Light in the Darkness Read online

  Light in the Darkness

  By: Cody Boettcher

  Light in the Darkness

  Copyright © 2018 by Cody Lumiére

  All Rights Reserved

  Part 1

  Ch. 1

  _____

  This year I will be turning fourteen, so it’s been approximately six years since it all began. Before then, I hardly had a care in the world but we can’t stay young and innocent forever.

  I suppose I should introduce myself, Pastor calls me Elliot but my friends call me El. The funny thing is that I used to like my name but that ended when I was adopted by Pastor; he has a funny way of sucking the fun out of things. Sure, he got me out of the dreary orphanage and being of the church, I should give him respect… but no thanks. Father Thomas is an odd man who mainly keeps to himself outside of Church affairs. Most members of the church love him for his quirky insights into biblical texts but unlike me, they aren’t aware of the strange things that go on in the church basement at night. He doesn’t like it but I just call him pastor, it makes me feel more detached and therefore more sane and hey, I’m a teen so cut me some slack!

  Before you start feeling sorry for me, I never met my family so it’s not like I can truly miss them. I remember the day Pastor came to the orphanage very well, it was one of the worst storms of the year but somehow he walked through the front door of the orphanage without a drop of water on him and with no umbrella in sight. I guess I would consider myself observant to have noticed such a thing at my age but then again, perhaps everyone was just too afraid to see. After he and the attendant spoke for a short while he slowly made his way into the greeting area and scanned the room until our eyes met. I had never received such an unsettling feeling from someone before; he had such a piercing stare that I felt as though he could see right through me. He immediately made his way over to my masterfully constructed pillow fort, we spoke for a short while, and I guess I was a winner as he decided to adopt me that very day. The funny thing about the whole ordeal was that I couldn’t help but agree with him so my reluctance was unnoticed.

  Before that point I had never been in a church and this one was massive; or so I thought at five years old. It turned out that it was pretty average as far as churches go and it soon became home. I received a pretty spacious room on the second floor as my bedroom, which was on the opposite side of the church to Pastors room, he likes his privacy. I received a modest weekly allowance so long as I kept the kitchen clean, wiped down the pews and benches and stayed out of the basement which was always locked anyways. I soon found that there was a library only a block away from the church and I spent many of my days sifting through its vast collection of knowledge. It didn’t take me long to discover the wonders of comic books and I took a liking to Falcon-Man who had many super human powers but his main grab was his ability to see the truth in all things and people; an ability I wished I could have. The librarian said I was quite young to spend so much time reading; I probably would have accepted the compliment if I wasn’t so distracted by the way her eyes looked in two different directions at the same time.

  Ch. 2

  _____

  It was a cloudy afternoon late March when I was startled from my secret reading spot by a series of thumps and some yelling: “ow ow ow!”. I crawled out from the estranged book shelf to see what all the commotion was about and saw a girl lying on the ground in a pile of books holding her knee in pain. She had a very thick head of red hair and substantial amount of freckles on her rosy cheeks. I reached out to help her up but as soon as she noticed she jumped up and proclaimed “I got it myself, thanks”.

  “Oh… well, I heard the books fall and came to…”

  “Yeah, it was an accident. Everything’s fine”. She interrupted. “Maybe if they bothered to keep some step stools around I wouldn’t have to make my own!”

  I was not used to such aggression from a girl; it certainly caught me off guard. Rather than get a step stool from the front desk she had piled up a bunch of encyclopedias into a mound as she grappled for the book she wanted on the top shelf. Her name was Roddie and she was a tomboy. In fact, I never knew girls could be into tests of courage, climbing and comics. We spent that whole summer getting our hands on every comic we could find; we longed to have super powers of our own. Roddie’s favorite was Spider-boy, she said his abilities to scale walls and the like reminded her of the stories her mother would tell about her father who had died in a rock climbing incident on the mountain known as K2. Roddie claimed that even if she couldn’t figure out how to unlock super powers of her own, she would become a professional climber like her father, and the very best climber who has ever lived. Roddie also had a peculiar repulsion to Christianity, she said all the people who went to church were just zombies feeding their energy into something nefarious… I had no idea what she was talking about.

