Hell Followed with Us(32)
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Reformation Faith Evangelical Church is a time machine made of stone and stained glass—a towering, Gothic-style monster cradled by brutalist ten-story offices and parking garages. It used to be a Presbyterian church, but the Angels consumed it like they did everything else. They invited all kinds of people into their flock, teaching them the purpose of Evangelicalism and tradition and the way of the Angels, and then the martyr masquerading as a preacher smashed a vial of the Flood on the altar and barred the doors shut. An eye for an eye, a plague for a plague.
We don’t get within two blocks until Cormac climbs the parking garage and snipes the soldiers standing at the front stairs, Faith going with him to watch his back. There’s a pair, one leaning against a broken streetlight and the other smoking by the door. Aisha stares at the road so she doesn’t have to see it. I watch them fall and wonder who they are. If I’d recognize them if I lifted up their heads.
Who am I kidding? Of course I would.
Cormac and Faith come back through an alleyway, thumbs up in reassurance. We’re in the clear.
As we get closer, the ground itself seems to hum, reverberating through my throat and behind my eyes. The church drips with flesh: arteries the size of arms breaking through stained glass windows, root veins spreading out between the stonework. Fingers grow from cracks in the masonry. Bodies hang from the architecture, the mark of wings painted on every door in the same shade of red as blood, like the blood on the doors of the Israelites to spare their firstborn sons. Scrawled messages cry, GOD LOVES YOU, GOD LOVES YOU, GOD LOVES YOU.
PREPARE TO DIE. HIS KINGDOM IS NEAR.
The closer we get, the clearer the hum becomes—cries of the Graces, calling to Heaven, the children’s choir singing about washing clothes with the blood of the Lamb. It’s the same hum I felt when Theo cut his hands and pressed them to the flesh of the church, when he leaned down to kiss it, his blood becoming Jesus’s blood, the same way as wine. It sounds like New Nazareth. It sounds like home.
When I step down from the curb and into the street, I almost stop. I don’t want to go any closer. This is where Brother Hutch was going to take me. This is where I watched Theo fall apart into something other than the boy I grew up with. The Angels always had their claws in him, but this is where they hooked into his insides so deep he could not pull them out without bleeding to death.
But Nick looks back at me, and I follow like I’ve been doing this all my life.
“Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?” the choir asks in a warbling, childish soprano before fading into a holy echo. We walk around to the back, where a delivery entrance pushes up against a graveyard meant for the bodies of the church’s elders. The door is unlocked; the Watch contains the only people brave enough or stupid enough to come this close.
Nick wrenches it open. We’re greeted by a distant sermon, crying loud to the faithful.
“We have gathered here today,” comes the faint voice of Reverend Brother Morrison, “to celebrate the achievements of our children.” It’s a voice that shakes under the weight of its words, the voice of the man who promised to wed Theo and me by the river when we were ready, when God had made me perfect with the Flood. Nick freezes against the door, eyes squeezed shut. My left hand shakes so badly, I have to shove it into my pocket. “To put the worthy through trial. To help them take their places one step closer to the Lord’s side.”
Nick lets me through first. The room is dark and musty, piled full of boxes and discarded pews. I didn’t need the map of the church we studied; I know this building. Theo and I snuck away while the presiding reverend readied himself for the ceremony, creeping through the halls to find a place all to ourselves. He stopped by a hidden staircase and kissed me, and when we got back my braid was a mess, so everyone knew what we did. I look up to see the same tendrils on the ceiling, a fingernail digging into the beams. We all come in, and Nick closes the door tightly. The room plunges into darkness.
I can do this.
“Brothers, take pleasure in your struggle,” Reverend Brother Morrison commands. “Learn to love the pain. It is a cleansing pain. It is a glorious pain. Love it the way Jesus loved the nails through His palms, the thorns upon His brow. It is not a soft love; it is not a gentle love, but it is a perfect one.”
Nick catches my arm—his fingers on my sleeve, enough that I feel them but no more—and murmurs, “On your signal.”
“On my signal,” I repeat and step into the guts of the church.
“Your love must be strong enough that it becomes fearsome! It is fear that brings the unfaithful to the Lord. It will be fear that saves the nonbelievers. It will be fear that teaches heretics the truth of our Almighty God.”
The back hallways are claustrophobic. Dust cakes the carpets, and cobwebs hang in the stone ribs holding up the ceiling. A rumble shakes the walls as those trapped here on Judgment Day groan in pain. I almost feel Theo pulling me through the corridor, smothering his laughter, glimmers of happiness shining at the corners of his eyes. The memory is beautiful and terrifying.
Focus. I feel out the doors in the dark. I’m not looking for this one, or the next one either. The offices are back here; one of these doors leads to the sacristy, where the priests prepare for service. A kitchen, the little rooms where Sunday school was held. None are what I need.
“Fear will always be what pushes sinners toward God because we are broken things that do not deserve His love. The first step to wisdom is to fear the Lord, to tremble in the face of His truth. And you! Oh, you, my children, will be His terror made flesh.”