––––––––
“Is it just me, or does it smell a lot better back here?” Kyle asked. “It still reeks of shit, but I can actually breathe now.”
“It’s definitely worse around the altar,” Bryan said. “They must have put a couple of dead animals under the church when they rigged whatever it was that made the sounds.”
Travis and Joey had stayed at Ben’s workstation, replaying the recording and arguing over its origin. Bryan became annoyed at their insistence that they weren’t involved. He understood that they pulled stunts like this to garner higher ratings, but he didn’t appreciate having someone lie right to his face.
“What sounds?” Katie asked. She had moved back to the desk and carefully turned the pages of a book.
“Bryan recorded some EVP’s!”
Katie stopped, her hand still holding a page in midair. “Where? What did you hear?” She released the page and stood from the old stool she sat upon, facing Bryan.
“It was nothing. They’re just planting some fake evidence like they always do,” Bryan said.
“Where did this happen? What part of the church?” she asked Kyle, ignoring what Bryan had just told her.
“We were sitting by the altar when he first picked it up. He couldn’t hear it anymore when we walked away, but the sounds came back when we turned around.”
“Only by the altar...” She spoke to herself as she ran her hands through her hair. “Perhaps the altar is where it will begin? Or is that the only place where a crossover is possible?” She paced back and forth in front of the desk, ignoring the confused men standing by her.
“What are you talking about?” Bryan asked. “You need to stop with the short, cryptic messages. ‘This place and time are significant. Is that where a crossover is possible?’ What the hell does that even mean?”
Katie turned back to the book on the desk and turned a few more pages before reading in silence for several seconds. “Perhaps they built the altar at the epicenter of the area.”
“You didn’t tell us everything before did you?” Kyle asked. He didn’t seem as perturbed as Bryan, but more excited about the possibilities of what she seemed to hint at. “What do you think this place is?”
“I didn’t want to tell you before, for fear of you questioning my sanity,” she said without looking up from the book. “I wanted to try and verify my theory before presenting it to anyone.”
Bryan stood by the hole in the wall and waited. Between Joey and Travis trying to trick him, and Katie sharing incomplete thoughts, he felt like the butt of a never-ending joke. He already visualized how he would most likely appear on the episode of The Specter Slayers – the skeptic that was slowly changed into a believer by all of the weird occurrences that happened around him.
In reality, the more they tried to spook him, the more he wanted to walk away. It particularly bothered him that an intelligent person such as Katie Upshaw seemed to buy wholeheartedly into the idea that the Danver church could actually be haunted.
“What I was able to deduce, prior to finding these texts, was that the land this church is built upon is special. On a particular date every couple of decades, there is a very specific celestial alignment that allows something incredible to happen here.”
Bryan sighed and covered his face with his hands. “Are you listening to yourself? You sound like a character in one of your books.”
“What happens?” Kyle asked, ignoring Bryan’s skepticism.
“I believe this area becomes thin, for lack of a better word,” Katie said.
“Thin?” Kyle watched her intently, completely enthralled by the story she weaved.
“Yes. The fabric of space and time, or at least our understanding of such things, becomes thin, like a cloth stretched too far. This allows things, to pass between worlds.”
“Things? As in ghosts? That’s why you think this area is haunted? Because a few balls of gas floating around in space are lined up, we’re able to see spirits? You actually believe this shit?” Bryan rubbed at his temples, trying to understand how someone could accept something so stupid.
Katie looked up from her book, her eyes narrowed to slits as she glared at Bryan. “I don’t appreciate your tone. I’ve spent years of my life researching many fields related to the paranormal. You, on the other hand, have watched horrible programs such as the one we’re affiliated with now. Don’t question my understanding of this situation, unless you have something to offer that can refute what I’m saying.”
“I would think that common sense refutes all of this bullsh—”
Kyle pushed past him, nearly knocking him over. “You said things could pass between worlds. What worlds? The spirit world?”
Bryan threw his hands in the air, giving up.
“I’m not sure,” Katie said. “These texts seem to point to different explanations. Some state the spirit realm, while others speak of something else entirely. Their interpretations of these events can probably be traced back to the time in which they were written.”
“You think what Bryan heard was a ghost? Could it have been something trying to come into our world? What about the awful smell – is that a part of this?”
“Most likely.” Katie put her finger on a line of text in the book and ran her finger under it as she interpreted what it said. “This passage basically says that the barrier between realms will grow thinner as the night progresses and the stars fully align. Or something very similar – I’m stuck on a few of the words.”
“And now you’re telling me that the ‘spirit world’ smells like shit. Guys, seriously, if this was somehow true, why couldn’t Kyle hear what I heard? How could that crappy microphone pick up something inaudible to the human ear?” Bryan asked.
