by J.R. Torina
The most likely place to stay safe from the foreboding haze hanging over the city was a higher vantage point. To that end, the three friends headed into the mountains, the entrance to which was just around the corner from the store.
As they drove upwards on the winding mountain road, the trees loomed over them, seeming to close in ominously. The once cheerful bright autumn colors now stood out sharply like beacons of life—dying life—against the grim gray of the autumn sky, that while depressing, were hardly somber compared to the hanging miasma which threatened to engulf the city below.
“Look!” Alice yelled out, pointing ahead. A figure dressed all in black was walking into the middle of the road ahead, waving his arms at them to stop.
For a split second Will thought they were being made to turn around by the police. Upon noticing the man wasn’t wearing a uniform, Will considered the man was just a local that didn’t want a bunch of refugees from the city to start flocking in.
“Police?” Burton questioned out loud.
Burton slowed the car to a halt off to the side of the road, and rolled down the window.
The man in black practically oozed up to the car window, leaning down to look inside. He was of a wiry build, with a dark mop of curly black hair. He appeared to be in his late forties. They noticed he wore a white priest’s collar, as he leaned down.
“You guys heading up here to get away from the Phage?” he asked.
“You got it” Burton answered.
The man lifted a hand into the window, which Burton grasped in a friendly shake.
“My name is Tom, Father Tom,” he introduced himself. “I bet you guys thought I was a cop or some crazed Phage victim.”
There was some nervous laughter from the friends in the car. “We were just at Lanzo’s down there, at the foot of the mountain. We had no idea about any disease or whatever, then suddenly the news came on, and everyone went crazy,” Burton responded.
Will added to his woes, “That was all bad enough, but then a girl wandered in, she was freaking out, like she thought she was going to die...and she did... She just...rotted away...or dissolved...right there. I’ve never seen anything like it. We decided to get the hell outta Dodge. Er...sorry, Father,” Will added, laughing nervously.
“It’s quite alright, don’t worry. I’m sure we could all use a little humor right about now. I’ve heard similar bad news myself. You were all right to get the “hell” out of Dodge, to be sure; and please, call me Tom, “Father” is so formal. You kids should pull down this path, I have a cabin up here, I use it for meditation and such. I also have a parish up here, you’ll be safe until we figure out what to do.”
With a sweeping motion of his arm, he indicated a leaf-strewn path at the entrance of an ornate black iron gate.
They clambered out of the car and followed the pathway indicated by the Minister’s outstretched arm, kicking up a trail of dust behind them in the still dry and barely warm mountain air.
***
It was dawn, the day after. Burton and Alice sat together, under a blanket, sipping hot coffee from the camping supplies they had initially brought with them. They stared out into the valley beyond, from high up on this vantage point. The cloud of fog was still nestled over the city, so thickly that only the spires and tops of certain tall buildings protruded through. It was like looking down onto a misty ocean.
“It all looks so peaceful from up here, doesn’t it? So deceiving.” They jumped a bit, startled by the voice of the Minister from directly behind them.
***
Will had suffered from a fitful, restless sleep. He’d slipped out of the chalet where the Minister had let them sleep over. The dusty cots weren’t comfortable, and there was an oppressive silence that bothered him to the point he decided to slip outside and try to get some rest back in the car.
He couldn’t get the bubbling, viscous images of decomposing death out of his head. More to the point, it was the girl. He felt so helpless, so sorry for her. The sorrow and anguish in her voice; the fear...
He lay there with the early morning light streaming in through the windows, in the comforting familiarity of the van. He decided it wasn’t worth any further pondering on this matter, nor was there any point to remaining in this airless metal box.
He got up and out of the van, straightened out his aching body, and went to find the others.
After walking down the pathway towards the chalet he left his friends in, William heard a gurgling stream nearby and decided a little splash of cold mountain water would help to clear away the grime and the stress. The stream was several paces away from the path. He knelt down at the edge of the gurgling creek and splashed cold, clear water on his face. He leaned back, his eyes shut, feeling the cold water over his face mixing with the warm autumn sunlight.
Thinking of what their next move should be, he looked down, studying the smooth, round rocks in the stream. Perhaps they should leave the state? Or maybe just stay up here? Maybe everything would just blow over. What if it was just some military poison gas that had escaped, a test gone wrong, or something to do with nuclear waste?
