The Church In The Woods | CreepCast

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Ademas delicios os trosos degranola nuesces y fruta que todos vanadis frutad.

Honey punches devotes para todos.

Tocal bene para sabermás.

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Welcome back to Creepcast.

Today we are diving into a creepypasta legend straight from creepypasta.com called The Church in the Woods.

It's a five-parter written by Vingle W, which I think is just Angel W.

They's upside down.

Yes, I believe it's Angel W.

This person has written a ton of stories on creepypasta.com.

All of them are like multi-part.

So they have Foxes Don't Ask Questions, The Great Occam Cobb, which looks like it's about a magician, the Dryad Woods, and Insula.

So very prolific.

Insula is 15 parts.

So they're writing like novel-length works.

I am, man, I've got...

Okay, I'm going to have to do something.

I have this stupid earpiece in my ear now because my audio messed up in the last one.

So I have to listen to myself talk.

So every time I say something, it echoes in my ear and I'm about to lose it.

Is it delayed or is it just you can hear yourself and you don't like it

yes it's delayed a little bit because the recording's delayed a little bit by a half second that's no good I know so it's awful

everything I say I echo it feels like I'm going mad anyway

Angel Angel W,

The Church in the Woods has been recommended a lot.

It is a five-part story.

It's been recommended a lot along with ones like accounts from the lonely broadcast station, which is something else we'll probably get to before too long.

But I've wanted to check this one out.

Obviously, it has all the tales that I like in a story, weird religion and woods.

So, you know, I'm already here.

I'm locked in.

I'm excited too.

It's also nice to be back in the creepypasta realm.

Also, just want to say thank you guys for, we have had so many submissions on our subreddit that it feels like it's a nice, it feels nice to see so many people coming out and writing shit.

It's just awesome.

So if you want to write something and have people read it, I've been seeing a lot of people upvoting stuff and commenting on stuff.

So that's sick.

So go there and check it out if you want to be a part of that community of people writing short stories.

It's fucking sick.

Also, just want to give a shout out to our patrons.

Thank you, patrons.

We appreciate you so much and hope you enjoy all that juicy extra content over on the Patreon.

If you're interested in that, check it out in the bio.

And as always, check us out on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

If you prefer listening to this on the audio side, give us a nice rating there.

It does help, Isaiah.

Let's run part one on this shit.

The church of the woods.

Part one, the dream.

The church in the woods.

Thank you guys so much for everything.

It's especially funny to talk about everyone submitting stuff to the subreddit and then not having an episode about the subreddit.

It would be very funny if we never do it again.

Like we encourage everyone to come on and post it.

It was too fun the first time.

I think it's, but it's going to be something where it needs to be a nice balance where we read some stuff, some classics and all that jazz of stuff that is written a long time ago and that has a nice place in people's hearts.

And then we come back and then we keep touching on it until inevitably the show just becomes reading uh fan stories because that's you know we because we've covered every other story under the sun right we eventually read everything that has ever been written online except us became the only place that new stuff is being created that's a great idea so how old will we be then like 140

all right without further ado Let's get into it.

The church in the woods.

I also, before I went, I also legitimately thought that we we have read this story six times.

It's because we've done Spire in the Woods, the Spire in the Woods, Camp,

or like Oak, Oak Wood.

There's been a lot of stuff of like buildings and woods.

Deep woods.

Deep woods.

Yeah, a lot of stuff like that.

And if there's any kind of AC DC reference in this, then I will know that it's actually all the same story.

Just re-skinned.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

The church in the woods, part one.

I had a weird dream last night.

It wasn't like your normal everyday dream.

It was very disturbing to me.

I wouldn't consider it a nightmare, but I know I'll never forget it.

It still brings a shiver just thinking about it.

Before the dream, everything was normal.

Saturday had arrived after a long, tiring week of work.

I was an IT technician.

It was the kind of job where we would assist customers varying from software issues to networking ones.

Occasionally, the job would require us to meet them on their turf to provide on-site service.

Unfortunately for me, I wore multiple hats which meant I had to tackle most on-site visits.

Some would think of me as a versatile, irreplaceable employee, and you wouldn't be wrong.

I, however, couldn't look past the glaring fact that the company was just being too cheap to hire others, opting to milk every ounce it could get from us, their understaffed employees.

You can see why I would spend most of my weekdays only sleeping or watching television.

Basically, anything that required the least amount of work or movement.

Unfortunately, these tactics made them fly by faster than usual.

There's nothing worse than expediting your rest days to your work ones.

This weekend, I decided to mix it up a bit.

Instead of my usual lazy days around my apartment, I decided to venture out and visit my parents.

I hadn't been home in two years, and I couldn't remember the last phone call I made to them.

So, I figured I was overdue for a visit.

Home was around 50 miles away, but that didn't seem too bad compared to most people I knew.

I had plenty of friends who were clear across the country from their folks, so I knew I had no room to complain.

To be honest, I was looking forward to the drive.

The ones in the morning were the best, watching the sun gradually rise, feeling the cool breeze while coasting the near empty streets, absent a river of traffic.

Was there a better time to travel?

I couldn't wait to see my dad or my stepmom either.

I could already picture the two of them ambushing me with hugs while releasing a barrage of of questions about how everything was going in my life, and I haven't even gotten to the best part, home-cooked meals.

Energized by these thoughts, I quickly packed up a few things, toothbrush, clothes for one night, towels, and anything else I thought I might need.

For a second, I thought about giving them a quick heads-up call to let them know I was coming, but refrained, thinking it would be better if my visit was unannounced.

By the way, how do you live 50 miles away from your parents and you haven't seen them in two years?

I'll tell you you what, that's that's optimization is what it is.

I honestly have never

had more respect for a character

because that is you, I don't know how you do that, even just like there's you don't bump into them at all, not once.

It's kind of it's kind of impressive if I'm being completely honest.

I was like, Something like 50 miles, gosh, optimization, dude, two years.

Holy hell, all right,

like you can go see them after work if you wanted to.

I mean, did you know

you haven't even like bumped into them at a grocery store or like at a gas station.

I mean like 50.

I mean, you never know.

I mean, I don't know.

It's just impressive.

That's a conscious effort.

100%.

At some point.

Exactly.

After my car was loaded, I pulled out my apartment area.

I pulled out of my apartment area and began the drive.

As expected, the sun had barely peaked beyond the horizon.

Drive itself was smooth and fluent with barely any other cars on the road, just the way I liked it.

As early as it might have seemed to some people, my parents were early birds.

They got up at the crack of dawn to maximize their day, taking care of small things throughout it.

Cutting grass, morning runs, errands, etc.

It didn't take long before I reached my old hometown.

I was met with the familiar setting, rendering old memories.

Almost at every angle, I could recall some event from my life while growing up.

It wasn't until I looked in the rear mirror that I noticed I had a smile pressed on my face.

There's this guy's a psychopath.

There was no hiding in it.

I mean, I was happy to be home.

I just got to read like that, right?

You live 50 miles from your parents in two years.

He looks in the mirror and he's unconsciously smiling.

Oh, God.

I'm just so happy.

I didn't know what this feeling was.

Yeah, what was this feeling?

Happiness.

Is that what this is?

Could this be what that means?

So foreign to me.

Happiness.

It's like Patrick Mason driving.

I am a shell.

You may touch flesh, but there is no one there.

Eventually, I reached my neighborhood turning onto the street where my parents lived.

From the distance, I could see their house at the far end to the right.

Drove down the street, glancing left and right, attempting to see if old neighbors were still present at their homes.

Just from a glance, I could recognize what houses had new people and which ones had familiar faces.

Only a few were actually up and outside.

One person in particular was Mr.

Harris.

He was infamous for always attending this yard.

He was mainly seen cutting his grass and did so in a full jumpsuit regardless of how hot or cold the weather shifted.

Vaguely resembled the ones prisoners would wear except it was navy blue instead of a bright orange.

I reached my parents' house and parked next to the mailbox.

The driveway had my dad's car in it.

My stepmother's car was usually kept inside the garage since it was a newer vehicle.

The house itself was fairly big.

It was two stories with all-white siding that made up its exterior.

It had burgundy shutters to accompany each window and a decent-sized porch with a bench on it.

After parking my car and walking up to the door, I could already see the screen door closed to allow the cool air to run through.

The aroma of bacon and eggs.

What the fuck is so funny?

What the fuck are you giggling about?

Sean, after my car parked.

Yes.

Sorry, I'm laughing.

You smell bad.

I'm laughing because it's been so detailed, every layer of it.

And when it started mentioning Mr.

Harris in a jumpsuit, I'm like, oh, is that guy like, I wonder if that guy's going to show up later as a killer or something.

So then, as I'm reading like the description of the house and bacon, I just started thinking how funny it would be if Mr.

Harris just sprinted down the street,

just beat him to death

in the middle.

Completely normal.

Even you saying that makes you think of that scene in get out where the guy's like running straight at him in the woods or whatever yes that's exactly what yeah where he's just sprinting full speed you get it yeah he's he's just like oh the aroma of bacon the beautiful old scissor bacon and eggs in his hand he has a cast he has a cast iron skill to bacon and eggs breakfast

like like the narrator's just like oh i'm happy to see mom again and you just hear

like

just off the sidewalk

anyway yeah I had to get that out the more idyllic the scene gets the funnier the bit got in my head the aroma of bacon and eggs filtered outward along with the sounds of talking and moving around despite

despite still I'm sorry,

I need to get this giggle fit out of my system.

Despite still having a key to the place, I rang the doorbell.

instant

instantly i heard just take a take take take a fucking minute to laugh

just take one fucking just count to 60 and laugh

listen

when i read i heard my i saw the word footsteps in the next line so now it's like maybe he is about to come springing down the street Look, I'm going to be honest, man.

The AC in my office isn't working.

It's like 85 degrees in here i'm hot i'm dehydrated well i'll tell you what i'm losing my mind i'll tell you what then get a wet get a wet fucking towel a cold wet towel and a glass of water and calm the fuck down because you are you sound fucking insane

like you're you're freaking me out if anything the real creepy positive today is like being on a discord call with somebody that has a little giggle fit

And even you saying giggle fit, I was like, what in the hell?

I gotta get this giggle fit out of here.

Okay, Okay, do I sound like Hank?

You gotta sound like Bill Dotrive to me.

Hank?

Bill.

Bill Dotrive?

Bill Dotri?

Bill Dotrive.

Oh, but his buddy.

His buddy on King of the Hill.

That's right.

Sorry, Hank.

I got the giggle.

I got the giggle fits.

Also, it would have been funny if you said giggle shits.

You ever laugh really hard while you're shitting and then you fart and it goes in rhythm with your with your laugh?

Well, thank you for saying that.

Immediately got rid of anything I found funny.

Well, I had diarrhea one time and that happened and it was like literally like a water fight with my asshole.

Here we go.

Here we go.

Okay.

All right.

Is that it?

Is that mercifully short?

Yeah.

The story.

I heard my dad's voice grumpily question out loud who would be visiting at this hour.

I could hear his footsteps walking over until he emerged into the entrance hallway.

I could see his eyes widen and a smile grow on his face.

He called out for my stepmother to come over to him.

When she did, I was met with a loud cry of joy as she raced over to the door, opening it, pulling me into a vice grip hug.

Man, I wish I had one of those.

i haven't had i haven't had one of those happen in a long time

someone scream out of enjoyment that you're like showing up to their house it only happened like it's happened like maybe twice in my life and it was great every time that that was such a sad forlorn statement okay in hindsight i do i do agree it was pretty sad but more so i just mean in my mind i was thinking about the last time someone actually looked man they do hunter oh

oh and they come over and they hug you

it happened twice

I think both.

I think

both times, too, it was never my family.

It was like a friend.

You're making it so much worse.

The fact that you're just randomly out of the blue, like, man, I miss that.

I miss when someone would love me like that.

Would hug me that way.

No, I was just joking around.

It happens all the time.

Okay.

Anyway, after about a 10-minute moment of hugs and greetings, I was finally able to settle in.

Brought all my stuff into my old room, which was in the basement.

The basement, of course, was finished and had a big television in front of a couch along with the washer and dryer down there.

It was almost like a second living room, perfect for having guests over or even a tenant for renting.

The day went by fairly quick.

I spent most of it talking to them.

I spent most of it talking to them about my job, politics in the world, and other recent events.

It wasn't until the evening arrived when my dad announced that in his spare time he had managed to convert all of the old homemade movie tapes onto DVDs.

My dad was always the type to keep busy.

He worked hard throughout the week and even on the weekends because he was unable to cope with the downtime.

It was in these times that he would keep himself busy with small side projects.

These projects varied from big ones like installing new floorboards to small ones like planting fresh flowers outside.

Apparently this time his project had been converting the old tapes before they became too bad to view.

We decided to spend that evening watching the old movies to gawk and laugh at the old days in our lives.

He popped in the first disc and left temporarily to use the bathroom.

The video appeared to be during Christmas time.

The footage was very grainy, producing a few white streaking lines across the screen.

The timestamp in the corner read December 25th, 1991.

In the video, we could see a big tree in the background, heavily decorated with tinsel and ornaments.

Below it, a multitude of presents covered the floor, varying in size.

Off to the side was my mother, my real mother, very young in appearance.

She must have been at least in her mid-twenties at the time.

I didn't get a chance to know her.

My father had informed me she had died when I was too young to remember.

I only recognized her from photos I had seen lying around.

It wasn't until I was old enough that my father explained her death was, in fact, a murder.

Some crazy loon had broken into their apartment and shot her.

That did kind of come out of that way.

Yeah, so

I forgot to tell you, though.

Hey, your mom got shot in her apartment a while back.

That's why I didn't know her.

Anyways, yeah, Christmas this year was crazy.

This Christmas was crazy.

There's your mother before she was shot to death by some madman.

By some lunatic.

By some freak that broke into her house and killed her.

It's no big deal.

Actually, I totally blanked on that.

I don't know why I didn't tell you.

I feel like I haven't heard the word lunatic.

Or, sorry, loon.

I haven't heard some crazy loon, like inside of a 20s comic.

I just can't believe that this guy hasn't told his son that his mom was shot in the face.

Well, he did later when he was older.

He didn't explain it to a five-year-old.

Yeah, but I think even like what?

How old do you have to be?

I mean, I don't know.

Gosh, how old do you be when you tell your son that his mom was shot?

I don't know, 10.

10 to 12.

Seems fair.

Yeah, I mean, maybe you told him at 20.

What?

It sounded like he said that he

it wasn't until I was old enough that my father.

Oh, okay.

Sorry.

I thought he was just saying it right now.

Like

the first time.

My bad.

I misread that.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No, no, no.

He's saying that when he was a little kid, his mom just said, his dad just said, oh, she died when you were young.

And then when he got old enough, he explained it.

Yeah, no, okay.

I misread it.

For a second, I thought he was just like, yeah, I don't know what happened to your mom.

And then now on this visit, he's just like, by the way, she got shot in the face.

Her head exploded.

Your mom got shot in the face.

Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That'd be really funny if, like,

what if I had some trauma like that and I just never told you?

I wouldn't give a shit.

Not my place.

Okay, well, that's kind of sad.

Like, you know, we're friends and stuff.

I thought maybe you'd care about it.

I mean, if you told me, I'd be like, that's crazy.

But at the same time,

if you never indulged that your mom was, if her head got blown up by a bullet, I'd mean, I'd be like, I'd be like, well, I know

that's for him.

You know, it's fine.

Wait, are you saying that you're the one who shot the woman?

Did you shoot your mom?

Is that what you're saying?

No, I'm I'm saying if I had like some trouble like that and you just didn't know.

No, I mean, I

don't know.

I mean, I wouldn't care.

You wouldn't care.

That's what you're saying.

You're saying you wouldn't care.

Yeah, you wouldn't care.

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We are now back to the episode.

Some crazy loon had broken into their apartment and shot her.

He didn't really like to speak about it, and I didn't blame him.

Because of his feelings, never pressed him more about it.

The camera in the movie set fixated without shaking, giving the assumption that it was on a stand.

Soon after, my father appeared from behind the camera to join her on the ground.

He too was young in appearance.

It was strange to see them this way and brought about a small amount of laughter for me.

Both seemed to have their eyes fixated on something.

It wasn't until my dad adjusted the camera that I could see that something was me.

There I was, a younger version of myself.

Checking the timestamp on the screen confirmed that I was one year old.

I watched in awe as my younger self hobbled around curiously, grabbing small things around the apartment.

Occasionally, he would render a smile to my parents whenever they called out my name in a soft tone.

The moment was nice until the screen went to complete static.

The sound was a little distorted, but it was clear the video was not over.

I could make out what sounded like a knock at the door from the audio.

I wasn't sure entirely.

My dad returned just as this happened and went over the television, cursing at it.

Finally ejected the DVD and popped in a new one informing us that the rest of the tape must have been too bad for the full record.

Yet we didn't let that hinder the moment and prepared ourselves as the nest disploded up.

After a long evening of laughing and admiring our younger images on the home movies, we decided to call it a night.

Said our good nights with my stepmother, promising to cook us all a big breakfast tomorrow.

I made my way back downstairs and changed into my pajamas, eventually laying on my old bed.

I lay there for a couple of minutes, just smiling to myself, still thinking about the videos and other times I had while growing up.

Without realizing it, I found myself asleep.

Now, this is when it all happened.

This is when I had the dream.

In this dream, I found myself back in that old apartment I had viewed with my parents earlier in the home movie.

It was odd though.

Unlike the angle the camera appeared in the video, I was standing offset of it.

It was an angle that did not appear in the video and yet somehow I could see more of the apartment with greater detail.

From the kitchen in the back, its sink full of dishes to the pictures hanging on the wall.

I wasn't sure how this amount of detail was applied because clearly I was just a child at the time and remembering this would be impossible.

There was a possibility that my brain was just filling the gaps of the apartment with places I had seen and been to.

But deep down I thought otherwise.

It felt like everything being presented was exactly how it was at the time.

That's really cool.

That is cool.

Having a dream about the house he was in as a child.

Around the apartment, it was clearly Christmas time, like in the video.

I continued to look around, noticing my dad standing behind the camera exactly like in the video and my mother sitting on the floor in view of it.

As if on cue, he walked from behind the camera and sat next to my mother.

It was literally like being present in the footage, scene for scene.

That's pretty fun.

I attempted to grab my parents' attention.

I tried calling out to them, waving, and even touching them, but it was like I didn't exist.

They couldn't see or hear me, and my hands went through them almost as if I was a ghost.

My dad then shifted the camera to where I could hear my younger self cooing and hobbling around on my side.

I watched as the younger me began playing with a book, curiously trying to figure out the subject.

Suddenly, There came a loud banging at the door.

The noise startled me, my parents included.

I watched as my dad rose and went back to check the door.

The door itself had a small peakhole.

I recalled that I remember hearing what sounded like a knock on a door from the distorted video.

I heard my dad mumble something in a confusing tone.

It was something around the grounds if the peak hole was either being covered or that someone was standing really close to it.

At this moment, I got an uneasy sensation in my stomach.

For whatever reason, I got the feeling that opening that door would be a mistake.

However, before I could react, my dad unbolted the locks and opened the door.

He was immediately struck with the barrel of a gun.

I watched in horror as he grabbed his now bleeding head in pain.

The assailant kicked my father back, causing him to fall over next to my mother.

My mother let out an ear-splitting scream in fear.

The assailant came through the door, shutting it softly behind and locking the bolts across.

Afterwards, the assailant gave off a hissing shush sound to my parents, hearing the voice confirmed that it was a man.

I stood silent, pointing the long-harreled gun at my frightened parents.

I too was frozen in fear, even knowing I couldn't be seen.

The man wore a long black cloak over his body with a hood draped over his head.

A few chains looped from his waist, connecting his hip.

When I looked closer, there were several faint grey inverted crosses on the side of his hood and on the back of his cloak.

Is this guy part of some twisted religion?

Carefully made my way around him.

He remained in the same position, appearing to not show any indication of my presence.

Yet I still wasn't taking any chances.

When I finally reached a good angle to see his face, my heart dropped.

He was wearing a pale white mask over his face.

The mask was glossy.

The eye holes were wide open along with the mouth, both completely veiled in black.

It gave off an eerie chill.

It was as if the mask itself was frozen in a fear, emitting an ear-splitting scream for its life.

We all just remained still for what felt like an hour.

Finally, my dad managed to mutter a question to the man, asking him why he was doing this.

The man, of course, remained silent, ignoring the question.

My mother was still whimpering to herself while my dad kept his head low, applying pressure to the wound on his head.

He repeated his question with more anger in his tone.

The man finally made a move.

Taking out a second pistol from within his robes with his other hand, he raised and pointed it in my direction.

My heart began rapidly pounding against my chest more than it had before.

Could the man finally see me?

Had he always been able to?

I raised my hands up in a surrendering pose while backing up a little.

When I did, I realized the angle of the gun was slightly off.

He was pointing it in my direction, but not at me exactly.

I turned my head to see that he was in fact pointing the gun at me.

The younger me, though.

My mother let out another loud shriek when the man had the gun in the direction of my one-year-old self.

Of course, being one-year-old, I didn't seem bothered by the gun.

In fact, I was still playing around with the book from earlier, oblivious to the whole situation.

What was the man planning?

Why did he break in to begin with?

He clearly did not want anything from my parents.

They didn't have anything expensive at the time.

More importantly, why was he pointing a gun at a one-year-old child?

My heart dropped even further when I heard him cock the gun.

What reason would he have for doing this?

What would it accomplish?

My mother attempted to move towards me, but the man refocused his other gun on her, cocking the weapon as well.

I looked back at my younger self, who in turn looked up at the man, giving a blank, innocent stare.

The man appeared unfazed, solid in his stance.

I could see his finger slowly squeezing the back of the trigger, heart still racing.

I quickly moved in the path of the gun, hoping to obscure his view.

Realizing it wouldn't make a difference, I decided to grab the gun, but my hand passed through it like before.

I couldn't touch him.

His finger gradually continued to squeeze back on the trigger.

It was like viewing the moment in slow motion, taking forever to occur.

Unexpectedly, I found my mind being flooded with images.

Images of people.

They looked to be people I knew throughout my life, almost like a photo album.

Endless images of moments of faces flashed by.

I saw my mother, my father, friends I had known, girlfriends I had relations with, everyone.

They continued appearing one after the other, and as they did, I felt a pulsating pain grow in my head.

I couldn't take all the images at once.

It was too much, and yet they persisted.

I found myself on my knees as the images began appearing at a faster rate.

I was now gripping my head, almost shaking uncontrollably, until they ceased without warning.

The air felt cold.

The warm colors around transitioned literally to a grayscale color.

I looked up slowly, and when I did, I saw the flash of the barrel go off, followed by the sound of a loud bang.

I turned around to find the lifeless body of my younger self lying on his back.

A pool of blood quickly formed around him.

The air was silent.

My parents were speechless, frozen in disbelief.

The man lowered his gun eventually, letting it drop to the ground.

We all remained silent and completely still.

He proceeded to lift his hand, removing his hood.

Afterwards, he slowly removed the mask from his face.

My eyes could not comprehend what they viewed.

This man, the murdering psychopath, religious, nutcase's face was

my face.

He had the same face as me, current age me.

Tears formed in my eyes and slowly made their way down his face.

Tears formed in his eyes and slowly made their way down his face.

He turned to my parents.

A small smile formed across his face.

It wasn't a twisted, evil smile or a satisfied one.

No, a smile in his eyes.

A deep sense of sympathy.

With it, he spoke with quivering words.

I'm sorry.

I had to.

I did you a favor.

Forgive me.

Without warning, a blinding white light appeared out of nowhere, completely engulfing me.

I could see a face appearing amidst the white.

Before I could make it out, I immediately jolted awake by the alarm on my cell phone.

I set up quickly.

The dream was still burning in my mind with every excruciating detail.

When I looked down at my hands, I found them trembling.

I put them to my sweaty chest to feel my heart knocking around uncontrollably to no end.

What the hell kind of a dream was that?

After the dream, I couldn't fall back asleep again, or actually, I didn't want to.

