Chapter 5

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They'd spent the last ninety minutes setting up the generator, carrying gas cans, and all manner of cables from the van, across the bridge, and to the front of the church.

The bridge held fast, though the weight of the generator had made things hairy for awhile.  Kyle and Bryan had managed to get it across, but they had both broken out into a cold sweat doing so.  It had been explained to Bryan that the generator would be needed because the church had no electricity running to it.

“No shitters either,” Joey had said, with a bizarre smile on his face.

The cabling consisted of audio, video, and Ethernet.  Ben would stay in a corner of the church through the 'investigation' and monitor all of the camera feeds.  He could remotely pan most of the cameras and zoom in on objects of interest.

Throughout the  set up, Bryan had watched Katie, noticing that she worked harder than the rest, always making sure everything was finished correctly.  He'd noticed Kyle keeping an eye on her as well, but imagined that he wasn't admiring her work ethic.

The Specter Slayers didn't do a lot, mostly standing around and drinking beers.  Travis and Katie threw several barbs at one another, but seemed content to stay out of each other's way for the most part.  Bryan still anticipated fireworks, and started to hope that they would happen sooner rather than later.

Creepy Joey sat on the beer cooler and watched everyone.  Bryan caught him staring at Katie several times, the same as everyone else, but his unblinking eyes made it disturbing.

After several false starts and installation errors, the generator was up and running.  The last thing they needed to set up before heading inside were the lights.  They would sit outside the front of the building to provide enough lighting for some exterior shots.

“Make sure you've got them angled upward, we need some good shadows running up the walls of the church.  Looks spooky that way,” Joey said.

Katie looked up from the notebook she had been taking notes in.  “We discussed this.  We need good lighting in order to properly document everything.  The piss poor setup your show employs will not suffice.”

Travis belched again.  “Tough titty - that's all we brought.”

Without saying a word, Katie turned on her heel and stomped away, stopping close to where Bryan was fumbling with a light.  Even in the darkness, he could see that her face had turned a deep red.  He wondered if the top of her head was about to pop off.  The aforementioned fireworks looked like they might be lit.

“I'm going to throw those idjits into that big crack by the end of the night,” she said under her breath.

“We're in agreement on that.”  Bryan kept fiddling with the tilt mechanism on the light, trying to get it into place.  He'd used several different kinds of lighting at the television studio that his college had, but this piece was driving him nuts.  Every time he tightened one bolt, another one seemed to loosen.  He’d purchased better equipment at a thrift store.

Katie crossed her arms and looked down at him, watching him unsuccessfully set up the light stand.  “Are you new in this crew?”

“Kyle and I are interns for tonight only.  After that I'm going to delete this experience from my memory.  We were just told about the internship yesterday.”

She softened a bit at that, her stance relaxing as she unfolded her arms.  “That's why you didn't know about the Danver church.”

“Yup.”  He finally got the hinge tightened and the light aiming at the church.

Running a hand through her black hair, she blew out a long breath.  “I feel like a real asshole.  I assumed you worked with the knuckleheads and lumped you in with them.  It seems you're as big a victim to their idiocy as I am.”

Bryan stood and brushed his hands on his pant legs.  He was taken off guard by her apology.  Having already written her off as a bitch, he started to reassess her.

“I'm just trying to get through the night without killing one of them, or my friend.  If I can pull that off, I'll consider this a success.  And apology accepted.  You seem to be taking this very seriously.”

“That's because I have a feeling we're going to find something very interesting here tonight.  I'm concerned they're going to screw it up and we'll be without any believable evidence,” she said, glaring over her shoulder at Travis.

“I still have no idea what you're talking about.”  Having a bestselling author on the set of a poorly made show like The Specter Slayers had Bryan intrigued.  What could have her interested enough to put up with this?

She reached into her bag and pulled out two energy bars, offering one to Bryan.  Surprised at the offer, he took it from her, giving her a questioning look in the process.

“You're going to need this.  It's most likely going to be a very long night.”  She opened the wrapper and took a bite, looking thoughtfully at the church.  “The Danver church has an extensive history, but only part of it is known with absolute certainty.  And most of that is just within the last several decades.”

Bryan bit into his energy bar, and immediately remembered why he didn't eat them.  They tasted like dried mud wrapped around tree bark.  He kept eating it however, not wanting to seem ungrateful for the peace offering.

