Part 2
Age Twenty-One
Chapter 4
So there we were at a diner at the edge of my college town. When Jesse walked in, she recognized me immediately, a beaming smile spreading across her face. Good thing she did, because I never would have recognized her first. Her formerly lank brown hair was now closely cropped. After a split second, I finally put it together; time and growth had shifted her facial features to a much more favorable location. Or to put it another way, she was gorgeous now, while still carrying the faintest memory of the awkward kid she once was. She wore a light jacket for the unseasonably cool week we had been having, but it was open, revealing a midriff baring sweater- man, I feel like a perv saying this- that tightly hugged ample curves. I say this because her current appearance was such a huge shock to me, as I had only imagined a taller version of that skinny, shy, uncertain kid I once knew. Also, the relatively immodest dress and what it revealed would have been her parents’ worst nightmare-it almost seemed as if she had grown into such a beautiful woman to spite them.
"Nice glasses," Not the first thing I expected her to say. “Super tall, black hair, glasses, from Kansas- you grew into a real Clark Kent. Or maybe Atticus Finch.” I felt a buzzing behind my nose and eyes as she hugged me tight again, almost as if she couldn’t help herself. She was still petite so my chin brushed the top of her hair- which smelled amazing.
The first thing that was said when we sat down was an almost simultaneous apology on both our parts for falling out of touch. We both laughed when we realized what we had tried to say at the same time, and that broke whatever awkwardness the nine years had wrought.
We ate in silence- she did the stereotypical girl thing and ordered a salad and a grilled chicken sandwich. Better to eat healthy now than waiting for the cholesterol to start walling up your arteries, I guess.
“So, just out of curiosity, how religious are you now? Seems like something we shouldn’t dance around.”
“I have long partaken in the joys of sleeping in on a Sunday morning, C.K.,” Jesse replied. “C.K.” for Clark Kent,” I guess. “And I support gay rights. And I don’t believe the world is 6,000 years old. Does that answer your question?”
“I think it does.” I wish I could say I was sorry if the situation was that her parents had poisoned her views on God and organized religion.
“I see you’ve been enjoying your freedom.” She noticed me glancing at the pink in her hair.
"You know, I just wanted the pink streak and it didn't contrast so well with brown hair, " Jesse explained. I was paying attention, but she saw me fidgeting; I had too many more uncomfortable questions that I didn’t want to ask so soon. But she seemed to know exactly what I was thinking.
"Go ahead, ask," she said with a smile.
"What about your brothers and sisters? What happened to your parents?" I asked, now that I was finally free of my friend.
She sighed. "My Aunt petitioned for custody for the eight of us that were still minors, but her income was deemed insufficient. It was just me, Jenna, and Jacob. We kept in touch with Jannah, Joseph, Jordan, Jilian, Joseph, Jaylene, and Jedidiah, though. I just saw Jannah and Jilian last week. Mom’s around somewhere. And Dad’s- well, I don't care to know how he's doing.” The derision in that last part was palpable.
"Jerilynn’s one of them- she thinks I 'fell into darkness,'" She shrugged, and I didn’t begrudge her how fake the casualness of it was. “The rest of us kids- you introduce us to the joys of video games, soda pop, and R-rated movies, and we all fell away.”
And actual free time to be a kid, I mentally added to her list. And parents who won’t beat you senseless for doing what kids do- like getting upset once in a great while. Before I could stop myself, my hand slid across the table and grasped hers. She squeezed it.
“I’m sorry we lost touch,” she explained. “I don’t know why it was so easy for me, especially since a couple of the younger kids had more trouble adjusting, but I had so many friends when I started school I didn’t know what to do with them. I was so happy that so many people made the choice to have me in their life…well….” And she shrugged guiltily. “And to top it all off, I left you back in our little Kansas town crawling with religious weirdos. I’ll bet you had a run-in with at least a few of those kids- I saw that movie Children of the Corn and I’ll bet Isaac turned out like-“She stopped there, because I had snorted Coke through my nose at the mention of Isaac, and the haunted look that came across my face. She asked, so I told her the whole thing- his assaulting me, his rants, and his suicide.
“And you never told me?” There was anger, but she was genuinely gobsmacked at this revelation. She buried her face in her hands.