It was just so disturbing and more importantly, too realistic.

Lucky for me, it hadn't been too early in the morning.

Soon, my parents would wake up as well.

This thought comforted me a little, for I didn't want to be alone.

As expected, I could soon hear my stepmother adhering to her promise, cooking the large breakfast upstairs.

Before heading up, I made sure to compass myself in the best manner I could.

I didn't want them questioning me about the ordeal, even if it was just a dream.

I wanted to prevent any reason to recall it, at least not at that moment.

It was too soon.

I ascended the stairs and made my way to the kitchen where I was greeted happily.

I, of course, lied about how I slept.

We ate breakfast silently for the most part.

Luckily, they were deeply involved with the Sunday paper, or they were on their tablets.

After eating, I thanked them for the meal and promised I'd visit more often.

I wanted to leave as quickly as possible, so I told them I had to leave early to prepare for work the next day, packed up my things, and said my goodbyes before entering my car.

Meditating on that incident really helped me wrap my mind around it.

It's helped me realize that it was just that, a dream.

No deeper meaning to it other than my mind conjuring up a freakish set of images based off what I'd seen prior to.

As time went on, the images began acting more like a dream.

I said I would never forget it and yet, like the typical one, slowly was slipping away from me.

I was ready to head back.

Before I could turn my car on, my phone went off.

On the other end was my boss.

He asked me how i was doing and if i was willing to do an extended on-site service for a client possibly for a week or two depending on the number of computers project involved establishing networks and accounts and mentioning that the client would provide room and meals seeing nothing wrong with getting out of the office for a while i agreed and asked who the client was he told me this would be a service provided for an independent church that is end of part one of the church in the woods i'm always a sucker for and i like that they kind of did this weird you know i usually i think the dream trope thing can be kind of overplayed but what i enjoyed about this was how detailed and kind of like haunting just like a home invasion is you know not i mean like obviously there's like the murder stuff but just the idea of like breaking into somebody's house and this kind of thing and being just a base like an ethereal fly on the wall and watching not only yourself get killed but like your parents and then it

unveiling to be you is sick but i do think it sets it up to like you know is he gonna get indoctrinated indoctrinated by this like church?

Is there because there's a little bit of religious symbolism with like the upside-down cross stuff on this guy's like cloak or whatever, but kind of cool.

I'm hoping that this goes into, and I think I'm, you know, I love me a cult.

Give me a cult.

If I had to guess,

it seems like he has been eyed by the cult and now they're coming for him in some way, right?

So maybe since he was a baby, maybe that's what, maybe this is like what would have happened if

his mother didn't like get in the way of the gun or sacrifice her life to save him.

Maybe the Colts wanted him dead for a while or something.

Uh, who knows?

I will say the story saved itself for me because I was about, I kept reading, and sure enough, it corrected it got better.

I thought what it was implying is that he was having a vision in that dream of what actually happened that night.

And then when he pulls off the mask and it's himself and like his younger self gets shot, that was better.

Because I thought it was saying

that

that Christmas night in 1991 is when his mom died and his dad was going to show the family the recording of it.

Oh yeah, I know.

No.

You know what's kind of weird too is the

Christmas aesthetic stuff can be so creepy.

What was that one story we read about a house that it's Christmas forever?

That was one of Legati's, right?

Yes.

Was it?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

That was a great story about how like it's the grandmother with the eternal Christmas and like it's like a dimension you go to.

Yeah, that was very surreal.

But I agree, yes.

There's something so it's like just the colors and stuff.

It's like a vomit of green and red and stuff, and everything's just like overly lit.

A lot of like weird

imagery of like Jesus in the nativity scene, and there's just a lot of like interesting visuals that are like very happy.

It's like whenever something's uncannily happy around you, like everything's smiling, and it's just a very like uh

like over-stimulating,

like uh i don't know like

family happiness uh vomit of just shit you know what i mean i have like these memories when i was a kid because my dad would always

um

like

do the nativity scenes and the christmas lights at christmas so i have all these memories of being a little kid and like the woods around the house painted in these reds and greens and like it's it's a very different time right it's it's a unique time i think you get a lot of interesting stuff out of it well should we should we move on to part two part two the congregation room i was particularly excited about this on-site job later on that evening my boss called again and filled me in on more details about the request He told me that traveling to the church would be quite a drive and that its location was in the countryside secluded from most towns.

He gave me strict instruction to abide by their basic rules and to not offend them by any means.

Apparently, they had paid handsomely for the service, and he wanted to be be sure our company kept every dime.

He did note that I only had to respect their rules and not necessarily buy into any of their religious activities or anything.

He told me to stop by the office in the morning for the necessary equipment.

He promised that the company would reimburse me with the cost of travel and reminded me to call daily with any updates.

I wasn't a big fan of religion, but I wasn't going to complain if they were providing food and a room for sleeping.

Again, it was a change to get out of the office for a few days.

That night, I quickly packed up enough items for two weeks into two big suitcases.

After preloading my car, I set my alarm early, knowing that I would need to compensate for the drive.

It was strange.

My night was dreamless and it was quick.

Felt as if I had closed my eyes for a second before I heard my alarm go off for the next day.

What struck me even odder was the fact that I could not recall what had stirred me up the night before.

I had a disturbing dream when visiting my parents.

That much I knew, but of what specifically evaded my memory.

I dismissed the thought, believing it to be for the best.

Despite being tired from the early rise, I was up without a struggle and ready to embark.

The outside air was cooler than I usually preferred.

The sky was starless, almost like a dark veil was across it.

I hopped in my car and kept the windows up this time with the heat at full blast.

There were a few times where my eyes rolled back from the tiredness, but the radio helped keep the temptation at bay.

I made the quick stop by the office to gather up all the necessary equipment needed for the job.

My boss already had it packed and ready to be loaded upon my arrival.

He wasn't there himself, but with the help from the third shift crew, I was able to load everything into my trunk.

Afterwards, they provided me a set of GPS directions provided by my boss.

Once I thanked the crew for helping, I made my way on the road.

The further I drove, the more scarce the streetlights and other cars became.

Before long, the sun had fully emerged, giving sight to the endless oceans of green pastures and cornfields.

Eventually, though, even the pastures came to an an end and soon I found myself swallowed by the dense patch of trees.

My car barely managed to remain on the thin rough patch.

Below I could hear the rocks and twigs crunching under the wheels.

I held my breath a few times, slowing my vehicle down hoping to not incur a flat tire, which was the last thing I needed.

After what felt like ages, I finally came across a fairly large building ahead.

The building itself was an old structure.

standing tall and stretched far back into the woods.

Its appearance was withered, made of old wood, pale, decayed.

It swayed a few times as the course of the wind, letting off a most disturbing groan as if suffering, wishing to be put out of its misery.

Truly, it was amazing that such a building hadn't already collapsed.

Continuing to approach, I could make out more of its structure.

The building appeared to be two stories.

Its front was rather plain, aside from the monotonous row of windows, a row of three that ran across the second floor.

The windows themselves were elongated, running along the sides of the building as well.

I was thrown off by the side of the structure.

I was sure my boss had informed me that this was to be a church.

I wasn't much of a churchgoer, but the building before me looked more like an old warehouse or boarding home rather than a place of worship.

The rugged path led up its entrance.

In the front of a set of double doors, I could see a lone figure standing, waiting for my approach.

It was an elderly man in his mid-50s in a gray suit and black tie.

He immediately made his way to me when I parked.

His walk was hobbled, but elegant in poise.

A little hesitant, I gradually let down my window, greeted by his big toothy smile.

Afternoon, son, said in a strong country accent.

You are a technician we've been waiting for?

I was taken back by his overpowering cologne.

It smelled like a poor concoction of baby powder and sunflower seeds.

He was balding towards the top of his head while his snowy white hair grew around the edge like a crescent.

Deep wrinkles were pressed across his face and seemed to grow in number with a smile.

Slightly stuttering, I answered.

Yes, sir, pleased to meet you.

He gave off an old man's chuckle, still housing his toothy grin.

This no need to be shy, son.

I'm Reverend Gary Gooden.

You can call me Gary.

Welcome to the Peach Hub County, he said, extending out a hand.

Nervously, I shook it.

I'd like to personally thank you for coming all the way out here.

I know it must have been something for you, and I hope you didn't get too lost on your way over.

For some reason, I couldn't find my voice and only shook my head.

That's good.

Look here, why don't you swing your car right around to the other side and I'll get one of my people to help you get your stuff settled in.

You don't have to lift a finger, understand?

He gestured to the right-hand side of the building.

I nodded and drove around as instructed and parked.

Before I could even vacate the car, I jumped when stared ahead.

I jumped when stared ahead.

What is that?

Oh,

oh, when I stared ahead.

Okay.

There.

Okay, there's some random, like, uh, grammatical errors in here.

I'm just going to put in, like, this sentence says, there a man standing in front.

I imagine it means to say, there was a man standing in front.

There was a man standing in front.

I hadn't even seen him approach.

Couldn't lie.

He was much younger than the Reverend, but clearly older than me.

He had slick black hair combed over to the side and wore a dark vest resting over a white button top with gray dress pants.

He gave a slight wave while approaching my car.

I exited and was greeted with a firm handshake.

Terrence Crow.

His accent wasn't as strong as the Reverend's.

Welcome to Peter.

I could tell that his smile was forced.

Even his eyes looked annoyed, but I thanked him.

You having any luggage on you?

Yeah,

it's in the back.

I unlocked the door.

Before I could turn around, the man quickly swooped over to the passenger door, opened it, and pulled out both suitcases.

He began making his way towards the front, gesturing me with his head.

You'll have to forgive my impatience.

I was in the middle of something important before the Reverend had me pulled to assist you.

That's all right.

I know the feeling.

You'd be surprised how often my boss does that to me.

I sometimes wonder if he actually wants me to get the job done.

I joved, hoping to lighten the mood.

He didn't laugh.

I could hear his grunts as he struggled to carry the weight of my suitcases, occasionally swaying to the side.

I felt guilty for letting him do so, but didn't want to impede on their hospitality.

He led me around to the front through the double doors.

I half expected to find the Reverend waiting for us with his grin, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Inside, we came into what looked like a lobby area.

It was much nicer than I expected, completely different from the outside appearance.

Inside the air was cold, borderline comfortable.

Perhaps it was the hint of honey and sunflowers in the midst that made it bearable.

The lobby was a simple room.

Everything around held a calm pearl white.

It was filled with a few tables and chairs up against the wall.

A golden chandelier hung from the ceiling, giving giving the bland room a more elegant feel.

A red carpet led from the entrance to a set of closed double doors ahead.

Two other doors sat at the left and right walls, both closed.

The man led me inside, setting down the suitcases, took out a handkerchief from his vest pocket to wipe away the sweat from his brow.

This here's the lobby, he finally said, tugging the handkerchief back into his pocket.

Chuckled to myself as if that wasn't obvious.

Through the left door, you'll find a hallway leading to the dining area, and to the right is a staircase leading to the living quarters.

You'll be staying in room six.

If you give me a minute, I'll fetch your keys.

What about those?

I asked, gesturing to the main double doors ahead.

Where do those lead to?

Those lead to the congregation room where we conduct our services.

Y'all find we conduct those on a daily basis.

Daily?

That's a bit much.

Whatever happened to once a week?

Again, he didn't laugh, his face stern and solid.

Mr.

Pale, Marcus Pale, sorry.

I never did introduce myself.

Right.

Mr.

Pale, this is a church.

I'm sure where you're coming from, once a week will suffice, but here it is our life.

He paused, peering into my eyes.

You do attend church, right?

My eyes must have truly given it away.

He smiled, shaking his head.

You're not much of a religious man now, are you, Mr.

Pale?

Tone of his voice matched his face.

I shrugged slightly, taking off beat at the the question.

No, I

guess not.

I see.

Please forgive me when I say this then.

But maybe you should just keep your mind on your job, then.

That is the reason why you're here.

Understand?

Yeah, sure.

Good.

I'll be back with your keys.

I just stood there.

The nervous feeling I had earlier had subsided.

Now what I felt was awkwardness.

What was the guy's problem?

There's no need for his rudeness.

The pity I felt for him earlier was no longer present, and I shook it off remembering that my boss said not to offend these people by any means.

Five minutes went by and I still found myself standing there.

What was taking so long?

Made it sound like the keys were right behind the door.

My eyes began wandering, bouncing from one side of the room to the next until finally settling on the double doors.

They had a symbol, an emblem of some kind imprinted down the middle of them.

Curious, I walked over to them to get a better look.

The emblem on the white doors was golden, almost looking imperial-like.

It resembled a face.

No, maybe it was a flower?

It was surrounded with what appeared to be a wavering cloak of some kind.

Did it have to do with their religion?

Still curious, I glanced over to the door where the man had disappeared behind.

Finally, I returned my eyes back to the double doors.

They had fairly large bar handles acting as the knobs.

I was hesitant, but I slowly reached out to one of them.

When my hand made contact with it, I felt a hint of warmness.

This was peculiar because the room was cold, so how was this likely?

The handle felt as if some had held it just recently, perhaps minutes ago.

Jerked back on it, but the door didn't budge.

Tried a few more times, but was unsuccessful.

It was locked.

I looked around it to see if there was a keyhole.

Maybe I could peek inside.

Instead, I found a small indent next to the handle.

The indent was no bigger than a quarter maybe.

Could this be the lock?

I looked closer to see it had a similar design as the emblem engraved on the inside.

Feeling defeated, I made my way over to one of the chairs and sat.

Hopefully the man wouldn't be any longer.

It was probably for the best that I didn't open though.

My first day on the job and I was already snooping around.

I was actually glad the man didn't catch me attempting to break in like that.

That stunt could have had my ass sent home, especially since he already seemed to be an uptight jerk.

If that had happened, my boss would have had a field day on me for blowing such a high-paying opportunity.

The man eventually returned from the back with a large ring of keys in his hand.

He hastily ushered me to follow, grabbing my luggage, and proceeded to the door on the right.

Just as he had mentioned, there was a staircase on the other side.

This area appeared more on par with the outside appearance of the building, looking pale and decayed.

Every step we took was followed by a long winded creak.

I was sure that at any moment they would give out on either of us, but they never did.

We reached the top and came to a long, dimly lit hallway with another red carpet, except this was long enough to run to the end.

The doors in the hallway appeared adjacent and parallel to each other.

Electric candles illuminated the area from the walls in between the doors.

The man led me halfway down before halting at the door on the right.

This your room, he said, unlocking the door.

The door produced a loud creak as he opened.

I braced myself, expecting to find a poorly conditioned room, but was met an agreeable sight instead.

It was similar appearance to the lobby, plain with pearly white walls, large king-sized beds set neatly near the window.

Blanket and sheets and even a pillow were already provided.

In the corner sat a sturdy wooden desk with a brass lamp on its stead.

A tall bookshelf leaned against the wall, empty of books with a small dresser to its side.

The room looked very comfortable.

The thought of staying in it for a few days was very appealing.

I may have placed my luggage near the dresser.

You can put your clothes up in here.

Breakfast is at 8.

Lunch at 12 and dinner at 6.

Shop.

You're welcome to wear whatever pleases you to the meals.

Just make sure you're not late.

We don't start eating until everyone is present.

8, 12, and 6.

Got it.

By the way, Mr.

Pale, I'm interested to know how you propose to conduct your work without any of your supplies.

Oh, yeah, sorry.

I forgot to mention all my equipment is in the trunk of my car.

He gave an unsettling glare and held out his hand.

Your car keys, please.

I returned him an unassured look, quickly handed them over when I saw his glare tightened.

He said, shutting the door behind him.

With that, I was left alone once again.

The quietness of my room left me with a dull, numbing sense.

For a second, I was lost in its trance until the moan of the building from the wind awakened me.

Once out of it, I turned my attention back to my room.

Clearly, it must have been recently refurbished.

Run my fingers along the surface of the desk.

Just from sight alone, I could tell its history dated back with the building.

Even so, it felt like it truly belonged despite its age.

I made my way over to the window, looking below.

I could see my car, but no sight of the man.

I shrugged it off.

It could take as long as he wanted, as long as he didn't break anything, I thought.

I smirked at this and returned my attention back inside.

My eyes fell on the bookshelf.

Although it was empty, several imprints from books could be seen in between the dust.

The size of the imprints indicated they must have been fairly large books.

Near the edge of the shelf, I could see dragging marks as if someone had removed all the books.

Maybe in anger, perhaps in a hurry.

That was probably done on purpose.

I couldn't blame them.

These people here seemed like the secretive type.

They probably didn't want me looking through any of their text.

My eyes floated over to the bed.

Looked very tempting.

I wanted to just crash on it, but I knew I had to call my boss first.

I promised him that I would inform him of any updates.

Even though I hadn't started yet, I could at least inform him that I had arrived on time.

I pulled up my phone and checked the signal bar strength.

It was hovering between one bar and none.

This wasn't a surprise considering where I was.

I played around with its positioning, first raising it higher and then side to side.

I had no luck though.

I even tried holding it closer to the window, but still was unsuccessful.

It was possible that it was just the room blocking the signal, so I made my way out into the hallway, keeping my phone stretched out.

With my eyes fixated on it, I moved around the hallway aimlessly, still changing its position.

Eventually, I realized how pointless it was.

I decided to see if I had better luck outside.

I went downstairs and into the lobby, checking my phone along the way.

Feeling the frustration build up, I aimlessly swung it around, threatening to just toss the useless junk.

Without warning, I was thrown off by a loud scream.

Following it came a voice that yelled out, Hey, watch it!

I was stunned, almost jumping out of my skin.

The voice belonged to a young woman, quite attractive one, to say the least.

Her green eyes flared at me in anger.

She had auburn hair that curled around her face and over her eyes.

She wore what appeared to be a black and green Victorian-style dress.

The most eye-catching part about her was that she was pregnant.

She had to be at least eight months by how much her stomach extended through her gown.

I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to.

I was trying to find a signal and I was getting.

Her glare softened and a smile formed.

She eventually let out a light giggle at my attempt to explain myself.

Okay, okay, it's fine.

You're forgiven already.

Her voice?

She had a British accent.

I wasn't sure why.

God damn it.

What?

I fucked that up.

Does that...

Oh, oh, the voice.

I thought you were saying that that ruins it.

Oh, yeah, it does too.

Disgusting.

Okay, yeah, you're like an attractive woman, but she's British.

Get it out of here.

They don't exist.

They don't make them.

I wasn't sure why, considering everyone seemed to have a country one.

You must be the technician I've been hearing about.

Uh, yeah.

You've been hearing about me?

Well, of course.

They've been talking about you for weeks.

Revan revangary's especially excited i'm victoria ruin

victoria ruin victoria the victorian character's name is victoria ruin i'm a victorian dress and my name's victoria ruin

slip inside the eye of your mind but you know you might find a better place to play

It's funny because now I'm imagining that she just started singing that.

Yeah, she is.

That's exactly what happened too.

Two days gonna be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you.

By now, you should have somehow realized what I got to do.

I don't believe anybody feels the way I do about you know

Wonder Wall.

Oh, okay.

Sorry.

She said, holding out her hand for me to shake.

I couldn't stop my blushing even when my hand met hers.

It was smooth and felt frail to the touch.

I could take it to you if you'd like.

Yeah, sure, I'd appreciate it.

I replied, finally collecting myself.

She began making her way to the hallway, beckoning me to follow with one hand.

I caught sight of a beautiful large silver ring on her ring finger.

I guess she was married.

Of course she was.

Woman that beautiful ought to be married.

I thought he's down bad for this for this British woman.

He's either down bad or my psychopath theory is like correct.

Like him just being completely detached.

You may think you have an idea of what Marcus Pale does.

You may look at me.

Well, he's like kicking his feet and he's like blushing and shit.

She's like, hey, how are you doing?

I'm Victoria.

He's like,

you've been talking about me?

She's like, well, I mean, they said that you were showing up today.

Okay.

It's like, Marcus, you, you're kind of, you can fucking suck, dude.

And she's pregnant with a ring on at church.

And he's like, oh, she's married.

Darn it.

I wish that was your first clue drill.

Yeah, dude.

I wish that was my biggest pregnant woman who was clawing at her intestines and her gutty works.

Oh, oh, gosh.

What?

Yeah, that's what guys think about pregnant women.

They're like, yeah.

Yeah,

let my little raccoon dig for some trash.

That's what I say.

Gross.

Okay.

Whatever.

I'm sorry, everyone.

I can't.

I'm not responsible for him.

She led me through the door on the left where I I originally saw the man retrieve the keys.

Led to a long hallway similar to the one upstairs.

This hallway was narrower, housing fewer doors all shut tight.

So tell me, Marcus, where are you from?

From Arlington.

And where is that?

Sorry, it's Northern Virginia.

Why did she read it?

This is err.

Sorry.

He's like, he's blushing.

He's being a fucking lame piece of shit.

Sorry.

It's Northern Virginia.

It's quite all right.

I've never been up north before.

You're lucky to be able to travel around.

All my life, I've been here.

Stuck here.

That is.

I've always wanted to venture out.

But what?

No, it's.

It's nothing.

Oh,

read that, Isaiah.

She said, by the way.

Oh,

flirtatious Victoria, eh?

She wants her i mean she's probably a prisoner or stuck here oh i also too i've been here forever and i'm like you have a fucking british accent liar uh and her name's victoria rue and once again we need to remember this that's true i'd also be like i'm also dr mustard

if we're playing make pretend then i'm ruthis mustard phd is what i would say

i thought you were making a clue joke colonel mustard yeah probably that's probably what the connection was in my head.

I'm going to kill you under the stairs.

You help me with your bag.

Under the stickers with a rope.

She's like, you're talking about the game, right?

He's like, sure.

Sure.

Whatever you say, Scarlet.

Hey, just don't go in your room because I have a candlestick in there and I'll beat the hell out of you with it.

No, whatever you do, don't go to the observatory.

There's definitely not an item

with Professor Pollard.

We're having fun, right?

Oh, yes, Victoria.

Oh, yes.

I'm the IT guy.

She's like, okay.

Yes, Victoria.

There's nothing wrong.

Do you want to follow me alone to this?

I want to raise the children.

I don't have a gun.

I want to be that child.

Hello, pregnant woman I just met.

Do you want to come alone with me over here?

I'm blushing.

I'm smiling and I can't tell again.

I'll look in the mirror and realize I'm smiling.

I hope you didn't notice that I was smiling and drooling, looking at your pregnant belly.

I definitely don't want to eat your child who's clawing away at your gutty works.

You're pregnant?

Yeah.

Great.

Bummer.

I thought you were just fat.

She's like, Marcus, yeah.

I started to scare me, Marcus.

He's like, No,

don't be afraid.

I'm just the IT guy.

Do you like being pregnant?

I love it.

See, I'm unironically.

I'm going to ask that to a pregnant woman sometime.

What's it feel like to be pregnant?

Do you like it?

I don't know.

It's okay.

Can you feel him crawling around in there, you know, and your gutty works?

Who did that to you?

Well, that's another gun.

Hey, who did that?

And point at it.

Can I see?

I bet if you lifted up your shirt and you showed me your belly, it would look like a bald man's head.

I'm the IT guy.

I help run IT.

I'm happy you're pregnant.

I'm happy you're pregnant.

It's a good one, too.

A man fully blushed.

I'm the IT guy.

Blush, sweating profusely, rolling

his fingers around his hands, like clenched hands.

I I love you.

That's what he says next.

I love that you're pregnant.

I love your pregnant belly.

You're pregnant, and I'm the IT guy.

I'm going to go fix a phone.

Do you have a phone?

You're pregnant.

I can't wait to see.

And I'm the IT guy.

I set up a server rack.

No, it's nothing.

Hold on, what?

What?

Oh, you're back in the story.

I didn't realize if you were still doing the bid or not.

I've been staring at the camera just saying those things.

Oh,

there's going to be a lot of love for that.

He looked right at me and said that he loved my pregnant belly, my little Prager's belly.

I'm glad that you're pregnant.

You know,

I'm the IT guy.

