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  We made our way toward the back of the room, all the while keeping one eye on the lit side room and another on the floor where we were walking. We tiptoed to keep from making noise, but it was proving difficult. The floor between the pews was littered with papers and disheveled hymnals, scraps of a once thriving house of worship. The condition gave an atmosphere of chaos, like everyone had thrown the books and papers into the air, like graduates and their tasseled caps. Or maybe the house of worship had come under attack by Satanists intent on trashing the place, leaving no word of God unturned. I wiped my temple, sweating despite how cold I was. Maybe my mom was right. I needed to stop with the B-movies, already.

  Turning to gauge Garrett’s impression of the mess, my lungs and cardiac muscle jerked me back. From where we’d entered, we hadn’t yet seen the altar, that front part of the church where the minister usually stands. Because if we had, we would have turned and high-tailed it out. Immediately.

  Chapter 19

  A weathered wooden coffin played the role of the elephant in the room. Dirty and looking very old in its design, it perched upon the raised stage like an altar awaiting its sacrifice. A knee-high spindled railing surrounded the platform, a warning keeping us at bay, as if we needed to be told to be wary. With the shadows doing their best to conceal it all, I couldn’t have overstated the chilling scene before us if I’d tried.

  The shock of seeing the coffin must have been playing across my face, because Garrett’s expression changed when our eyes finally met. His eyes narrowed, and his head cocked to one side.

  “Luke?”

  He hadn’t seen the coffin, yet.

  “Dude,” I stammered, “check it out.” I nodded in the direction of the closed coffin. Then, as if being pulled by some giant magnet, I started walking toward the death box before Garrett could even turn and look. My feet moved—left, right, left, right—one at a time without taking my eyes off the elongated wooden box. I couldn’t. I was afraid if I looked away for even a second, it would be gone once I turned back, like a mirage or a ghost. I was a marionette with someone else working the strings. I just kept walking. I passed the rows of crumbling pews, weaving through the scattered hymnals here, kicking right through them there, until I stood at the foot of the raised pulpit. The break in the front railing served as an open invitation to anyone brave enough to come this far.

  As I considered the weight of my intestinal fortitude, a sound came from above. A loud groan emanating from old wooden planks. I instinctively crouched down on one knee. Garrett’s warm breath brushed across my neck, telling me that he had hit his knee, too. I made a gradual turn on my heels so that only he would hear my whisper.

  “The wind?” I asked, eyebrows raised optimistically.

  Garrett just shrugged. “Hope so.”

  We both raised our gaze toward the high ceiling that might as well have not even been there. Shadowy blackness was all we could see. There was no telling what laid beyond. I’d seen a tiny window from the outside, high enough to be from a second story. Maybe an attic, or loft of some kind, but I wasn’t sure.

  “I saw a stairway leading upstairs,” Garrett whispered, as if reading my mind. “Back there. Off to the side. But, I don’t think the sound came from upstairs. Sounded more like the wind playing havoc with the roof shingles to me.”

  “Maybe, but it seems pretty obvious that someone else is here,” I whispered, although the words half stuck in my throat.

  “And I’d say they have about as much right to be here as we do.”

  “And what about that?” I asked, pointing at the coffin.

  “There’s got to be some reasonable explanation,” he said, but a slight hesitation told me he was acting more confident than he felt. He licked his dry lips in the dim light. “Fine. We’ll save the upstairs for later,” he said, making clear the concession was only temporary.

  I gave Garrett a thumbs up and returned my attention to the coffin. Despite the opening in the railing, inviting us closer, where we stood was close enough for me. The force that had pulled me this far had ceased, like someone had grabbed ahold of my jacket from behind. But, it wasn’t just the will to get closer that had deserted me. I no longer wanted to investigate the coffin period. For that matter, the church itself. Maybe I was afraid of what I would find. Maybe I was afraid of the knowledge I would have afterward. There are instances in life when it’s just better not knowing. And for me, this was one of those times.

