Page 39 of Together We Rot

“Ah, yes, that,” I reply. That’s actually vaguely terrifying in itself, but I hold my tongue.

“It’s a relatively simple lock,” he tells me, pointing to the little box they keep beneath the cross. It’s raised high and flecked with gaudy splashes of gold paint. Upon closer inspection, I see floral markings etched into the wood. Someone really took their time on this to create a forest of ivy and sharp branches. “I’ve watched my dad open it a million times. There is a slight trick to it, though.”

He mimes the action with his hand, the ninety-degree turn one way, followed by another counterclockwise one after that. One last shimmy and the imaginary key is yanked free. “Like that.”

“Noted.” I fish two bobby pins from my hair and my greasy bangs break free and spill across my forehead. I flatten the first piece and dig it into the groove, and then I create my pick. I jiggle the makeshift key in the lock and listen for the clicks of each seized pin inside it.

One by one until the door swings wide open.

“A little scary how good you are at that,” Lucas says.

“Says the guy who easily broke down a door with a crowbar.”

That shuts him up.

Elwood reaches his hand into the chasm. Beyond the gaudy chalice, there’s a page tucked in the gloom. He frees it and shuts the door behind him, his full attention on the stolen passage. It’s folded several times over and creased from the time it’s spent hidden away.

He’s delicate with it, his fingers brushing the paper as if it were the sacrament itself. Some holy artifact bestowed from the heavens.

He smooths it against the pulpit, pressing it out like he might read it to a congregation. We crowd behind him for a better look.

“In the midst of the town’s starvation, leader James Alderwood claims to have conversed with an angel,” it begins, the script as thin and faint as the text in the library. I strain to read it in the gloom. “A holy messenger of God showed him the path to salvation. Like in the days of old, a sacrifice was needed to nourish the land and keep the town fed. And so they spilled the blood of Alderwood’s only son in the snow and the Lord was satisfied with this offering. With their Gift, the woods took on new life and a new Eden was born.

“Blessed are those who follow in the Lord’s path and offer their sons to the earth. Feed the blood to the soil and it shall nourish the land for years to come and keep Eden holy. Spare your sons and face God’s wrath.”

“They’ve been killing people here since the very beginning. There’s no denying it.” My voice breaks halfway in. Elwood’s not speaking, hardly moving. When my heart catches up with the rest of me, it catches up fast. Slamming brutally against my rib cage, a stern pounding on a frail door. The chill racks along my spine.

No one else says anything. No one knows what to say, and it turns out we don’t need to anyway, because the world that was so painfully silent minutes prior is no more. Through the quiet, the sound of footsteps breaks.

Someone’s coming and they aren’t alone.

The color leeches right out of Elwood’s face, and the paper is no longer smoothed in his grasp but crumpled beneath his trembling fist. He utters three little words, and it’s enough to make the blood run ice-cold in my veins:

“The night service.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ELWOOD

Spying on a church has got to be a sin. And a dangerous one at that.

After everything we’ve unearthed, the sensible thing to do would be to run far, far away from here. All of us should clamber into the back of Lucas’s car and speed away. Out of this town, out of this state.

But spying is exactly what we’re doing. Wil’s busy fiddling with her phone settings in the back office and dutifully ignoring everyone’s whispered pleas for us to hurry up and leave. Once she’s absolutely positive that the flash is off, she clenches it tight between her trembling hands and starts the video. Kevin mutters something about found-footage horror films, but she swats away his comment too.

I swallow the lump that’s formed in my throat. I’ve never been to a night service. I always thought once I returned home in the future that I’d be deemed old enough to attend... but clearly that was never bound to happen. As horrible as this idea is, my dark curiosity has surfaced again. It’s been showing its face a lot recently and here I am, submitting once more. It’s a friend at this point. An impulsive, reckless friend leading me from one bad idea to the next.

Like Wil.

So we watch the scene from the back office, the room an echoing cavern that could betray us at any turn. One wrong move, one slight sound, and it’s all over.

My father stands among monsters.

Faces cloaked by deer skulls, antlers protruding like branches on either ends of their scalp. They’ve split deer jaws wide open, severed the mandible and left the upper teeth behind in a grisly faux smile. Beneath their ghastly masks, their bodies are obscured by long green cassocks. Stitched ivy slithers up the sides, the fabric alive with a forest of foliage.

“You all know why I’ve called you here today.” My father’s voice sounds like a roach scuttling up the drain. For years I’ve been Little Red living with a wolf, marveling over sharp teeth as if they weren’t meant to swallow me whole. “Elwood needs to be found, no matter the cost.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve hidden him.” I recognize Vrees by the gray stubble of his chin and the timbre of his voice. He gnashes the words in my father’s face as he approaches him at the podium. He might’ve switched out of police attire, but his rigid stance is nothing he can hang up at the end of the day. “You’re telling me after years of keeping tabs on him, suddenly he’s running free? You’ll damn us for this, Ezekiel. As far as I’m convinced, the Clarke name is a rotten branch. Your father—”

---