The first thing I say to a pregnant woman is, I can't wait to boop your snoot.

I can't wait to touch what's inside of you.

Oh, my God.

God,

that is.

Good lord.

That's a freak one.

I'm going to hold you from the inside.

Huh?

Whoa.

You're pregnant?

Can I see?

Yeah, cough twice.

Okay, I could do it.

I mean,

if we stay here, I'm going to keep going.

So just do the lining.

No, it's

nothing.

She said, biting her lip.

She came to a door on the left and opened it.

Here we are.

You can use this phone.

I thanked her and entered.

The room was tiny, just an upgrade from being considered a pantry.

Inside it was a small wooden table cramped to back with an old phone.

A single door set on the side of a small window.

A strong collection of breads coated the air, making the cramped setting feel even more stuffy.

A collection of breads?

I was legitimately wondering if it was like, is he like literally saying that it's like there's a bunch of rye, white, and sourdough bread around him?

That's what it sounds like to me, right?

I don't know bread's being used as something else.

I want that to be what it is.

Do you like bread and being pregnant?

You shouldn't eat that while you're pregnant.

Uh-oh, you're pregnant.

As a man, it's my job.

Looks like that's for me.

As a man, it's my job to tell you what you should and shouldn't put inside your body as a pregnant woman.

And trust me,

marble rye bread, sweetheart, isn't the thing to put in your body.

Preach King.

I love walking up to pregnant women that I see on the street and being like, I wouldn't.

No, don't do that.

Maybe not that.

You shouldn't do that.

And they try to try to act like they try to

hear me and I say, hey, sweetheart,

not that.

Or like if I'm at lunch or something, there's a pregnant woman like sitting at a table across to me.

Every time she orders something else on the menu, I'm very loudly like,

well, I'm gagging.

I'm gagging for the first five minutes on there.

That's gross.

Well, hey, I'm sorry for that guy inside of you.

Or girl, whatever it is inside of you.

I'm sorry for that person inside of you.

They have to put up with that.

Yeah, I'm just loudly like,

I need a basket.

Actually, that's not even, I need a basket.

That's not even related to food or anything like that.

That's just like seeing a pregnant woman.

Like,

yeah.

A single door set to the side of a small window, strong collection of breads.

I quickly dialed up my boss and informed him of the situation.

He was glad to hear that I arrived all right and went into a speech about ensuring that I represented the company in the best manner possible.

Afterwards, he told me to keep up the good work and and to call him tomorrow.

After hanging up, I was surprised to find Victoria still waiting for me in the hallway.

You didn't have to wait for me.

Well, honestly, I have nothing better to do.

I've been cooped up in my room for the longest time because of this bloody baby.

Oh, couldn't think of any response to this.

You don't talk much, do you?

I shrugged sheepishly.

What can I say?

I'm a quiet guy.

Didn't that just feel appropriate?

I did, I didn't like it.

Come on, that was perfect.

What can I say?

No, that is perfect, but every extra noise made me uncomfortable.

You know what?

Should have says this.

Let me reread it.

Say, I shrugged sheepishly again.

Okay, I shrugged sheepishly.

Okay, well, let's try that again because you that you okay, okay, I didn't mushmouth that one.

My bad.

I shrugged sheepishly.

What can I say?

I'm a quiet guy.

Ew.

I like that.

I feel like then when he went, I'm a quiet guy, he like squatted down and said it to the baby.

He put his lips around her belly button and talked that way.

I'm a quiet guy.

Well, it's a change for sure.

You're different from all the men around here.

All they do is talk and lecture.

She's just looking down at him, kissing her stomach.

Like, well, it's a change for sure.

Well, this is a change for sure.

You're different from all the other men around here.

All they do is talk and lecture.

They expect all the women to just listen.

It's quite maddening at times.

Are all men of the north like you?

I blushed at this.

Are you the only woman here?

I asked, attempting to change the subject.

She scoffed.

Of course not.

I don't know what I'd do if I was.

There are two others, my aunt Margaret and cousin Sophia.

You'll meet them later at dinner.

You are coming, of course, yes?

Her emerald eyes gleamed into my own.

I could feel my heart rate slowly increase.

My face must have been bright red from blood.

Yeah,

of course I will.

Her smile widened.

I've been bored for the past few days.

You want to go on a little adventure?

Adventure?

Yes.

I could give you a tour of the place.

I'm sure you're wondering where everything is at.

Can I get a tour of the baby?

Do you think it's the pheromones?

Is it pheromones that women exude from their honeycomb that's making this man be a ravenous bee.

I didn't like anything you just said.

I thought it was kind of, I thought it was kind of creative.

That was rough.

That was right there.

Honeycomb?

Yeah.

What?

I really hadn't thought about that place as a whole.

The only area that vaguely interested me was the room behind the double doors, but I didn't feel comfortable asking.

I really hadn't thought about that place as a whole, but figured it'll work.

Sorry.

That was horrible.

Sorry.

That was terrible.

I hate myself.

You have a line.

Thank you.

But I didn't feel comfortable asking.

You already said that?

No, then you say surely.

Why not?

Oh, my bad.

Sure, why not?

I got hung up on the whole thing.

Sure, why not?

Or sorry, sure, why not?

Okay.

Dude.

Thank God.

Took long enough.

She said, wrapping her arm around mine.

Where do you want to go fast?

Her perfume engulfed me, smelling of sweet berries and honey.

Smell that was perfect for her.

You want me to decide?

Yes, of course.

I don't want to bore you, showing you every nook and cranny.

I don't like some of the word in here.

She's getting all horned up, dude.

I don't, I don't like it.

I could tell she was reading my face because she added.

Come on,

I know there's a place you're dying to explore.

See, dude, come on.

She's fucking.

I don't like this.

I don't like it.

She's a pregnant lady.

She's a married woman.

This is

What?

My minge.

You make it worse.

Everything that you say becomes worse.

Dying to explore.

She's basically.

And he says, well.

Okay, even if that's where we're getting into, everything's like, oh, you're dying to explore every nook and cranny.

Like, there's still

sexual tension to it or something.

To just be like the beaver, that kind of kills any nuance.

I'll have it shaved.

It looks like.

Okay, see what I mean?

You're doing it.

You're doing it right now.

well yes just spill it already

i did kind of want to see what was behind those doors in the lobby i replied rubbing my neck in shame doors you mean the congregation room if it can i understand i no nonsense let's go she said yanking my arm pulling me until we reached the lobby again victoria i asked as she made her way to the doors

That symbol on the doors.

What is it?

She glanced over to the doors.

That is the symbol of all religion.

Well, their religion, anyway.

I've grown tired of all the prayers and the sermons.

It's all rubbish, really.

Rubbish?

If you don't care for it, then why are you here?

No, you're right.

I don't.

I never was into it.

Ever since I was a little girl, my father forced me to be a part of it.

All I've ever known has been Herb Beach County.

Well, apart from brief stay in the UK,

I'm sure you can tell I don't exactly sound like I'm from around here.

Yeah, I noticed.

I said, rubbing my neck.

You have my aunt to thank for that, anyways.

I've grown really tired of all of it.

Like I said earlier, I want to venture out and see the rest of the world.

At least, my home country.

I can't even remember it anymore.

So, your aunt brought you here?

What about your mother?

What did she have to say about all this?

She chuckled softly.

Oh,

this is implying

you're saying here.

How are you giggling in a British accent?

Sorry, that smells soon.

It actually got me pretty good.

I have no memory of my mother.

My father told me she died after I was conceived.

I was mainly raised by my aunt.

Oh,

I'm sorry.

I know the feeling.

My mother died when I didn't do it.

This story hasn't jumped the shark or anything.

It's still fine.

Like the tension's still, it's still okay and everything.

You have ran it.

I'm also a little tired, which is why I think I had the giggle fit earlier about the guy running up the sidewalk.

Um,

but I don't let me let me read

the story of flies and she starts giggling that far.

Let me read it.

No, no, no, no, no.

She chokes her.

I don't want you to read it.

I have to say, no, I'm going to keep bothering you.

No, no,

no, that's conceiving.

Oh,

oh,

oh, I know what she wrote.

Oh, wow, wow,

okay.

Now that that's clips unusable, we're good to go.

We went quiet for a minute.

Why don't you just leave?

I suggested breaking the silence.

You're not a little girl anymore.

You don't have to stay here now.

That's a little much emotion, I think.

Come on.

Come on.

Hey, you're not directing this thing.

I gotta read it however I want.

I'm directing it now because you have taken this under your own rein.

You're not a little

You don't have to stay here now.

He didn't just explode into that level of

emotion.

Why don't you just leave?

I suggested, breaking the silence.

You're not a little girl anymore.

You don't have to stay here now.

We have to keep the previous lines, too, so everyone can see what you're trying to do to this story.

That is completely, it's not earned that yet.

You're acting like they've played ACDC or something.

I'm just reading.

I'm just reading it.

She smiled.

If only that that simple, Marcus.

I'd love to leave.

But some things are not that simple.

She said, looking down, rubbing her belly.

Oh.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to.

I felt like a complete idiot.

My talent of making awkward moments worse was starting to emerge.

I was bad at this kind of thing, and even worse at comforting someone.

It was mainly the reason why I remained quiet.

Come on, let's not ruin your tour with my story.

She interrupted, making her way over to the door.

Yeah.

I said, still feeling guilty.

Not even thinking, I asked.

How do we even get in?

It's locked, right?

A smile returned to her face.

She turned to me, giving off a jokingly suspicious expression.

How did you know it was locked?

She's fucking with you.

See, you're doing it.

What's she said?

Jokingly suspicious expression.

How did you know it was locked?

No, that's like a how How did you know it was locked?

How did you know it was locked?

Sure.

I shrugged pathetically, giving off a sheepish grin.

I don't know, aren't most doors in this place locked?

It's a poor excuse.

I knew it.

Oh, you're more audacious than you make yourself, Marcus Pale.

She said, placing her ring into the small indent.

She twisted her wrist to the right, which prompted a soft click.

Your ring is a key?

I asked in astonished.

What?

Does the north not have keys like these?

Come on.

I followed her behind the door.

Inside, the room was huge.

A sweet aroma from the lobby seemed to fall flat, sucking out when the door shut.

Instead, a singe of smoke and ash filled the air.

The lighting was very poor.

What little light was present came from the cracks of the doors behind us.

The room had long cues for seating lined in rows.

The rows made their way to the front of the room where they stopped before an altar.

From there, a small set of stairs ran up to a large podium.

Behind it was a flat table with an altar.

The table itself was covered in a white cloth.

Near the wall stood tall columns of rigged rocks as if crudely carved, connected to the ceiling.

And between them stood small marble pillars, each housing a brass bowl.

What was this place?

Must have spoken the question out loud because Victoria answered.

It's a congregation room, silly.

Was something burning in here?

Yes.

It's from the candles.

It's what we use during our services due to the poor lighting.

Why not just install lights?

Well, candles are also an important part of our service.

She said almost as if I was supposed to know this already.

I dismissed it though and went further in.

I climbed up the stairs of the altar, noticing a figure standing behind the podium.

It's hard to make out in the shadows.

It wasn't for the strains of light behind us, I wouldn't have even noticed it.

I took out my phone and held it up to the figure using its backlight.

What I saw almost caused me to tumble down the stairs.

In front of me, I saw a tall white statue depicting a strange figure well over my height.

Its upper body was of a very fit man, bearing a strong chest and arms.

The arms of the statue hung low, sweeping near its ankles.

It only had three fingers.

The legs appeared inverted.

Its knees caving inwards like a goat's legs.

Even more disturbing was the head of the statue.

It was a hard sight to bear.

The head looked like a sick crossbreed between a dog and a man.

It wasn't like the typical depiction seen like in Egypt.

No, this head was like a dog and a man simultaneously.

It had a long, narrow snout that seemed to morph into the mouth of a man.

Other parts of its face appeared human like, while in others indescribable.

The eyes were small and beady, staring firmly off into the distance.

It held a third eye larger in comparison to the other two in the middle of its forehead.

Long wild hair ran down its face, ending at its shoulder, with horns protruding from its back.

The statue as a whole stood in a confident pose, as if knowing its presence was significant.

Victoria?

I felt my voice squeak.

I could feel an eerie chill fall down my spine, unable to tear my eyes from the horrid view.

What the hell is that?

Walking to me, her eyes carried over to the figure.

She seemed unfazed and calmly stated.

That is our god, Lanius,

the YI of time.

That is the end of part two.

Excellent.

Nice.

Sick.

I'm in.

I'm so in.

We just need

a Jamaican guy

and like an Armenian dude to be in the camp, too.

I was just saying, they have like one British person there.

So I think to even it out, you need a

menanians specifically.

They're just different accents.

Could be a Spanish accent.

Okay.

For all I care.

Is Lanius a god in any culture?

I'm not aware.

It's the name of the guy from Fallout New Vegas.

I don't think.

I mean, obviously, the imagery is very demonic, like, you know, like pagan god, half human, half man.

But I don't see anything about there being a Lanius god.

Interesting.

Okay.

Anyway, with that.

Oh, hello.

My wife's at the door.

Hello.

Yes.

With Hunter.

Could I...

Hey, wait, wait, while you're here.

Kayla says, hi, Hunter.

Hey.

He says, hey.

Can you be a doll?

Get me something to get me something to dwink.

Call her toots.

Toots, toots.

Can you get me

like a perhaps a Dr.

Pepper or Dot Coke may have she didn't like the use of toots.

That did not go to my favor.

You say you look so much prettier when you smile.

When she comes back with the drink in a second, I will hit her with that.

That'll be really fun.

Yeah, just say, just say, you know, honestly, you walking around the house like this, it would just be so, you'd just be so much prettier if you smile.

Yeah.

And lost the shorts.

Right.

So I should have the end.

Or just, you know, just like makeup.

It's a friend to everyone.

Something like that.

Now that one would get me in a doghouse like that.

I'm going to get slapped pretty hard.

I'll do the first one, but that's where I draw the line.

Can I just say something?

Yeah.

Just like while we're waiting to get into part three, I think this might be like my favorite story we've read.

What?

I think this might be my favorite story we've read.

This one?

Yeah.

Okay, so you're messing with me.

No, I'm serious.

No, you're not.

Because this isn't really

how you seriously describe things.

No, I seriously, I fucking love this story so far.

You don't.

Dude, stop laughing.

I fucking love this farm.

You do not love this story.

No, I do.

Stop.

I really do.

This is my favorite.

I'm putting it down right now.

This is my...

You would be so much prettier if you smiled.

She did not like that, Hunter.

That was a bad move.

That was the bad pull.

Just slammed the door on her way out.

That won't play out well.

All right, well, part three.

It's called the book.

Oh.

Part three here.

And I just want to say this is my favorite fucking story.

Okay, whatever.

Part three, the book.

I think it's fine.

I'm vibing with it.

It needs to.

I do talk.

I mean, you're talking to me like that.

This is my favorite story we've ever fucking read.

It needs to pick up a bit.

Like, I kind of like the direction with Lanius and stuff like that.

I feel like it's been a little slow on the setup, but I need to see it

go a bit more.

But yeah, I like it so far.

It's got potential.

For my review so far, no complaints, nothing.

What's this attitude you're approaching this with?

I just well, I just don't know, man.

Like, you're throwing, it needs to pick up.

Like, what the fuck are you talking about?

Just read.

What's wrong, Marcus?

Victoria asked.

You absolutely pale.

Are you frightened?

The light from the cell phone I dropped reflected back into my face.

Even with this light in my eyes, I could still make out the horrid figure looming before me.

Did you say you're God?

You worship that thing?

The Looney Tunes lead-in was unnecessary.

What, man?

That's how it's read?

No, it's not.

That's not in there anywhere.

That's how I'd be.

If I saw a giant satanic statue.

Hi, Dave.

I do.

Oh, my God.

Let's get out of here.

And I'd run off, but I'd run in place for three seconds.

And I'd run off.

It's what would happen.

This story is not that bad.

How actually, how much better would it be if Boody Tunes, if it was seriously like,

Jesus Christ?

It'd be a pretty good read, honestly.

All right, sorry, go ahead.

Flawless.

Love it.

What's up?

Hunter, it doesn't deserve it yet.

will unironically say, this is my favorite story so far.

Oh, gosh.

Okay, whatever.

I took a few steps back, losing my balance in the process.

Instantly, I fell back, slamming into the seating pews behind me.

Sharp pain erupted from my back as I could feel the rush of air painfully forced its way out of my mouth.

I guess it would don't do that.

Gosh, I guess it was true that the wind could literally be knocked out of you.

I remained still, feeling the pain surge from my back.

Marcus, are you alright?

Victoria asked, rushing to my side.

Are you hurt?

Instantly, there was a loud slam from a door behind us, flooding the room with bright light.

What the hell is going on in here?

Victoria popped up.

Nothing.

We were doing a little touring when Marcus had a tumble, she said, addressing the voice.

Marcus?

The voice responded in surprise.

You brought an outsider into our area of worship?

I could hear the voice's footsteps moving at high pace until they halted next to me.

My eyes hadn't completely adjusted to the light yet, so all I could see was a partially lit figure.

A man at least.

Didn't matter who it was, though.

It sounded angry, regardless.

This could be the moment I was going to be sent home.

He fell!

I'm not sure if he's injured himself or not.

The man sighed.

He does look pretty banged up.

Hey!

Can you at least move?

Yes, looking down at me.

I hadn't tried yet, but I attempted to move my arms and then my legs.

Despite the stop moaning!

Despite the lingering pain from my back, nothing appeared to be broken.

I think I'll be all right.

I slowly began to stand, feeling the man help me up.

Are you sure you're alright, Marcus?

He'll be all right, the man said, helping me towards the light of the door.

When my eyes eventually adjusted, I could finally make out his...

Okay, here's what I'm going to do.

So there's long sections that I can read.

So if I go into Discord and I mute him.

I'll stop by.

I'm just trying to do the thing that he was.

I'll stop doing it.

But

I was just supposed to be like, he's hurting.

So now that he's muted,

I'm going to read until it comes to a quote.

And then, so I can't hear him until I get to a point where there's no quote.

Then I'll unmute him.

When my eyes eventually adjusted, I could finally make out his face.

It was Terrence.

After reaching the exit, he shut the door to the room behind us.

It felt good to be out of there and back in the coolness of the lobby.

Apparently, I'd been sweating because I could see large spots across my face.

Did you hear it?

I came back and unmuted to, because it's your turn, and it was very distorted over the microphone, but it sounded

like the noise when like you step on a dog toy really hard that like squeaks and it's like

the entire time you're reading I was just like

Now look here

I know y'all guessing all, but I'm gonna need you to end your little exploit.

I need you to end your exploring

we cannot we cannot read this late in the day i'm telling you that right now

the only other time we've read after like 4 p.m was uh the dianea house which became eat me like a bug so historically our track record for doing stuff later in the day not great

Oh,

and like, and like introducing a pregnant woman to us after this time, bad idea.

We're immediately going to make the guy weird.

He's going to have a lot of weird bits.

He said to me before turning his attention over to Victoria.

As for you,

you ought to know better.

Matter of fact, you should be resting.

We're lucky that didn't happen to you now with that baby.

No more exploring.

Else things like this happen.

It felt like we were both being scolded as if we were his children.

Just remember you're here for for a job, he said, returning to me.

So if you just stick to that, you'll be fine.

Now you best go wash up.

Dinner'll be ready soon.

Bathroom's at the end of the hall on the left.

Just make sure you knock before you enter.

Go on.

I nodded weakly, catching Victoria's apologetic eyes as I turned to leave.

I wasn't mad at her for what had happened.

How could I be?

It was my own fault for clumsily falling like I did.

I made my way back upstairs, cleaned up.

By the time I finished, the time was 6.03 p.m.

I knew Terrence had told me not to be up late, but I didn't want to be the first one to show up either.

I'd cut it too close though, and hastily made my way back down, heading through the door on the left in the lobby.

Coursing through the hallway, I caught the hint of food in the air.

The smell gradually increased the closer I drew to the other side.

By the time I'd reached the end, my stomach was beginning to growl in protest.

Even my mouth began to water.

I approached a pair of double doors and could see light coming out through its cracks.

Behind them, I could make out murmuring voices.

This was it, I thought.

Took a deep breath and pushed open the doors.

The dining room on the other side was big, like fancy big.

The vibe I felt reminded me of the formality back in the old days, early 1900s maybe.

Several antique cabinets stood up against the walls.

They had glass doors with the insides filled with priceless-looking treasures.

Portraits ran along the walls portraying the faces of people, possibly ancestors of the sort, their eyes firmly staring down as if a silent audience to the event.

In the center of the room, large tables sat filled bountifully of plates with mountains of food and drinks.

The other residents of this church could be seen standing around the table, chatting amongst themselves.

However, their chatting ceased when the door shut behind me.

They all gazed at me silently.

My nerves were through the roof, so I just stood there like a deer caught in the headlights.

What now?

I thought.

Finally, one of the women spoke out to me.

Ah, you must be Marcus.

Welcome, my dear.

She had a British accent like Victoria's, and I quickly assumed this had to be her aunt.

She was most likely in her mid-forties, with a face slightly stained in wrinkles.

She had dark hair tied neatly in a bun, wore a dress similar to Victoria's, but with more red in it.

I'm Margaret.

Pleased to meet you, she said, walking up to me.

After shaking my hand, she guided me over to the others around the table.

There were four others.

One was a woman she introduced to be Sophia, apparently the cousin Victoria had mentioned.

I was surprised to hear she didn't exhibit the same accent as either of the two, instead having the same country one as the Reverend.

She was much younger than Margaret and probably a few years older than me.

The next person was Terrence, who I'd already met.

From him was another man about the same age as him named Jesse.

Lastly, she showed me Victoria.

I couldn't hold back my smile when I saw her.

She returned one as well.

Margaret caught sight of this.

I've taken you've already met my niece, she stated with a teasing smile.

Well,

I started, beginning to blush.

Yes.

I was showing Marcus around earlier, trying to get him familiar with everything for when he starts to work.

Oh, I see.

Well, come now, dear.

You sit over here.

She led me to an empty chair near the end of the table next to her.

Everyone else made their way behind the respective chairs too.

Toria stood behind the chair across from my own.

I was ready to pull out the chair and sit when I caught sight of her eyes beckoning not to do so.

I quickly corrected myself realizing that everyone was still standing as well.

When the Reverend arrives, we can begin eating soon.

Please excuse him, he can run a little late sometimes.

I chuckled a little to myself, thinking of Terence's words from before.

However, it wasn't long until everyone's attention turned to the door opposite the end of the table.

I hadn't realized it was there.

I was curious to where it led, possibly to the reverend's quarters.

The door opened and the reverend came walking through.

He still had his hobbled walk from earlier, his face still pressed with the same toothy grin.

When he came through, everyone spoke in unison.

Evening, Reverend.

The smile grew wider at which he replied, Evening, everyone.

Pulled out his chair and sat down, gesturing everyone to join him.

We all followed suit.

The food before us was truly a sight.

There was many dishes flooded gracefully with food, rice dishes, freshly looked vegetables like corn and baked potatoes, sliced breads and even three roasted meats.

A large silver plate sat before everyone along with rows of forks and knives around it.

I noticed the many wine bottles spaced along the table.

The food looked simply amazing and I couldn't wait to eat, but was hesitant to make a move unsure of their manner of etiquette.

I decided to follow any and all actions of Victoria.

It was probably the reason why she sat across from me.

Let us bow our heads for prayer.

My eyes shifted over to Victoria.

She bowed her head with one eye open, pressing a finger to her lips while looking at me.

Then she placed her hands together.

I nodded and did so too.

From then, the air was silent.

I wasn't sure how much time had elapsed, but it felt long, at least five minutes.

I wanted to check to see if everyone was still praying.

Everyone, including the Reverend, still had their eyes shut.

I could see all of them mouthing something silently to themselves.

Margaret, I could see, was holding tightly to a charm from her necklace up to her forehead.

I could only make out partial amounts of it, but I was sure it was the same emblem as the congregation room.

