Alex kept low and moved slowly, using whatever trees and bushes he could for concealment, just in case. His assignment was for night photography of still subjects. He could have picked a considerably easier site…but there were a couple of drop-dead hot Goth girls in his photography class. They seemed to like creepy stuff, so he figured-naively, he had to admit-some shots of the cemetery at night would at least be conversation starters.
The cemetery groundskeeper hadn’t bought into it when Alex called during the day to ask for permission. The guy hardly even listened.
Alex wasn’t normally one for doing crazy things like this, but lately, that very factor seemed to chafe at him. He didn’t take many risks. He tended to play by the rules. Just boring, nice guy Alex, never with anything crazy to share at parties. Even now, his hopes for this little stunt were not high. A single act of trespassing wouldn’t change life forever. He only wanted a couple shots as icebreakers with Molly and “Onyx,” nothing more.
Yeah, those are from Sacred Heart cemetery. No, they don’t allow you to get in there at night. But if you climb the fence and stumble around in the dark anyway, you can get this really cool shot of this statue here. And you can sneak up on the chapel and get a pic of the steeple with the moon overhead, and it feels totally creepy and there’s this mist and stuff, and you almost feel like you can hear wailing…
Alex stopped taking pictures and listened. Was that someone wailing? It sounded like a scream coming from the chapel. A woman’s scream, in fear or pain or both. Alex waited and heard another one. It sounded like someone yelling “no.”
His imagination tried to run away with him, but he quickly stomped on it. For all he knew the groundskeeper sat inside watching a movie with the volume on full blast. Still, his concern overrode his hesitation. The last thing he wanted to do was abandon someone in trouble to avoid being yelled at or getting a fine for a little after-hours photography.
Slipping closer to the chapel-quickly now, since whatever was going on inside offered some cover-he thought he heard men chanting, though windows and curtains muffled it all. A dim orange glow flickered behind the white fabric. Up near the walls and windows now, he heard a sharp shriek of pain, probably a woman’s. Another woman yelled, “You’ve got to stop this! You don’t know what you’re doing!”
“Shut her up!” bellowed a man’s voice, breaking the chant only momentarily. A sharp crack and a grunt interrupted the cries of agony from the first woman’s voice. Alex’s did his best to stay calm as his heart raced. He suddenly felt out of breath. That definitely wasn’t a television.
Alex stayed low and alert as he moved around to the back door. He found it locked. The windows were shut. Crazy as it was, he considered checking the front door. The floodlights made that risky, but this place was truly dead outside the chapel.
The first woman’s cries stopped. The chanting male voices continued. He heard another sharp “crack,” which elicited a yelp of pain, followed by another, and then another. He had never heard the sound of anyone being whipped in real life, but that seemed to fit the bill.
Alex slipped up onto the porch quickly, slowed down as he grabbed the doorknob…and found it unlocked. He had no more time to think now that he stood exposed in the porch lights. Alex slipped inside.
The foyer, thankfully, lay empty and dark, lit mainly by the intense glow of candlelight from down hallways on opposite sides of the room, both leading to a central chamber. He found comfortable chairs and random pictures on the walls and a shelf of books that probably nobody ever read.
From down the hallways off to his right Alex heard the sharp crack of the whip and the cries it forced from its victims, along with the chanting of those male voices-a handful at the most. A distinctly smoky, sulfur smell hung in the warm air.
“Why are you doing this?” a woman asked in a desperate, almost sobbing voice. “This is crazy! It’s beyond evil! You’re going to end up-argh!” Her inquiry ended in another scream.
“You don’t know-!” The whip cracked. “Agh! — what you’re-” Crack. “Gngh! — playing with, old fool!” The second voice was feminine, like the first, but lower and angrier.
“I know precisely what I am doing, whore daughter of Satan,” said the deeper, clearly male voice. The others kept chanting. “How else did you get here? Why are you trapped? Why do you bleed?”
Alex crept up to the hallway. This is totally crazy, he thought, but he didn’t want to go calling the cops on just what he heard. What if this is…? He scowled fearfully. He didn’t know what it could possibly be. He had to see.
The memorial service chamber lay cleared of furniture. Lit candles occupied virtually every possible space along the walls, which all together put out significant heat. Bizarre runes written in ash decorated the floor. Circles of more ash sat here and there, all with the bloody bodies of dead dogs, cats and birds in the center. Alex even saw a human hand in the mess. A smoldering pile of ashes occupied another large circular outline near the hallway.
Two bloodied, mostly-naked women hung from the ceiling by chains attached to their wrists near the center of the room. They faced away from Alex. Bloody pentagrams had been drawn on the floor around the feet of each. Both women bled from nearly identical wounds on their backs: two deep vertical gashes parallel to the spine, below the shoulders.
The woman on the right was blonde and lithe. An odd scattering of long, white feathers lay around her bare feet. A few more of them stuck to the trails of fresh blood on her back. A white cloth of some sort hung around her waist, torn and sagging off of her hips.
The one on the left had no feathers around her, but looked much worse for wear. She bore an additional deep, wide gash just above her rear, which was only barely covered by a black thong. Her dark-haired head slumped forward, steadily dripping blood.
A trio of men lurked around them. One wielded a whip. Another held a goblet and a bloody, wavy-looking dagger. The apparent leader wore a priest’s cassock and looked fairly old, but hardened. The other two dressed in ordinary street clothes.
The first goon lashed out with the whip again, looking more than a little excited. The other, with the goblet and dagger, was noticeably bigger and marginally better groomed than the first. Scary as the scene was, none of them looked particularly imposing. The funky dagger and whip seemed to be the only weapons present.
The whipping paused and the chanting picked up. Alex watched as the priest took the goblet and held it between the two women, chanting something new, loudly and forcefully.
“No!” the blonde shrieked. “You stupid fucker, don’t do this!”
The other woman yelled nothing, but instead spit a bloody mess onto the priest’s face. His eyes flared, and he faltered in his incantation, but began again and this time finished it. He held the goblet under the dark-haired woman’s head, which he had to hold in place to prevent her from resisting. Alex saw blood flow from wounds just at her hairline. The priest then turned to catch blood running from the wounds at the blonde woman’s back. “With this cup, I gather your essences,” the priest said solemnly. “The purest of your good. The foulest of your evil. You will bend to my will, and you will serve me loyally and faithfully.”
The other two men paused and looked at each other. “And us, too,” the whip-wielder reminded.
“Shut up, Harold,” the priest growled.
The men glanced at one another again. “Just sayin’ is all,” muttered Harold, mostly to his feet. He busied himself coiling up the whip.
“There’s no turning back from this! No absolution!” yelled the blonde. “You’re damning your own souls!”
“You’ll burn in Hell for this,” hissed the other woman.