Page 54 of Obscurity
They were no longer camping—they were sitting in a small lake.
And Jason was right. They needed to get out of here before it was too late.
CHAPTER 33
Olive unzipped the tent and looked out at the blurry, rain-drenched darkness on the other side.
It was a soggy mess out there.
Some people had left their tents and were now dancing in the rain.
She spotted some flashlights and, from their position, assumed it was probably security keeping an eye on things.
“The free alcohol.” Jason peeked out behind her. “Some people are probably passed out cold and don’t realize they’re sleeping in puddles. Others are getting soaked as they dance.”
“I just hope no one does anything stupid.”
“We need to find somewhere dry.” Jason shouldered their soggy gear. “And higher up.”
They stepped into the rain, carrying their backpacks, and the drops pelted them. Then they began to pick their way through the muddy campsite, past tents sagging under the weight of collected rainwater and others that had clearly taken on significant flooding. Most remained ominously quiet.
“There.” Olive pointed toward the old church. “It’s on higher ground. I wonder if we can get inside.”
They headed that way. Jason tried the door, and it was unlocked.
Jason tested the floorboards before motioning for her to come inside.
As Olive and Jason stepped through the warped wooden doors, escaping the driving rain, they were immediately hit by the musty smell of rotting wood mixed with something sharper—the metallic tang of rusted metal and the sour odor of standing water that had pooled and stagnated in hidden corners.
Their flashlight beams revealed a space that had once been sacred but now felt haunted by neglect. The wooden pews sat in crooked rows, some collapsed entirely, their boards warped and split from years of moisture and temperature fluctuations. Hymnals lay scattered across the floor, their pages swollen and illegible, creating a carpet of molding paper that released the sweet, cloying smell of decomposition with each step.
The altar area was partially collapsed, the wooden platform tilted at a dangerous angle where the floor joists beneath had rotted through. Behind it, stained glass windows that had once depicted biblical scenes were now broken puzzles, with colored glass fragments scattered across the floor like discarded jewels.
Despite the decay, the space offered shelter from the storm raging outside, and they gratefully moved deeper into the ruins to escape the wind and rain that had been soaking them to the bone.
At once, memories from nearly a decade ago hit her.
Memories of her father’s brief stint as a pastor at a small community church in Indiana. It was the place her family had moved after leaving Texas . . . and Jason.
She’d never quite understood why, after all the scams her father had pulled, he’d then decided to go into ministry. He’d never shown any interest in church before. She found the whole thing suspicious.
But she’d been coached by her parents on how to act like a good Christian girl. Every time the church doors had opened, she and her sisters had been there.
Though Olive had been apprehensive at first, she’d come to appreciate the people there and the community.
However, it was while her father served at that church in Indiana that her entire family had been murdered.
Nausea began to roil inside her at the memories.
“This could be worse,” Jason murmured, pulling her from her thoughts.
“Could it?” Olive frowned as she heard something scampering in the distance. A rat?
Jason pulled out some blankets from his pack—blankets that had somehow stayed dry. “At least we won’t freeze.”
“At least,” she murmured.
But this was the first time she’d set foot in church since her family’s murders . . . and she might not survive the ghosts coming back into the light.