I also noticed that everyone had a similar ring, like Victoria, all on their ring finger.

The rings each withheld the same emblem engraved within it.

This made sense, since apparently, they were the keys to the room itself.

I noticed Terrence didn't have a ring on his finger.

Instead, I saw it hanging from a necklace.

I looked at the Reverend and I saw he had two rings.

One was the same as the others, but the second one was different.

I could tell the symbol wasn't the same, but the way his hands were positioned made it so I couldn't distinctly make it out.

Amen.

On command, everyone's eyes opened.

Let us eat now, he said, raising his hands out.

Everyone began grabbing at a bowl or plate, passing it around, feeling their plate at their leisure.

I was glad it was finally time to eat.

I don't think my stomach could have taken another minute.

I could feel my mouth watering even more, but I sat patiently, occasionally glancing over to Victoria for guidance.

So Marcus,

I swallowed a little, not wanting to explain I'd been somewhere I wasn't supposed to be.

Somehow my eyes guided over to where Terrence sat.

The glare from them felt unsettling as if his look alone was punishing me.

He was in the congregation room, he said sternly without removing his gaze upon me.

Say what now?

How did he manage to get in there?

He was helped by Victoria.

Terrence answered without hesitation.

The way he said it, though, felt like he was dying to get it off his chest.

It was like he was reporting a crime or something, expecting a reward.

My eyes fell to my plate, unable to meet anyone else's.

I was unsure what would happen next at this point.

Oh, dear.

Did you not have a candle on you, hun?

Quickly looked up, surprised at her response.

Victoria, you took him in there with no proper lighting?

It's no wonder he banged himself up.

I couldn't believe it.

Here, I thought I was going to hear a mouthful about invading their sanctuary, and instead they brushed it off like it was nothing.

Glanced over at Terrence, who appeared to be just as surprised by his reaction.

Steady grumpily turned his attention to his plate, unable to look at me in defeat.

Looked over at the Reverend, and he too seemed unfazed, still smiling.

No,

I wasn't thinking when I did.

However, we were doing fine without a candle.

It was more from the statue that startled Marcus.

Margaret and the others laughed at this.

Oh, I was dreadfully frightened too when I first saw that thing as a child.

It is quite a sight at first, Marcus, but I assure you, when you learn about Lanius, you go to truly understand him and what he is.

Swallowed a little more at this.

And what is he?

I asked, leaning in a bit.

Now, Margaret, the Reverend interrupted, chuckling a bit.

We didn't bring the young man all the way up here to teach him a sermon.

Give the young man a chance to eat.

Oh, of course.

Eat up, Marcus.

We don't want to waste anything around here.

She said, passing a bowl of potatoes.

Felt my stomach growl again at the sight of them.

I couldn't believe I had forgotten about my hunger.

I thanked her and added it to my plate.

Glanced over at Victoria, who gave me a slight nod of approval.

Smiled and began receiving the other dishes being passed around.

I will say, I like that.

I like the Reverend keeping the demeanor up.

And when she starts to say something about Lanius, he's like, oh, well, let the boy eat, like a casual way to keep it quiet for now.

Yeah.

There's like these slow

manipulations happening.

Right.

The rest of the meal went by smoothly.

There was chatter amongst everyone.

I listened as they went went on about their everyday occurrences.

It was funny to hear them bicker at each other a few times, too.

Occasionally, one of them would ask me a question or two about where I was from or what I did.

Then, though, I didn't feel nervous anymore.

After dinner, the Reverend dismissed everyone.

On the way to my room, Victoria caught up with me.

Marcus,

I just wanted to apologize.

For what?

For how Terrence acted in there.

It's fine.

I was just happy everyone else didn't feel the same way.

Yes, well, Terrence has always been that way.

I'm just saw he tried to call you out like that.

I'm I'm fine.

Said, blushing a little, trying to brush it off.

He did the same to you, too.

Went back upstairs, stopping when we arrived at my door.

Well, good night, Marcus.

Today was truly a pleasure.

Good night.

Washer continued down the hallway, stopping a door on the left, three away.

She glanced my way when she saw that I was staring.

Immediately, I snapped my head towards my door, locking it, closing it behind me.

Inside, I smile to myself.

He smiles to himself quite a bit.

And also, I don't like his implication that he's keeping track of what room she's in.

We got our Marcus here is already like, maybe I can be the dad that stepped up.

Maybe that'll be me.

That's Marcus Pale for you.

It's Marcus Pale.

Every night I dream about killing my family and myself as a kid.

That's just me, Marcus Pale.

Do you like being pregnant?

I like that my mom's dead.

Is your mom dead did you do it i wish my mom would have shot me in the womb as a baby when she was pregnant you know when this kid's born if i kill you then your kid will be like me a ghost you'll be dead i'm marcus pale you'll be dead and he'll be like me he'll be like me dead and beautiful is it a girl

does she look like my dead mom

She can.

I quickly got dressed down into some shorts and a tea and sat on my bed.

I decided to look for any new messages on my phone.

The screen lit up, revealing a surprising no-signal message.

Of course, I thought sarcastically, how could I forget?

This place was a damn dead zone.

Fell back, lying completely on the bed.

Before I knew it, I was out.

I awoke suddenly, blinded by light.

Apparently, I had forgotten to turn off the lamp on the desk.

Last thing I needed was them to complain about wasting their electricity.

Slumped over to my feet to turn it off.

After doing so, I caught sight of something outside.

Below, I could make out my car in the moonlight.

I could see that a clump of leaves had been blown over a lot on its roof.

However, that's not what caught my attention.

I could see a figure standing next to my car.

Even with the moonlight, I could not make out who it was.

It did appear as if the figure was trying to enter my car.

I tried to focus my eyes better, but it still didn't help.

I wanted to blame it on my tiredness, but my mind instantly thought about Terrence.

Perhaps that jerk was still sore about dinner.

Could have been trying to sabotage my car or something.

Ran for my door, ripping it open and racing down the hall to the stairs.

When I reached the lobby, I stopped.

The entire lobby was dark.

In the air, I could smell a hint of something burning like candles.

I noticed a thin line of light coming from the congregation room's double doors.

Completely forgetting about my car, I made my way to the doors.

I could hear the slight murmur of voices from inside the closer I got.

I pressed my ear against the door to get a better listen, but I still couldn't make out what the voices were saying.

I could hear one voice speak out loud.

When it did, the other voices would speak in unison, same rhythm.

It was clear they were repeating the message of the lead one.

The tone and manner they spoke sent a chill down my spine.

It was clear that this was the church conducting their worship.

upon whatever the horrid image was I had seen earlier.

I didn't understand how they could worship such a thing, but then I didn't know how any religion could worship anything as they did.

I decided to let them be and made my way back upstairs.

They didn't seem like bad people, so how could I judge them based on what their belief?

Victoria was a prime example of someone good from it.

When I entered my room, I glanced out the window one last time, expecting to still see something below.

However, nothing was there.

Shrunked it off.

It's possible that there never was.

Slipped back into my bed, fell asleep.

The next day, I was awoken by knocking at my door.

I was surprised to find Terrence on the other side.

He apparently was ready for me to begin my work as soon as possible.

I checked my phone.

The time read 6.30 a.m.

This was a real dick move by him.

I didn't even wake up this early for my job back at home.

Reluctantly, I bit my tongue and told him I'd be ready in 10 minutes.

After getting ready, he led me to the room where he had placed all my equipment.

The room had several old computers inside, like late 90s old.

I hoped they didn't expect the best performance on these dinosaurs.

Nonetheless, I had a job to do.

I immediately began setting up my equipment.

I was even lucky to have company the whole time.

Terrence thought of that.

Seriously, what was this guy's problem?

Eventually, though, the time went by and even he got bored and left me.

I was too happy when this happened.

The day went by fairly quick once I really got into my work.

Of course, when mealtime came round, I attended them.

A few times out of the day, Victoria came by to check on me.

She would force me to take a break by walking around with her, which I didn't mind at all.

Days continued to pass as I worked, each one becoming more routine.

Which, by the way, before we get into Victoria, me and you are of the opinion, right, that she's pregnant by some means within the cult.

Like, it's not a husband or anything, and the kid's probably going to be a sacrifice or whatever.

It's a monster baby for sure.

100%.

Okay, make sure we're on the same page.

Throughout these days, I found myself spending more time with Victoria.

I always looked forward to those break times I had with her.

We'd walk around just talking and laughing.

Most of the time we did so outside.

I never thought I'd meet someone like her in a place like this.

It made each day more doable.

It was almost like our friendship was becoming more.

I didn't mind if it didn't, but if it did, that was better.

There was something that bothered me though.

Every time we were together, it felt as if someone, or something,

was watching us.

I couldn't shake the feeling, even when I looked around only to find nothing.

I wanted to think nothing of it until one particular evening, after dinner, came back to my room to find that someone had gone through my stuff.

I had to transport any of my clothes from my bags to the dresser, feeling too lazy to do so.

One of my bags had a Velcro strapped to accompany the zipper for reinforcement.

I knew I always kept the Velcro fastened.

I was rather OCD about it.

However, the Velcro was clearly unfastened and hanging loose.

The first thought that ran through my mind was Terrence's doing, but I had no proof.

It was possible that I was just looking for someone to blame.

I never did confirm who it was by my car, if there really was someone, so I couldn't prove that it had been Terrence at all.

I decided to look through the bag to be sure nothing was missing.

I went through to find that everything appeared to be there.

I could tell my things were moved around a bit, but other than that, nothing.

Clearly, whatever the culprit was looking for, they didn't find it.

Does this feel oddly?

The beats feel so familiar to me.

The story beats?

Like, the

yeah, I don't know which one because I'm bad at remembering the stories, but literally, it was the guy who was at like a summer camp.

Uh, Camp Oakwood, I think it was Camp Oakwood, the one where it's like hard-ass

guy, like

some like hard-ass roommate or like camp guard, and people start going through his shit.

There's also like, I think, like, a love interest in that as well.

It's just like the beats feel so familiar, don't they?

Yeah, I don't think there was a love interest in Camp Oakwood.

He had his roommate he liked that turned out to be a part of the cult, but there was like the hard ass camp counselors assistant guy that was really mad.

Yeah, but then the like if I had to, if I had to guess with this, Terrence is going to be like end up being a good guy.

Yeah.

Or something.

Or

something like that.

But then also I sense this feeling.

I mean, like, also, sorry to derail this.

I just had to say it while it was on my mind.

Also, the idea of like

the baby is his somehow and that he, like, I have been here before, but I never remembered.

or something weird.

They have kind of painted that idea with the dream of the person who shot his younger self being him.

yeah so it could be his could be his kid also the person that killed his mom was probably somebody from the cult etc i think so also that part about the dream where he's or sorry he always feels like someone's watching him while he's with victoria could be referenced to while he was in his dream he was in that place but no one could see him could be similar like right him from the future seeing himself or something like that I couldn't lie.

I was angry that someone had gone through my things.

Was it really Terrence's doing?

Did he really have something against me that much?

Did he do all of this?

Maybe I should confront him, I thought.

No, the last thing I wanted to do was start accusing people, which never looked good.

I decided to let it slide, just this once.

I got into shorts and collapsed onto the bed.

When I did so, I felt my head hit something hard.

Felt around the pillow, and instead of the usual fluffiness, I felt a hard texture.

Someone had stuffed something.

I reached inside and pulled out the object.

It was a thick, old, leathery book.

Brought it over to the lamp on the desk to see it better.

The cover looked hand-stitched to the spine.

In the light, I could see a symbol engraved across it in gold.

It was the same one I had been seeing everywhere.

My hands began to tremble at the sight of this.

How did the book get there?

Who put it there?

Why?

I was hesitant, but I slowly opened it.

It gave off a peculiar scent, smelling of wet leaves and old tree bark.

The pages were old and rather fragile.

They were filled with text written in black ink.

I couldn't comprehend the words.

They were written in some strange language.

I didn't even look like a language that should have existed.

I continued to turn the pages though, seeing the text flood each one.

A few pages in, I came across a picture.

It was hand-drawn with limited details.

The picture depicted what looked to be a star.

Around the star stood several figures, looking like people, one appearing slightly bigger than the others.

Turned the page to find more text.

Continue to turn it until finally, I came across another picture.

This one showed one of the human-like figures standing on what looked like a pedestal.

Other human-like beings stood around the main one.

Again, I flipped until I came across the next picture.

This picture showed the star from before.

It looked bigger, but with squiggly marks shooting away from it.

Human-like beings appeared to be cowering in fear, kneeling down at the star.

Even the big one from before.

Picture after depicted the human-like beings falling from the sky, their faces drawn in fear.

The one I turned to after, showing them drawn in a dark place, their faces twisted in despair.

It then showed the human-like figures began to change into hideous, deformed-like creatures.

They had teeth and horns protruding out different parts of their body.

The biggest one, even worse than the rest, with eyes drawn angrily with sparks coming from its fang-filled mouth.

Despite appearing like the drawing of an eighth grader, the images were really disturbing.

Something about them made the hairs on my neck rise.

I wanted to stop, but my hands kept turning the pages despite my mind's wishes.

The next one showed one of the hideous beings stray from the others.

It was similar compared to them.

The creature came across a man and the next one.

It appeared to reveal a swirling looking symbol to the man.

The man appeared to walk through the swirl.

When he did, the creature followed.

A small child stood in front of the man and the next one.

It was weird.

The two looked similar somehow.

The creature appeared to possess the child's body.

When it did, the man fell to the ground, presumably dead.

Now in the child's body, the child grew up.

As it did, it showed the creature leave the man's body, depicting it underground, possibly sleeping.

The man was seen surrounded by many people, with others joining.

Eventually, like before, it showed the creature awakening next to the man, showing him another swirl.

Again, the man walked through the swirl, the creature following, appearing in front of a child.

Once again, it possessed the child and the man died.

The images repeated.

Each time as they did I noticed the creature's size growing bigger.

Finally, I skipped further into the book to see where they led.

The images revealed something different this time.

Now it showed the man with a woman, the creature standing behind her.

When I flipped where the next image would appear, I found its page stuck tightly together to another.

Tried to part them, but a tear began to form, threatening to ruin both pages altogether.

Decided to skip it, move on to the next image.

Heart dropped when I did.

This time, the image showed the woman pregnant among a group of people from before.

Images later, which showed the woman in labor, giving birth.

The man appeared to have delivered the baby.

However, it looked like no ordinary child.

It was depicted to have large black eyes with long teeth.

Horns poked out in many directions of the child with its legs and arms disproportionate to each other.

The man was holding the child in in the air almost like he was glorifying it.

At that moment, I couldn't take any more and slammed the book shut.

Tossed it to the other side of the room.

I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, my arms and face sweaty.

Shook my head in disbelief.

There was no way, I thought, what the hell was all of that even about?

After seeing those images, I couldn't sleep for most of the night.

All I could see was the horrid inked images of that creature.

When I thought of the woman depicted being pregnant, I couldn't help but think of Victoria.

There's no way it could have been her, could it?

A lot of women can be pregnant.

It was just a coincidence.

It had to be.

So

that stuff from the book, some of that imagery is like, seems explicitly religious.

Like all of the people things, like one of them puts themselves on a pedestal, and then it shows all of them falling to earth.

And then.

Like one of they become deformed and monstrous, and then they go to man.

That's like the biblical account of the angels rebelling against God.

The fallen angels fall to earth, become demons.

That's all like Christianity lore, right?

The star thing could be in reference to wormwood, unless it's, I mean, it could also say a star, like just a pentagram, like the pentagram's used.

But in the book of Revelation, there's talk of a star called wormwood that falls to the earth during the end times.

So

maybe then, if we're going off of end times stuff, this cult is trying to bring about the Antichrist.

And it seems that the way they do that is this demon, Linus, or Linnaeus, or Ladius, whatever its name was.

Yeah, Lanius.

It approaches man and it shows them a swirl and they travel back and then they become themselves.

So it sounds like Marcus is in a time loop where he keeps going back with Lanius and he possesses his younger self.

He lives for years, possesses his younger self.

And then each time the demon gets stronger, eventually allowing the demon to insert his child, maybe literally, maybe, maybe spiritually, into a woman that brings about a child that might be the Antichrist or the equivalent thereof.

Yeah.

I think.

Maybe.

Who knows?

Yeah.

I mean, definitely Victoria got banged by the demon, and now the demon is going to come back and

bear the child.

What I'm wondering is, is our boy Marcus Pale Linnius?

He could be.

He certainly could be, or at least he's the man that is

making Lanius more powerful by continuing the cycle.

What we might be reading about now is Marcus near the end of his cycle, right?

Before he has to make that decision again to go back to his younger self, perhaps.

The next day, I worked sluggishly from the lack of sleep.

At breakfast, I made no eye contact with Victoria, nor did I talk to anyone else.

They asked, I simply blamed it on a headache or tiredness.

While working, I pleaded to myself, hoping Victoria would not come by as she usually did.

And despite my internal pleads, she came.

Marcus, are you feeling any better?

She asked, entering the room.

I didn't respond.

I didn't even look up.

Marcus, are you alright?

My silence caused her to press on.

What's wrong?

Why are you ignoring me?

She asked.

I could hear a hint of annoyance in her voice.

Still, I gave her no answer.

What could I say?

All I could think about was.

Fine!

She yelled and proceeded to leave the room.

That child.

I asked her without looking up.

I hear footsteps come to a halt.

What?

Who's the father of your child?

Who

is that what this is all about?

Stood up, finally facing her.

It was direct, but I had to know.

My face, along with my silence, must have said it all for her.

See the look of confusion in her eyes.

Why does it matter?

I need to know.

I wanted it to be from her boyfriend or even her deadbeat husband.

Any of these were better than what I was thinking.

Yet the entire time I had been here, I had not seen seen him, nor had there been any mention of him.

She just stared at me with her mouth open as if trying to find the words to speak.

Tears formed in her eyes.

Her gaze at me angrily and with sadness simultaneously.

She shook her head softly, never taking her eyes from me.

Finally, she spoke.

You stay away from me, Marcus.

Never come near me or speak to me again, or I'll have you sitting home.

She swarmed out, leaving me dumbfounded.

My plan had backfired.

I wanted to call out to her, to stop her, and apologize, but again, I was at a loss for words.

Like an idiot, I just stood there and let my head fall down in grief.

As the day continued on, Victoria never returned to see me while I worked.

Mealtime, she never made eye contact with me either, keeping her eyes focused on her plate.

Felt horrible for what I did.

I had no right to put her on the spot like that.

Cursed at myself.

After dinner, I attempted to talk to her as she was leaving her room.

She ignored me, though, when I did.

I don't know why I thought knocking on her door would be any better.

All I received upon it opening was having it immediately slammed in my face.

Sighed, truly feeling utter regret, made my way back to my room.

When I did, sat on my bed, staring off into space.

I wish I had never found that damn book.

Then everything between her and I would have been normal.

I miss seeing her already, her smile, hearing her laugh, just being around her.

Let my hand slide to my pillow to check for the book, only to find it missing.

Stunned, I poured out the pillow's contents, finding only feathers and cotton.

I was sure I'd put it back after I left each time.

Was somebody messing with me?

I angrily began searching for the book.

I checked my suitcases, tossing clothes around as I did.

I checked the dressers, under the bed, and even behind the desk.

Where was it?

My eyes met the window when I came from under the desk.

When I looked down, I saw the same figure from all those days before standing next to my car.

This time it appeared to be looking up at me.

Anger filled me.

I assumed it was Terrence again.

This was a bad time for him to be messing with me.

I raced out of my room and downstairs.

I ran around to the side of the building to where my car was.

The moonlight was stronger than ever, illuminating my way as I did.

When I reached my car, no one was in sight.

I'd finally reached my boiling point.

You picked the wrong day to fuck with me.

Come on out now!

If not, leave me the hell alone!

My voice echoed in the air before dying in the wind.

The building gave gave off one of its unsettling moans.

The leaves from the trees in the distance shook, rattling against their branches in the wind.

There's no one out here.

Feeling my mind grow at ease and realizing how much of a fool I looked, I started to make my way back.

However, my nerves froze when I heard the snapping of a twig behind me.

My heart began beating fast.

I slowly turned around to see a figure gradually rising from behind my car.

The figure was wearing a cloak with a hood over its head.

In the light, I could see pieces of twigs and leaves sticking out of its cloak.

I opened my mouth to scream, but the figure quickly darted over to me, covering my mouth with its hand.

It shushed me softly.

The voice was clearly of a woman's.

She slowly removed her head from my mouth and made her way to the back of the building.

Before disappearing behind it, she gestured me to follow her.

I didn't want to, but my legs began to move on their own in her direction.

When I reached the other side, I saw her remove the hood from her head.

The moonlight lit her face.

She was an elderly-looking woman, possibly in her early 50s.

She had ragged black hair mixed with gray strands that ran untamed.

Her face was depressed with wrinkles, dry patches of dirt.

The scent from her was rank but familiar.

Smelled like wet leaves and old tree bark.

Did you see it?

She whispered.

Her voice was cracking and rasped.

You saw it in the book, right?

You have to help me.

You have to help me save my daughter.

Interesting.

Does it seem does it seem like that might be Marcus's mom?

That's the thought I had, but then

unless the dad is in on it, which I don't get the vibe he is, I don't think it is.

I think she was in the same position her daughter is, maybe.

Like, they killed Marcus's mom for whatever reason.

Maybe because the attempt to kidnap him was unsuccessful.

And now...

Victoria is an example of like a successful kidnapping where they did kidnap someone, bring them into the cult.

And like, what was that line randomly like, oh, they're cousins, but they don't have the same accent or whatever.

Yeah.

Implying that like they're not actually related, not actually a family.

I was thinking

it would be freaky if it was his mom.

Could you, I've, with the time travel stuff, I had the thought to myself, what if Victoria is his mother?

Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to find, because it's setting up all these different things, and I think that it's like,

obviously, first time reading, so you don't know, but it's definitely trying to set up like like signals and signs of just trying to tell you what's up but i do think that either at this point in the story i think it's either his sister or i think it's the uh person that i think that marcus still might be the uh

the person that maybe impregnated her or something like i don't know i or just just something lends itself to that but i don't know or because of time travel wonkiness that is him inside of her He is the baby.

Oh, I think that's like his mom.

Potentially.

Wouldn't that be messed up if, I know this is a real thing people have, but wouldn't that be messed up if, like, you never knew what your mother looked like?

I mean, I guess most people have pictures of their mother, even if she passed away when they were young, right?

Um,

and Marcus does too, like, he saw the home video earlier.

Wouldn't that just be messed up?

All right, the church of the woods, the ritual, part four.

Who the hell are you?

I asked, backing up from the woman.

Please, she backed me, grabbing at my arm.

The smell from her was more unbearable up close.

Get off me, old hag!

I yelled, pulling myself free.

She shushed me loudly.

Her eyes appeared wide, scanning the area with paranoia.

You want them to hear?

Who will hear?

What are you talking about?

It had only been a few minutes with her, and I was already beginning to become irritated.

Damn!

I could see the wides of her eyes gleam in the moonlight at her weak attempt to scare me.

I shook my head unmoved.

I don't have time for this.

I'm really tired, and I gotta get up early.

Honestly, I don't care what you do out here, but just just stay away from my car.

I don't want to catch you near it again or else I'll report you.

No!

Please don't!

She begged, ready to grab at me again.

However, I was able to avoid her clin hands this time.

Fine.

Just don't touch me again.

I'm leaving now.

As I turned to leave, I could see the woman's head suck to the ground.

Normally, this would have been the part where I felt sorry, but right now I didn't care.

I was too tired with my mind overwhelmed with the events that had transpired throughout the day.

Besides, she was clearly deranged in the head, possibly possibly homeless, or maybe one of those people who lived off the land.

I started to walk away when it hit me.

I thought about what she had said earlier.

I looked back to still see her eye on the ground, almost appearing in a trance.

I was reluctant to go back, but I had to know.

What'd you mean, your daughter?

But how'd you know about the book?

I asked, approaching her.

Without looking up, she answered.

My daughter.

I need your help to save her.

