My hometown is a Middle American no-place. That sort of typical Midwestern that the freeway bypassed decades ago. During the autumn, the emerald green corn and soybean plants fade into a brittle gold. The city itself–if we might call it such a thing–has the spidered broken asphalt and bombed-out husks of factories that characterize the rust belt. Post-war. Post-boom. Post-life.
By the time I was born, it was long past its prime, with little more than understaffed retirement homes, slot shops, and enough churches to make God blush. Every street corner was blessed with a rising spire of Christendom that cast its pointed shadow over the collapsing bars next door. It wasn’t a choice whether one grew up a Christian. It was simply expected.
Despite the suffocating presence of Bible-thumpers and drunk repenters, I began to drift away in my early teens. When I look back on it now, it seems surprising given the lack of available alternatives. Still, I did. And it didn’t go unnoticed. When people live such small lives it can only be expected that they make the business of others business of their own. When Mary showed up to Sunday service without Rick, people noticed. When Terrence dyed his hair pink, people glared, spread rumors, and scoffed. When a black family moved in at the end of Stephenson Street, there was an air of discontent at the monthly luncheon.
And, of course, children learned how to behave from their busybody parents, with many eager to police their peers. Power is always attractive, no matter age. Each church had its dedicated youth group run by a relatively hip pastor who connected with teens and pre-teens on their terms. The most prominent of these was hosted at Oak Hill Evangelical. It was called Frontline–a fittingly militaristic name to match their philosophy of serving in “God’s eternal army.”
Every morning I would walk through the halls of our high school and have to slide along lockers to squeeze past their massive pre-class prayer circle. Sometimes they would join hands around the flagpole in front of the school, close their eyes, and sing off-key hymns. In first period, while our homeroom teacher led the Pledge of Allegiance, they would glare at anyone who didn’t stand and especially those who skipped “under God.”
None of this struck me as strange then. I didn’t know any other way. But my distance from the faith made me feel uncomfortable with these practices. I simply wanted to exist without the constant pressure to playact Christianity. I often wondered, why must they make such a show of their faith? It felt performative, more about virtue signaling than worship.
Naturally, those who attended Frontline were eager to spread the gospel. I had quite a few friends in the group who were eager to knock on my metaphorical door. They wanted me to come to the group. They sensed my distance from God. They thought that there was something sad in my eyes and that He could cure it.
I was able to put their invitations off for a while. I worked too much outside of school. I had band practice. My parents didn’t want me out late. But eventually I relented–in a sense. It was Jeremiah–the bassist in my band–who convinced me to attend a special event.
“Every October we do a group field trip to a Hell House out in Lewiston. Do you want to come? It’s really spooky and fun.”
“That’s like–what? A…haunted house?”
“Yeah, like a Christian version. It focuses on sins and biblical scenes–that sort of thing. But unlike secular haunted houses, It doesn’t celebrate devil worship.”
“Huh,” I nodded as we left the school, walking out into a brisk autumn day. It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, but haunted houses were hard to come by near Jonestown. The only other place–the Haunted Barn–was closed the previous year due to fire safety violations. So I agreed to tag along for the trip the following weekend. It was a silly haunted attraction, how bad could it be?
I went to Oak Hill–easily the largest church in Jonestown–at 6 PM that Friday night. It was already dark, but a brilliantly orange harvest moon illuminated the vast parking lot. We met there, piled into a 15-seater transport van, and made the hour-long trek to Lewiston.
There was something exciting about being in a social setting with so many of my peers outside of school and on the drive I began to see the appeal of Frontline. And there was plenty to bond over. Jeremiah was big into Christian metal and told me all about Rock the Kingdom, a music festival that he was eager for me to attend.
But what at first felt like hanging out with a thin veneer of scripture soon turned into something much more uncomfortable. The chatting dried up and the songs–led by the two chaperones in the front–began. I remember quite vividly sitting between Jeremiah and a girl named Reagan while everyone sang along, eyes closed, gently swaying. Eventually I closed my eyes too and began to pantomime singing–more for the benefit of the driver watching me in the rearview mirror–but I neither knew the words nor could I bring myself to actually say anything.
I still get chills when I recall the refrain from one song:
O sacred lamb, thou sacred lamb
Your shed blood purified the soil below
We drink deep from thy bleeding hand
And are made pure and white as snow
Pure and white as snow…
My mood brightened when we pulled onto a rough, gravel road. We drove under the red glow of a welcoming sign: Hell’s Gate. The words burned like napalm against the clouded, starless night. I felt a surge of adrenaline as we wove through the gnarled wooded trees that shrouded a former elementary school.