“This is not the normal conversation I thought we’d be having. No matter what a therapist says, it all boils down to putting this shit as far back in your mind as possible. Just short of actually forgetting. So let’s… let’s forget about this for now. What we went through was not normal, and here we are trying to have a normal reunion. How about we tell normal to go fuck itself and have an adventure?” she asked, her eyes alight with a hint mischief. “Just the two of us, something none of my other friends have done!” Despite my attempts to take the high road, I was still a healthy, libidinous young man more than willing to at least hear out this gorgeous young lass. But also, I wanted my old friend back. So I listened. When she explained what she wanted to do, I was surprised, to say the least, and the conversation took a serious turn at this, but she assured me that this was just for curiosity and something she didn’t want to do alone.
During the two-hour drive, we talked about everything and anything that had happened over the years. I understood then how overwhelmed Jesse was by her new life and all the opportunities she had been granted- she was on both the volleyball and track teams, and was in just about every play in all four years. She had busted her ass that first year to catch up; her “D” average finally was hovering around a low “B” by the end of the year, and after studying ahead during that next summer, she finished middle school a straight “A” student and never looked back.
Maybe I could have followed through more than I had. In the back of my mind, I wondered if I had allowed things to drift apart as they had because Jesse no longer needed saving and my work was done. I wondered if that was truly the case, if Jesse had truly moved on, as we pulled up to the front of her old house. She explained to me that she had looked up the property before our meeting and found out that the Goodmans’ old house had been foreclosed on eighteen months ago, and that judging by the sales history, it had previously been bought four years prior. It had recently been bought again, and there were obvious signs it was being rehabbed- a port-a-potty in the yard, a stack of lumber on the lawn, and a rental dumpster. Jesse sighed at this.
“My friend Kelsey’s aunt smoked four packs a day for forty years, and when she died, they had to completely gut her house because the smoke was buried so deep in the walls, the carpet….This place didn’t just need to be gutted. It needed to be knocked over.”
“It looks like the new owners will be happy here when they finish it up…”
“Lots of people thought we were happy,” Jesse sighed. “Because we always had those Stepford Wife smiles on our faces. And you know why that was, don’t you?”
I nodded, grasping the hand that was draped over the armrest. She took it. Her head was bowed, the platinum locks obscuring her eyes as she submerged into ever-deeper thoughts.
“I want to see the church,” she said, finally. I didn’t know how much she expected to see, but when she looked up, the pleading look in those big brown depths was hard to deny.
“I’ve never broken the law, not once,” Jesse said. “I can’t think of a better exception, or a better person to do it with. I just need to see.” I remembered how long it would take a cop to get out here when called-except that one time when it really mattered, thankfully- so I resigned myself. The thought that if we got caught, it might be by an officer I knew or, god forbid, my Dad himself nagged at the back of my mind. But all the same, three minutes later, there we were.
There was a large, handwritten “FOR SALE” sign on the front of the gate to the property with a phone number, but when we checked, the padlock on the chain was rusted open. It looked like someone had just looped it through the chain because the appearance of being locked was good enough. And we discovered this, of course, when Jesse got out of my car and pulled the padlock out. I looked at her, illuminated under my headlights, slowly smile at this. She took hold of the gate and pushed it all the way open, came back, and plopped back into her seat.
“Looks like we’ll definitely have the place to ourselves.” I said with a sigh as I resignedly let the car roll through the gate.
“I think now might be a good time to tell you that my dad got paroled three months ago.” I stomped on the brake, only jostling us at the low speed we were going.
“You think you could have told me before we trespassed on his property?”
“He’s not going to be here,” she promised.
“How the fuck did he get out?” I asked. “I mean there was the embezzling, then the child abuse, the B and E, assault of a minor- he should be halfway through his sentence at a minimum!”
“The judge in his case… well, I’ll put it like this. The judge started writing articles for the website of an organization with the word “Family” in the name a couple of years ago. All it took for Daddy to get off light was to plead ‘no contest’ was to cry out ‘God God God, Jesus Jesus Jesus” and the judge went light on him.” Ah, yes. The “no contest” plea was the main reason none of us had to testify in court. I remembered he had been sentenced to fifteen years, but there were more pressing matters:
“And it didn’t occur to you that we might run into him?” Even in the dark, I could tell Jesse wasn’t looking me in the eyes. “Or are you itching for me and him to go for round two?” At that, she was vehement:
“No! Daddy’s not living in that old church. Nobody ever lived in that church. It’s going to be completely empty, I promise!”