Your daughter?

Who's your daughter?

You already know of her.

Why do you ask me?

She replied, looking up at me, her eyes relayed a look of solemn.

I need to hear it from you.

I was sure I knew the answers she mentioned, but something inside me wanted to hear those words come from her.

I wanted to be absolutely sure.

Say her name.

Why, it's Victoria, of course.

Shook my head in disbelief.

But how?

You're her mother, but you're supposed to be.

She said you died when she was just a child.

Is that what she told you?

It'd be like Gary to tell her such a lie.

What?

Yeah.

He took her from me.

When I didn't want to submit to his religion, he banished me.

This couldn't be possible.

Doria's mother was dead, right?

But how would I know otherwise?

I did notice, when I listened closely, I could hear her accent hidden behind a raspy voice.

Wait, this man you're talking about.

I started.

It couldn't have been the same person.

Do you mean do you mean the Reverend?

She didn't answer me immediately.

Instead, her eyes wandered off into the trees beyond, but eventually her head gave a soft nod.

Look,

you said you wanted to help your daughter and that the Reverend took her.

Why don't you just go to the police or something?

She chuckled to herself lightly, turning her eyes to mine.

You don't know these people.

I don't know anything because you're not telling me everything.

My impatience had elevated to annoyance.

All you need to know is that these people you think you know are liars.

The Reverend is the worst of them all.

They need my daughter.

They made her a part of their revolting ritual.

I should have never brought her here.

I was so weak-minded back then.

Damn them.

I didn't know what to do.

But then, that I saw you arrive.

At first, I was unsure what to think of you.

Yet, while watching you with Victoria, I knew it would be you who would help me.

To do what I couldn't and take her away from all this.

Okay, so it's not gone as bad yet.

but much in the tone of Camp Oakwood, this is becoming the scene where a character since unrevealed to us in the fourth act of the story gives a needlessly long explanation of everything.

I don't think it's going to be the same thing I said then.

If that ever happens to you while writing, don't.

I don't think it will be as obnoxious.

Long story short kind of meme for sure.

But

I don't know what it is so far about

like

people who write basically camp-esque, like basically ex-location in woods where it's

a hopeless Sanji neon

Evangelian character is like thrusted away by like women who desperately want to have sex with him and then opposing forces in the forest is like the template, it feels like for these stories.

I don't know why.

It actually reads a lot better if you go, I don't know anything because you're not telling me everything.

Because you're not telling me everything.

But we're not there yet.

No, no, no.

Clarify, it's not yet.

No, no.

But you, I can smell the ceiling.

I could smell it.

The meat is on the grill, Isaiah.

And

it's getting to the point where I'm like, you should probably turn the meat.

You should probably take it off the grill.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

You're burning it.

I'm in the next room over.

I've been to a few barbecues in my time.

I know what burnt meat smells like.

What the hell?

Yeah, exactly.

So I'm just calling it now.

And like, the story had some great stuff in the setup, again, similar to Camp Oakwood.

Yeah.

It had some great stuff in the setup with him having the dream of his younger self and

the pregnant lady being part of the ritual.

That was all really cool.

I also like the aesthetic of a demonic cult.

That has the exact same aesthetic of like a southern church.

Wait, that's all.

And Camp Oakwood, he also had a dream about himself.

No, no, no, no, no.

I'm saying

similar to Camp Oakwood, there's cool stuff in the beginning that I really enjoyed.

Yeah.

And I'm just calling it now that I'm getting a little

getting a little scared.

This is a lot of the real horror begins.

Last night when we ended, we ended because I was like, look, I can't take this seriously.

I'm going to make jokes about.

We now have this character to narrate a lot of the unforeseen stuff because there wasn't a better way to show that.

But now I realize that that wasn't just me being tired and hypercritical that may actually be where the story

that just me may be our death sentence is what you're saying

that might might be the inevitable yeah

yeah

okay it all started to come together all those times it felt like something or someone was watching me had been here yet i was still confused janna really answered my question and only contributed to the pile of others That's a lot to believe, especially about the others.

They don't act the way you make them out to be.

Besides, Besides, what ritual are you talking about?

You're very fond of her, aren't you?

Yes, ignored my question.

I'm glad that you are.

It does my heart good to see another care for Victoria as I do.

This is the reason why I knew you'd help me.

But I had to show you first of what they plan to do or what they've already done.

I left that book in your room as proof.

You saw it, so you now know too.

I was thrown off again.

I couldn't believe she was behind the placement of the book as well.

Wait a second.

I don't even know what I saw in the book.

I couldn't even read the words.

You don't need the words.

You saw the pictures, didn't you?

What you saw has been done.

Okay.

Alright, alright, alright.

So here we go.

We figured out she was the one who placed the book.

Booked those in his room that showed him and we already saw visual symbols of stuff that was if anything too much explained what was on to be fair i did think it was terrence that left the book so my my my bear trap is disarmed but now we know now we know that the book was left by her someone trying to help him and we already got descriptions of images that i theorized about earlier and theory is all you need for a story to understand it enough to move forward right questions are a good thing so if the next i see a bunch of i'm not reading them i see a bunch of paragraphs underneath this if she goes on to just explain what those drawings are, we already had described, the story has crashed out for me.

And I will start doing the shinji voice.

That's fair.

I didn't know what to think.

The images on those pages were indeed horrific.

I wanted to believe, but another part didn't want to accept it.

You mean to tell me that's what's growing in Victoria?

What can you expect from me then?

It seems a bit

too late now.

There's one thing we can do:

we can dispel the ritual, stop it before it is ever completed, and that evil is born.

Why haven't you done it already?

Because

I need to access the room of worship, and last I checked, I lost my key.

She held up her hand for me to see.

I can make out a small stump where a ring finger used to be.

What the hell?

The rings are more than show.

I'm sure you know that by now.

They are keys, but there's a darker secret behind them.

They're also a symbol to show your your allegiance.

Okay.

They're also the symbol to show your allegiance to the faith by permanently clamping onto the wearer's finger.

The only way to remove it is by removing the finger entirely.

When they banished me, I was so torn that I bit off my own finger.

I didn't want anything on me that was associated with them.

That's crazy!

Are you pregnant too?

I noticed your belly is kind of rump as well.

Can I see?

Methinks me heard a kick.

Is that a pregnancy?

Yeah, your belly sounds like a war drum.

Please?

Do you like that?

I want to play Donkey Konga on your belly.

I couldn't fathom.

I couldn't fathom someone wanting to risk their finger.

Okay, sorry.

Go ahead.

Sorry.

Sorry.

I love the Wii.

It's my favorite.

I love the Wii.

I love the Wii.

I love Nintendo.

Yay!

I can't wait for another Le Donkey Kong game to come out.

Can I get pregnant with Nintendo?

I would like that.

Mr.

Nintendo, impregnate me.

Can I be pregnant too?

I want him to put his power glove in me all right well we didn't need to get we were like alluding to something nefarious we didn't need to go into detail with like you just did they were talking about things going into people that's not what I wanted that's really popular I don't know his name but that guy he's like not the American guy yeah the he was the CEO of America Nintendo and

people liked him.

I want him to make love to me.

I think his name's Reggie.

Okay.

Reggie.

Make love to me, Reggie.

Okay, I made a mistake bringing the pregnant.

pregnant fish.

Come out of retirement.

I should have known that was a hot zone for you.

Fill me with your chum.

See, there we go.

There we go.

I'm a chum bucket.

Okay.

Okay.

That's enough, I think.

Chum bucket.

Where do you get a muffin?

It's a fish thing.

Also, it's where Playton wants to steal the crabby patty.

That was a good impression.

Thank you, crabs.

I couldn't fathom someone wanting to risk their finger finger or any part of their body on the basis of their faith or anything.

I've heard of tattoos, but this was way beyond that.

I couldn't help but picture the woman clamping down on her finger until it snapped and spitting it out.

The very thought made my stomach churn.

Yes, but it was only after so that I wish I hadn't.

I could have ended this nightmare years ago, yet I let my anger cloud my judgment.

But you're here now, which means there's hope again.

Me?

I don't have a ring either, though.

I know.

But the others do.

Do you know Terrence?

Gritted my teeth.

How could I not?

You frick.

I'm going to be honest.

Like, seriously, the chest has been open.

The chest has been opened, and the fedora and scarf have come out.

Yeah, that, that, like, it was bad enough him earlier being like, I noticed I was smiling and we kind of made jokes or whatever, but now like.

He's been watching this whole fucking time.

He's been beat red this whole time.

between

and he's also like there's been i haven't called it out

but like similar to the boat in the middle of the ocean one there's a lot of whatever that one was called um there's a lot of screaming and almost screaming and a lot of holding in screams yeah yeah yeah i i've been trying to be a good sport and not i have to

but it's it's getting a little rough because like he goes from like huh

and then one sentence later i gritted my teeth How could I not?

Like, how could I not?

How could I not?

The prick.

Make love to me, Reggie.

No.

Um.

Terrence is a lapdog when it comes to the Reverend and the faith.

But he's too much of a pansy to wear the ring like the others.

He keeps his on a necklace he wears.

I've seen it.

I replied, recalling the times at dinner.

How am I supposed to get it?

If it's on him?

Two things.

One,

the less important one.

Do you remember at the beginning of the story?

There was that guy I was cracking up about because I'm like, he's going to come sprinting down the street and kill him.

Yes.

Yeah.

I remember.

The get-out guy.

Yeah, yeah, the get-out guy.

In hindsight, the description and sentences that were given to that character related to absolutely nothing.

There's no way that guy comes back into the story, correct?

Oh, by morning.

By morning.

Okay.

The second point.

Haven't we had multiple pair, like, sentences to himself where he says he doesn't believe in religion.

He doesn't believe in faith.

He doesn't know how any religious group could worship a God.

And then this lady comes up to him and says, the woman that you know is going to birth the Antichrist.

And he's like, what do we do to stop it?

There's not even like a what?

I think that he immediately buys into the supernatural.

One of the other parts, he needs to have had a confrontation with this person and like been skeptical to like remain true to like what he has said in the story, which is like, oh, I don't really buy into the religious thing.

I mean, even like to Victoria, he's like, this is kind of, he hasn't really said it outright, but I think like there should have been more of him being like, I don't know.

And then there should have been some kind of evoking incident that happened that like reveals that he's like, oh shit.

Like his skepticism starts coming out and he starts being like, well, fuck, well, maybe this is real.

Yeah.

So, but right now it's just like, it seems very easy.

I feel like you could just go to this guy and be like, give me your bank information.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

628

149.

Need anything else, stranger?

Do you like being pregnant?

Do you want to be?

This is where you come in perfectly.

Probably don't see much of everyone throughout the day.

That's because there are chores to be done to keep the place up and running.

Terrence is a working man.

He normally chops up wood or fetches game for the meals.

When he bathes afterwards, he takes off the necklace.

I know this because he used to do the sheets around the living quarters and would see his ring just lying there.

That is the best time to do it, for he never locks his door at that time either.

If you can take his ring at that moment, bring it to me and I'll do the rest.

I bit my lip thinking on it.

I don't know.

It seems a bit risky.

If I get caught, I'm finished and

he'll have me sent me home instantly.

Then don't get caught.

You're the only one who could walk around easily.

If I could do it, I would.

But they'd see me on first sight.

I was barely able to place the book in your room.

Please, you have to do this for Victoria.

Also, I just want to say,

if you were fucking able to place a book in a room, you're able to grab a ring.

You can get the necklace.

It's always unlocked.

It's always unlocked.

He always takes it off.

And then also, it's like...

She also already said, well, people will be doing chores and no one's going to be around.

So it's totally.

It's like, well, why don't you fucking do it then, then you old bird god damn yeah what do you mean he he goes out and hunts game for the meal that's what i want like a

that's what i that's what i mean too i was like you're telling me those motherfuckers don't have just like frozen steaks or whatever like are you like yeah they have lots of they have an it guy there running computers yeah the fiber internet is a guy who's like hooking up fiber and stagging computer racks and you're telling me the guy's just like well yeah i don't know the

the the deer just

weren't roaming today today it's like what are you talking about dude why don't you door dash some red robin or something like that you're close enough what the

they were like every time he goes hunting he reliably gets food for like 40 people yeah every time god damn yeah good good lord i may you know what it is maybe he tells people he's hunting game but really he's just going to like a walmart and he's getting uh that would be that would be funny he comes back and they're like you're truly the nimrod of these woods And he's like, yeah.

And you can see like the great value sticker on it.

Yeah, don't I put that there myself.

I'm getting into graphic design.

I already cleaned and stripped the meat on all these.

Don't look for where I did it at.

This is trustworthy.

I gave off another long sigh before conceding.

With that, a smile formed wider than it ever had on her face.

I could see the many crooked rows of her blackened and yellow teeth.

Good, said leaning close to me.

I've been watching Terrence for a while.

He's already chopped off a round of logs good for now.

Well, he'll be ready but you'll need to do so again he does it every two days so the day after tomorrow you'll have to make your move he explained i nodded once i get it how will i contact how will i contact at you where will i find you she paused for a moment before answering your lamp if you're able to get the ring then turn your lamp on and leave it on I'm always watching, so I'll see it.

Then what?

Then bring the ring down to me, and I'll conduct my ceremony in the room.

At that time,

I want you to get Victoria out of here.

I.

What about you?

I'll be fine.

I've survived this long, so don't worry about me.

You should go now.

We don't want anyone catching wind of you out here.

Also, you've been out there for how long?

Just talking in the wide open?

Doesn't matter.

Yeah,

right.

There's one more thing I need you to do.

What is it?

I need you to promise to never mention this meeting to Victoria.

She must never know you've seen me.

What?

Victoria would be thrilled to know that you're alive.

I know she would.

Which is why she cannot know that I am, or else she will not want to leave.

Now can you do that for me?

It's a really dumb reasoning, but sure, whatever.

Because if she's not leaving like the country, she's just leaving the building.

That the church is also outside of also they banished this woman and she's just living in the woods adjacent to the property.

I was going to say that.

20 years.

You know, they didn't even cut off her finger.

She bit off her own finger.

Yeah, that one I was kind of like,

all right, but now you need a ring really bad.

So why not just...

Well, it's just like

it's one of those things.

Even if you want to cut off the finger, why did you throw away the ring with the rest of the finger?

If you needed the ring later, why did you not

take off the ring?

Like, it's this thing if she's just like, I don't know.

Well, they said it's permanently attached to them.

Oh,

okay, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

So to get it off, you had to cut your finger off.

But even if you're like, I'm so disgusted, I want to cut it off, that's fine.

But keep the ring if you need it for a ritual.

Yeah, I would have kept the finger in the ring, for sure.

I heard her voice quiver off.

Her eyes became glossy in the moonlight.

I swallowed hard and nodded.

She returned a grateful nod and faded until I could no longer see her among the shadows.

I shivered a little.

The chill of the wind was finally getting to me.

So I quickly ran back inside and back up to my room.

The following day, I started the day as usual for my work.

Throughout it, I thought about the plan.

Regardless of how I felt, I knew I had to make it work.

I also knew I had to stall the overall progress of my work, so I made sure to inform Terrence that I would need a few extra days to complete it.

My boss didn't pick up when I called, so I left him the message.

Made up a BS excuse about needing more time to set up and ensure the system was functioning correctly.

This is really funny how he just, without informing us or any real change, a woman just told him the supernatural exists and he has to stop this, so now he's changing his entire plan, how long he's out there and stuff like that, to stop the devil.

After lunch, I proceeded to...

Well, to save Victoria, the woman of his dreams.

Of course.

Of course, the pregnant woman he fell in love with immediately.

After lunch, I proceeded to head to my room to take a nap.

Normally, I would have spent this time with Victoria.

When I unlocked my door, I heard a grunting sound.

The noise was subtle at first and appeared to be coming from the end of the hallway.

I paused for a moment, unsure if I'd actually heard something.

I was ready to shrug it off until I heard it again, but a little louder.

Curious, I made my way down the hallway, listening as I did.

Stopped at the door I presumed it came from and pressed my ear up against it.

I heard it again.

Took my ear away.

This was Victoria's door.

Hesitant, I knocked on it lightly.

Hey,

are you alright in there?

There was no answer.

Victoria?

It's me, Marcus.

I could hear rapid breathing from inside sounding almost like hyperventilating.

Didn't sound good.

Frantic, I knocked on the door with a little more force.

Victoria, are you alright?

What's going on in there?

Can you let me in, please?

Go away!

I heard her say

in between gas.

Go away.

I mean, does this sound like she's in the middle of a sexual situation?

Yeah.

To see, I didn't like that.

I was trying to be subtle.

Yeah, to make it like that.

I mean, that's just, it is what it is.

Sounds like some.

I said, no, no, no, don't.

You know what it is?

I sighed, pressing my no, no,

I would have thought that.

He should have, Marcus should have pressed his ear.

Marcus should have pressed his ear against the door, and all he heard was.

Amarilla Bumor.

In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lions leaves tonight.

And then, get out of here!

In the jungle, the mighty jungle.

Yeah, that'd be sick.

That was good.

That was actually a better direction.

You took that than whatever I thought you were going to do.

I sighed, pressing my head softly up against the door.

Look,

I understand you don't want to talk to me.

And

I don't blame you.

I had no right to.

I was a jerk.

I was a jerk back there, and I shouldn't have been prying as I did.

In truth, I don't care about the baby or who the father is.

I never did.

I just wanted you to know that I.

The words again failed me.

I could see them in my mind, but I couldn't push them out.

I'm sorry.

Okay, so is she giving birth?

Is that what's happening?

Is that what the hyperventilating is?

No, I legitimately think that she's getting...

She's getting fucking

Mike Tyson punch up.

I don't think so.

I wanted to tell her something else, about how I felt about her, about everything, but the timing didn't feel right.

I turned to leave, but stopped when I heard the door open behind me.

She had it half cocked to allow her face to peer through.

She stared at me for a moment as if analyzing my eyes for truth.

Finally, she opened it fully, walking back into her room.

I followed her, closing the door behind.

Her room was nice.

Unlike mine, which was bland and almost empty, her room was more cozy.

She had a desk filled with books, some open journals, others, maybe novels.

Her mini mini-dresser was complemented with a vase filled with several flowers, clearly well cared for.

The scent of her perfume lingered in the air.

I embraced its smell, scent I longed to miss.

What was that noise I heard earlier?

I thought something was wrong.

She walked over to the bed and sat, making a painful face as she did.

I'm fine.

It's just this bloody baby is all.

Joined her on the bed.

I meant what I said out there.

She broke down in tears, cupping her face with her hands.

I was bad at handling these kind of moments.

They always left me feeling awkward, but I gradually reached over to her shoulder to comfort her.

She immediately threw herself on me, bawling her eyes out on my chest.

After a good solid five minutes, she had finally stopped.

Her eyes were reddened and her nose slightly runny.

You said your mother died when you were young.

How did she die?

She was killed.

I answered after a long pause.

Some guy broke into their apartment and shot her.

I gotta read that.

She was killed.

Some guy broke into their apartment and some guy broke into their apartment and he shot her.

Marcus,

I'm so sorry.

That must have been devastating for you.

Yeah, well,

I don't remember when it happened.

Like I said, I was too young.

There you go.

There he is.

I could feel her sob a little more on my chest.

This is also, by the way, like...

Like the level of like, oh, there's a beautiful woman at this cult.

She's immediately in love with me.

She forgives me instantly.

And now she lets out all of her womanly emotions on my chest.

Exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

That's what happens to me.

That's what's always

average I.T.

experience, I suppose.

Yeah.

Another score for the I.T.

department.

Yeah, take that.

Average I.T.

experience.

I stopped the world from being killed by the devil and get with the pregnant woman.

And I got a total awesome hug.

One day we're gonna- this isn't it, but one day we're gonna step into a story that's just fetish content.

You think so?

Statistically, it has to happen.

In a way, these are all

these are all kind of daydreamy, fetish content in a way.

Is what it feels like.

I wouldn't say all of them.

Almost.

The moth one, yes.

Absolutely.

I could feel her sob a little more on my chest.

It was my father.

Ooh.

She finally said, leaning on my shoulder.

Little inbred baby.

Father?

Yes.

He did this to me.

She said, looking down at her stomach.

My eyes widened as I pulled away.

Your father did this?

Who is he?

Who do you think?

She said, harshly, wiping her eyes.

I thought about it for a second, and immediately my eyes flashed.

The Reverend?

Wait.

The reverend is your father?

I couldn't believe it.

Her mother said he took Victoria from her, but mentioned nothing of him being the father as well.

Victoria nodded, but then shook her head.

Well, he's my stepfather.

My mother met him after my real father died.

If he did this,

why didn't you tell anyone?

Because I could not prove it.

He drugged me or something.

Okay, first off, she wasn't.

Is that funny?

Don't tell me there's no way there's a DNA save.

Also, it's like she's just like, I don't know, he drugged me.

Like, I don't know what happened.

Because I could not prove it.

He drugged me or something.

I don't know.

At first, I did not want to say anything, but when I started showing signs of the baby, we went on to tell everyone that it was a miracle.

That it was a gift from Lannius.

And like aimless sheep, they questioned nothing, taking in his poison words.

But I knew the truth because he was the only one else there.

More tears fall down her cheek.

I bit my lip when she said that.

Oh, God, stop sticking.

He bites his lip all the time.

It's so weird.

It's fucking annoying.

Also,

imagine a girl telling you that her father impregnated her, and you're just like.

Well, yeah, because biting your lip is like, what?

Like, you're like almost like seductive or something, right?

Doesn't it mean like

it can, but it can also be nervousness.

Like, I don't know, you know?

Yeah, if anything, I think it should have been something more like my lips curled or something where you're like, holy shit.

Well, he describes lips quivering a lot.

He uses that word.

Why aren't we reusing that instead of biting lips?

Geez.

It should have been, I didn't know it, but I had a giant smile on my face.

Oh, sorry, I didn't know.

Or he describes, like, I put my hands out equal on either side, and I lifted my shoulders and gave a sarcastic smug gesture and went, well,

what are you going to do?

He's your dad.

Oopsie.

Oopsie.

You're pregnant from your dad?

I'm sorry.

Uh-oh.

Do you like being pregnant?

Even though the whole dad thing?

This part sounded all too familiar.

I thought about the book and the image of the man standing with the woman and that horrid figure behind her.

Was it all true, though?

She had no memory of the event.

Was it possible that this sick action was all just the reverence doing?

regardless of which victoria's mother was right these people were monsters they're not that ignorant is he uh saying that is he saying that he is like questioning he's like well did the reverend really do it

is that what he's saying well this is every time in the story he learns something else he's like could it really be and then he just does it so i think he's like could it really be that the reverend did this and then i just thought it was going to be fucked up if he was like i don't know if the reverend could have done that but he immediately believed that the the homeless woman outside was like, You gotta save my little baby.

I left a book under your mattress or whatever the fuck.

And he's like, Okay,

I'm part of your plan now.

I just didn't know.

Got it.

Yeah.

At this point, I wanted to cheer her up.

I thought about telling her everything about her mother, but remembered the promise I made.

Said I lifted her chin up so that her eyes were looking into my own.

Oh, don't worry, me, the big buff IT man will save you.

Yeah,

we mopa, we mo up.

I could take you away from all Oh my god!

This is so gay!

I could take you away from all this.

All we have to do is jump in my car and leave.

You'll never have to see this place again.

Now this is becoming like uh gay.

Well, I don't know about that.

Not really, but you know

middle school day, where it's lame.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's lame.

It's, it's becoming lame and it's like,

I don't know, man.

It feels it's weirdly going in like a white night, like, oh, this poor pregnant woman needs my help.

And I can stop the devil.

It's fantasy stuff.

Whenever I read this kind of stuff, I always like, I can just picture.

I can picture the author like smiling and like they're, they're living out their own fantasy.

But this whole thing of like, I, even all the smile stuff, I didn't realize I had a smile.

That's the that's the person writing this.

The person writing this is like, oh my god,

my cheeks hurt.

Well, yeah, you've been like this roommate's like, yeah, you've been smiling for four and a half hours.

