Page 67 of Skotos
Thomas and I exchanged a glance.
“Looks like they’re not joining us for prayers,” he said, his mouth twisting to the side the way it did when he was deep in thought. “Guess they weren’t trying to run us over. Maybe they just wanted to scare us.”
“Mission accomplished.”
We turned toward the chapel. Half choked in ivy and the shadows of tall olive trees, it looked like it hadn’t seen worship in a century.
Thomas scanned the area. “This it?”
“This is it,” I confirmed, swallowing the unease rising in my chest.
We pushed the gate open, earning a groan of metal on metal. We hadn’t even crossed the threshold yet, but already I felt like we were being watched from every direction, not simply by the men of the Fiat.
The chapel’s doors hung heavily on their hinges, wailing with the pain of movement after so long idle. Inside, the chapel was dim and cold. Stale air clung to the walls, and a draft whistled low through cracks in the stone. Dust blanketed everything. Wooden pews sprawled, cracked and splintered, some half collapsed, with cobwebs stretching from rafter to wall like delicate veins of forgotten time. A bird’s nest, long abandoned, lay beneath a broken window.
My boots echoed against the uneven flagstone as we walked down the center aisle. A rotting wooden cross still hung above the altar, tilted, one arm broken. I imagined a whisper of incense, faint and sour, though mold and decay were all that remained.
We reached the front. Two doors flanked the altar. Thomas motioned toward the first, as though offering to let a lady step before him on a crowded sidewalk. Unable to resist, I gave him a shallow bow of my head and stepped forward.
The door creaked open to reveal a small library. Shelves sagged under the weight of water-stained books. Most were unreadable, their titles faded or peeling away. Dust motes danced in a shaft of pale light slicing through a crack in the ceiling. Scanning the shelves, I doubted anyone had touched a single volume in a dozen or more years.
We stepped back into the main chapel and approached the door on the left. Thomas went first this time as we stepped into a cramped office. A wave of musty, cold air greeted us the moment he opened the door.
Thomas reached for the light switch and flicked it, but nothing happened.
“Dead bulb or no power,” he muttered.
Only a sliver of daylight filtered through the curtain-draped window.
Thomas crossed the room slowly, his boots scuffing across dusty stone, and grasped the edge of the curtain, yanking it aside.
Dust billowed as light spilled into the room.
“Oh my God,” I breathed. “Thomas . . .”
Father Marini lay on the floor behind the desk, his body twisted at an unnatural angle, his robes stiff with dried blood. A grotesque halo darkened the floor around his chest.
The smell hit me next—iron and the unmistakable sourness of death. The priest’s eyes were open,glassy, and staring at the ceiling as if to ask, “Why, Lord?”
Thomas stood frozen, his hand still gripping the curtain.
The room was silent as a tomb.
Too silent.
And then—
Creeeak.
We both looked up.
My heart raced.
Another sound.
A bump this time.
Something large shifted.