“You know, if the cult is falling on hard times, any of the higher-ups might have decided to crash there. Did you think about that?” Even as I said this, I could see the shame on her face.
“It can’t be as bad as tussling with General Zod or Lex Luthor, C.K. I’ve been careful this whole time- why do you think I never had a Facebook until recently? Because I had a Myspace and got no end of abusive messages when other kids in the cult found me. So can you trust me on this?”
“Well, we’re going to find out,” I sighed. “Here we are.”
We had pulled through that last copse of trees into that open field, and I had to suppress a shudder- all those years ago when I was surprised at how normal the church looked- this is what I had expected. It seemed rickety, about to tip over, and even a few windows were boarded up. It wasn’t the 2x4s you see nailed in at random angles like in the movies- it was the single boards that fit the entire window that in itself became a symbol of abandonment after the Great Recession. Half the paint had peeled, and the grass was overgrown around the building, and bursting through every crack in the pavement it could. I shined my flashlight around, somehow knowing I would find some clues. There they were- scattered here and there where various liquor bottles. This place was tucked just far enough off the beaten path that it wasn’t an obvious hangout for rowdy teenagers, and we weren’t going to get any homeless people gathering out here. Someone connected with the church had fallen on some hard times, it seemed. I had a pocket flashlight in the dash, so I grabbed that before getting out. Jesse just used her phone light.
The church’s entrance was a simple double door, and before I knew it, Jesse had slid a credit card through the lock, and was rewarded with an immediate click.
“Holy shit,” Jesse gasped. “I’ve never tried that before.” She ignored my dubious look at that statement as she pulled the door open, and was greeted with the expected groaning creak. She looked over her shoulder and offered a single smirk before heading in.
“I give up,” I sighed, and followed her.
To the left were stairs that led down to the basement and up to the choir loft and a closed door still labeled “Receptionist.”. To the right were the restrooms and an empty office. I think it was some sort of mini library at one point due to all the empty shelves. All the propaganda inside had been cleared out.
The place didn’t have any of the smatterings of clutter I had somewhat expected. They had even cleared out the debris from the two huge holes in the roof. A tarp had been covered each one to protect it from the elements. Well, I think that settled whether the place was being used. Jesse’s shoulders were shaking, and I realized that a slight chuckle was building to a rambunctious peal of laughter.
“Dad bribed somebody when they were building the place,” she said when she had composed herself. “He thought OSHA guidelines were crushing his freedom to make his church the way he wanted. This is a classic example of being hoisted by your own petard.” Almost instantly, whatever wariness I perceived in her body language was gone, and I understood the real reason we were here: this was like attaining closure by seeing the body of a loved one-or that of their killer.
I had a sense then- that someone, somewhere, was aware of us. I pointed my flashlight at the choir loft, expecting to find a dozen hooded figures staring down at us, ready for blood for our interfering with their plans to profane this empty church. But there was nothing. The only other door in the entire huge room- which is called a nave, by the way- was one next to the lectern. Jesse was already striding through it. I felt compelled to confirm one last time the choir loft was empty, but when I did, the goosebumps on my arms wouldn’t rest, so I put a little determination into my own stride when I went after her.
It was a small vestibule with a side exit, two single-occupant restrooms next to another door that led back outside. Jesse ignored the stairwell that led up and marched straight into the office. The annoyed look on Jesse’s face when she saw that office was empty was starting to tell a story.
“Could you not just go blindly charging around the angry cult’s place of worship, please?” Jesse rolled her eyes, despite smiling at my joke.
“OK. Watch me slow-ly step outside.” And at that, she turned the lock to another ponderously heavy door, and stepped out. I followed, yet again, starting to feel like a devoted puppy rather than a man trying to protect someone from themselves.
“Oh, my God.” Jesse gasped. She pointed her flashlight at a small patch of grass with a wrought iron fence around it ten feet away from the church. In the enclosure were two headstones:
LORI ANNALYNN FREELY 1967-1988 BELOVE WIFE AND MOTHER
ISAAC FREELY BELOVED SON 1988-2002
Jesse put an arm around me.
“He was only fourteen? I thought he was older because he was so big.” I had thought the same.