Why you've been writing?

Have I?

I didn't know.

I could see a mixture between happiness and fear in her eyes.

But how?

Where would we go?

You can stay with me.

I have my own place.

It's safe.

Trust me.

Marcus.

She spoke softly.

A smile gradually formed on her lips.

Yes, let's do it.

She said, rendering me a tight hug.

We should leave tonight.

Tonight?

Yes.

After dinner.

Any earlier and they'll become suspicious.

They always hold their sermons late at night, which gives us enough time between them.

We can leave then.

I looked away, trying to find a way to convey my thoughts.

I didn't want to reveal to Plan or her mother.

What's wrong, Marcus?

How about tomorrow night?

Tomorrow?

Why?

Why do we have to stay here another day?

Let's just leave tonight.

No, it has to be tomorrow night.

Shot back without thinking.

Marcus, I don't understand.

I place my hands on her shoulders firmly, looking at her in the eyes.

Look,

you have to trust me.

I have a plan with...

Hmm.

A friend.

They're willing to help, but it has to be tomorrow, okay?

do you like being pregnant i keep mimicking like the the hands on the shoulders thing you're pregnant god i'm in hell

hey i hate this i'm not gonna

no actually you know what no thinking thinking about it this is actually my uh my favorite story go ahead there you go thank you i'd say attitude her eyes were full of so much confusion i knew she thirsted for answers but luckily she simply nodded Okay,

I'll trust you.

For a second, we began to lean in for a kiss when we were both startled by an abrupt knocking at the door.

I answered it to discover Sophia on the other side.

Mr.

Pale, we were beginning to worry about you when we didn't find you in your workspace.

Her eyes shifted their gaze between me and Victoria.

I trust I wasn't interrupting anything.

No.

I said, trying to maintain my composure.

I was just...

Checking on Victoria.

Turned back to give her a wave and slid past Sophia.

Heading down, I glanced down the hall to still see her in Victoria's doorway.

I didn't want to arouse suspicion, so I continued on back to the room I was working in.

For one, Victoria has no reason to trust him.

Also,

so what I said earlier still stands.

I like the idea of like a demonic cult or like, you know, pagan cult that has the aesthetics of like a southern Christian church.

That's cool.

But why would they

like if your whole thing's like say or not sadism like um hedonism like doing whatever you want as in line with a lot of satanic stuff.

Why would you be like, I trust nothing was going on or everyone being so prim and proper?

Like, they should be having weird orgy rituals and stuff like that.

That would be more in line.

That would be way cooler.

They wouldn't have the same morality.

Like, maybe the aesthetics are fine, but they wouldn't have the morality of like southern Baptist churches.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, there's no reason to put on, I guess, an...

like this front-facing thing all the time.

Whatever.

I don't know.

Yeah, you'd expect once they get inside, inside like the the mask would slip but it doesn't they just act like that for some reason maybe where he's an it guy maybe they don't want outsiders know it so they're doing it around him maybe we'll see this what this story would redeem itself if like everything was a lie and victoria was in on it and the mother was in on it and like you know a rage from the start kind of thing that would be cool but i don't think it's going there i think it's going we're gonna save the we're gonna save the princess and get out and she's gonna love me forever and we're gonna have five kids i think that's where it's going yeah it's it's uh pregnant fetish fantasy stuff.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

I was glad I had patched things up with Victoria.

The feeling helped ease my thoughts on the plan.

I wondered if we could really pull it off.

Leaving the place was one thing, but stealing the ring from that jerk was another.

Something broke this mood though.

I was heading back to continue my work when I caught sight of Terrence walking outside with an axe over his shoulder.

That was strange.

There was probably nothing to worry about.

The old woman said he chopped every two days.

He would still need to do it tomorrow.

He probably needed it for something else, I assured myself, though the thought wasn't that very reassuring.

I decided to keep my eye on him while I worked just in case.

I looked towards the trees, hoping to maybe catch sight of the old woman, but didn't see anything.

I didn't actually believe I would, since she had been able to keep herself invisible for years.

I was sure, though, that she too was watching everything.

I continued working until Sophia came to me.

She informed me that my boss had called and was waiting on the phone.

Great.

Perfect timing as always, I thought grumpily.

What did he want anyway?

She led me back to the phone where I found it sitting off the hook on its side.

Apparently he was following up on the message I had left and wanted to ensure I was making progress.

I told him that I would have everything up soon, hoping to end the phone call quickly.

I noticed a small window in that room and peered out of it.

stretching the phone line as I did.

I gazed out and to my horror I saw Terrence making his way back.

His shirt was fully soaked in sweat while he was pushing a wheelbarrow full of chopped logs.

After dumping the logs off he made his way around to the front.

I felt my heart leap into my throat.

In my ear I could hear my boss go on into another one of his speeches about representing the company.

Screw the company right now, I thought.

I had a small window of opportunity and I was about to miss it.

We were completely wrong.

I could already hear Terrence slam the front door and proceed to the stairs.

I quickly thought of a way to let my boss allow me to hang up, a line that one of the clients had asked for my help.

Once over, I raced out of the room, nearly smacking into Margaret on the way.

Goodness me!

You're running as if a fire spurred!

I apologized frantically, my eyes looking down the hallway behind her.

Is everything all right, dear?

She asked with a puzzled look.

Yeah, I just need to use the bathroom really bad.

Oh my, I shouldn't keep you then.

She replied, holding a hand up to her mouth.

I think turned raced towards the stairs, stopped immediately before reaching the top.

I cautiously peeked down the hallway.

No one was in sight.

Where was he?

Was he still in his room, or did he already enter the bathroom?

I crept up the last remaining steps, slowly, eventually making my way down the hall.

I could hear the sound of water running in the background.

Yes, he was in the shower.

For how long?

Knowing I didn't have much time, I sped up my pace until I reached his door.

I opened it quickly, shutting it behind me.

Surprisingly, his room was a lot like mine.

There wasn't much in it.

It was bland and almost empty.

Anything he did have, like books, were nicely organized in its place.

I began looking around, making sure to return anything I moved back to its original place.

I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.

Every sound I heard, whether creak or thump, I associated it with being Terrence.

It felt like my senses had amplified.

I found myself constantly looking towards the door in paranoia, thinking he could barge through at any minute.

I looked through his dresser and all around his bookcase, but found nothing.

I started searching the desk, pulling open drawers to see inside.

When I opened the last drawer, I froze.

Inside, I could make out a familiar object.

A gun.

It was a revolver.

I didn't know the specifics, but it had a very long barrel.

I could see the dust that had formed over it.

Clearly, it hadn't been touched in a while.

I shut the drawer and continued searching around.

In the end, I couldn't believe it.

The ring wasn't here.

How could that be?

I wanted to check over everything again, but a feeling inside urged me to leave.

I listened to it and left the room, gently closing it behind me.

I started to head back to my room until I heard a voice call out.

Oi!

I heard freezing my nerves.

Almost shouted in complete terror out of shock.

I turned to see a half-robed Terrence dripping in the hallway.

A towel was wrapped around his waist, soaking up with little water dripping from his wet body.

His sweaty clothes were tightly gripped and a ball in one hand, while the other held his shoes.

What you doing down here?

My heart was now knocking against my chest, as if wanting to burst out.

I just needed to use the bathroom.

I didn't realize someone was in it until I got down the hall.

Tared squinted hard at me as if trying to figure me out, but finally gestured to the bathroom with his head.

Well, it's free now.

I thanked him and made my way past him.

I pushed open the door to the small bathroom and immediately Myes lit up.

There, sitting on the sink, was the necklace with the ring attached.

Yet it with him all along.

I was close to reaching for it until I heard someone behind me.

There's the blasted thing, Tared said, moving past me and grabbing grabbing it.

It's all yours for real now.

I couldn't believe it.

The plan had failed.

I wanted to punch a wall or something, even scream out loud.

Yet when I really thought about it, there was no chance of getting away with it freely.

Even if he had left it in his room, he would have immediately noticed.

There wouldn't have been enough time to give it to the old woman and leave with Victoria, especially if we planned to leave in the evening.

I sighed and began my long walk of defeat back.

What could I tell the old woman now?

We didn't have an alternate plan.

I continued heading downstairs and decided to get back to work.

Maybe I could think of something while I did so.

Dinner eventually came by, and still I had no idea what to do.

I was sure the old woman had seen my lamp was still off to relay the failure of the plan.

I wondered if she would possibly come up with a solution of her own.

Marcus, how far along are you with your work?

Margaret inquired, pulling me from my thoughts.

I heard there were minor delays.

Well, I should have everything up and running by tomorrow.

Oh, there's a dreadful thought.

We're going to miss having you around.

You're almost like a member of the family now,

she said, giving off an unsettling giggle.

I've actually been meaning to ask why you needed the service anyway.

Doesn't seem like you really need it.

Oh, on the contrary, my boy.

Our faith is a rare breed.

But that doesn't mean that there aren't any other inspiring souls out there.

We want to be able to reach any and all potential followers.

With your help, we can do that and upload our Simmons for all to see.

Oh,

okay.

So.

okay i when we did it at our church and like hooked up the cameras and mics and all that so we could record videos and post them to youtube it took maybe two hours

okay well

why is he there was the it technician obsessed with the pregnant woman who he was getting

i hope i hope not i hope not i don't even know that's probably why the workout

would have been this

Yeah, but it's literally just like set up a camera and a mic.

No.

Why is this a multi-week job?

Where he doesn't have to go into the actual congregation room.

He's just in a back office.

He's just downloading OBS to one computer.

That took weeks.

He's been hanging out with Victoria.

Whatever.

Okay.

The mere thought of them uploading footage of them worshiping made me feel uneasy.

Plus, it brought you to us, Marcus.

Having a young lad such as yourself has truly been a pleasure.

I smiled sheepishly and glanced over to Victoria.

She appeared to be squinting in pain.

Are you alright, my dear?

Margaret asked when she caught sight of this too.

Victoria appeared to be suppressing the pain.

Yes.

I think I just need to lie down for the evening.

Do you need do you need any help?

No, I'll be fine.

Please, there's no need to worry about me.

She said excusing herself from the table.

I just need to rest.

I could see her gripping her stomach as she did.

I wanted to leave the table as well, but my legs remained frozen, numbed to the commands from my brain.

I just sat there watching her leave.

For some reason, I could not shake the feeling of discomfort.

After dinner, I made my way back to my room.

In the hallway, I glanced down towards Victoria's door.

What were we going to now?

The plan had failed, and tomorrow was the day I promised would be our last here.

I entered my room, almost slamming it shut.

I could feel tears of anger growing in my eyes.

Why did it all have to go to hell?

Why did the bastard have to ruin everything?

And why?

Why did I have to screw it up so badly?

I must have eventually passed out from my rage fit because I

just imagined him like pacing around the room like, oh,

passed out from my rage fit because I was soon awakened by the sound of voices and footsteps.

The footsteps sounded urgent, rushing from one end of the hallway to the next.

Without warning, a blood-curdling well filled the air.

grew so loud that I had to put my hands over my ears.

It sounded like a woman's voice.

Victorious.

I raced to my door to rip it open, but immediately I stopped myself.

I could hear a sound worse than her well.

It was so eerie and frightening that it sent an icy chill down my spine.

What I heard was the low chanting of voices.

I spoke in unison, reciting words I couldn't comprehend.

I could see a dim light flicker across the door's bottom crack.

While it did, I could hear Victoria's moans of pain.

The voices grew louder, passing by my door, eventually fading into the distance.

I cracked open my door to look out, which let out its signature creek.

I was sure it would alert them.

It halted in at mid-swing.

I could see the hallway was still quiet.

I opened the door fully, taking a step outside.

It was dark and absent of light.

Under my shoe, I felt something wet.

Took out my phone and using the back light to get a better view.

It was some kind of liquid.

Maybe water?

I was ready to believe the saw until I accidentally dropped my phone in it.

I quickly grabbed it in a panic, wiping it off.

The liquid seemed to only smear.

Took my phone back into my room to see in the better light.

It wasn't water, it was blood.

My heart skipped at the realization of this.

I went back in the hallway using my phone's light again over the liquid.

I could make out more of it leading to the stairs.

The other end of the hallway showed the trail led back to Victoria's room, which had its light on.

I swallowed hard and walked towards it, trying to mentally prepare myself for the worst.

I reached it and slowly edged my way back in.

There was blood everywhere.

A trail of it ran from the door up to her bed.

The sheets were completely doused in red.

I could smell her perfume mixed with smoke and the metallic smell of blood.

I felt my stomach give in at the sight.

Immediately, I vomited all that I had eaten.

I felt my

woman's giving birth, and you just walk into the room and throw up.

Same brother.

Complications.

Same, brother.

I felt my knees weaken and give away as well, falling to the ground and dropping my phone in the process.

I must have blacked out for a few seconds before regaining awareness.

When I regained consciousness, I noticed my phone's backlight about to turn black.

I quickly got up, horrified that I had been laying next to blood.

What had happened in here?

I grabbed my phone and glanced at the bed.

A puddle of red soaked the lower half of the sheets.

However, I noticed there was another spot, much smaller, forming near her pillow.

I slowly reached for it, unsure what I was about to see.

I couldn't imagine anything worse, but I was wrong.

To my dismay, I found a finger.

It was clearly cut off with the tip of its bone sticking out of the red-covered flesh.

It appeared to be Victoria's.

It had to have been.

Next to the finger was a small knife with its tip covered in blood.

Why did she cut it off?

I observed the finger closer and realized the ring.

She had cut off her finger so that I would have it, the key to the congregation room.

She must have done so out of desperation.

I thought about the pain she had shown from her contractions at dinner.

She must have felt it was time for the child.

Those sick bastards were going through with their ritual.

They didn't care about Victoria.

The old woman was right.

I had to do something.

I promised her that I would get her out of here and I was going to keep it.

I hesitantly picked up the finger.

It was still warm.

I cringed as I placed it in my pocket with care.

Afterwards, I raced out of the room, halting when I remembered the gun kept by Terrence.

It was something I was probably going to need.

His door was locked when I tried to open it, but I didn't care.

Didn't have time to waste.

I just kicked at it until the handle creaked in.

I pushed it open, running to the desk drawer where I had last seen the gun.

I opened it and smiled.

It was still there.

I grabbed it, feeling its weight fall into my hand.

With my thumb, I popped its wheel open to reveal six bullets lined in their chambers.

Perfect, I thought.

I tucked it in the back of my pants and then ran out of the room.

I got to the bottom of the stairs and noticed that the lobby was dark, the scent of candles in the air.

A trail of blood from earlier could have been leading to the congregation room.

I pressed my ear up against the double doors to listen.

It was silent, no voices or wails from Victoria.

Something wasn't right.

I tried the handle only to find it locked as always.

I reached into my pocket, pulling out the finger.

I checked for the small indent on the door, placed it up against it, and twisted it to the right the way I remembered Victoria doing so.

Instantly, there was a soft click from the door.

I pulled up the handle again and could feel the door move.

This was it.

I placed the finger back in my pocket and peeked through the small crack.

All I could see was darkness.

I opened the door wider and was met with a warm breeze to my face.

With it open, I could see a dim light flickering from the sides.

I poked my head in first before completely entering.

The light was coming from the candles mounted on columns near the walls.

With it, I could make out the room even more than I had the first time.

The entire area looked older in the light.

The walls appeared worn out and decayed, almost blackened as if burned.

The columns appeared ancient in nature, broiled with cracks and fungus throughout.

A deep scent of ash and moisture filled the air.

I could now see the seating hues were carved from stone similar to the columns.

A few were split in areas almost falling apart.

The place looked like it had been there for centuries.

The building must have been built around it.

In the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a dark figure off to the side.

The candlelight flickered across it, producing a vague outline of it.

I swallowed hard, peering towards the thing with frightened eyes.

Something was there, and it was watching me.

Hello?

I called out softly to it.

I could feel every every hair standing up on my neck.

Hello?

I said again, my voice quivering.

The figure gave no answer in return.

I slowly walked to it, watching as the light flickered across it.

With the distance closing between us, I could see its pale face in the light.

My heart plummeted.

Empty black holes were present where its eyes were supposed to be.

The mouth of it was gaped wide open, almost like it was screaming in terror, but no noise came out.

So I imagine that's the mask or the same kind of face he saw in himself in the dream at the beginning.

That's what I'm thinking.

I was ready to bolt out of there until I noticed that it did nothing.

It didn't even move.

Cautiously, I approached the figure with my hand stretched out.

I eased cautiously, half expected it to lash out at me at any moment.

Finally, I touched its surface.

When I did, I took a deep sigh of relief.

It was only a mask.

I picked it up, revealing its disturbing features even more up close.

I looked back at the wall to see the figure was in fact a black cloak of some kind.

Pulled it off, releasing it from the hook, brought both objects into the light.

It was a cloak and mask, alright.

Thank goodness.

Was this what they wore for their ceremonies?

I looked back at the wall to see several other empty hooks lined up.

Glancing back at the cloak, I noticed a faded image running across it.

It was a symbol, but not like the one on the door.

I recognized this one, though.

It was an inverted cross.

It had chains attached as well, hanging from its waistline.

It must have been Victoria's.

Without warning, I was startled by the faint echo of a woman's wail.

It was coming from further back in the room.

I followed the noise, which brought me up to the altar.

At the top, I could make out a familiar sight behind the podium.

It was a statue from before, still horrid to the eyes as ever.

As I climbed the stairs, the image of the statue became more apparent.

Still, it brought an eerie feeling to me, right down to my bones.

I couldn't stand the sight of it and looked away as I passed.

Behind it, I saw the mouth of a cave.

Reaching it, I could see it stretched deep into the darkness.

It was dimly lit by a few candles mounted on its walls.

Stone steps descended with it.

Feel a warm breeze flowing from it like the breath of a large beast.

Every so often, a wail would echo from its depths, sending my heart into its own with it.

This was crazy.

How could all this be in here?

It was clear that this, that all of it, was way over my head.

I wanted to turn around.

God knows I wanted to, but with each well, I thought of Victoria.

Couldn't leave her to suffer.

I glanced down at my hands to discover that I was still holding the cloak and the mask.

It was a long shot.

I thought if I wore, it would help me blend in.

Even if it bought me only a few minutes, I could use whatever edge I could get.

Threw on the cloak and placed the mask over my face.

I took one last breath and began making my descent.

That is the end of part four.

Part five.

Last part.

Part five.

Part five: The White Eyes.

so predictions for this uh the demon's gonna like send him back in time and he is going to be the one that shoots his younger self to save victoria or something like that that's a dream he saw or something yeah something along those tracks to me yeah the stairs felt like they would never end i pressed onward though passing by one of the mounted candles ever so often in between them i was left in utter darkness at the whim of my own footing.

I took my time walking down them, adding to the anxiety to reach the bottom.

Voices began to echo from the abyss below, bouncing off the walls.

Once again, I could hear their monotone words being spoken in unison, still incomprehensible to me.

In the darkness, the words were even more nerve-wracking.

It almost didn't sound human.

The last of the stairs brought me to a large chasm.

A few candles were mounted on these walls as well, but they weren't of much help.

I could see their light reveal a set of different tunnels pointing in diverse directions.

From here, it looked like I had to choose a path, but which one was right?

If I chose wrong, I knew it would be nearly impossible to retrace my steps, especially in this darkness.

The voices from earlier began to echo once again.

Among the cave walls, they bounced all around, amplified by the acoustics.

I focused on the sound, trying to pinpoint their origin.

Finally, after several minutes, I was able to determine that they were coming from the tunnel on the left.

So I headed in that direction.

The tunnel was completely dark, absent of candles.

A few times I tripped on the rocky surface, but using the walls helped to maintain my balance.

It continued to stretch onward.

All I could see was an endless void in front of me.

As I walked, I felt the urge to stop, feeling as if I would smack into a wall or something.

All the while, the voices continued their chanting, growing louder the more I pushed forward.

Finally, I reached an opening.

It was glowing all the while.

producing a wave of heat.

I came to a rocky perch on the side.

I could see another set of stone stairs curved down to the area below.

I didn't need to take them because the best gave a good overview of everything below.

I crouched and moved closer to get a better view.

What I saw would forever be burned in my mind.

Below, I could see four individuals standing in a square formation, each facing inward.

Four bowls containing an intense fire was set in between each of the individuals, forming together some sort of diamond.

There were markings in red, producing an arrangement of symbols and designs behind each of the figures.

I noticed how all of them donned the same cloak and mask I was wearing.

Each of them was slowly bobbing their heads, their hands clasped as if in prayer except one.

The one was holding up a camcorder to film it all.

Stated in the center, I saw a fifth person.

This one wore a different cloak.

It was pale white and more loosely fit than the others.

The mask worn was black instead of white, almost as dark as the tunnel itself.

If not for the light from the bowls, it would have looked like a faceless being.

It had to be the Reverend.

Each time he spoke out that strange language, the others would repeat it in unison.

My eyes widened when I saw what was behind the Reverend.

There was a stone table covered with a white sheet, and on it I saw Victoria clenching her stomach in pain.

Every so often she would let out an intense wail that filled the air.

The white sheet underneath was half soaked in blood.

Now what?

I didn't know what to do now that I was here.

Without warning, I was pulled from my thoughts when I felt something touch my shoulder.

I spun around, almost screaming out loud.

However, my eyes recognized the figure crouching behind me.

It was the old woman, Floria's mother.

How did she get in here?

I don't know.

She had followed me down here.

Oh, okay.

Well, I guess there's no explanation.

Whatever.

She held up a finger to her lips and slowly crept past me to look below.

We must stop this before it's too late,

she whispered over her shoulder.

How?

What can we do?

We can't just rush down there without some sort of plan.

She nodded in agreement.

I know.

We need to sprinkle this within their inner circle.

She said, pulling out a small glass vial.

It was filled with a clear liquid.

At the stage she's in now, Victoria will need some of this on her as well.

That's it?

That's the plan?

Yes.

She replied, returning her gaze below.

Once this is sprinkled, I will need to recite my own incantation to cancel out the effects of the ritual.

Only then will Victoria be saved and the rest of the world.

I shivered a little.

The world?

You never did mention that.

What would happen if that child was born?

Nothing good, I assure you.

But that will not happen.

Listen, I have a plan.

I was all ears to hearing it and leaned close.

We need to draw them away from here so that I can conduct the incantation.

How are we going to do that?

A distraction, of course.

She replied, producing a twisted smile.

Wouldn't it be the opposite of an incantation?

Because an incantation is a summoning ritual.

Yeah.

So, wouldn't it be like an anti-incantation?

Right?

Is that correct?

An incantation of some ritual.

I think an incantation is just a spell.

I could be wrong.

An incantation

intended to evoke a magical or supernatural effect.

Okay, so it could be an incantation.

I was wrong.

Never mind.

I sighed deeply.

I really didn't like this plan already, but it seemed like the only other option.

After taking a few breaths, I stood up to announce my presence.

Hey!

I yelled out.

It was all I could think to say.

Immediately, they went silent below, staring up at me.

The light bounced off the faces of their twisted masks.

Not one said a word until the Reverend spoke out.

Ah, Marcus, is that you?

What a

You bastards better let her go, or

I'll get the police involved.

The Reverend chuckled, his mask bouncing a little.

Marcus,

he said softly, almost in a joking manner.

When you first arrived, I'll admit I thought I understood everything about you.

Just from our first conversation.

And at the time, you looked like you were nothing more, but a stammering piglet that had gone astray.

You couldn't even get your words right.

I could see the others slowly moving away from their spots, edging their way to the stairs.

But then you surprised me with your bold antics.

You sneaked into our congregation room, attempted to steal one of my members' rings.

Yes, I know about that.

My eyes lit up.

How could he have known?

You even warmed up to Victoria.

You're vincent her to leave all this and her family behind.

Now, that, my boy, is something.

Tell me.

I know you're sick of seeing everyone suffer, like a grandfather, even your mother that passed away from when you were young.

I was dumbstruck.

How did you know all this?

Couldn't have.

All those people out there in the world as well.

Suffering.

Doing so unnecessarily.