“In the sixties, Charles Danver, a wealthy steel industrialist from Pittsburgh, became fascinated with the occult.  At that time, it seemed that his interest was purely academic.  Those closest to him have sworn under oath that he didn't practice any form of religious activities, let alone anything outside of the Christian variety.”  She crumpled the wrapper of her snack and threw it into her bag.

“He began hunting through libraries, reading about the history of rituals, demonic possession, the history of modern religions, et cetera.  His hunger for knowledge of the paranormal became voracious.  At some point, he came upon some texts - very old and specific texts.  It's unknown if his occult obsession was because of these works, or if he merely stumbled upon them during his research.”

Though Bryan normally didn't bother with these kinds of things, he found himself leaning forward, listening intently to the tale Katie weaved.  She truly was a great storyteller.  Even her body language conveyed her message - her head bowed forward, eyes looking up at Bryan.

“Either way, these documents would forever change his life.  No one knows what happened to them, where he found them, or exactly what it is that they conveyed.  What is known, however, is that he was never the same after reading them.  He began searching for, and buying, thousands of acres of property covering the Appalachian Mountains.  Where we're standing right now being one of those lots.  The road that brought you here, and the surrounding land, is all owned by his estate.”

Kyle realized what they were talking about and rushed over to where they stood, trying to hear the story better.  The excitement on his face was that of a little boy preparing to open his first Christmas present.

“His estate?” Kyle asked.

“I'll get to that soon.  He searched for years, looking for this exact spot.  When he finally found the location of the church, he purchased it, and then promptly closed the entire area off to everyone.  Through his searching, he found other people with interests similar to himself.  Together they began meeting here, at the church,” she said, gesturing toward the aged structure.

“That's when he killed everyone!” Kyle said.

Katie tried to hide her annoyance unsuccessfully, and moved on.  “They continued to convene here at odd dates that seemed to have no rhyme or reason to them.  Typically, they would only stay for a night, and then head back to their normal lives.  Except that Charles Danver had all but abandoned his everyday life.  He stopped working at his steel mills, lost contact with friends, and ostracized his wife.  He spent his days travelling to libraries and searching for other pieces of seemingly esoteric parcels of land.”

Travis and Joey noticed that they had all stopped working and stomped over to them.

“What the hell are you doing?  We aren't paying you to stand around shooting the shit,” Travis said.  He crumpled his beer can in his hands and tossed it into the crevice.

“You aren't paying us anything at all,” Kyle said.  It was apparent he was eager for Katie to continue the story, and his agitation at their interruption bled into his voice.

“True, but we−”

“I'm conveying the story behind the church to...” She looked at Bryan, clearly not remembering his name.

“Bryan,” he said.

“Bryan.  He should not enter the church unless he is fully aware of the potential dangers that lurk inside.”

Although Bryan had found himself enraptured by her little history lesson, she lost him when she started laying on the dangers of the paranormal.  He still wanted to hear the rest, but he would do so with much less enthusiasm.

Creepy Joey looked over all of them with his unblinking eyes.  “Fine, but let us record what you're saying.  It could turn into a great intro for the episode.”

“Do what you will, but I'm going to continue whether you're ready or not,” Katie said, turning back to Bryan.  He noticed that her diction became more pointed and her vocabulary more robust when Travis and Joey were near.

Joey shuffled back to the equipment cases.  Bryan watched him leave with disgust - even his gait made him want to shiver.

“Danver's life had been completely consumed by his obsession with the occult.  For ten years, he isolated himself, except for his jaunts to the church on seemingly odd dates.  And then it happened.  His group met here on Saturday, May seventh, nineteen seventy-two.  Eleven people came here:  seven men, and four women.  None returned.  At least not right away”

Travis popped open another can of beer, interrupting the story.  Bryan blew his breath out, not realizing he'd been holding it.  Everyone turned toward Travis.  He shrugged his shoulders and took a swig, winking at Katie over the top of the can.  Katie flipped him off.

“When Sunday night came and went, the families of Danver's cohorts became concerned.  Most of them didn't know what the group did during their palaver−”

“Palaver?” Kyle asked.

Katie's shoulders slumped, her head hanging, the irritation of being interrupted over and over growing.

“Meetings,” Bryan said.

“Oh.  I knew that,” Kyle said, his eyes searching the ground.

