While I didn’t know the contents, I knew in my bones, it was from the same people who had contacted Kansas about the documentary.
They knew where I lived.
Rule 11 - Constantine
Know the layout.
Brush and dried twigs crunched under my boots as I trudged through the woods. It had been almost a decade, but I still knew the path well. I shifted my backpack and kept walking. I put my hood up to cover my face from the thin, long-reaching branches. I’d be covered in cuts and scratches if I wasn’t careful.
What a pain that’d be.
The wind howled, creating a whistling sound as it moved through the dead trees.I came across a few indications that people had been through here. A filthy mattress, pop cans, snack wrappers, used condoms, and brown beer bottles. The stuff stupid teens brought with them when they were feeling brave and idiotic.I could almost hear them in my head.
“Let’s go see the Sinister Minister’s church!”
“I wonder if there’s ghosts!”
“Who can last the longest inside?”
Over time, once the police were done with it, kids started using the church, the place I’d lived for the first twelve years of my life, as a make-out spot. As the original owner of the land was dead, no one could stop them from trespassing, so why not?
I was half a mile in when the large building took shape. From a distance, it was as I recalled when I saw it for the first time. It was a small church building with a large cross on its steeple. That was it. A church buried deep in the woods. Nothing… sinister.
What a fucking lie that was.
I kept moving. I had a goal in mind tonight. I wanted to see the damage ten years of reckless teenage drinking had done to the place and try to clean it up some. Just enough for me not to vomit every time I stepped inside.
It was my inheritance, after all.
I reached the double doors and pushed on them for half a second before freezing. Were those giggles? I listened harder, and sure enough, it was.
People were here.
Sliding my backpack off my shoulder, I unzipped it and pulled out my hunting knife and my mask. Quickly, I pulled the mask over my face and removed the knife from its sheath and held it up to the moonlight. I took pride in maintaining it, and it shone brightly.
I zipped my bag up, slid it back on my shoulders, and gently pushed on the door, rather than kick it down like I’d originally planned. The door creaked, but the voices were coming from down below in the basement. They were so loud, they didn’t hear me open, close, and then lock the front door. I looked around and grinned. It was a miscreant’s paradise. A good miscreant, anyways. Not the ones that used to occupy this place when I was here.
I explored the upstairs, admiring the graffiti on the once-pristine walls. Everything smelled like mildew and rat piss, which I almost thought was better than the lemon cleaner they used so much up here.That was how my dad and the rest of the Family got away with everything for so long. On the surface, everything was perfect. Deep red carpets vacuumed daily. Pews were polished weekly and hymnals were dusted as often.
The organ was expensive, as was the pulpit my dad stood at and spilled his bullshit out to the crowd. On days in which nosey people from Shelley Vale came to attend service, he’d change up his sermons to something more palatable. Loving thy neighbor was a common theme those Sundays.
Someone had spray-paintedCHOMOon his pulpit.I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of it. I almost wanted to frame it.The giggling grew louder, and I turned around. I had gotten so lost in the new look of this place, I had almost forgotten about the kids in the basement.
Carefully, I tiptoed toward the basement stairs. They were in the common room. If I went straight down, they’d see me.I tightened my grip around the knife and listened in.
“I can’t believe I’ve never been down here,” a boy said.
“The best time to go is in October,” a girl said. “That’s when it’s the most haunted.”
“You’re so dumb,” another girl said. “It’s not haunted. Although it is giving that.”
“It does serve,” another guy said. I rolled my eyes.I stepped away from the stairs. I’d go the back way.
Despite there being no electricity anymore, the shattered glass-stained windows brought in the moonlight well enough for me to navigate through the mess of broken boards, twigs, and ripped-apart hymnals. I reached my dad’s office and found more graffiti with disgusting, yet accurate words on the door, and inside on the walls.
His desk was beaten with a metal bat. It was broken into large chunks on the floor. Every crazy bible of his that had been left behind had been pulled apart and scattered. The carpets had been pulled up and it looked like small fires had been started in here, but I didn’t have time to go through it all. I didn’t fucking care. I wanted to push the bookcase aside and go through the door that led downstairs to… the studio.
When I shoved it aside, I was unsurprised to see people had discovered the not-so-secret door. There wasn’t a door at all anymore, just a long, dark tunnel down. I pulled out my phone again and shone the flashlight down, half expecting to see something hiding in the dark.I crept down and paused at the base of the steps. I’d only been in this room once to film. It was the last time I’d spoken to her, during the ceremony.The memories flooded through me so fast, so hard, I had to lean against the wall.