He noticed a red tincture mixed in with the water that was dripping off of his hands. Examining his arms, he found no evidence of scratches or cuts. He looked down again. The water had a rivulet of red going through it. What the hell?
He looked upstream, wondering if maybe a deer or other type of mountain animal had died, its carcass polluting the stream. What he saw took him a moment to process. Carcasses, yes. Not deer, not bears or raccoons, but...people. Human beings. Men and women. Even some children.
“What in the hell...” Human bodies. His heart was beating fast as he moved closer to inspect them.
They were dead, all of them. At least seven that he could see. Dead and rotting. Some were partially hidden in the sand and mud along the stream’s banks. Others were simply thrown there, while some of them seemed to have been half-hidden, in some desperate attempt at burying them. Dismembered body parts were scattered about here and there, some partially hidden, halfway submerged in the sandy mud.
From his vantage point, standing there, Will was surrounded by bodies decomposing into the mud. A pronounced trickle of red mixing with the stream water and muddy banks came from a what appeared to be a fresh body laying directly across the stream further up the bank. It looked to Will like he was standing in the aftermath of a battlefield.
The Minister startled him by saying "It’s horrible isn’t it?" in his soft, soothing voice.
Will jerked around.
“Yes...yes, this is horrible...” he said, absently. “What in the hell happened up here, Father? Did you know about this? What’s going on? Did these people all die from the Phage?”
“No, my son, not the Phage. I saved them from the Phage.”
Warning bells sounded in Will’s head. “Saved them...?”
“Yes. They came up here, much as you and your friends have, seeking refuge yesterday morning. I couldn’t just let them go back down there. Instead I’ve sent their souls on their way to heaven. So much better than the grisly fate that awaited them down below, don’t you think, my son?”
Deciding that he was ill placed in a remote location in the company and at the mercy of a madman, Will simply played along. “Oh, yes...they are spared... that horrible death. I’ve seen what happens...”
“Yes, yes,” the Minister added excitedly. “Come, let me show you my house of worship.”
***
Will made sure to walk to the side and slightly behind the Minister, his heart racing, a cold sweat coating his body. It was slightly warmer out now, with just a hint of a chill as it was autumn. Will knew his sweat was from fear for his life and not from any fall weather. He had to think fast.
They headed toward a small abode constructed out of brick and wood. It appeared very old, as if it had been up here in the mountains since at least the 1950s, enduring the harsh mountain elements all that time.
The thought was racing through Will’s mind that the Minister, or maybe some accomplice of his, would try to attack him at any moment, but something about that didn’t seem right either. It seemed more likely that he might try some other tactic, like poison, or maybe lead him into a trap of some sort.
He was biding his time, until he could get to the others, and then, with their help, by sheer force of numbers, they could get the hell out of here. If they could subdue this maniac and call the authorities, even better.
He didn’t have any conclusive proof that the Minister killed those people back there, but who else could have done this? What else could it have been?
They approached the front doors of the crumbling structure and walked inside. A musty, cloying smell pervaded the air, a certain something he couldn’t quite ascertain. It smelled like cloves, and something else...there was a faint hint of something malevolent, mostly covered by the sweet smell of cloves which hung in the air.
Will was surprised to see a somewhat large chancel area before him, complete with a few rows of pews, supplemented by dingy, beat up metal folding chairs as well as some older wooden chairs, and an altar with a large cross at the end of the room, backlit with an orange glow. A few sickly looking plants finished off the décor.
He suddenly realized the rows of pews were mostly full. Wondering how he had not noticed them at first, he stepped forward when the Minister caught his arm.
“My congregation. I’ve saved them all. They’ve saved me, too. Your friends are here as well. Burton, Alice?”
William went in to find them, having a sudden feeling of something malignant on top of his already close to panicked state from the bodies he remembered seeing back at the banks of that bloody stream.
The only light inside was from whatever source backlit the cross, so it took his eyes a minute to adjust to the gloom. His sinuses reeled from the overpowering smell of cloves, and...was it fish? He noticed that at the front of the altar, two people, a man and a woman, were seated, facing the congregation. It was then that he also noticed the music of a church organ, but coming from a vinyl record spinning on an old turntable in the far corner of the room.