  “I’ve seen enough,” I whispered. “I can live the rest of my life not knowing what’s in there.” Turning and looking at his face in the near darkness, I struggled to read Garrett’s expression. Was he feeling the same ominous sense that I was? Was he finally ready to put some distance between us and this old place?

  “We’re not leaving yet,” he said, answering my silent question and extinguishing my flicker of hope. “I’m with you on the coffin. But I have to know what, or who, is in there.” He turned toward the lit room. My wary eyes followed his gaze, not believing what he was saying.

  “Are you f-ing kidding me?” I gasped. Garrett’s sense of adventure was getting the best of him, and I was getting nervous about his qualifications as our unspoken leader. Nothing about this place—the fresh graves, the black-covered windows, the freshly dug up coffin sitting on an abandoned church’s pulpit—was telling a story that I wanted to hear, much less be a part of.

  “What?” he asked, meeting my bewildered stare with a serious one of his own. “Could be a runaway for all we know. Or runaways.”

  The moment he made the word “runaway” plural, I understood. Didn’t agree with him, but I understood. Garrett had the missing girls on his mind. He was thinking about them, not us, and thinking they might be hiding out in this church. Hoping so, most likely. Who wouldn’t want to be the one to solve the mystery and actually find the girls? I understood completely.

  But I didn’t buy the idea that it was them. There were too many screwed up aspects of this no-longer vacant church to be a simple hideout for a group of teenage runaways. The coffin changed things. It was obvious to me that something bad was taking place here, and I couldn’t believe he wasn’t seeing it.

  “Garrett,” I whispered, trying to keep my voice down, but using his name for emphasis, “you can’t be serious. Megan, Hannah and Becca, they’re not here. I don’t know where they are, but they sure as hell aren’t hiding out in this deserted church, digging up graves from the cemetery and bringing the coffins inside. Are you kidding me?”

  “I know, I know,” he said, talking to me, but keeping his eyes on the room with the light. The way the room’s doorway was positioned, not much was visible from our vantage point. There was a section of dingy white wall, but beyond that, anything could have been in there.

  Or anyone.

  “But, there still might be a connection,” he continued. “Wouldn’t you like to find out if they’re here? This could be the break the police need.”

  “But, we’re twenty miles from New Paris,” I pointed out. “There are a hundred places between here and there they could hide out in.”

  “If that’s what they’re doing, which I doubt,” I argued back, feeling more certain on this point than on anything I’d said in my life. “And what are the odds that we stumbled upon the very place so far from home that –”

  “Okay!” Garrett interrupted, his voice threatening to hit a dangerous level. “But, someone’s here. Or has been here. And it’s a hell of a coincidence when you think about it.”

  I stood in the near darkness and found myself shaking my head and feeling like I’d been here before. The conversation was much the same as the one we’d had on the driveway after finding the freshly dug graves. And like that conversation, Garrett had piqued my interest despite the voice inside me yelling “no” like I was about to jump off a ledge. The idea of finding the answer to the missing girls, or the girls themselves, was definitely appealing. We’d be heroes. Heck, the town would probably hold a parade in our honor. Not only did
I think he was barking up the wrong tree, but also, we weren’t equipped with the tools to handle what we might find if we investigated further. I had a downright bad feeling about doing anything in this place beyond running out of it. But Garrett stood, waiting for me to answer.

  “Alright,” I sighed. “We peek inside the room, then we get the hell out of here. No matter what is or isn’t in there. If it’s nothing, we leave just the same as if there is something. No more private investigator bullshit. We get the hell out of here, tell the cops about this place, and let them decide whether or not what’s going on here is as fucked up as it looks. Deal?”

