“Speak for yourself,” L.J. responded. “We have the numbers.”
“Have you been paying attention toanything?” Thomas seethed. “Every person who disappears, every whisper in the darkest of allies. It’s all about them. The people in our world fear them.”
“There are thousands of us,” L.J. replied. “More if we train some of these Favorites to act as our shield. It wouldn’t take more than thirty minutes to rid the world of them, then we would truly be kings.”
Someone scoffed. “This is not a goddamn battlefield,” Thomas swore. “This is real life. We won’t meet somewhere and fight to the death, they will pick us off one by one. None of you can be taking this seriously, right?”
“We don’t have another choice, Thomas,” Mr. Young replied.
“We have to find another choice,” he argued. “The whole underworld knows of them, yet nobody even knows who they are,” he pushed. “We would be fighting ghosts. It’s a lose-lose situation. Father, you have to see that. The Shadows are impossible to fight. Nobody even knows what they look like, nobody knows their names. All we know is that she is now one of them.”
He was right, even I had heard of the Shadows and their strange ritual before, I was intrigued by it. By all of it. A story whispered through the world this church lived in. The Shadows, the sons and daughters of the infamous Malachi Adler, untouchable by all, feared by all. They could ‘Claim’ someone if they decided that man or woman were worthy enough. They branded them. I only knew about it because Thomas had brought it up to his father in private once.
He worried that one day, The Family would come after us, and now that Mr. Alascer had made this crucial mistake with his daughter, Thomas’ fears were coming to light.
Despite Thomas’ fears, however, he liked the idea of branding Favorites. To the point that he pushed and pushed, telling Pastor Masters how that would show the world that we were truly dedicated to the life of God, to worshiping him for all of eternity.
Pastor Masters had said absolutely not. We would not follow in the footsteps of The Family. Even if the rumors of that ritual were false, we could never partake in an idea that came from them.
One late night, however, when the world was silent, I remembered having a dream about being branded. But it wasn’t by Thomas or anyone in the church, for that matter, it was by a faceless being. One with horns and a shattered mask. A fallen angel, I had told myself. A dark guardian of all things evil and vile.
I had broken the rules on purpose the next day just to punish myself for ever having such a dream.
So now hearing Thomas talk with such disgust about that very same ritual, it was contradicting.
But, I suppose, he always liked to contradict himself.
There were four Mississippi’s of silence before Pastor Masters spoke again. “Alascer, you’ve taken care of all the loose ends?”
“They took care of many of them,” he responded flatly. “I’m working on the rest.”
He sighed. “Very well. We’ll send a message to the Elders, what they do after that is out of our hands, for now, no traveling. No anything. Stay under the radar, keep quiet, don’t make any waves. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Sir,” sounded throughout the empty sanctuary and I couldn’t help but wonder if God had echoed their response or if he was watching on in silence, just like me.
~ ~ ~
December 24th, 2019
I didn’t expect to feel his eyes tonight, not on Christmas Eve. Yet there they were, lingering over me, warming me, making me want to shiver.
I have found myself looking forward to his monthly visits. Sometimes he even came more than once a month, and those times were my favorite.
I wasn’t sure if Pastor Masters had spoken to him yet, but I did know Thomas’ mood was getting increasingly worse every time the sea came to church.
I didn’t know if he was kind or cruel. He never said much, but I did know that when he came, it felt like the sea came too.
The sea in all of its infinite, unending power.
When people refer to the sea, they give it a female gender.“There she goes,”they’ll say.“Her waves are going to be rough during this storm.”
But that’s not the case, I know this for certain.
He is the sea and the sea is him.
I wondered how many ships have crashed in his waters. How many storms had he unleashed upon this world.
I wouldn’t mind him unleashing an unrelenting storm upon this place, even if the water’s drowned me.