“That’s a good question,” Katie said. She moved away from the desk and began looking at other books sitting on the shelves. “I don’t have an answer for you. The situation we’re dealing with here is something that has not been observed through history, outside of the volumes contained here. Basically, I’m learning as we go, same as you.”
“And you think we’ll hear, and hopefully even see, more as the night goes on? That would be sweet,” Kyle said.
“Maybe. What I’ve gone through so far only mentions that the area grows thinner throughout the night, but doesn’t have an actual timeline we could follow. I still have a lot more to try to read, but that episode you just experienced could have been the peak; or it might just be starting. Bryan thought he could see where this was heading. Earlier Katie had alluded to Charles Danver being innocent of the disappearance of his colleagues three decades ago. Now on the forty year anniversary of that event, she sat in the same church, reading books about thin places in time or whatever. That couldn’t be a coincidence.
“You think Danver’s friends were killed by something that came through a thin spot in the church, don’t you? You actually think that a ghost killed all of those people, and Danver managed to escape.”
Katie didn’t reply, only looked at him briefly before continuing to look over more books.
“That’s not possible though, right? I mean, a ghost can’t actually kill someone. They just rattle the chandelier and blow on the curtains, right?” Kyle looked around the room with nervous eyes, glancing at every shadow. The light flickering from the candles on the table suddenly made everything look ominous.
“I didn’t say that. There’s a lot going on here that I don’t understand.”
Bryan turned and walked toward the hole, having heard enough crazy talk. “Why did you call us in here? Just to tell us that? Anything else you feel like sharing, or do you want to keep playing games?”
“Keep your eyes open and your ears at the ready. With any luck you’ll record even more evidence that there is something else out there, beyond our perceived existence.”
“I’ll make sure I’m ready if Bigfoot shows up.” Bryan ducked his head and stepped through the hole, wondering who actually used the phrase ‘perceived existence’ in real life.
Once again, the smell shocked him as he stepped into the chapel of the church. He knew it would be there, but it seemed to get worse every time he came back into the main room. Pinching his nose with his fingers, he watched as Joey and Travis slowly circled the altar.
Their barometer and EMF readers sat atop the large oval stone, and they had set up a fifth camera with a dim light pointed at the center of the chapel. Both men held flashlights, which they were shining all around the base of the large stump. Ben, as always, sat at his workstation, monitoring the audio and video feeds.
“What are you guys doing?” Bryan asked, his voice nasal because of his pinched nose.
“We’re trying to figure out how you recorded that,” Travis said. He grabbed a can of beer sitting on the altar, took a sip from it, and set it back down. “It’s a very interesting sound and we’re either going to recreate it, or find its source.”
“Our viewers love watching us try and debunk crap. Usually we fake something and then show that it’s not paranormal,” Joey said. His tight shirt lifted as he bent down to inspect something on the floor, exposing his large tire of fat.
Bryan let go of his nose, trying to acclimate once again to the stench. He knew that they had somehow tricked him into recording that sound, and were now adding layers onto the fraud to make it look authentic for the show. Despite knowing that, he didn’t feel like arguing with them anymore.
The conversation he’d just had with Kyle and Katie had exhausted him. Just a few hours ago, he’d found her very interesting and thought they’d shared a moment or two together. Now he wasn’t entirely sure that she was sane. All the talk of the spirit world, ghosts, and celestial alignments was ridiculous.
Realizing that she suffered from the same obsession that Charles Danver went through in the years prior to his death didn’t make him feel particularly comfortable about being stranded in the middle of nowhere with her. Danver became consumed with this location, and had fallen off the grid. Katie Upshaw, famous horror author, seemed to be suffering from the same fate.
Travis dropped his beer, spilling the amber liquid down the front of his shirt and pants, making it appear as if he wet himself.
“Shit! Now it’s going to look like I pissed my pants,” he said, brushing at the front of his trousers. “Ben, everything with me in it for the next hour has to be edited out.”
Ben smirked from his position behind the monitors, but didn’t reply.
The can of cheap beer rolled across the stone floor, the fluid inside making it loll heavily back and forth, its contents pooling underneath. Travis kicked at it, a nonstop stream of obscenities flowing from his mouth as he did so.
The sole of his shoe swept away the layer of dirt and soil that had been loosened by the beer, leaving a swath of exposed stone. Travis spotted something on the floor as he continued to whine about his shirt and pants, and bent down to inspect.
“What’s this?” He brushed away more of the debris with his hand. “Joey, look at this shit.”
Joey stood up and walked around the altar, his love handles jiggling as he went, and hovered over Travis. “Is something carved in the stone?”
They both pointed their dim flashlights at the floor, turning their heads slightly from side to side, trying to get a better angle.
“It looks like it goes the entire way around the altar,” Travis said. He resumed kicking at the dirt, slowly moving to his right as he did. Joey did the same, but moved to the left, clearing away debris as he went.