“I didn’t want to talk about Isaac,” Jesse continued. “But I guess I have to. I can’t believe you had to go through that. I was a little kid with no choice in being over a thousand miles away, but I’m still going to say I hate that I couldn’t be there for you.” When I didn’t say anything, she kept the conversation going:
“You tried to save him, didn’t you?” I nodded. She put her hand on my knee. “Of course you did.”
“He was schizophrenic. And I’m positive he didn’t get treatment because his dad thought he could pray it away.”
We had one more moment of uncomfortable silence then, so she gently broke our embrace and cocked her head towards the church.
“Let’s get this over with. I have a little more exploring to do and then we can get out of here.” She led me back inside, still keeping her obvious intent close to her chest. She stopped, and pointed at that stairwell by the entrance.
“That goes to the choir loft and the bell tower one level above. Wanna go ring it? You probably noticed that the bell never rang when you were here. That’s because they were saving it for the apocalypse. When Gabriel blows his trumpet, when the seven seals are broken, and when the Four Horseman are unleashed-that’s what they were saving it for. Looks like the end came for their little cult, at least.”
She made as if to head up the stairs, but stopped and looked back, smiling. I was steadfast, folding my arms in defiance.
“If you ring that bell I’m carrying your little ass out of here.”
She looked chagrined. “I was just kidding.” To her credit, it didn’t sound like the protest of someone who actually wasn’t kidding when called out.
“We need to check out the basement before we leave. I promise that’s all.” She walked back through the nave, not sparing another glance before marching through the lobby. The wind was starting to pick up, and the tarps were rustling in response. I had a single thought: That’s just enough noise to hide the sound of someone sneaking up on us. I whipped my light around the church, expecting to see a crouched figure behind a pew watching me. I didn’t. so I scuttled on after, still annoyed that she wasn’t sticking close to me despite the apparent truth of our solitude here.
“I don’t know what you’re expecting to find,” I told her when I found her waiting for me in the lobby.
“Me neither, but I’ll know it when I see it.” It sounded cryptic on the surface, but I had a feeling it was true. There was catharsis and closure to be found here, thought she wouldn’t recognize it until she saw it.
At last, we went into the basement, and I followed Jesse into what turned out to be the church’s classroom. Just like in the Goodmans’ house, the children were taught out of sight. It looks like it was still used as a classroom until the very end. The teacher’s and students’ desks remained. A few textbooks were still on the bookshelf below the chalkboard.
I pointed the light from my phone above the chalkboard; there was a light spot in the wallpaper in the shape of the cross that had to have hung there for years, just like the one in her old basement.
“Talk about your visual metaphors,” I said, turning to Jesse. This was the indoctrination center of their youth; this room was the real reason their cult existed. They didn’t have kids out of a love and sincere desire for a massive family; the whole purpose was to create so many hardcore believers that one day they would outnumber the non-believers. And this is where their mission statement, their sole reason for being, was beaten into them- oftentimes literally. Jesse said nothing; her back was to me, her head bowed. All the memories were coming back. And as if on cue, Jesse suddenly grabbed a desk and flipped it over, knocking it aside. Instantly, she was yanking all of the textbooks of the shelf, where she kicked them across the floor. Her bender of destruction continued, and I stepped in when she tried to upturn the teacher’s desk.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Easy, there!” I yelled. Not knowing what else to do, I grabbed both of her arms and tried to restrain her. She twisted and turned like a calf being tied at a rodeo before she finally seemed to remember herself, going limp.
“Sorry,” she finally said, her voice shaking with rapidly subsiding rage. “This…usually, this is where all the lessons were given.” “If you have fun, it’ll make the training all that much easier,” came Silver’s voice to my mind. I didn’t know what to say at this point that any other, so I simply let go of her arms- and she fell into mine, melting into an exhausted embrace that I returned without thought.
“I swear I have never flipped out like this before,” she murmured. “I guess I wasn’t as ready as I thought. This whole evening I was trying to show you I turned out OK- guess I kinda blew it.” She laughed as she said this, and I told her it was OK.
The adrenaline was dying down, and to my embarrassment, my body finally seemed to notice our closeness and reacted in kind. I tried to pull back just a little, but Jesse forcefully pulled me back into the full embrace.
“I can literally feel the heat in your face,” Jesse chuckled. “Why are you embarrassed?”
Since she didn’t seem upset, I sighed and copped to it. “Sorry. I just can’t help it.”