  My living in a Catholic church did me no favors with Roddie. She would try to make fun of me quite regularly but I just shrugged it off and redirected the focus onto her oddly masculine name. In a lot of ways Roddie was more masculine than I was, she often climbed onto the roofs of buildings proclaiming: “You look so small from up here,” trying to taunt me into joining her but I never did as I wasn’t all that good with heights.

  One stormy afternoon in late March, Roddie and I were walking to the library to meet up with our mutual friend Stevie who we nicknamed “Little Steven” due to his small stature, even for our age. We eventually arrived at the entrance to the library just as it started to pour and Roddie ran over to one of the pillars of the building and expertly scaled it in a few swift moments. As usual, she started to taunt me into joining her just as little Steven was walking out the front doors to meet us. Her attention soon shifted to little Steven; Stevie was not one to turn down a challenge and immediately started trying to find a grip on the pillar. I was more than content to watch this play out as I didn’t feel like getting any more wet than I already was and soon the both of them were on the roof laughing at my lack of athleticism. This apparently struck a nerve with Stevie as he soon decided to climb further up the library to prove just how great he was. At this point Roddie was ready to come down and the rain started to come down much harder. She called up to Stevie but he didn’t hear her as he was in full on pride mode and the storm was starting to get pretty loud. Just as he was about to pull himself onto the upper ledge a huge flash of lighting lit up the sky; the thunder was louder than I have ever heard even to this day. Stevie was startled by the sharp crack of thunder, so much so that he lost his grip and fell onto the ledge below him. I swear I heard some bones break as he continued to tumble down and land on the concrete steps, face down in a twisted position. We looked at each other, and then to Stevie who wasn’t moving. That would be the last time we ever saw Stevie.

  Ch. 3

  _____

  After the death of little Steven I was much less inclined to visit the library but would still make my way there once a month or so to see if they updated their comic selection. The incident must have struck Roddie pretty deep as I never saw her at the library anymore. Life was much less enjoyable without my friends to share it with and I’ll admit I did start to acquire some escapist tendencies as a result. The congregation at home was much too busy to be bothered by the likes of me and Pastor was too distant to allow for a real relationship; I often wondered why he bothered to adopt me at all.

  Out of curiosity or perhaps even boredom I started to spy on Pastor’s activities from afar but he certainly didn’t make it easy. I had never known Pastor to be a nervous man as he put on such a strong social mask but watching him on his own, it became clear that whatever he was doing in that basement was taking its toll on him. The more I watched him in his daily routin
e the more I found out just how paranoid he was becoming, especially after he walked out of the under chambers on those late Saturday nights. I hadn’t a clue as to why someone would want to spend time in what I figured to be a cold damp place at one in the morning let alone during the day but as the weeks went by I became more and more curious about what went on in the depths of the church.

  The few occasions I bothered to ask about the basement over breakfast with Pastor would prompt lectures on how I must respect his decisions with warnings of punishment if I should try to go down there; I could tell that the topic made him uncomfortable. As Pastor became more involved in his secret activities, I started to notice that I would wake up with odd scratch marks on my arms and it seemed to happen more and more frequently as the days passed. It was about this time when I started to hear voices in the darkness as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep. The voices would startle me out of relaxation seemingly just when I was about to reach sleep and I became increasingly more sleep deprived as a result. This also got me curious as to how sleep worked and I started researching it at the library on the weekends.