  “Deal,” Garrett said with a single nod. There was no smile on his face this time. No swagger. The cockiness was gone, leaving only commitment. It wasn’t about an adventure anymore, and I should have recognized that earlier. He was just as scared as I was. I could see it in his alert eyes, open slightly wider than normal. This was just Garrett wanting to do whatever he could to help. Basically, Garrett being Garrett. And truthfully, that was one of the main reasons I called him my best friend.

  “Alright, Dickhead,” I said, “let’s go check it out.”

  Chapter 20

  She laid on her frameless bed, trying to soothe the dull pain growing behind her right eye. It was the same pain, in the same place, about once a week or so. It was enough to make her eye water. The pain. Sometimes she could get it to go away if she tried hard enough. If she relaxed and hummed her song. Not just any song, but her favorite. It always soothed her pain and calmed her when she was feeling nervous. Just like her mother used to do.

  Softly, and with eyes closed, she started to hum the tune. It was the same melody her mother had often sung to her as she tucked the blanket underneath her chin and planted downy kisses on her forehead when she was little. She could still recall her mother’s gentle voice, like an angel’s, drifting over her like the golden slumbers of which she sang. Lulling her toward the land of dreams. Until the last thing she would remember before drifting off was her mother’s voice floating toward her from her bedroom doorway. Just before her mother clicked off the light, just before she –

  Her eyes flew open like she’d been poked with a stick. Her muscles tensed as she realized her mistake. Her stupid, stupid mistake. She had forgotten to put out the candles in the classroom. Her father had warned her about that before. About leaving candles burning. Warned her and followed through on his threats more than once.

  Rolling off the mattress, her feet hit the floor running. She ducked underneath the curtain and scaled her father’s mattress, scooting her bottom across it in one long slide, until she was on her feet again approaching the doorway. She had to get to the classroom before her father. Her hand went to her right eye, remembering. She just had to.

  Chapter 21

  We crept between the ragged and tortured pews, slowly slinking past the long shadows toward the room with the light. The possibilities of what we might find in there ran through my mind on a loop. The missing girls. A homeless vagrant. Remnants of a Satanic ritual. As we crossed over the center aisle that divided the sanctuary lengthwise in half, I tried to focus on my favorite possibility: the missing girls. A harmless homeless guy just looking to stay dry and remain undisturbed ran a close second. As we made our way closer to the doorway, I crossed my proverbial fingers for the best, but braced myself for the worst.

  We were only a few steps from the room when another sound came from above. Halting our forward motion, we were forced flat against the wall. On our way across the large room, Garrett had pointed out the stairway that led up to a second story. My eyes went right to it then. Maybe it was a wild animal—squirrel, raccoon, bird—but there was definitely something making the sounds. Something more than just the wind.

  The shuffling continued, sounding even more like an animal scurrying across the floor than before. Nothing more than that, I told myself and exhaled the air I’d been holding when the shuffling stopped. While I rested my back against the wall on one side of the doorway, Garrett took up position on the other. We looked more like a couple of S.W.A.T. officers about to raid a crack house than two half-frightened teenagers about to investigate a room simply because a light was on. I looked at Garrett, and in true cop show fashion, he looked back at me and nodded.

  The room was empty except for six miniature chairs placed side by side in the middle with one larger, adult-sized chair facing them. On each of the tiny chairs was a tattered doll, positioned to face the large chair and the chalkboard hanging crookedly on the wall behind it. The whole room wasn’t much more than a coat closet. For all I knew, it could have been one in a previous life.

  After another look at Garrett to make sure I wasn’t going in alone, we stepped farther into the room and were fully embraced by the light. The room was warm, whether it was heat from the three nearly consumed candles glowing on a narrow stand in the corner or the presence of recent body heat. Either way, it felt good on my damp face. I was chilled to the bone and this was the first heat I’d been exposed to since stepping out of the cab of Garrett’s truck, not to mention the first real light since the sun had been swallowed up by storm clouds.

  With thoughts of warming my frigid hands on their enticing flames, I made a beeline for the candles, but the notion escaped me before I’d made it even halfway across the room. The gears of my brain ground against each other at what I saw to my right. I took a couple of steps closer.

