Allegra runs her fingers along the brick wall. She takes her time to absorb every detail of every corridor, always a stickler for details. The lanterns mounted to the wall stretch off down the corridors, implying that these hallways served a higher purpose than laying the dead to rest or recording history. She’s not sure what to call this space beneath the church-- a tomb, a hideout, a miniature city of sorts-- but she feels at ease. Like someone’s been waiting for them to show up. As they go deeper, the ceilings grow taller, taking the area from a mere series of tunnels to a space truly meant for human eyes to thrive in. About twenty feet up, hints of sunlight peek through the worn brick.
The thought of going back to Elk City crosses her mind. Although her opinion is a raindrop in the ocean, all she wants is to right her wrongs and rewrite what it means to be a ‘beast’-- that is, if they find what they’re looking for in this world below the church. Whether or not they’re seeking them, answers are sure to show up in some form.
Chaos turns the corner and pauses. Each new hallway, they expect something ominous, something beastly, but every area seems oddly well-lived. Chaos gazes across a common area of sorts-- chairs surround a small table, covered in scattered board game pieces. A broken TV hangs askew on the wall behind it. On the kitchen counter pressed up against the brick wall, a thick layer of dust sits. Dishes pile up in the sink.
“People… lived here?” he mutters. “Seems awfully depressing.” Allegra wanders over to the TV and crouches down, blowing the dust away from a narrow set of cubbies. Each slot holds a notebook. She pulls the first one out and pages through it delicately.
“Yeah, well, we live in a shack in the forest,” Wendy says. “I’ve heard of churches taking in refugees, but that’s only for emergency situations. This space looks like it was a permanent home for a lot of people. At the very least, life was coming and going.”
“As maybe our leading expert on group homes,” Calamity answers, “this is hardly a place for orphans. Whoever-- or whatever-- was living here, they didn’t want the world to see it.”
“So what drove them away?”
Allegra holds the notebook out to Wendy. “There’s probably an answer in these,” she says. “I flipped through this first one, but by the end, it was incoherent. Practically just chicken scratches and torn pages.”
Lynx points out that the date scribbled on the side of each row increases by ten; these notebooks represent nearly fifty years of entries from whoever inhabited this place. Each member of the group pages through the journals from each decade interval. Sure enough, whether or not the person writing the entries is consistent for all ten years, they all follow a similar pattern: normal dialogue, followed by more frantic, introspective discussion, followed by a complete loss of coherence. Some even have threats of violence.
Wendy finds herself fixated on the final journal she picks up, so much so that Lynx has to give her a gentle nudge to snap out of it. “This one,” she says. “It feels familiar. Like I knew whoever wrote in it.”
“Well, you’ve seen a lot of people come and go in the forest--”
“No, no, no. Not like knowing a person. It’s a different kind of familiar.” She hands the journal to Lynx. “I think this was the last person to carry my souls.”
Lynx skims through the final pages of the journal. Unlike the majority of the others in the cubbies, there’s no frantic writing, no scribbles-- every entry is as clear as day. Some of the comments, such as mentions of loneliness and vegetarianism, definitely sound like Wendy could have written them. The resemblance is uncanny.
On the final pages of the journal lies a map. The first quarter of it is exactly what Lynx saw on the TV upstairs, but the rest is unfamiliar. “This place is unbelievable,” she mutters, astounded. “Let’s keep moving. We can look around until the lights shut off. After that, let’s come back here and turn in for the night.”
Wendy carries the journal with her, feeling an attachment to its words. She traces her fingers over the pen markings, the dates, and the frayed fabric covering of the book as if she’d done it a thousand times before. Below the final quadrant of the map lies a phrase:
“I will be found. In this life, or the next”.
Comments (0)
See all