And for what reason?

For what he wants.

He said, pointing upward.

With Lannias, though, we can reshape this world.

We'll reshape everything in his image and erase all that pain and that suffering

everything will be set right the way it should be

why not be willing to join him in his transformation

so

that this isn't as bad but this is very similar to camp oakwood them trying to bring back the reincarnation of that guy or whatever uh because he would bring about world peace because when he died archduke ferdinand was assassinated.

Yeah.

This is better, to be clear, but it's very like, world peace.

We just have to kill first.

I could see the other members drawing closer up the stairs.

Think about it, Marcus.

Are we really that bad a people?

Look at yourself.

What have you really believed in that you could hold on to?

Join us down here.

Be a part of the new world, a new direction.

You're already halfway there.

We got you what you need on right now so why not come on down the path fully

he said lifting up his hands victoria's suffering right now but when it's all over she won't anymore you can you can even be with her in the new world it's what you want isn't it

my sanced over at victoria still gasping in pain her eyes clinched painfully shut i listened as she let out horrific wail I see could an impression of something moving around in her, pressing upward against her skin.

My voice was lost.

I was unable to say anything.

This bastard was crazy.

They all were.

However, if that was truly the case, why was I so hesitant?

Was there a part of me that wanted this, that believed in this?

Immediately, the old woman stood up to reveal herself to

voiceless words.

Never fail to excrete from your mouth, you sniveling snake.

Who is that up there with you, Marcus?

Who do you think, you foul bastard?

Carolina?

I must admit, I'm a bit shocked to see you're still living.

I must have asked how you managed to escape the gaze of Lanius.

Wouldn't you like to know?

You're not the only one who can conjure up a spell or two.

Oh, God.

Right.

Yeah.

Always were an unpredictable one, Carolina.

I truly was heartbroken when I learned you weren't fully on board with us.

Samarcus, what will it be?

I glanced over to see the old woman's eyes gleaming at me from the shadows.

She shook her head in dismay, mouthing something softly.

I couldn't hear the words, but I could make out the last word escaping her lips: lies.

No,

come again.

I said no, you satanic fucks.

It always gets to this point, man.

It always gets to this point.

It always gets to the point where they'll have like an interesting thing or stuff, but they always write these like world-ending supernatural cult or whatever as like I hate that they're all snappy reddit

voices.

Yeah, it's yeah, it's never just like oh, it's like a Marvel.

It's like a Marvel movie.

Yeah.

It's like, how can you ever?

It's like the worst thing ever that could happen in like this one person who's like a nobody has to solve it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's up to me now.

Yeah, like it's it's so cringe.

And they always talk like both sides, the evil and the good always talk like Saturday morning cartoon villains.

Yeah, or I would say just extremely extra.

Very like, it's very theatrical, like very big.

Like very, very big, but not super realistic, but just like big.

Almost like it's a stage play, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's always, everyone's very dramatic.

Everyone always says their stuff out loud.

There's never nuance or stuff like that.

We are reading stories people made when they were young for free on the internet.

For sure.

That's why they're the best.

Give us some context.

Give us some perspective.

And the one time that we read a published, like, fancy author on this channel, people got really upset at that.

So I guess this is what they want.

So.

That's it.

He sighed, dropping his arms.

That's too bad, son.

He gestured with his head to the others.

We immediately sprang up the stairs.

Move it!

The old woman yelled, bolting down the tunnel we had entered from.

I was surprised she was even able to move at such speed.

Without wasting time, I quickly hurried behind her.

I could hear their footsteps echoing, following us.

I didn't know where I was going.

There was nothing but endless void before me.

I felt my feet trip again a few times as I went.

My lungs were burning, begging me to stop, but the adrenaline pumping through me must have kept me going.

Eventually, we reached the original chasm with all the tunnels.

We need to split them up.

I was half out of breath myself, barely catching what she said.

Without hesitation, she ran off to the tunnel on the left.

I took the hint and darted down the nearest one to my right.

They're doing like a Scooby-Doo hallway chase.

On the inside, I hoped that I had not chosen the one with the dead end.

The tunnel itself was very tight.

I felt the sharp edges of the wall scrape against my arms a few times, but I pressed onward.

Thinking quickly, I pulled out my phone and told its light to help guide the way.

Ahead of me, my eyes made out what I had dreaded would happen.

I had reached a dead end.

Shit!

There's no way I could turn around, not if they were following me.

However, I was surprised to find that the wall wasn't like the tunnel's uneven texture.

Looking closer, it appeared to be a type of door.

Still made of stone, but it was smooth and had markings engraved on it.

Couldn't make them out, but the phone on my light revealed a familiar sight.

See a small indent with a symbol edge within.

It was similar to the one from the congregation room stores.

The finger!

I thought out loud.

I reached in my pocket trying to find it.

Behind me I could hear the clapping of footsteps scanning on me.

I struggled to pull the damn thing out.

When I did I pressed it up against the end and twisted.

At first nothing happened but soon the door began to move.

Loud moan was produced from it as it slowly lifted upwards.

I could hear the footsteps getting closer but the door was still at my ankles.

I yelled and cursed at the damn thing to hurry until at last it was up to my chest.

It was good enough for me.

I was ready to bolt through the opening when suddenly I was tackled from behind.

Force from the tackle sent me forward along with my attacker.

We both rolled into the room sliding away from each other.

I landed crudely, banging my knee and elbow in the process.

It wasn't until I looked up that I caught the scent of something putrid in the air.

The room we had entered was colder than the other areas and seemed to be darker.

My impaired vision had been amplified, my sense of smell, because I had completely appalled by it.

It was as if something had been decaying or rather many things had.

Under my hand I felt something hard poke me.

I couldn't see the object clearly, but I felt how smooth it was, almost too perfect.

Around it, I felt other objects with the same feeling.

I wanted to use my cell phone, but I couldn't find it, clearly dropped from the fall.

I did, however, hear a man grunting, apparently my attacker.

You little shit.

I knew you'd be in trouble from the start.

The voice sounded like Terrence.

I could hear him standing up.

His breathing was still rapid from the chase.

My heart leapt in my throat.

I tried to be extra careful when I rose to my feet, hoping to not draw his attention.

If he was like me, then it was impossible to see anything in the darkness.

If quiet enough, I could probably sneak past him.

He started moving forward, taking small steps while I listened for him.

The Reverend told me about the ring.

He thought you were slick about it all, huh?

Yelled out as his voice echoed.

You see, the Reverend knows all and sees all.

I could hear his footsteps pacing around.

The acoustics of the room made it hard to pinpoint his exact position.

Then you stole one of our tomes, but I found it.

I was

I didn't know what came over me after that.

After hearing those disgusting words, I somehow managed to find and pounce on Terrence in an immense rage.

Like a poop.

Don't call her.

Don't call her that.

I'm going to change my plan from sneaking to I'm going to kill you with my hands.

Because I'm so emotional over this woman I love.

I didn't hesitate and swung where I thought his head was, striking a hard surface.

He just punched a wall.

I yelled out in pain.

It was his mask that I'd struck.

Oh, okay.

He laughed, rendering a strong blow into my stomach.

I felt the wind painfully rip its way from my mouth.

Afterwards, he pushed me away, which sent me falling on my back.

I felt sting from something hard press itself beneath me.

I reached behind for the object and my eyes lit up.

Immediately after, his hands grabbed at my legs to pull me close.

Still in pain, I kicked at him, pulled out the object from below.

I cocked it, aimed in his direction, and pulled the trigger.

A flash of light lit up the entire air for a split second, followed by a loud bang.

The noise echoed throughout the chasm and beyond.

The flash of light was enough for me to locate my phone.

I grabbed at it, pushed a button, and aimed it in front of me.

I could see Terrence in the illumination gripping his arm in pain.

The blood from his wound dripped to the ground.

You little,

he started, but croaked in pain.

The gun shook in my hand.

This was the first time I had ever shot one before, let alone at a person.

I didn't get oh, this is also where he gets the gun to go back and shoot himself when he was younger.

I see.

Gotcha.

I think he's going to have to shoot.

I think he's going to have to shoot the baby.

I think he's going to shoot Victoria and the baby or whatever.

Yeah, that's like what it meant by himself or whatever.

I'll also say that they like we've joked about it with like the smiling or the biting the lip, but they also he keeps using the same

things to describe the same actions like earlier in the story when he sees the dream and he sees himself in the mask shoot his baby self.

Um, it's like uh, the bullet, there was a loud flash and then the sound followed.

And it's like, well, I mean, by milliseconds, but they're, you know, if you're at the same distance, it's perceivably at the same time.

That's a weird way to describe it.

And then, sure enough, here it says there was a loud flash followed by a sound.

It's like, okay, those are really at the same time if you're there.

Like, unless you're using like a super high-speed camera audio device, they're the same thing.

Like, he's just using the same like things to describe stuff.

It gets a little repetitive, but the gun shook in my hand.

This was the first time I've ever shot one before, let alone a person.

I didn't get time to decide what to do next.

There's a deep growl that filled the air and echoed all around us.

The ground almost felt like it was trembling.

Further back in the room, I could hear something twisting around us.

Its movements were crackly and heavy.

The odor from earlier grew stronger, flooding my nose even more than before.

Shit, it's awake.

I heard Terrence scream out.

He turned to leave, yet before I I could even blink, I felt a large rush of wind race past me.

The smell of its odor lingered behind it.

Whatever it was, it was fast and it was huge.

The next thing I heard was it pounding on Terrace.

I could hear it ripping into him and tearing pieces apart.

His screams flooded the air, a blood-curdling shrill so intense that it brought tears down my eyes.

I could hear the thing continue to tear at him, cracking bones as it did.

Somehow I managed to find the feeling in my legs and bolted out of the room.

Behind me, I heard the thing let out a frightened roar.

I didn't stop running though, pushing as hard as I could through the tight walls.

I could hear its heavy footsteps pounding behind me.

Sorrows from its breathing grew closer in my ear.

It was gaining quickly.

Without thinking, I aimed the gun behind me and fired off a few rounds.

It wasn't until after the third round that I heard another loud roar.

The footsteps behind immediately came to a halt.

I continued running until I reached the open area once again.

I was out of breath, but I knew I couldn't stop.

That thing was sure to continue its pursuit soon, so I couldn't waste any time.

Before I could fully gain my composure, I heard footsteps heading in my direction.

A word from the tunnel behind me, but ahead.

I quickly readied my gun, ready to fire again.

Three figures emerged from the darkness, racing frantically.

It was the other church members.

I'd already fired four bullets, which meant I only had two left.

Wait, where did he fire?

Did he just fire?

He fired one and then he blankly fired three behind him.

Okay.

So he shot, he shot Terrence, and then yeah he was just running away and he was like ah

whoa whoa whatever wait he's never shot a gun before but he knew how to like get the cylinder open on the revolve whatever there were three of them so i would have to decide carefully who i wanted to shoot they came to a halt in front of me hello marcus i heard margaret's voice speak out from the three have you finally stopped running

back the fuck off

I yelled the gun still pointed at them.

If I have to, I will kill you crazy bastards.

I heard one of them giggle must have been sophia they slowly began edging their way towards me i backed up a little keeping the gun trained on them i started to shift it aside hoping to align the next tunnel to my back it was clear this gun was doing nothing for me yeah because you keep firing it and the one time you used it correctly it it killed terrence effectively that was a good shot now you okay I just think it's going to be because at the beginning in his dream also by the way his dad was shot on the ground being like

I think that that reminds me of Terrence getting shot being like ow And I think he's not going to shoot the gun here.

I think that it's going to be saved for Victoria and the baby, or the Reverend and the baby, maybe.

I'm thinking it's that.

I probably would only have enough time to shoot one before the others rushed in.

I would need to be quick so I can make a run for it.

Come now, Marcus.

Have you realized it yet?

You really think we invited you all the way out here just to install some silly computers?

I was stunned when I heard this.

What the hell are you talking about?

Why else would I be here?

We need a legitimate reason to get you out here, and here you are.

You don't even know who I am.

She was clearly talking nonsense.

Is that what you think?

I'm surprised none of this appears familiar to you.

You have, after all, been down this path before.

My hand slowly lowered the gun.

I don't know why, but a small portion of me believed, even if it did sound ludicrous.

What do you mean?

It's

She started to say, betrayaled in her words.

What about me?

Before she could answer, a large figure bolted from the shadows, pouncing on Margaret.

It was that horrid creature from earlier.

It had caught up.

Now among the dim candlelight, I could make out more of its features.

I really wish those candles weren't there.

Through the poor lighting, I could see its thin, elongated arms with sharp talons for fingers.

Massive horns extended from its back.

Its loose wild hair fell across its crude senative face.

Its blood-colored eyes glowed, piercing the darkness.

I watched as it began tearing into Margaret as it had tears.

With each new sound of splitting flesh came a loud shrill from her.

Her loud cries bounced off the walls, extending through the tunnels.

The others attempted to flee, but they didn't get far.

The creature was merciless, pouncing on them and tearing into them in the same manner.

Suddenly, I felt a harsh tug on my arm pulling me down the tunnel behind.

It was the old woman.

I didn't know where she came from, but I didn't question her.

The tormenting screams of the others continued to resonate in the air.

The burning pain in my lungs returned as we turned and ran.

The old woman yelled back not to stop.

I could hear the struggle in her voice as well to maintain the pace.

There seemed to be no end to the tunnel.

It felt like we were running in place, making no progress.

In the midst of my exhaustion, I felt my foot drag, causing me to lose my balance.

Fell hard, slamming onto my already injured knee.

Get up!

Get up now!

I tried but struggled to do so.

Caught in the blend of pain and exhaustion, I tried to pull myself up using the wall.

Behind me, I could hear the rapid thumping of large footsteps once again.

I could feel the old woman help me up.

She threw my arm over her shoulder and began assisting me forward.

However, it was too late.

We could feel the gaze emanating from the creature behind us.

Our eyes must have fully adjusted in the dark because I could clearly make out its massive form.

Its hot breath breath blew across our faces.

The smell of fresh blood lingered in it.

The old woman pushed me away.

Run now!

What?

No, we have to stick together.

No, you must go.

I will hold it off.

But

go!

Her voice startled me.

I quickly turned and began hobbling away.

Behind me, I could still hear her.

You foul demon.

You think you've won?

He turns around and she, like, in a single swipe, just gets vaporized.

Just like straight into the cave ceiling.

The creature rendered a harsh snarl in return.

I could hear her begin to recite strange words in another language.

The creature sounded affected, screaming loud roars of pain.

Whatever she was saying, it was clearly working.

I paused to look back, just making out their faint outlines in the dark.

I wondered if what she was doing was actually going to stop it.

However, I saw the creature swing one of its long arms to her.

Her body flew against the wall, producing a a loud crack.

Her words instantly died.

No, wait, I was right.

It just one hit, swung an arm, and she just

like straight against the wall.

Instantly just like...

I'll hold it off.

Not long after, I could hear the thing ripping away at her.

The blow must have been enough to kill her because she didn't yell in pain.

I went from hopping aggressively on one foot to a full-fledged run.

I ignored the pain from my knee, feeling fear and adrenaline engulfing me.

Up ahead, I could see a light from the end.

I knew I didn't have much time until that thing would continue its pursuit for me.

I reached the opening, revealing the original ritual area I had first come across.

I was hesitant in approaching the perch, but I did so, looking down.

Victoria was still down there.

Based on her increased wells, it wouldn't be long before she gave birth.

I saw no trace of the Reverend.

I made my way down the stairs, approaching the symbols surrounding Victoria.

Up close, I could tell they were made from blood.

Bowls were still blazing.

The heat from them was intense, forcing sweat down my face.

When I approached Victoria, her eyes fell upon me.

I could see the fear returning in them.

Stay the fuck away from me.

She yelled, struggling with words.

I was taken back at this, but then I remembered I was still wearing the mask.

I quickly removed it and was relieved to see her eyes light up upon seeing my face.

Marcus!

Yeah, I'm here, Victoria.

Tears formed in her eyes.

Marcus,

please.

She stopped amid sentence, rendering another well.

She continued screaming.

I could hear her vocals become rasped from strain.

I didn't know what to do.

A massive lump moved around her stomach uncontrollably, pressing up against her skin.

I didn't think it was possible, but her screams grew even louder.

I felt completely useless right now.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, I heard a familiar roar from above.

The creature from earlier had returned.

I could see its burning red eyes beaming down from the perch.

It leapt from the top, landing with a thud.

Its disturbing form was hunched over, breathing a rapid rhythm, exalting a snarl in between.

Now fully in the light, I felt my stomach tighten at its appearance.

The thought of the statue came to my mind.

This thing was almost a spitting image of it, but only worse.

Its face was more disturbing in person with its blackened human dog features.

The nose atop its snout appeared caved in, flaring with its breathing.

Its eyes were beady, completely dyed a crimson red.

Atop its forehead, it held a large, closed eye.

I stood in between Victoria and the beast.

It wasn't going to let this thing do anything to her.

I raised the gun up, ready to fire, waiting for it to make a move, yet that was it.

It did nothing.

Just stood there, breathing.

Come on!

Do it!

Come at me, you sick fuck!

It did nothing still.

Instead, the edge of its lips curled up into a twisted smile.

I felt a shiver roll down my spine.

The damn thing was smiling at me.

I was ready to fire the gun, but then I noticed the bullet holes on it from where it had been previously hit.

Two of the bullets had managed to hit it, but they stuck out of it, its wounds barely penetrating it.

It was useless.

The gun did nothing to it.

Realizing this, I lowered it, eventually letting it drop to the ground.

When I did, its smile grew wider.

What the hell are you?

That, my boy,

I heard the Reverend's voice answer out loud.

Is Lanius, the wide eye of time

i could hear it behind me but i didn't dare break my eyes away from the creature he will become this world's new master

i was speechless you will witness his rebirth into this world marcus he will reshape into his image now witness it as if on cue the creature began to roar into the air I could see the rows of its blood-covered teeth extend deep back into its throat.

It felt as if the whole room was rumbling.

Suddenly, it collapsed to the ground, lying motionless.

I was confused.

Did it just die?

If it did, what killed it?

Victoria broke the silence, screaming at a level a human shouldn't have possibly reached.

The form within her moved around vigorously, eventually tearing its way free.

Blood flew in all directions, some splattering across me.

My eyes turned to see a blood-soaked creature wallowing around in the remains of Victoria.

It looked to be the size of a dog.

I could see the sharp talons from one of its lanky arms cling to the side of the table.

Curling horns protruded from its head, entangled in the wild strands of its hair.

It sniffed the air for a while before turning its attention to me.

I felt tears forming in my eyes.

Immediately, I felt my stomach give in, curling to the side.

It hurt because I had already done so earlier.

There was nothing left to give.

Leaning over the mess I produced, I could only think of one thing.

Victoria.

I whispered.

In the end, I couldn't do anything but watch her suffer.

She trusted me to save her, and I failed her.

The creature looked like a miniature version of its previous self.

However, its third eye was open this time.

It was completely white, void of pupil, blinking asynchronously to its smaller ones.

Despite having no pupil, I could feel its wide eye gazing upon me.

My head began buzzing or starting as a simple vibration.

The vibration escalating to an immense outpour of pain.

See images in my head.

They were images of places in the world, of people.

People were screaming for their lives.

The sky above them was black, streets littered with thousands of bodies lying lifeless and torn to pieces.

Fires were brewing over damaged cars with half-burnt corpses sitting in their seats.

Faces of horrendous beings, too atrocious to describe, were seen everywhere, tearing away at those unable to escape.

The images flooded my head.

I was at the mercy of them as the pain increased, the more they appeared.

Tears fell endlessly from my eyes.

Why was I being shown these horrible things?

Just when I thought I couldn't take any more, they stopped.

I slumped over, still feeling my head throb.

I could still see their faces, hear their screams.

Did you see it, Marcus?

Did you see the dream he reduced in your mind?

The Reverend asked.

He walked from the shadows into the light.

Slowly removed the mask from his face.

I could still feel lingering amounts of the pain.

It took many years to prepare this revelation.

First, he had to get stronger and do so.

He needed a vessel to use.

I too was frightened when I first laid eyes upon him.

But he showed me his intentions.

From then

I was enlightened.

He speaks to me with his white eye.

That's how I knew everything about you back there.

I'm sure he gave you a glimpse of the paradise to be.

Paradise?

Is that what the fuck you're calling it?

Yes.

Lanius will reshape this world into his image.

Imagine sweet blue skies, inless inless green pastures with trees flowing abundantly with scrumptious fruit.

No more pain, no more suffering, a true renewed Eden.

I know it's hard to conceive all this.

Could we in this current world we live in?

His power is beyond our understanding, but he can open the ripples of time.

He can alter what he likes, insert what he likes.

With it, he can return to the past the vessel he chooses.

Each time, he he possesses the younger self, growing with them until they become of age, doing it repeatedly, making him stronger.

When he finally reaches fruition, he needs to be born of human flesh.

Victoria

correct

now is that time, Marcus.

Once he does it again, this will be the last.

He will permanently be infused with a new vessel.

He answered, revealing his twisted, toothy smile.

You?

I asked, still feeling the throb in my head.

Come now, Marcus.

I've merely been a humble servant, ensuring everything was arranged properly for his rebirth.

Lanius has always been interested in you.

You recall the pages of the tomb, yes.

Who do you think that was with, Lanius?

I shook my head in disbelief.

Didn't make sense.

There's no way it could have been me.

You're like...

That's impossible.

If so, why me?

Well, you see, Marcus, Lanius sees all aspects of time, all possibilities.

Out of everyone, he saw you to be the best candidate to lead into the outcome he desired.

You should be honored.

I don't understand.

You said he's always been using me, but I don't recall any of those times at all.

Well, of course you don't, Marcus.

Each time, Lanius removed a memory after transmitting to your younger body.

Believe it or not, we've already had this conversation before.

I only recall because he allows me to.

You see, I'm the one ensuring everything goes as planned accordingly.

You'll go back as if you'd done before, but this time, it'll be for good.

I'm sorry to say, though, what is left of Marcus Peyo will be no more.

Do you remember

how I...

This is everything I said in part two, right?

Yup.

I said, oh, he's probably in a time loop, and that's what the swirling is, and he keeps going back through the time loop.

Okay.

The story conveyed all of that to us with pictures.

And if I was a little off, that's fine.

I can be a little off.

You remember how earlier I was like, we're getting dangerously close to explaining what the pictures are in detail?

Yeah.

This is the pictures being explained to me in detail.

Yeah.

Well, I wrote down some thoughts while you were reading as well that I want to say at the end when it's done.

Okay.

All right.

We're close.

We'll just keep doing this thing.

I'm going to continue to set at the bottom of my chair like this, in the bottom of the frame.

I found myself shaking my head again.

I couldn't believe it.

I didn't want to believe it.

What will it be, Marcus?

Actually, hold on, come to think of it.

I just had this thought.

So

and what made me think of it is some stories there will be exposition that i read because it's the character internally figuring it out or putting it together but there's other exposition that you read because the characters within the story are telling each other

but

why would you if it is a story where a revelation is being made why would you write it to where the characters have to explain it to each other especially when one of the characters like the reverend already knows all of this he knows the religion you could just have marcus figure this out internally.

So it's almost like it's not just exposition for the sake of getting the story across.

It's exposition that the characters are speaking.

Because normally when you watch TV or movies, that's how exposition is delivered.

They have to do it in movies and TV because it's a visual format, but it's almost like just taking monologuing from movies and stuff and throwing it into a story.

I think that the argument can be made here that

since this is like an ongoing charade with Marcus and the Reverend, that I feel like he might be saying this in an attempt that instead of fighting this time, that Marcus will just willingly give himself over.

Like he's trying to present the information in this way.

But I mean, maybe.

I mean, it is an outlet to exposition dump to make sure that readers understand what's going on.

But I think that's like the argument

you could make.

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe.

I suppose.

I remained in silence, trying to absorb everything.

It was too much.

How could it all possibly be true?

There's no way of telling otherwise.

It seemed like a lose-lose situation.

I think

you're full of shit.

