. My phone’s sorry shine did nothing to reveal anything beyond a ten-foot length of narrow tunnel.
Abandoning my senses, I ventured inside and stoop-walked down the length of it.
I came out into a roughly-hewn room about twenty feet square. The walls of it were a smooth, unbroken stone comprised of what seemed to be the same material making up the bricks that were used to build the church. Above me, I could hear Atterberry and my friends talking to each other, their words muffled by a layer of carpet, probably some insulating layer, and wood flooring.
I did some quick mental math and decided that I was directly underneath the altar and the big brown Jesus. The walls to my left and right were broken into bold white stripes. I approached them and found that there were wide swaths of canvas hanging from the walls like tapestries, with unfamiliar words and phrases scrawled on them in black.
I noticed something jutting out of the stone wall over the hole I’d entered from, so I stood up and got close with my phone. Someone had hammered what appeared to be a railroad spike into the wall’s surface near the ceiling, leaving only about an inch protruding. It angled downward almost imperceptibly, as if having supported a great weight for many years.
The dialogue overhead tapered into silence, and I heard footsteps making their way off to my right. A door closed.
Something moved behind me.
I spun and thrust the cellphone out, flooding a nearby corner with light. My relief at not finding
I couldn’t hear the awkward shrug from Sawyer, but I could see it, as by then I’d opened the door just a crack. They were standing and talking in a loose triangle just in front of the altar, Noreen and Atterberry facing away from me. I knew Sawyer couldn’t see me behind the door, so I came out of the bell tower anteroom and waved at him, creeping across the narthex to the other side. He only vaguely acknowledged me, averting his eyes from the movement.
Luckily, Atterberry didn’t notice, and he nearly did, when I almost ran into a candelabrum because I wasn’t watching where I was going. I pulled the key out, boogied over to the other door like a ninja running the last five yards of a game-winning touchdown, stuck the key right into the old deadbolt lock, and turned it.
There was a faint click!, and my heart leapt in shock and fear.
I peered over the top of the rearmost pew to see if anyone was looking at me. They weren’t, so I turned and opened the door only to find myself face to face with a most opaque darkness. I literally could not see anything beyond the door’s threshold.
So, I walked right in and eased the door shut behind me.
_______
The musty void I’d hurled myself into threatened to consume me with dread. I knew only that I was standing on a staircase because the floor was extremely uneven. If I hadn’t been so nimble, I might have taken another tumble down the stairs, and those never end well.
I rotated slowly, feeling my way with my toes, and took my cellphone out, shining it all around me, illuminating my surroundings with an eerie blue glow. The walls of the stairwell were simple red bricks, dusty and draped with buntings of cobwebs that looked like black cotton candy. The stairs were ancient-looking and wooden, jostling side by side like an old man’s teeth.
Several steps down, they veered to the left and continued downward into a space under the nave. I followed them, creeping sideways, ready to charge back up the stairs at the first provocation.
I descended into some sort of a dirt-floored cellar. Tiny cockroaches scattered from the glow of my cellphone. I looked up at the ceiling just a foot above my head, and crouched out of fear. A few fat spiders lurked in the spaces between the joists of the narthex floor overhead.
I duck-walked away from them and saw an opening in the dirt wall to my right that continued deeper into the floor under the nave. I gazed inside. My phone’s sorry shine did nothing to reveal anything beyond a ten-foot length of narrow tunnel.
Abandoning my senses, I ventured inside and stoop-walked down the length of it.
I came out into a roughly-hewn room about twenty feet square. The walls of it were a smooth, unbroken stone comprised of what seemed to be the same material making up the bricks that were used to build the church. Above me, I could hear Atterberry and my friends talking to each other, their words muffled by a layer of carpet, probably some insulating layer, and wood flooring.
I did some quick mental math and decided that I was directly underneath the altar and the big brown Jesus. The walls to my left and right were broken into bold white stripes. I approached them and found that there were wide swaths of canvas hanging from the walls like tapestries, with unfamiliar words and phrases scrawled on them in black.
I noticed something jutting out of the stone wall over the hole I’d entered from, so I stood up and got close with my phone. Someone had hammered what appeared to be a railroad spike into the wall’s surface near the ceiling, leaving only about an inch protruding. It angled downward almost imperceptibly, as if having supported a great weight for many years.
The dialogue overhead tapered into silence, and I heard footsteps making their way off to my right. A door closed.
Something moved behind me.
I spun and thrust the cellphone out, flooding a nearby corner with light. My relief at not finding
Similar Books