“The families didn't know what the group did during their... meetings, but they had a feeling that it was something 'unnatural.'  That's a direct quote.  On Monday, the police drove up the mountain and found the church.  The description of it in their reports is what caused the biggest backlash.  The pagan symbols, massive altar, and upside down crosses caused a massive outrage.  They discovered evidence of the group being there that weekend:  food, clothing, and their vehicles.  However, they didn't find a single person, living or dead.  No blood either – at least none of the fresh variety.  Everyone was gone - vanished into the woods.”  Katie pointed toward the crack in the earth.  “Or fallen into that large chasm, though they never found any evidence of that after they searched it.”

Bryan was shocked that he had never heard about this before.  Witchcraft and murder are a reporter's wet dream.  Not being alive in the seventies probably played a part in that, but it still seemed like the kind of story he would see on American Justice or Cold Case Files. 

“The next morning, the state police had organized a massive search party.  There were some very rich people missing in Appalachia, and the Governor applied a lot of pressure to find them.  The search had only been in progress for two hours when they found Charles Danver, wandering in the woods.  His left hand was missing and blood saturated his clothing and hair.  He mumbled incoherently about 'the other side', sometimes whispering, and other times screaming.  Death was knocking on his door and he appeared ready to answer it.”

Bryan smiled at that last part, realizing that she had completely lost herself in the story, and had begun spouting cheesy lines as if she were writing one of her books.  She also seemed to have turned into a walking thesaurus.

“Shocked by his appearance, health, and state of mind, the police hastened their search, concerned for the safety of the others.  They scoured the mountains for weeks, never finding a single shred of evidence as to their whereabouts.  Bringing in hounds, they followed Danver's trail back to the church, but they weren't able to locate his missing hand, or find the place where it had been severed.  Investigators were baffled at the complete lack of clues.”

“Jesus,” Bryan mumbled.

“Jesus?  No, I don't think so.  This seemed to be something else entirely.”

“So what happened with Danver?  Did he survive?  Was he able to lead the police to the bodies of his friends?” Bryan asked.

“No.  Though he lived through his injuries, his mind never recovered.  Prosecutors wanted to try him for the murder of his compatriots, but with no physical evidence as to their actual demise, they couldn't charge him.  His mental state, however, landed him in an institution outside of Indiana, Pennsylvania, where he remained until his death by suicide last week.”

The timing of his suicide didn't strike Bryan as accidental.

“He killed himself a week ago?” Kyle asked.

“That's right. He hung himself and did not leave a suicide note.  The disappearances of his acquaintances happened forty years ago tonight.”

Kyle's eyes widened.  “No way that's a coincidence.”

“Who gives a shit?” Travis asked.  “He offed himself, and he was too crazy to draft a will, so all of his property went to his grandkids.  We paid them a shit ton of money to let us be the first people to set foot in the church since he lost his mind and killed everyone.  End of story.”

“There is no evidence that he did anything to anyone,” Katie said.  Her shoulders tensed and she squeezed her hands into tight fists.  Bryan wondered how much longer it would be before she starting taking swings at him.  He hoped not long.

“Aren't you supposed to be some super smart writer?  You can't figure out that the only guy to survive a massacre is the one that did it?  And he happened to be insane afterwards - that's a pretty smart defense for a murderer.”

Bryan's mind reeled as he thought through the story he had just heard.  This unkempt, bizarre church in the middle of nowhere had a dizzying background that he never expected.  The condition of the woods and the isolation of the location added a truly spooky atmosphere to the whole situation.

“Hold on a second.  You're telling me that the guy that owned this shithole killed a bunch of his friends here, cut off his own hand, and then spent the rest of his life in an asylum, never revealing the locations of his victim's bodies?  Then he killed himself a few days before the forty-year anniversary of this event?  And now we're standing here, about to go inside?”

Katie shook her head in frustration.  “Why is no one listening to me?  There is no evidence that he was involved in anyone's murder!”

“Ok, fine.  Either way, that's a pretty interesting string of events that led all of us here on this precise night,” Bryan said.  “But I don’t see how this is any kind of proof of the supernatural. And I still don't understand why you're here?” He nodded at Katie.

“She's paying us to tag along on the investigation,” Creepy Joey said, smiling at Travis.  “We paid Danver's grandkids a lot of cash, but she's paying us even more.”

Katie shrugged.  “I'm researching a new book.  The history of this place will provide an interesting backdrop for my new novel.”  Her eyes shifted ever so slightly as she spoke, making Bryan wonder if there was more to her being here than she cared to share.

“As much fun as this little history lesson was, we have a show to shoot,” Travis said.  He looked over his shoulder at Ben, who was still playing with the generator.  “Turn on the goddamn lights.”