This horrific story follows Father Gabriel, a priest who faces something terrifying inside a church.
The cross stayed in the air for a second. Maybe less. Then the girl laughed.
It came from her, but it didn’t sound like her laugh.
“Your god is not here.”
Father Marcus kept praying. He didn’t stop or even answer her. He just kept saying the words, hoping they would do what they were supposed to do.
They didn’t.
He felt something behind him. At first he thought it was someone standing too close. Then he felt a hand on his arm. Another one touched his back. Then there were more.
He couldn’t tell how many.
The candles went out together. He couldn’t see anything after that. He still had the cross in his hand. Something pulled at it, and he held on.
He tried to step back.
His foot didn’t touch the floor.
That was the part he remembered most clearly. He could feel the floor under one shoe, but not the other. Something was holding him up.
The hands moved him a little. He couldn’t see where they were taking him. When he stopped, the altar was no longer behind him.
There was another sound in the church. A small clicking sound. It kept stopping and starting.
Then she laughed again.
This time she was very close.
Father Marcus kept praying. He lost his place once and started the same line again. A hand covered his mouth. Another grabbed the cross.
The wood cracked.
He felt the cross turn in his hand.
Then, suddenly, nothing.
The hands were gone.
He stayed where he was for a while. He wasn’t sure how long. He didn’t want to move until he was certain whatever had been touching him was really gone.
Eventually he found the side door.
The lock opened normally.
Outside, nothing seemed wrong. He could hear crickets and a dog somewhere down the road. The night looked completely ordinary.
He walked away without looking back.
The next morning, the sexton came in with the two altar boys.
They found the cross broken into three pieces on the altar steps.
There were words on the wall above the side chapel.
I returned.
Nobody knew who had written them.
The girl’s chair was empty.
There were footprints in the dust.
They started at the chair and went straight to the wall.
They stopped there.
Father Marcus wasn’t at morning Mass.
His car was still in the parking lot. His keys were on the dashboard. The radio was on, but there was nothing except static.
They found his journal in the rectory.
The last entry was short.
It knew the words before I said them. It waited between the verses. I raised the cross and it smiled with her face.
The hands were cold.
When the lights went out, I understood something. The church had been empty for a long time. We were just making noise inside it.
That was the last thing he wrote.
The church bell rang once later that morning.
Nobody was near it.