  Talk of trying to fall asleep is such a silly thing when you consider that the relinquishing one’s conscious effort is a key component to enter dream land. Modern psychology would have us believe that dreaming was having the conscious mind mostly put to rest and had us floating around in the subconscious where we would experience information that our minds kept working on and that there wasn’t much logical sense to be made of it; While that was all fine and good it became apparent to me that science was only scratching at the surface of reality, I mean after all what’s religion all about anyways? Surely there’s at least a grain of truth in all the talk of spirits and religion or else there wouldn’t be so much information to be found on it throughout all of history, but perhaps I am just biased from living in a church and having the existence of God asserted to me on a regular basis. Despite my increasing knowledge in psychology I was still too afraid to bring up the voices to Pastor after hearing him give sermons on the dangers of demons and spirits.

  One sunny afternoon, as I was wiping down some pews I overheard Pastor talking to someone near the back of the church. He had taken the role as subordinate in the conversation which really caught me off guard since he was usually pretty dominant. I decided to take a closer look and see Pastor taking orders for a change. I stayed low to the ground and made my way towards the back of the church but as I drew near and peeked over the last bench, I saw that Pastor was standing alone, with his eyes closed and his forehead crinkled. I waited to see if the person he was speaking to would step into view but Pastor just bowed and thanked the invisible presence for its time, after which he sighed and leaned on the wall while breathing deeply as if he was fatigued from having been on a run or something. I was more than curious at this point; could Pastor hear the voices too… and even have a relationship with them? Were the voices demons or spirits… I mean, I couldn’t actually see the source of them. After he seemed to catch his breath he stared at the basement door for a short while before calling out to me that he’d be leaving to take care of some errands and to be sure to do a nice job tidying up the main hall.

  After I was sure he was gone, I cautiously made my way over to the basement door. Now, this door wasn’t just locked, it had three pad locks and the door was made out of a different material than the others in the church, some kind of metal. I knew there had to be some connection between the basement and the voices but it would take some effort to get through all that security and find out what exactly was down there. The biggest problem was that Pastor had all the keys to the church on his belt which he never took off. The keys would have to be obtained while he was asleep but I worried I might evoke his intense rage if he caught me. I never could quite tell what he was capable of but the piercing stare I received if I ever disobeyed him was enough to make me think twice about this endeavor. Alas, I was far too invested in finding out the truth at this point.

  I planned to stay up late that night and sneak into Pastor’s bedroom once he was asleep. Eventually 1:00am rolled around, I carefully crept down the hallway towards my unsuspecting victim, knowing full well that he was a light sleeper. The walkway between our bedrooms had a nice overhead view of the heart of the church which curiously had all of its candles lit. I stopped and stared out over the vacant temple space. As my eyes made their way over to the front podium, I saw what looked to be a man hunched over in the shadows! I quietly made my way forward so I could get a closer look but it was as if that area alone was blurred in darkness despite all of the lit candles. I started to feel my adrenaline kick in; I had to get a better view.

  I almost tripped down the first step of the stair I was so on edge and I cut my elbow on the old metal railing. Oh well, no turning back now; I had to see what had made its home in the church! I reached the bottom of the stairs and peeked around the corner just in time to see the shadowy silhouette make its way into the back room! I didn’t know if I had the stomach to go and corner the thing but I pushed onward to the back office door. Normally this door would be closed and locked at this time… but then again the candles shouldn’t have all been lit either. My heart was pounding in my chest as I cautiously stepped into the back room when out of nowhere a howling gust of wind flew through the church! I turned back to see that all the candles had gone out and my fear got the best of me. I booked it across the podium, back up the stairs and once I stepped into my bedroom the door slammed shut behind me all on its own.

  I tried to turn on my light but it refused to work. I collapsed down on my bed, my heart pounding so hard I thought it may come right out of my chest. Never before had I been so scared! I just sat there, trying to calm down wondering if I was even alone. I rolled towards my bedside lamp and tried again to turn it on. The light flickered on, thank God; it would seem that I had made it to safety.