He glanced over his shoulder, instantly mortified. The Minister was still silhouetted in the doorway, the autumn sunlight blazing around him with an unholy aura. Something about the record player producing church music instilled a heavy dread inside him. The feeling was not unlike that of a chosen prey suddenly realizing it is the target of a nearby predator.
All at once his body bristled with static electricity, as if confirming that he was the game in this sinister place, and that something significant was imminent. Nothing could have reaffirmed that notion more than approaching the man and woman seated at the altar, to see that the man was indeed Burton, his throat slashed, with blood drained down all over his front, his long brown hair matted with deep red sticky gore, itself already drying; while to his left sat the slumped over form of Alice, her dark ringlets of hair also releasing one droplet of blood after another, her slack mouth showing numerous wide gashes and cuts visible from under the duct tape fixed over it.
Turning to look behind him, he saw the Minister approaching down the aisle. It was then that the true form of the congregation focused before him, a gallery of uniformly dead, brutally murdered human beings, row after row, stiff to attention in their advanced states of rigor mortis and decomposition. Glazed over eyes as well as sockets lacking eyes stared back at him, in rapt attention.
The smell of cloves again returned to his nostrils, this time, the mystery of the other odor solved—rotting flesh. He also noticed now an increased number of flies in the house of worship.
“They’re a beautiful people—all of them” came the voice of the Minister, still semi-darkened in silhouette. “Aren’t they, my son?”
He stood just a few feet away from Will now, arms spread somewhat out from his sides, indicating the congregation in a gesture of benevolence.
Will was shocked, appalled, disgusted. He became quietly enraged as he saw his friends sitting limply, lifelessly.
“We’re having a wedding today,” the Minister proclaimed jubilantly. “Your friends, they told me of their plans for getting married soon; we’re going to have the ceremony here, tonight.”
They would never see that dream realized, Will thought, thanks to this heinous bastard. However, if he was to survive a confrontation with a madman, he’d have to be smart, and hold back his emotions for now.
Doing his best to choke back his fear, his hatred, his disgust and loathing, he steeled himself.
“Father, yes... What you’ve done here, it’s a...miracle,” he muttered, doing his best to offer a sincere smile. “I... I can’t believe it. You’ve saved... You’ve saved all of these people, from that dreadful Phage...” He wondered if the stammering here and there in his last few words were from fear and adrenaline, or whether he was really this accomplished of an actor.
The Minister beamed, almost visibly glowing at the sound of this. “My son. You’ve accepted me, I see. You must come with me, and together, we...”
The Minister fell to the floor, in a spread-eagled heap, blood gushing from a mean gash in the side of his head, courtesy of the crucifix candelabra Will had stealthily picked up behind his back, while talking to the madman.
“There’s your judgement from your god, bastard!” he said to the unconscious vicar.
He raced towards the van, just to get the hell out of here, once and for all. He thought better of it as he sat in the driver’s seat, trying to catch his breath. He could call the police, surely, but would the Minister still be here? Would there be justice for his now dead friends, and all of those others?
He got out of the van and hurried back to the cathedral, where the Minister still lay in a small pool of his own blood, sprawled in the aisle of his grisly cathedral.
He noticed a large, ornate wooden chair on the altar. An idea...
Running back to the van, he dug around in the back of the vehicle, until he found what he was looking for—climbing rope, at least ten feet of it.
Heading back in to the church, he dragged the dead weight of the Minister up to the altar, where he also noticed a starlight window in the roof; a single, bright ray of autumn sun shone through, illuminating dust motes pulsating through the air. “The Judgement of God”?
Dumping the unconscious man unceremoniously into the old chair, he proceeded to tie him up in such a manner that Houdini himself should have been impressed.
His circulation would be cut off, but...who cares? That’s the least of the suffering this murderer deserved. At least this way, he’d stay here until he could notify the police.
The police...
Will wondered exactly what was going on down in the city.
Taking one last look back at the madman tied to the chair on the altar, all the silenced worshippers around, and his two dead friends, he walked out and moved toward the van.
He suddenly felt as if gravity had forced him down to the ground. Feeling a dull thud to the back of his skull, the last things he saw were the ground rushing up to meet him, right in front of the van, and his hand, stained red, when he pulled it away from the back of his head, after he felt a warm sticky liquid there…
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