Silent Faith

Only another two circuits of the tower’s perimeter, and Zoe’s feet finally met solid ground. It was a cellar-like space, empty save for a scattering of wooden crates and barrels so decrepit that whatever they contained had likely rotted to dust long ago.

Heart still hammering in anticipation of those unsettling statues groaning to life and pursuing her, Zoe wasted no time in making a beeline for the huge oaken doors across from the bottom of the stone steps.

Distant, muffled ballroom music still echoed down the stairs from above as her shaking hands met the uneven surface of the doors and pushed. They were mirror images in every way of the tower’s main doors far above, and every bit as heavy.

Gritting her teeth and pressing her full weight against the wood, she was met with a rush of cool, dusty air, and a deep, foreboding silence that seemed to wash away the music from behind her away like smoke on the wind.

Keen to escape the perceived danger at her back, but equally wary of what might still lie ahead, Zoe took a moment to remind herself that she was just dreaming and wasn’t in any real danger. Steeling her resolve, she slipped through the gap of the partway open door.

There was a certain scent of deterioration in the air as she stepped beyond the confines of the tower cellar. Not quite must, but more the smell of a hundred years of wear from the countless footsteps responsible for the irregularities in what had once been a smooth, stone floor.

Zoe’s torch flashed to life in her hand for only a mere second before giving out. She cursed to herself as the door behind her creaked shut, trying to get the thing working again, but to no avail. Finally giving up and replacing the useless light source in her pocket, she glanced ahead to find she had emerged at the corner of a large, masonry-arched corridor, lined on one side with tall glass panes through which was spilling what seemed to be pale moonlight.

Spying vague shapes in the glass, she squinted for a moment before realising she was looking at a series of stained-glass windows, each depicting what appeared to be a different religious scene. Frowning, she glanced to the interior side of the corridor, and was just about able to make out similar such scenes painted on the walls between the pillars in the form of frescos.

A sense of uneasy half-familiarity washed over her as she surveyed her new surroundings. They almost reminded her of Trinity Church in Holmstowe, but… well, bigger. The passageways both ahead of her and to her right were practically wide enough to allow for road traffic, and the structural pillars protruding from the walls stretched up far enough above her that the very apex of the arched ceiling was shrouded in almost perfect darkness.

It must have been some kind of cathedral, she thought, although she’d never been inside one herself. Her mother had used to take her and Kit to Trinity every Sunday when they had been kids, but that was a very long time ago now.

If this place truly was someone else’s dream, then it probably wasn’t her brother’s. Sure, he loved working his way through video games filled with exactly this kind of Gothic imagery, but… The taste of the air. The feel of the uneven stone beneath her feet. It was too… real. Too complete to have been dreamed up by someone who only knew these kinds of places from the other side of a computer screen.

Taking a deep breath of the stale air, Zoe glanced between the two corridors before picking the one straight ahead on account of it being slightly better lit. The great arches towered oppressively above her as she walked, but, as before, her unease was overpowered by the pressing concern that she didn’t know how long she had left to search.

Even in length, the corridor seemed to stretch on forever. After more than a minute of walking without finding an exit, Zoe was starting to consider heading back to try the other passageway when a brief flash of light caught her eye just inside a recess in the wall to her right.

Apprehensive, she quickly checked over her shoulder for trouble before swallowing her fear and approaching the alcove. Quietly ducking inside, she noted what appeared to be some kind of memorial against the wall that had been scuffed and knocked askew. Names she didn’t recognise were engraved in golden italic script and illuminated from underneath by the gentle, orange glow of rows of votive candles. Some of the candles had been extinguished and scattered to the ground, presumably by whatever had impacted the memorial.

The candle glow was too weak against the light from the windows to have been what had attracted her attention, so her eyes quickly drifted to the floor. Amongst the scattered candles and puddles of dried wax lay a small, familiar device with a black outer casing and a cracked, reflective screen, glinting in the moonlight.

Heart lurching in her chest, Zoe crouched down and picked the object up, sliding its façade up to reveal a keypad concealed underneath.

She swallowed dryly. The phone was a Nokia 3600. Identical to the one her brother had received for Christmas from their dad last year.

Instinctively, she turned the device on. The damaged screen flickered to life, displaying the familiar logo, and then two hands reaching out for one another across a field of white.

Half the screen went black, the logo disappeared, and the leftmost hand was left reaching out into the darkness, jerking back and forth in an unsettling spasm before, finally, the phone failed altogether.

‘Dad was always telling you not to leave this in pockets it could fall out of…’ she muttered, uneasily running her eye back up along the memorial and noting the telling angle of the disturbed votive stand.

Tracing the apparent direction of impact, her gaze fell onto one of the puddles of wax nearer the far side of the alcove. It was smeared by what could easily have been a handprint. She pushed herself up to her feet, phone still in hand, and stepped back into the corridor, now carefully scanning the surrounding area for more details.