“Maybe I should trash more houses if it helps me score,” she whispered, her voice husky. Before I knew it, she was on her tiptoes, kissing me. The outburst was almost expected, but this wasn’t. I stopped trying to figure things out .
“Wow,” she whispered when she pulled back. “Warn a girl before you wrap those big strong arms around her, C.K. There’s no telling what she might do.” With that, she turned and marched back out the door. I hesitated, and she stopped halfway up.
“What, afraid to follow the crazy chick? She still needs a ride.” I chuckled, and quickly followed her out.
“So…am I stuck with ‘C.K.’ or what?”
“Better than being stuck with ‘Atticus.’ Do you think I’d be that cruel?”
We milled around a bit; the downstairs bathrooms were at the end of the hall around the corner from the stairs; they were disgusting, of course. The insides of the toilet bowls had all rusted over, and a mildew-y smell hung in the air. But rot and filth wasn’t the sign of the mortal wound to the cult Jesse was looking for. Turning back the way we came, we went past the stairs and past the doors for the fellowship hall.
The door said “Pastor’s Office.” Instantly, I knew whatever Jesse wanted would have to be in here. By now we weren’t bothering to tippy-toe our way around; the damage to the building made it clear no one was using the building, not even a squatter or two. All the same, I winced when Jesse practically threw the door open and marched in. I entered to find her rifling through the desk, finding only used office supplies and old junk mail.
“The place is empty. Like they turned tail and didn’t even stop to grab what they dropped.” I was trying to subtly hint that we should leave, but if Jesse twigged to this she ignored it.
“No, they’re not going to pack up and leave, Aaron!” she snapped. “They wouldn’t give up this land. They want a church they can hole up in and fight off the government when O-bahmuh institutes sharia law and comes for their guns.” She was digging through a mess of papers she had pulled out of a file cabinet, seemingly all that was left here. She finally set it all aside in favor of an envelope with the contents placed back inside-she opened it, pulling out a single letter, and started reading aloud.
“’We wish to congratulate you on the purchase of 400 acres of pristine Ozark forestry…’” she sighed, and a smile came over her face. “They’re not here. Most of them, I mean. They probably packed up to set themselves up as the next Waco. But it looks like this little slice of hell no longer met their needs.”
“So what are you so happy about? I’d think you’d prefer them being carted off or the cult just breaking up.”
"I don’t know why I’m happy. But just seeing this place left to rot is enough for me. Sit down, we need to talk.”
The couch was of that thick knit of fabric you don’t see too much of anymore, and a layer of dust had settled in. All the same, I sat with her, and she went into it:
“I stretched the truth a little. I think you look more like Atticus Finch than Clark Kent I mean, he would have made a good Superman back in the day, I guess. But we were watching scenes from ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ for English Lit. ‘The Heroism of the Common Man’ was the paper we were supposed to write. We watched Tom Joad and Atticus Finch’s final speeches back to back, and I almost ran out of the room. When I moved in, Aunt Andrea made me write to you less and less- she was really worried that I was obsessing over you and not making friends in Maryland. She limited me to one email a week. It worked. I made more friends than
I knew what to do with. It wasn’t healthy even if you were my first friend, my first crush, and you helped me so much- but I needed a little time and space away to get my head together. Then I saw those movies, and they reminded me of you, and I realized I went too far the other way. So I managed not to start bawling in class and just whipped out my phone and found you.” She kissed me on the cheek, before adding. “I’m only going to say ‘I’m sorry’ once, or else I might never stop.” I didn’t know what to say about that. I knew enough to know both characters were cited as heroic, but still down-to-earth characters who set an example in their ordinariness. Two men who stood resolute against the rising tide of cruelty from an unjust world, not caring if they were swept away because they could only do what they felt was right.
“So… young Gregory Peck. Hot or not?” She laughed, and the next thing I knew, she was planting kisses all over my face and neck. I happily reciprocated but when her hand started to fumble with my belt, I pulled back. She looked exasperated at this.
“What are we going to know about each other after three dates that we don’t know now? Do you really think if I give it another week I’ll suddenly decide I was completely mistaken about very, very hot for you?”
“We just met again a few hours ago!” I said.
“Some guys go out and pick up a new girl every night,” she said softly, not meeting my eyes.
“Yeah, guys like Channing Tatum, not me. I- I don’t think this is healthy, if you’re doing this just to, you know, get even…”
“You think I’m doing this because I have ‘issues?’ Because I’m ‘damaged?’”