The singing stopped, replaced by cheerful chatter. Both Jeremiah and Reagan looked ecstatic and, for a moment, we shared in our equal enthusiasm. Mine would soon evaporate. We wound through the line of crucifix-adorned teenagers to enter the black-veiled double-door entrance. A tall, red-faced demon greeted us in a booming baritone, “Ah, more sinners, then? Come, come forward you unholy heathens. Pass through the curtain and see what awaits those who forsake God’s love.”
Our group was split into threes. I passed through the doors with Jeremiah and Reagan, who already appeared terrified.
There were scenes dedicated to the perils of video games, metal and rap music, drugs, sex, and every other favorite boogeyman of the dogmatically Christian sort. Looking back, much of it seems quaint. But there were also rooms seething with menace, which were just as shockingly offensive to my teenage brain back then as they would be today.
The last room was at the end of a long, dark corridor. The floor was a slick, cracked cement. I had to run my hand along the similarly smooth and cool wall to keep from tripping over my feet. The only light was from above a set of double-doors–our destination–a neon blue sign that read “Salvation.” Naturally, I assumed this would be a more hopeful room, perhaps some depiction of Heaven. I was wrong…Well, perhaps I wasn’t entirely wrong, but nothing could prepare me for what was beyond the heavy steel doors.
We pushed through to find a crowd of hooded individuals standing in a circle. Upon noticing us, they broke apart, gesturing us forward to stand within the now open ring. There was a sound, like an animal whimpering. As we drew closer, it struck me as rather alien, like it came from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Then–I saw it.
Kneeling among the cloaked crowd was some kind of humanoid creature. Perhaps it was a human, but I couldn’t say for sure then and I certainly can’t say for sure now. Its skin was the tarnished white of an aged porcelain figurine. Its limbs were long, slender, and sinewy, with prominent veins that were black where ours are blue. The face was hard to make out, considering the poor thing was curled into a fetal position, but I thought I saw the gold flash of its eyes.
Before I had the opportunity to process what I was seeing–I was still left wondering how this actor’s costume looked so much more convincing than any of the others–Jeremiah thrust a knife into the air. It emerged like silver lightning from his bomber jacket.
“We drink the blood of the lamb!” His cry was a dense echo in the concrete room. He plunged the dagger into the creature, which let out a maddening shriek. His lips followed, as he tasted the thick flow of black blood. Reagan followed. And then the others, one after another. A dozen knives piercing the white flesh, drawing out the blood. Each teenager kneeled down, like they were suckling at the teat of a cow, the blood pouring down their chins.
I ran. Back the way we came. I recalled a fire exit. Out, out, out. I had to get out. And when I emerged into the cheek-chastening air of the autumn night, I kept running. I crossed through a dry creek bed, through a dense, but dead forest, tripping over fallen logs but never looking back. Eventually, I emerged into the golden leaves of a soybean field. There was a gas station in the distance. I made it there, hid in the bathroom and called a friend to pick me up.
The rest of the night is a blur to me. I barely remember what I told my friend–probably something silly about being so scared of the Hell House. Over the next few days, I was terrified of seeing any of the Frontline kids at school. What would they do to me? Was I supposed to see what I saw? But, in a sense, it was anticlimactic. They returned and continued on as always. Still, there was a difference. They were fiercer in their devotion, more aggressive in their faith. They became single-minded in a way that was frightening.
Occasionally, I would leave school at the end of the day and find two or three of the Frontliners staring at me from afar. Their eyes followed me as they stood on the crested bank above the soccer fields. I had trouble sleeping for a long time.
Jeremiah stopped showing up for band practice. This was a relief. What would I say to him? How would we interact knowing what had transpired?
While I wish I could say this was the end of my experience with Frontline–it wasn’t. That community is something I still fear every time I return home for a visit, but…it goes beyond that. These people are everywhere. Hell Houses are everywhere. And I wonder if what I saw wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s a sobering thought, but what is even more disturbing is the question I was left pondering.
Let us assume, for a moment, that this creature was what they believed it to be: an angel. The servant of the God they worshiped. Why then would they treat it with such cruelty? Lock it up, deprive it of whatever sustenance it needs, harm it? The question of their motives was just as baffling to me as the apparent existence of a divine being.
But I know the answer. I think I’ve always known the answer. And soon–very soon–we will all know.