Bryan wanted to go to sleep on one of the benches, but felt slightly curious and walked over to where they were working. He lifted the candle from the stone top of the altar and held it in front of him, trying to make out what they were seeing.
Deep grooves had been carved into the stone of the floor. Though it wasn’t completely cleared yet, Bryan could make out two circles, one inside of the other, around the tree stump base of the altar.
Placing the candle on the floor, Bryan got on his knees and began brushing at the dirt covering the circles with his hands. A symbol appeared between them as he cleared more dirt away, showing two lines that connected to look like a snake, or an S with an elongated center.
“There’s some kind of symbol or insignia here,” he said to no one in particular.
He moved a few inches closer to the altar and began cleaning above the two circles. More grooves appeared as he worked, with two hard lines coming to a point at the edge of the inner most circle. Even more designs became apparent between those two lines, but Bryan couldn’t tell what pattern they created.
He continued forward, continually sweeping closer to the altar until he’d cleared the entire area in front of him from the outer most circle to the edge of the tree stump. He kneeled on his haunches, hearing his knees creak as he did, and looked at the progress Joey and Travis had made.
Around the shrine they had cleared away enough to see that the circles were an equal distance apart the entire way. More lines seemed to intersect, crisscrossing in a yet unseen pattern.
Bryan jumped when a hand clapped on his shoulder, making his head knock against the stone slab above him.
“What are you doing?” Kyle asked.
Bryan rubbed his head as he backed out from under the overhang of the altar and stood beside his friend. “There’s some kind of pattern carved into the stone around the altar. The dirt around it was so thick and packed that we couldn’t see it before.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know yet. Help us clear everything away.”
Travis and Joey didn’t bother looking up, but kept sliding their feet on the floor. After another ten minutes of cleaning, the area surrounding the altar had been cleared enough that they could see all of the lines.
Bryan stood back and tried to take the entire image in at once. The outer most circle had a diameter of roughly ten feet, making it difficult to put all of it into perspective.
“Is that a star in the middle?” Joey asked. His head was cocked to the side as he looked at it.
“Ben, beer me!” Travis yelled from beside him. A few seconds later Ben threw a can across the room, which Travis caught and promptly popped open. Foam erupted from the can, spilling over the sides and covering his hands. He didn’t seem to mind.
“Looks like the Star of David or some shit like that,” he said, and then drank down half the can. Sweat covered his brow from the small amount of work they had put in to cleaning the floor.
“What are these little symbols at the point of every star?” Kyle asked.
Bryan backed up several steps and hopped onto one of the nearby benches, giving himself a better angle of the entire image. A five-pointed star sat in the middle of the inner circle, with small squiggly symbols residing at the end of each point. Small designs sat inside of each section of the star, but Bryan couldn’t tell what they were.
The base of the altar covered the center of the carving, keeping him from seeing the image in its entirety. Even still, he thought he recognized it.
“I’ve seen this before,” he said. “I think it’s the symbol used for Satanism. A pentagram or whatever it’s called.”
“And it has a sacrificial altar sitting in the middle of it,” Kyle said. “This is insane.”
Joey looked back at Ben. “Do you have a good shot from Bryan’s helmet cam?”
Yeah, it’s pretty dark, but the candle on the floor is making it look spooky as hell.”
“OK, we’ll run a voice over on top of it later on. Make note of the spots where Travis pissed himself.”
Bryan hopped from the bench and walked over to Kyle. “Do you think we can knock that altar over and see what’s under it? That stone has to be really heavy.”
“No problem,” Kyle said, a large grin spreading across his face. He tossed the barometer and thermometer to Joey and Travis, and then put his hands under the stone slab. “This might break if I push it over.”
Travis shrugged his shoulders and drank more beer.
Kyle bent his knees, straightened his back, and heaved against the underside of the altar. Cords stuck out of his neck and his face turned a bright red as he slowly slid the large piece to the right. Bryan moved to his left and put his shoulder against the edge of the stone and pushed, feeling it give several inches.
Bryan felt it reach the tipping point, where it balanced precariously on the edge of stump. He stood up and let Kyle move it the last few inches, watching it fall to the floor, landing on its side and leaning against the base. They pushed against the bottom together and watched as it fell to the floor, smashing into several large pieces.
The stump in the middle showed no signs of decay, and had a glossy finish, as if it had been preserved by a resin. Kyle managed to flip it on its side, allowing him to roll it out of the way. It went another four feet unassisted before crashing against one of the benches and falling over.
The stones in the floor that had been under the stump were a different shade than the rest. The presumed bloodstains covered much of the area. The packed dirt that had covered the outside of the large symbol wasn’t present in the middle.
Eyes looked out at them from the center of the star.
“Yeah, this is definitely the symbol used by the Church of Satan,” Bryan said.