“Screwing someone you haven’t seen in a long time in an abandoned church isn’t…” and I trailed off. As a contrast to how she had been in the basement of the house, she seemed so in control, so certain, that anything I said in protest would feel like an insult.
"Maybe you’re just being a tad condescending, That’s a word I needed to learn early on, what with how fragile everyone thought I as.”
“I know you’re not fragile.” I meant it.
“Then who are you trying to talk out of this? Me… or you?” And for emphasis, she ground into my crotch. I’m surprised I had enough blood left anywhere else to function in any other way.
“I-I-I’m just worried you might have,” and she was slowly moving her hands over me in ways that seemed designed to shut down my conscious thought. “-idealized me.”
“OK. Aside from the fact that if I was carrying a torch for you I wouldn’t have fallen out of touch for years- let me list all the reasons I really want this. There’s this-“ and she planted a kiss on my cheek. “This.” My neck. “This.” My stomach… And her reasons were compelling. I held her chin and almost went for it, but stopped, thinking of some last excuse, muttering that I didn’t have a rubber.
“I’m on the pill- plus I have an IUD. Check and mate, C.K.”
And that was it. We were writing naked on that couch minutes later. She didn’t say much in the act- she was noisy, for sure, but there was nothing intelligible. I managed not to explode after thirty seconds and she let out a near-scream at the end that belied the release of more than just sexual tension.
“Next time, can you keep the glasses on?” I could do that.
We held each other for a time, before Jesse finally said: “I’ve thought a lot about… horrible things. These dark thoughts welled up as soon as I started getting close to these…places. I wanted to burn down my old house- I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t brought you here. I might have just torched the place.”
“It did occur to me that all this was to seduce me into killing your dad or something,” I joked. Jesse scoffed.
“Oh, could you? I’d be eternally grateful.”
And the ceiling creaked. We both froze, both of us not having gotten much further dressed than our underwear and socks. I risked a peek out the basement level window of the office, and didn’t see any red-and-blue lights flashing. I could see the glimmer of Jesse’s wide eyes in the meager light.
“Is there another way out?” I whispered. With the entire top floor being essentially a single wide-open space in which we would be spotted immediately, I dearly hoped there was a basement exit. We were just underneath the lobby entrance.
“In the kitchen in the back of the fellowship hall,” Jesse whispered. She was already stepping into her jeans and her sandals in two fluid motions. Whatever or whoever was above us, they had been so still since the first creak that I was almost tempted to write it off as the building settling- but then, another came. And another. A whole series perfectly timed to what could only be slow, deliberate footsteps. We were on the move seconds later. I tried not to think about the fact that it seemed like the entire bottom floor was a U surrounding the fellowship hall, with the steps leading up less than ten feet from the double doors we needed to get through. I listened, knowing that unless the unknown upstairs started moving away from the back of the church, we were going to have to get closer before we could actually get away. I gave Jesse my flashlight as I gestured for her to take the lead, keeping myself between her and the stairs.
“Put away your phone. It’ll take too long to switch that light off if we have to do that.” She nodded, understanding. Thank God I had thought to shut the door behind us; the last thing we needed was for the person upstairs to see the beam from my flashlight dancing about.
I placed a hand on the knob like Superman fearing he might accidentally crush it, listening for any hint of our fellow intruder’s whereabouts. For all we knew, this door would open with a creak and a groan worthy of a haunted crypt from an old horror movie just like the front door. Opening the door might be the moment we give away our presence and had to bolt.
Who the fuck was up there? I didn’t see the lights of a cop car through the office window- or any kind of light, for that matter. So this new arrival was either in the building the whole time, approached on foot, or with his headlights off. None of those boded well for us if we were caught. The people who made up cults like these were the kinds that relished the thought of Second Amendment-ing trespassers. And the thought of it being a squatter or just someone who likes exploring abandoned buildings was right out- my car was right out front, and should have deterred them if that’s all they were.