It looked like someone had ducked into the alcove in a hurry, slammed into the votive stand, and fallen over before scrabbling back to their feet. Given the phone they had left behind, and who she had come here in the first place to find, Zoe could only imagine it must have been her brother.

Her eyes widened as she finally registered the long grooves carved into the pillar on the side of the alcove from which she’d approached. They almost looked like… claw marks? A spike of adrenaline coursed through her body as she estimated that the grooves she had initially overlooked as a flaw in the architecture were each spaced almost a foot apart.

Whatever it was that Kit had been running from, it must have been enormous… Naturally, Zoe’s eyes drifted up to the shadowy apex of the ceiling. This place certainly didn’t seem built for anything human-sized…

A muffled bang farther down the corridor drew her attention and made her jump. Squinting ahead, she spotted what looked like an opening on the right wall maybe sixty metres away.

A second bang a few seconds later kept her frozen to the spot, within easy ducking distance of the alcove, but when a third rang out and seemed to be no closer than the first two, Zoe swallowed her trepidation and began to creep forward.

Mindful of both her footsteps and her silhouette, she kept herself low and close to the right-hand wall, in the shadows away from the glow of the moonlit glass.

A low, background thrum soon joined the rhythmic banging, but not until Zoe reached the passage exit and peered around the supporting pillar did she realise that it was a chorus of voices.

She had been right to consider this place a cathedral. It seemed she had emerged at the transept of a vast, cavernous church. Enormous, candle-lit chandeliers hung from impossibly far above, casting the dark, stony chamber in a paltry orange glow and painting the nave below in fat clumps of sickly, dripping wax.

The pews were fuller than Zoe had ever seen at Trinity Church, although not with people but… things… Great masses of sickly flesh heaved atop the creaking benches, wrapped in skin pulled taut, and held steady by veiny roots anchored to the shattered stone below.

Like foul insects emerging from bulbous cocoons, ungainly, human-like torsos erupted from their tops, twisted faces stretched across too-long skulls, and spindly hands clasped firm before them in prayerful petition. Some even displayed the growth of feeble, underdeveloped wings from between their unnaturally prominent shoulder blades.

Where there should have been ears on the sides of their heads, there was only smooth, tight skin. They bore no hair of any sort and were so emaciated that it seemed the only thing keeping them from collapsing to the floor was the support of their rooted cocoons.

‘Fa… ther…’ ‘So… near… n-now…’ ‘…our an… gel…’

‘Deliver… us…’ ‘…can… f-feel…’ ‘Tell… tell us…’ ‘…the… l-living…’

‘A… A-Amen… Oh, God… amen…’ ‘Your… Y-Your words…’ ‘…s-so… long… Please…’

The creatures’ rasping groans overlapped into a monstrous, unintelligible cacophony as they vied for the attention of the object of their prayers. Zoe’s stomach turned at the sight.

Barely able to take her eyes off of the inhuman horrors in the nave to her left, she finally managed to pull her attention across to the apse as another of those loud, rhythmic bangs rang out through the air.

Before a grand altar, wide as a cabin cruiser and extravagantly decorated with towering golden statues of beautiful, robed figures reaching down from above, stood a creature unlike anything Zoe had ever seen before.

Monstrously tall at at least four times her height, it wore tattered, yet regal priestly vestments that trailed down to its taloned feet. Lengthy clumps of matted, grey fur sprouted from all four of its exposed forearms, as well as the six enormous wings that sprouted from its back.

A face that looked just a little too much like it may have once have been human stretched out obscenely in front of it. A sharp beak seemingly made of fused bone and teeth protruded out farther still from where the over-strained skin terminated just below the nose. The creature didn’t seem to possess a lower jaw, the opening to its throat instead a visible, yawning chasm only partly hidden behind its jagged bill.

Two of its four arms were stretched up to the sky, as if appealing to the great statues behind the altar, and one held a golden processional staff which it periodically used to strike the ground at its feet. The fourth was outstretched, seemingly arbitrarily, in Zoe’s direction, and she couldn’t help but notice the vast, talon-like claws that perfectly matched the scratch marks at the alcove.

The priest-like creature cast one arm to the side, and the congregation fell silent. Zoe held her breath, heart hammering in her chest.

The monster turned to regard what must have been its “flock” when, much to Zoe’s horror, the phone still clutched in her hand chose that moment to squawk out a sinister, corrupted misremembering of its shrill startup tune.

She held her breath and scanned the room. None of the earless worshippers in the pews seemed to have noticed.

However, when her gaze flitted back to the winged creature by the altar, it was met by dark, inhuman eyes, and a bestial hunger which left her most animal of instincts screaming at her to run.