Page 53 of Forever Dark
His gaze held on her face.
“You must prepare yourself,” he said.“You’re going to hell.”Her eyes widened further.Her head moved weakly from side to side.No.No.No.Blood bubbled at her lips when she tried to force sound through a ruined mouth.
“Don’t worry, though,” he said.“Your sacrifice isn’t in vain.You’ll be an example to the others.”
That was the part they never understood.They thought death was the end.Death was only the message made permanent.The flesh stopped, but the lesson carried on.Every woman like this who saw the body, heard the rumor, caught the warning in some bar or motel or cheap parking lot, all of them would feel it.Some would ignore it.Some would laugh.Some would think themselves too careful or too clever.Yet the fear would enter them all the same.That was enough to begin.Some might even be saved from their decadence.
One murder would lead to another, a road paved to salvation for those willing to listen.
Brenda had all but opened the path.
Candles at the church.Latin on the wall.The body was placed where it could be found and was covered over.People had called it madness.Ritual.Desecration.Idle gossips who understood nothing.The blind always reached for the wrong words first.What he had given Brenda was not desecration.It was his holy duty to warn the wicked.Her death had done more than satisfy justice.It had strengthened him.He had felt it the moment her last breath left.Not a thrill.Not mere pleasure.Something deeper, cleaner, fuller.As if the act itself had widened a hidden channel and let grace run through.
This woman had to follow.
Another gargling breath came from the stone.Her chest fluttered.A bubbling rattle rose and fell low in her throat.Blood loss and shock were taking hold now.Her eyes started to drift out of focus, then snapped back to him with a last effort that almost looked like fury.
He leaned closer.
“That’s it,” he murmured.“Into the flames.”
Her fingers curled once.The motion was weak, almost childlike.
Then the body slackened.
Air slipped out in a final wet breath.One long shudder ran from her shoulders down to her feet.After that, there was nothing.
For a suspended moment, he did not move.
Silence held the graveyard.No insects.No traffic.Only the wind brushing the dead grass and the shape of the abandoned church above.
Then he tipped his face up to the sky and laughed.
“Glory be!”
The cry left him in a rush, full and bright and answered only by the empty dark.
When he looked back down, she was gone from herself.Eyes fixed.Mouth open.Flesh already turning into an object.
He let the sight rest in him.
Then, slowly, he turned toward the church on the hill.
The tower stood motionless above the graves.Boards covered one of the lower windows.Ivy had climbed partway up the stone on the northern wall.Nothing moved there.Nothing shone from within.
He closed his eyes.
At once the darkness behind them changed.
In his mind the church came alive, every black window filling with radiance.Gold first, then white, then something richer than either, a blaze that poured through the tower openings and down over the graveyard in silent streams.He imagined it touching the stones, the weeds, the bare branches, but most of all he imagined it reaching him.Entering him.Passing through skin and bone and into the places ordinary men kept rotten and empty.
The warmth spread through his chest.
Not heat from exertion.Not a fantasy born of excitement.Something holier.Something his actions had earned.Divine providence.With each offering he felt the same enrichment, as though another thin layer of filth had been burned away from his own soul while the victim’s corruption rose like smoke to be judged elsewhere.This was the exchange the world refused to see.This was why the work had to continue.Others sinned and called it appetite.He did what was necessary and was rewarded with clarity.
For three long breaths he stood there, eyes closed, drinking in the light that did not exist.The light that was only created by his perverse imagination, though he did not realize it.
When he opened his eyes, the church on the hill was black again.