Oh, God.

Oh, God.

Jesus fucking Christ, man.

Good lord.

This is some anime levels of bullshit, bro.

I said rendering a light smirk.

Here, you, I'm going to render, I'm going to render a light smirk, and then I want you to look right at the camera, blank stare, and then render a light smirk.

There you go.

I mean, just like, it's the end of the world.

I'm part of a time loop and stuff.

I think you're full of shit.

Wait, okay.

His eyes seemed to twitch with dissatisfaction.

How very disappointing.

He said, turning his back.

I could see his hand move into his cloak.

He turned around, producing a gun in his hand, fired the weapon, missing me.

Quickly threw myself to the ground, grabbing my own gun.

I pointed and shot off around just as he did.

His shot grazed my side, only piercing my cloak.

My shot, however, had hit him in the leg.

He fell to the ground immediately.

He proceeds to lift his gun, struggling to aim it at me.

I walked over to him, keeping my own pointed at him.

Standing over him, I held it to his face.

He smiled at me before dropping his own feet.

You think this hasn't already happened, Marcus?

It's inevitable.

The smile grew wider on his face.

I didn't answer and simply pulled back on the trigger.

His body immediately went lip.

I remained over him with the gun still pointed at it.

I never thought about killing someone would be so satisfying, but

I didn't like this thought, though.

There was something about this place.

Whatever it was, I was ready to leave it.

Unexpectedly, I felt the same painful pulse from early flood my head.

I fell to my knees, gripping my head.

When I turned, I could see the creature crawl from the table, dragging its deformed legs.

It snarled at me, moving close in speed.

I held the gun in my hand and pulled the trigger, but it only clicked.

I repeated the action, only to receive- You know, there were six rounds!

I repeated the action, only to receive the same result.

It was empty.

Quickly, I reached over with my other hand and grabbed the reverence gun.

Yet it was too late.

The thing pounced on me.

Its slimy hands gripped my neck.

I could feel its hot, putrid breath on my face and see pieces of flesh clung to its jagged teeth.

I wanted to throw the damn thing off, but I could feel the pain in my head amplify.

It's hard to describe, but I could feel its presence within my mind.

It was like it was searching for something.

It wasn't until the last minute that I could visually see what I had found.

Immediately, we both were engulfed to a blinding light out of nowhere.

Okay, so it's they're going to be back in, they're going to be back in his apartment Christmas Day, right?

Uh, um,

in 91.

Um, Yeah.

I also just realized, so earlier in the story, Victoria's like, oh, well, I lived in the UK for a brief while.

That's where I got the accent.

And I thought that would come into play.

Like, oh, maybe in the UK, she became a part of the cult.

But now, with this much left in the story, where we're at, I realize that she only was in the UK for a while because the author wanted a pregnant British woman in the story.

Nothing like a nice...

Like I said,

it's a pregnancy fetish content.

And then she explodes.

explodes the demon comes out of her and she just dies it's just cannon fodder that to call it fetish content is a little rude to the author i feel like he thought it would be more interesting to make her british so that detail was thrown in but it feels like it's it seems like a cheap way to to subvert people of like it doesn't really tie in so then your mind is kind of like oh well i wonder wonder what like maybe she like it makes you go down a like a false road you know to only amount to nothing.

So yeah, like why is she British?

That's interesting.

That doesn't go anywhere.

Yeah.

When the light cleared, I found myself lying in something cold.

When I stood to my feet, I realized that it was snow.

There was snow everywhere.

Where was I?

I looked, seeing cars covered in snow as well.

Several buildings loomed around me, all with something in common, decorations.

They all had reefs and lights either on their doors or around the buildings.

Christmas?

How could that be?

It was July.

Something about this area was familiar, but I didn't know why.

The The building before me was fairly tall, maybe four stories.

Something about it drew me towards it.

Through the glass, I could see my reflection.

I could see that horrifying mask over my face.

How did it get back on my face?

I also noticed both of the guns still in my hands.

I can't describe it, but I felt lightheaded.

I could hardly recall what I had been doing prior to arriving here.

In fact, I didn't even remember where I got this cloak from.

I felt the urge to enter the building.

I tucked the guns away and entered.

Inside, I noticed several closed doors along with a staircase to the side.

This must have been an apartment building.

I couldn't.

Wait.

He's going to shoot his mom.

Okay, hold on.

Yeah, I know that.

I know that.

He's about to go kill his mom or whatever.

But wait.

Do you remember how earlier I'm like, okay, I like that the dream was representative and symbolism because that makes it make more sense as to why his dad would show the Christmas tape?

But if this is literally what happened, it's a literal time loop that he goes back in and kills himself.

That mean his his dad just has a vhs video of his wife getting shot in the face and decided to play that in front of his step in front of his wife and son

so

and and just by chance he's like oh the tape was busted it must have not recorded he was just gonna play his wife's execution video he just has that

I guess.

Because if it's all literal, then he was, you could hear the knock on the door.

That was the killer about to come shooter.

Wasn't there like a static bit?

Like, are they trying to say, like, oh, we don't see the shooting?

Because he's like, oh, I got to turn it off before it gets to this one part.

No, no, no, no, no.

Remember, that's not what it said.

Because it said that

they're watching it and then the screen goes staticky and you hear a door knock and the dad gets frustrated and says, oh, it must have like gotten corrupted.

It must have not have copied over.

So until that moment, the dad thought he had a video of his wife getting shot in the face for a home video and was just showing that on disc.

Would be a pretty cool home video, though, to be fair.

That's a

oh, let's sit around and watch your mom get shot.

That's such a cool,

oh my gosh, because it made sense when it was like, oh, well, he's having a dream where he's back in that scenario and it's representative of him being there and like blah, blah, blah, whatever.

But no, it's all literal.

He literally went back in time and shot himself and his dad had a recording of it for some reason.

Whatever.

Also, my wife just texted me.

Who were you yelling at?

So that's how that's how I'm taking it.

I could hardly recall what I've been doing prior to arriving here.

In fact, I didn't even remember where I got this cloak from.

I felt the urge to enter the building.

I took the guns away and entered.

Inside, I noticed several closed doors, along with a staircase to the side.

This must have been an apartment building.

I couldn't pull myself from this feeling, letting it take me to the stairs.

I began climbing, passing more doors on each floor, each time with their own set of wreaths or anything Christmas-related.

With each floor, I tried searching for for some hint of why I was here.

I continued upward until reaching the third floor.

I was led to a door on the left marked 3A.

Why was I brought here?

I felt my hand lift as if it had a mind of its own.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't gain control over it.

It banged on the door.

Inside, I could hear someone moving towards the entrance.

Next, I felt my hand reach back into my cloak, pulling out the revolver.

Fear filled my eyes.

Was I grabbing the gun?

Yeah, this is because it says that the demon possesses him every time in this cycle, whatever.

I wanted to warn the person inside not to open the the door, but my mouth wouldn't obey either.

To my horror, I listened as the bolt unlocked and the door opened.

My eyes could not comprehend the sight before me.

The person in front of me was my father.

He looked very young, more so than the last time I saw him, but it was him.

How is this possible?

Without warning, my hand struck him across the face.

Next, my leg kicked him back.

The woman inside gave out an ear-splitting scream and shock.

It was the young face of my real mother.

She was alive, but how?

Oh my gosh, catch up!

The apartment was heavily decorated to suit the Christmas atmosphere.

It was a tree nicely decorated with presents piled underneath.

I couldn't help but felt a sense of familiarity to what was transpiring before me.

Again, my hand moved without command, shutting the door and locking the bolt.

It pointed the gun at my parents, fear engulfing their eyes.

Why are you doing this?

The father asked, gripping his head.

What do you want?

I wanted to answer, but could not.

To my side, I heard a soft voice.

I looked over and saw a young child playing with a book.

It was me.

I was actually in the presence of my younger self.

I felt a strong force vibrating through my head, feeling it filter out.

It was odd, but it looked almost like the fumes of gasoline flowing towards my younger self.

It suddenly hit me.

I felt a partial memory return.

I recalled the words of the Reverend.

This was happening to me because of that thing, Lanius.

It was inside me, controlling my actions.

It needed to take over my younger self or its vessel.

I could feel its presence vacating my body.

Do what?

Just unnecessary to say.

It's like kind of just unnecessary.

Yeah,

it's like, we get it.

We put...

I said, I think I said all this back in part two.

Like, the drawings were enough.

It's now been explained three times.

I could feel its presence vacating my body, watching it flooded to my younger self.

My parents probably couldn't see it, only me.

I couldn't let this happen.

I was not about to become one of this thing for the rest of my life.

Concentrating, I attempted to move my hand.

The one with the gun was solid and unmovable.

Finger, that hand began moving in its own accord.

I could feel it tighten on the trigger.

The gun was still aimed at my mother.

Why was it it doing this?

Why was it trying to kill my mother in the process?

I made every attempt to stop my hand, but it wouldn't listen.

I was ready to give in until my mind had another lapse in memory.

I recalled having a dream.

It was similar to what was happening now, but slightly different though.

I tried to focus, attempted to recall more of the dream.

For some reason, it was hard to do so.

I didn't know why, but I felt it necessary to remember it.

More pieces began to come together.

In the dream, I saw myself fire the gun, but it wasn't at my mother.

No, I shot myself, the younger me.

It's puzzling that I was did this.

Another piece of the dream came to me.

There was a bright light and in the light was a face.

I could recall the face this time.

It was the smiling face of my mother.

She was completely encased in the light as if the source of it.

At that moment, I understood everything.

I knew what I needed to do.

I attempted to concentrate on my other hand, focusing on the image of it moving into my command, hoping the thought would render it.

I could gradually feel my control returning.

Somehow, the more the creature left me, the more I gained feeling in my body.

I concentrated on moving my arm, feeling its mobility.

With it, I reached down into my cloak and felt around until I recognized the object.

Pulled out the second gun, aiming it at my younger self.

My mother, before me, let out a loud shriek when she saw this.

I could feel parts of my arm waiting to drop the gun, but I fought against it, aiming at the child.

The creature must have picked up on my plan because it started to flood images through my head again.

This time they were of people that I had known or would come to know.

My friends, my loved ones, everyone.

It was like it was trying to get me to understand the consequences if I continued my action.

I I could see its fumes attempting to pump faster into my younger body.

Finally, I saw the last of them completely enter my younger self.

My one-year-old self stared at me innocently.

This moment had made sense now.

I could picture the dream that brought me into all this.

The foul creature had controlled me for the last time.

All this time.

It had been me who had been the executioner of my own mother.

I was the monster, the crazy loon that had broken in all those years ago.

No, he made me that crazy loon.

He altered time.

I was the closest person to help him realize his plan.

However, the creature probably probably saw in all the infinite possibilities of time that my mother was the only threat to its plans.

I laughed to myself.

It was why?

It was ironic that even in death, she found a way to warn me, providing an escape route.

Lanius' own tearing through time and space and had backfired.

In its own attempt to fulfill its ambition, it ended up creating its own demise.

Couldn't stop the human spirit.

It was powerless to love.

My-

my mother's interference was like what the Reverend had said verbatim, inevitable.

I smiled to myself, squeezing back on the trigger.

The bullet pierced through the child's skull, instantly dropping.

That's a crazy sentence.

Instantly dropping him.

Now dead, I could feel the control of my body return.

It was as if a heavy aura of weight lifted from me.

Sighing deeply,

I dropped the gun to the ground.

Slowly, I removed the mask from my face, looking over at my parents.

They were silent with eyes still fixated on their dead child.

Finally, he shot him infant in the head.

Finally, my mother turned her gaze to me.

I smiled at her, watching her eyes grow,

watching her eyes grow wide at seeing my face.

With tears forming in my eyes, I could feel a hint of pain growing across my forehead.

Something warm began to run down my nose.

My eyes looked deep into my mother's as I spoke several words.

I'm sorry.

I had to.

I did you a favor.

Forgive me.

Story ends.

So here's, I'm just going to go into this while it's fresh in my brain.

One, this is not by, you know, this has the bones of a pretty fun idea.

Granted, I will say, out of all the stuff that we read, I do think that like

earth-ending demon satanic monster that comes alive and kills stuff is becoming a bit repetitive and old, which you're going to find whatever.

It doesn't mean that like, I like the ideas and themes of like, you know, those religious kind of weird ideas.

Um, I just wish it was approached differently.

The biggest thing through the story that I seriously feel like it would have helped a lot is there's a cardinal sin.

Well, not cardinal sin, but there's a thing that a lot of authors do in these stories that I think is important to, if you're wanting to, like, write something or like make

something feel more cohesive is

Marcus's job should have had something to do with like

his job shouldn't have been IT.

It is completely irrelevant, and that's like a huge negative.

There's nothing about his him being an IT

that helps him in any way.

Versus the whole time I was thinking, I was like, if he was a nurse or if he would have something to do with like being able to like check up on a baby and like maybe he's like a part of a hospital unit that goes to people that don't want to come to the hospital and he like checks on a child or whatever him being able to

do that and find this revelation and like his actual practices or like you know maybe even in his character arc maybe he's a doc maybe he's this kind of doctor because he realizes he can't have kids of his own, or he's afraid of the thought of having children, whatever, that kind of thing.

And it haunts him and it plagues him.

That could have been more cohesive and tied in.

Also, by doing so and being more a part of Victoria's like pregnancy.

Also, don't make her British.

Just make her normal.

Like, like, she can exist in the area normal.

You know, like British people are.

I mean, more so.

Make her correct.

It makes her.

Make her the right way.

It makes, just make it seem like she can, it's not like just such a weird out-of-pocket thing, like giving her a fucking Rastafarian accent or something that makes no, like, doesn't make any sense.

Just make her a local or whatever.

But that way, if he's able to like check on her, they can form a bond that way.

And he can, like, maybe she can just show him the like the beauties of having a child and ease his fears, and they grow romantic that way.

But, like, as it stands, it's like he sees her, and because she's beautiful, he's immediately drawn to her, and that's just like not satisfying.

There's not an emotional level there at all.

It's just him being like, okay, this is a hot pregnant chick.

I think I want to fuck her.

And then that's like his connection to her.

And I just think that like having something where

what he does in life connects even into like the parallels of like, you know, it's like these haunting, like he keeps like kind of being reborn and stuff.

And like that's like a base level fear that is also based around the career that he has chosen for himself or whatever.

um

and i just think like that was like the one thing that i was thinking the whole time through that last act i was like i just feel like him being an it guy it just does absolutely nothing and there's other things too like just the british thing unless we just missed it but i just feel like the british it just wasn't any there was no connection besides like i guess like the family got bought in by a cult for the reverend or whatever that maybe they they met overseas or something like that but it just felt unnecessary it felt unnecessary and convoluted And, you know, you go through and you get all these things of like repeating yourself.

Like the another thing that the story, I think, was doing

poorly was not trusting that the viewer understands what's happening, that like the information they're laying out isn't sufficient enough.

You see that a lot in like movies and stuff like that,

sometimes too, where it's like.

They really beat something over the head and you kind of like roll your eyes because you're like, dude, I know.

I've seen, I've seen this before.

So those are just two of the largest things that I just wanted to make sure and say at the end.

But, like, I don't think that this story is particularly bad.

I think it's bloated.

And I think that, like, the ideas, there's some cool ideas there of like

basically

your life is predetermined for you, and you've been basically reborn again and again to be the uh to be the sacrifice or the shell for this like greater being and like not and having no control over that is pretty interesting um but it just goes about in a way that is

a bit too formulaic a bit too predictable and like by the end of it you've we've gone through four hours of

basically reiterating things that we already know you know what i mean versus i feel like if this was like an hour hour and a half this could have been a very strong like just punchy thing of like guy shows up to help pregnant woman he's kind of weirded out he's not a religious guy um but i think like you know cutting the mom of being like you have to save my daughter and she's like you're not the only person that can cast spells and shit it's like get rid of that too much there's too much little things that don't amount to anything and like even our character marcus just completely buying in to This person he talks to her one time and he buy, he's just completely bought into what she's saying.

It's just like strip all these characters out.

And if anything, you could have had it, even if it wasn't a church, it could have been like a house in the middle of the woods and it's just one family.

And and then you can have that weird thing where it's like wait what there's like an incest thing going on of like my father did this and you think it's incest but really it's like you know a devil's growing inside of her it's not like he actually had sex with her or something i think that it's just you strip all that down like in a way kind of like what stolen tongues did stolen tongues very minimal cast of characters but you're able to do a lot with that you know we're focused on one thing and we're on a very straight ahead road versus this thing's kind of like pigeon pigeoning around all these different ideas Um,

and there's like a thing in writing, I don't know if it's how popular it is, but it's like a thing called like kill your babies is what it's called, where it's like you might really love an idea, kill, yeah, also called kill your darlings, yeah, yeah.

And it's like you might really love an idea, but it just does not fit in the story, and you have to be able to remove it from your story to make the story better and just like pocket it.

It doesn't mean you can never use the idea, but it's just like remove it from the story, even though you're like, oh, I love this idea, though.

Sometimes it's better to just like take out that extra fat, even if it's cool, to just make it be, to make it make more sense.

And this is just a case of that where I think there was too many, there was too many extra darlings in there that I think could have been removed.

But all in all, like I said, I mean, like, you know, I appreciate the attempt of,

or I, I just appreciate the kind of like creativity that went into the story, but I just think like the dialogue tends to be.

I think that that's like one thing that I'm finding more and more that people have a hard time writing natural dialogue, like writing an actual conversation and like reactions and stuff that doesn't go too theatrical and too big.

Yeah.

So that's those are my final thoughts.

But all in all, definitely not the worst thing we've ever read.

I'll say that.

I

talked about most of my issues.

It mostly comes down to like the way information was given was annoying.

I feel like this feels like the first draft of a story down to like the grammar mistakes and spelling mistakes in some parts.

It needed to cut a lot of the fat, needed to be shorter, needed to get rid of some of the details.

I thought it would have been really interesting, like it could have saved a lot of itself if the author was lied to at any point.

But despite being within a cult, he did not understand every bit of information that was provided to him was accurate.

Everything that Victoria said was true, everything the old woman said was true, everything the Reverend said.

So all it is, is as the plot happens, the people within the story explain to him and therefore the reader what is happening, and there's no twists.

There's no like new information turns, anything like that.

It is like well, no, no, there's new information turns, but it does nothing to disregard the last thing that we learned.

Exactly.

It's just like different things.

Everything's just very information.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Everything's just like, oh, well, we're doing this now, and there's no reason to doubt it.

We're doing this now.

There's no reason to doubt it.

And I kept being like, well, maybe it'll be interesting if, you know, he's being lied to, or there's a twist, or the old woman has it out for him, but none of that came true.

So it was just like things being explained as they were happening.

There was never like a development or something.

So because of that, it was just kind of flat.

I feel like there needed to be a lot of fat cut.

There needed to be like,

I think it'd be interesting if the old woman was a part of the cult.

And also at the end, like all that, there was a bunch of stuff that didn't go anywhere that sure was red herrings, but it got to an absurd point, like stuff like the British woman or whatever.

But then like.

At the end, when the old woman's like, oh, if I can get this clear liquid on the ritual, I can stop the incantation.

And then she just dies.

So that doesn't go anywhere.

Yeah.

So, and I, I don't know.

Like, I really liked part one with the home invasion thing because that was just a different take.

We haven't done a home invasion thing really before.

So it was cool because that's just, that's just such a fucking horrifying concept of someone breaking in and, you know, just invasion of privacy and you feel defenseless and all this kind of stuff.

And I think that the ending of this story, even of having go back and you kind of rit rate of like, yeah, I remember that dream.

This was the dream.

I kind of wish it

like in my own opinion i like subjective thought or whatever would have been like just don't even go back to it and then like let people when they reread it be like oh this is him you know like i don't think you have to go back and show all those things i think that like you already get the cloak and everything um

and all that stuff i think like

I think allowing your viewers to piece some of these things together and like give them just enough information to like have fun with it and run free with it, I think, is where the story could have shined a lot more.

So, but yeah, I mean, you know, Church in the Woods.

This is a fucking like heavily requested episode, too, or like a story.

So, I'm glad that at least we got to read it.

And, you know, I have a feeling it's going to be one of those stories, too, where our audience is like, oh, yeah, I remember reading this way back in the day because it's almost a decade old by this point.

So, what, wait, wait.

I just had another thought, not to keep harping on it, but

if

if all of this happened because it's a time loop and that's why they need him because there was a time loop created with lanius so i understand why after lanius possesses his younger self they have to keep getting the it guy back even if it's a time loop so it's technically only happened once but for him it happens multiple times whatever um if that's the reason he's important because he was picked then why did they pick a random it guy the first time Why not one of the people in the cult?

Why not?

Why anyone?

Okay, whatever.

Whatever.

It doesn't matter.

We read the story.

You read it.

Let us know what you think in the comments.

As always, it's always nice kind of seeing what you guys have to say about the story as well.

Just want to be sure to thank all the audio listeners right now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts who gave us a chance there.

And as always, wanted to give a good shout out to our patrons as well.

Thank you guys so much for supporting.

Hold on.

Okay, let me say this because I need to clarify.

I was reading a little bit about the author, and he was really into creepy pauses when he first saw them.

He's probably around our age.

This story was made eight or nine years ago, which means he probably wrote this when he was in high school or just out of it.

So this seems like something he was passionate about, one of his first stories.

And since then, he's written a lot of other stuff.

And I have to say, if I wrote a story in high school, which I did, they were not as good as this.

They were not as well put together, as well thought out, as certainly not as long, able to keep cohesive characters and stuff.

So, I mean, I don't think that we

I don't think we have to lie.

I mean, the story, I mean, we just had critiques on the story.

That isn't to say, too, with anything that we say or do.

I mean, like, we might meme and do that kind of stuff and joke, but at the same time, we appreciate people writing these stories.

And, like, they're just criticism and thoughts.

These are also all subjective, you know, like

people can also listen to what we say and completely disagree, or people could be like, this is fucking great.

So just know that, like, I like, I guess, because I see some people too, I guess, just to hop on that, is they're like, well, I'm afraid that people aren't going to like it.

They're just going to have to deal with that.

That's just like people are, when you make something, you should make it for yourself.

And for, you know, it's just like an expression of what you think is cool.

And if people, there's going to be people that like it and there's going to be people that fucking hate it.

And that's just like, fuck them, you know?

It is what it is.

At the same time, this is a story that's online.

We read it.

We gave our thoughts about it.

And it's just, it's, I, I love that it has become in the collection of our episodes.

So then years down the road, it's just going to be rediscovered again, even if like this show doesn't exist anymore, you know?

So in my opinion, it's just a way of bolstering and bringing stories, even if they aren't perfect, because no story is perfect, but at least it creates discussion for people who are writing, even myself writing stuff as well.

It's nice just reading stuff and being like, okay, that's good to know to maybe not do this, or to be inspired and be like, that was awesome.

I like how they weave this together.

So,

you know, I don't think we're ever shitting on someone and being like, give up, because that's not the case.

Of course.

Yeah.

I'm just saying this seems like early on an author's career and they had they had fuel there.

There was stuff to work with.

So I would be interested in covering one of their more recent stories, seeing how they've got along in the last decade.

This isn't indicative of the author as a whole, just this one story needed a few more drafts, I think.

Yeah.

And also, I mean, as always, we'll leave a link to their profile so you can see more of their other stories and be sure to check those out as well.

One story isn't

indicative of an entire person's catalog.

You know, someone can also write a banger story and then they write absolute dog shit after that, too.

That happens as well.

It is what it is.

But as I was saying before, too, just want to give a giant shout out to our patrons.

Thank you so much for the support there.

And I hope you enjoyed the extra episode this week that's going up.

So, thank you so much, guys.

This has been Church in the Woods.

We appreciate you watching, and we'll see you next week.

Bye-bye.

Don't go looking for pregnant British women at a cult compound, I guess, unless you really want to

or something.

I don't know, man.

Bye.

in the jungle, the mighty jungle.

The lions leaves tonight

in the jungle, the mighty jungle

bumble.

In the jungle.