But the wackos must have kept the WD-40 handy, because the door opened without so much as a squeak. Jesse entered, and I followed, shutting the door behind me. The fellowship hall was another big empty space, with a shuttered window that obviously led into a kitchen. To our right there was a stage, but again, the entire room was empty. But next to that shuttered window was what was hopefully the second-to-last door we’d have to take. And miracle of miracles- the door we just came through had a lock! I quickly snapped it shut, and all we had to do was cross the bland expanse of linoleum to freedom and-
My heart nearly exploded from my chest when the sound of bells obliterated the silence. Jesse shrieked, but it could barely be heard over the din. When rational thought returned, I was actually relieved- to get all the way up there to ring those bells meant that there was too great a distance between us and the intruder as long as we hauled ass and went out the basement exit. But then it occurred to me that maybe there were two intruders. Fuck you, brain. So on that cheery note, we both darted to the kitchen door toot sweet- and another horrible though gripped me- what if we ran into the mysterious other outside, with the bells completely obscuring their approach-
There was a splintering and clattering sound as the door to the fellowship hall flung open, and a single figure stood framed within. They had turned on the hall light, and the form was backlit and obscured. The rational part of my mind knew that there had to be two people here to ring the bells and still be down here. But suddenly, as the bells still continued to batter my eardrums, I was certain there was only one. I flung the door open and pushed Jesse through so hard I heard an angry protest despite our mutual terror.
I slammed the door shut, and my flashlight revealed that we were in a kitchen large enough to feed a gathering worthy of the room we had just fled. I thoughtlessly brought down a cabinet in front of the door, barely noting the crash it made or the weight that could have made that loud a noise- adrenaline had made it effortless. There was only one more door, only one option, nestled between the dust-covered stove and refrigerator. With my wildly dancing flashlight, I was expecting to trip over something that just barely evaded its light, something we couldn’t afford as the door banged against the cabinet. I didn’t dare look back lest I turn back to find the floor rushing at me and our pursuer doing the same from the other side, both of us keeping our pace even as the repeated bangs of the door crashing against the fallen cabinet resounded- as well as the dull scraping of each push as the door slowly opened further with each slam. I didn’t dare look back to see or guess how much time that cabinet was buying us, only registering that we were on the other side of that last door when our slamming it shut was simultaneous with one last bang from the other end of the kitchen. One last button lock to buy us a little more time before we were home-free and breathing night air again.
The single room that stood between us and freedom was a laundry/maintenance room of some kind, complete with a mop sink. The stench was overpowering; judging by the stains on the floor and the sink there had been some kind of sewage backup. It had been cleaned enough so that there wasn’t a layer of crusted shit on the floor, but that was it. The metal door was locked securely- but unfortunately for us the rusted deadbolt would barely move, and I was forced to jostle it back and forth just to slowly inch it open.
“Jesus, of all the luck-“
Never ceasing my attempts to wriggle that bolt free, I risked a look at Jesse, and she was facing away from, staring stock-still at the increasingly less-protective wooden door. And still, I wriggled. Was it my imagination, or was there some other unexplained resistance slowing the bolt down besides rust and age? Or was the panic making what would normally be a minor inconvenience an eternity?
“I looked,” was all she said, before another bang sent fragments clattering about the concrete floor.
Something heavy collided with the entry door, making a crack run down the center. Another blow, and it splintered. The latest drop from the stream of crazy thoughts I had been having that evening came: If I see their face, we’re dead. But I knew that was ridiculous- but the loud snap of the bolt finally sliding free was followed by resistance from the door- there was real weight pulling on it- even as I started to pull it from the frame- and it jerked closed again. Someone was pulling it, and that meant there was a fight one way and flight another- or a fight both ways if we dawdled.
“There’s someone on the other side,” I said to Jesse. “We’re going to have to-“ but she had already struck an amateur fighting stance. Another bang came from behind us, and shards of wood clattered on the concrete floor. I dared a look and saw a dark shape through the crack. But I had to ignore it, in favor of what was on the other side, as, with a jerk, I flung the door open, raising a fist to meet whatever-
There was nothing there. Unchallenged and unimpeded, we barreled out into the July night, revealing a clear path back to my car. Jesse attempted a Dukes of Hazzard style hood slide, but she ended up having to roll herself off the other side to finish. I thanked again my lapse into paranoia, because I hadn’t locked the door in the event we would be required to flee early. I thanked my diligence in maintaining my old Civic when it started on the first turn of the key. And for good measure, I thanked my paranoia again for parking with the front of my car facing out, directly at the exit.
Submitted September 18, 2017 at 09:11PM by DustiinMC http://ift.tt/2xfuCW2 nosleep
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