  Random paper drawings of houses, stick figure families, cats, dogs and turtles clung to the chipped and cracked plaster wall with thin strips of clear tape. Drawn using all the colors from a Crayola 64 box, the drawings themselves were simple and caused little reason for concern. Where the concern came into play, however, was with the names that were scrawled on the papers in what appeared to be a child’s hand. Each drawing was signed with a name, and each name was the same as one of the missing girls from New Paris.

  Megan.

  Hannah.

  Becca.

  My heart trilled for a moment at the thought of having found them, but as I looked closer at the drawings, my delight descended into uneasiness. Four drawings each were attributed to Megan and Hannah, while only two bore Becca’s name. But judging by the skill level displayed in the drawings, they weren’t drawn by seniors in high school. They weren’t terrible, but the attention to detail wasn’t there. Hannah Rogers was a very gifted artist whose paintings and drawings had always won awards at the local art shows. Despite her name being on them, I knew that Hannah couldn’t have drawn these clumsy crayon pictures. Still, the fact that I found their names on something in this place set off every alarm in my mind.

  I turned to Garrett hoping he could offer a plausible explanation, although I couldn’t imagine what that might be. But Garrett stood in the middle of the room, jaw hung slightly open, staring at the chalk board on the wall. By the look on his face, he’d also seen something that wasn’t quite right, and depending on what it was, I had a feeling I might regret having seen the drawings. Basically, I had limitations. I could only handle so much and was already approaching that line.

  I forced my eyes to follow his, and for the first time since entering the room, really took notice of the chalkboard. Or, more specifically, what was written on it in pink chalk. From top to bottom and side to side, like a schoolboy’s punishment, was one sentence written over and over:

  For the hour to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.

  “What the…?” was all I could get out as I stood there mesmerized by the words. They had little meaning for me, but dread poured into every inch of my body. Reap. Harvest. The words kept jumping out at me, drawing my eyes back to them every time I tried to look away. I was at a loss. I felt like a stoner standing in the potato chip aisle, unable to decide which variety would best satisfy the munchies.

  “Creepy shit,” Garrett said. His head was slowly nodding up and down, and I wasn’t even sure he was aware of it.

  “That ain’t all,” I s
aid as the rhythmic pounding of my heart sounded in my ears. “I’d tell you what I saw on the wall over there, but after seeing this, I don’t want to take the time. I just wanna get the hell outta here. I’m officially done with this place.” I patted Garrett on the back as I started to walk past him, and was admittedly thankful when he turned to fall in beside me. No more arguments. No more persuasion. Garrett was just as freaked as I was. Once we got back to town, we’d tell the police about this place. It’d be their problem then and maybe it would still lead to wherever the girls were. In any case, we’d never have to see this creepy church again.

  As soon as we stepped into the openness of the sanctuary we were greeted with an audible gasp, the sound of someone’s breath catching in surprise. I stopped in mid-stride and looked back at Garrett. His eyes were equally wide, probing mine. It took only a second for us to realize that neither of us has made the alerted sound, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled.

  We scanned the sanctuary from where we’d frozen and saw nothing. Maybe we had imagined the sound. A sigh of relief was escaping my lips when a soft whimper spun us in the direction of the stairway. A teenage girl stood barefoot in the middle of the stairs like she was just on her way down. She wore grey sweat pants rolled up over her calves and a maroon NPHS cheerleading t-shirt, both of which looked like they hadn’t been washed in weeks. She was dressed the way the New Paris cheerleaders dressed when they weren’t in uniform, but this girl was far from a New Paris cheerleader. Stringy yellow hair, dull and thin, hung from her desolate scalp. Her gaunt face, filthy and pockmarked from acne run amuck, offered not even a hint of beauty. One eye looked normal, but the other was only slightly open as she looked down in shock at the two of us.