  Ch. 4

  _____

  After the incident, things became rather quiet and more typical at the church, which was good since all I wanted to do is forget. A few weeks later Pastor came down with some sort of fever with his temperature holding steady at 102. Pastor’s illness kept me busy with food preparations and church maintenance; it was hard work but it helped me to get some well-deserved sleep thanks to all the physical activity.

  One afternoon while I was carrying some tomato soup to Pastor’s bedroom I noticed that he was not in his bed. This was concerning to me as he was far too weak to be up and about and I searched around upstairs thinking he couldn’t have gotten very far. I checked his closet, the upstairs bathroom and as I walked back out onto the walkway, I saw him sitting on the railing overlooking the church! I rushed over to him to find him unresponsive and humming an unfamiliar tune. I reached out to help him down and as I did his humming stopped and his head moved sharply in my direction even though his eyes were closed. I stood there stunned and after a few moments he opened his eyes to reveal a piercing stare as he ordered me to get back to my chores as “the church can’t take care of itself”.

  The very next day his fever broke and things started getting back to normal again. I started to feel as though maybe I was just losing my mind and it was just my own insanity haunting me while life continued as usual around me. I was the one who heard the voices after all; maybe I just imagined all the scary things surrounding Pastor as a way to keep myself occupied and justify our lack of relationship.

  A few more days passed and I had written off all the incidents as my imagination which was good since that evening we were holding a banquet, so Pastor and I were very busy setting everything up. As I finished setting the last table, Pastor stated that he was going into the basement to grab some additional chairs in case we needed them. This struck a nerve and I was again curious of what was down there. I listened to him fumble for the correct keys and open the locks. After his footsteps seemed to trail off, I rushed over to the door and peeked down. Pastor was lighting a couple candles, I guess the basement didn’t have powe
r like the rest of the church, curious. I continued to peek around the door frame as Pastor disappeared from view; after a few minutes I no longer heard any sounds coming from the basement. Five more minutes went by and pastor was still nowhere to be seen or heard. I called down to see if he needed any help but there was no reply.

  I cautiously started down the old staircase and noticed that there were no railings, so much for safety. I stood at the bottom of the steps and looked around the dimly lit space to see that Pastor had seemingly vanished. The basement was a decently sized single room decorated with a bunch of what looked like tribal masks and some kind of ancient artifact looking things. In the center of the room between the two candles was an altar decorated with geometrical figures and some kind of mirror was placed on top in the center. I walked up to the altar to find that the mirror was painted black; I didn’t see that being very practical. There was also a small decorative crystal bowl filled with some incense and a dagger off to the side. I picked up the dagger and it felt oddly heavy in my hand as if it were twice its size. Just then I heard footsteps from behind me; I whirled around to find that Pastor was glaring at me, grinding his teeth in rage: “I TOLD YOU TO NEVER, EVER COME DOWN HERE!” he yelled. “GET BACK UPSTAIRS AT ONCE!” I sprinted up to my room and slammed the door behind me. Now I know I didn’t imagine all that, all those tools made me think Pastor was performing some kind of ritual but for what? Pastor was surely up to something nefarious.

  At the banquet, all I could think about were my paranormal experiences and the contents of the basement. I had to get back into the basement and from the looks of things, Pastor was hitting the bottle a little too hard… so tonight would be my chance. It took several hours to get everything put away from our celebration and by the time we were done I saw that Pastor was running on fumes, perfect.

  It was now 12:30am as I crept down the hallway, this time I was more determined than ever to accomplish my goal. A quick peek down below revealed that there were no unwelcome visitors in the church tonight… at least I hoped not. I made it to Pastors room and looked inside to see him awkwardly sitting against his bed board with a book on his lap; he must have passed out while trying to get some last minute reading in. Luckily he managed to take off his key chain and place it on the bedside table. I slowly walked over and picked up the keys only to immediately drop them on the ground with a loud thud on the hardwood floor. Idiot! Somehow Pastor remained asleep so I quickly picked up the keys and scuffled out of the room.