Hey everyone, my name’s Jamie, and I thought I’d put my story out on here because, I don’t know, I have to tell someone.
I just wanna start by saying I’ve always hated going to church. I was raised catholic, but the whole thing never really made sense to me. It always sorta seemed like a lot of standing up and sitting back down and pretending to understand what the pastor is talking about at any given moment. It always just made me feel a little dumb.
That, and I’ve always been weirded out by all those little statues of Jesus hanging up, dotted all along the walls of the church. I was scared of them as a kid, I always thought that if I did anything wrong they’d see it and tell God or something, I don’t know. Those things always seemed just slightly off, making me feel some weird unsettling vibe.
I’m getting off topic, but all of this is to say, church isn’t for me. No hate to anyone who regularly attends church or anything, its just not for me.
With all that said, anyone who knows me would be surprised to see me wearing my best attempt at “church clothes”, sitting in some unfamiliar church, pretending to know anything about what’s going on. But, I was dating this girl, her name was Ava, for like eight months and she had been insistent that I come with her to one of her church’s regular services. And listen, I really liked Ava so I thought, “Fuck it, I’ll go once”. I pretty much only did it to make her happy.
So I woke up extra early last Sunday morning, and drove down a bunch of twisty ass back roads for about forty-five minutes until I found it nestled in at the edge of a nearby forest. Just a rickety little oak building tucked away with the nearest sign of civilization almost twenty minutes away. But like I said, I really liked Ava, she was kind, and funny, and I could talk about the greatest stuff about her for three pages, but in the grand scheme of things it wouldn’t matter.
I parked in the dirt lot out front of the little wooden building, I saw Ava’s car but I didn’t spot her anywhere so I just assumed she was inside. I awkwardly made my way towards the building, and as I did, I passed a little sign that read “The Divine Ascension Parish”, which I assumed was the name of the place.
When I entered, I saw maybe thirty people scattered among the 10 or so rows of pews. I spotted Ava sitting at the very front, of course it was the front, cause why wouldn’t it be? But I smiled and pretended I wasn’t a little weirded out by the entire situation cause I wanted to make her happy. After about another fifteen minutes of people trickling in, there were about fifty of us lining the pews and we all sat down and waited for the service to start.
The service began and it seemed pretty standard compared to what I remember from childhood, I’m not gonna really act like I paid much attention though. I mostly just sat there, said the right thing when everyone else did, and tried my best to look like I was having a good time for Ava’s sake. I did catch at one point the pastor saying something about a “special ascension ceremony” taking place at the end of today’s service, and that kind of stuck out to me, because from my vague childhood recollection I had no idea what that could have been. I just assumed it was some special celebration and that was why Ava wanted me there so bad.
I zoned out for probably another twenty minutes or so before I felt Ava nudge me with her elbow, signaling me to stand as everyone else did the same. The energy in the room seemed to have shifted, as the pastor who had been so boring and monotone before was yelling, and I mean YELLING, about salvation and ascension and all kinds of stuff. I was actually paying attention at this point, but a lot of it went pretty far over my head to be honest. After the pastor finished his wild speech, he gestured towards the room at large. And with no further indication, the whole room started chanting some Latin phrase in perfect unison, literally everyone but me.
I don’t speak Latin or anything so my best approximation of what they were saying is something that sounded close to “Exsurge, et comede carnem nostram”. They just kept saying it over and over for at least five minutes. After about the fifth time they said it, I looked to Ava for any kind of guidance, confused and a little weirded out. It was like she didn’t even see me though, she just kept staring blankly ahead, reciting that damn phrase over and over and over. I asked her what was happening, desperate for some kind of explanation, and received no response. She just kept up the damn chanting, her focus unbroken.
As the chanting ceaselessly carried on, I noticed that a small hole had begun to open in the floor right where the pastor had been standing during his speech. As they kept chanting that phrase in uncanny unity, the hole kept growing larger, until it had expanded to be probably 20 feet across. Then, as though sensing they were done, everyone fell silent all at once. At this point I was freaking out, I should have ran out of that building and drove away as fast as I could, but I was basically paralyzed by how strange this situation had become.
After a few seconds, something started to rise out of the hole. It started as five writhing fleshy masses, each one undulating rhythmically. Then as it started to rise higher, the five masses all connected to form what I realized to be a massive hand. It kept rising out of the hole higher and higher. As it finished reaching up, the wretched thing was revealed fully, a massive arm bending wildly at two separate joints, with a deep wound on its wrist, gushing blood down onto the floor below. Seeing it seemingly reach up to the heavens, fingers brushing the ceiling, it would have almost been beautiful in a weird biblical sense if it wasn’t the most horrifying thing I had ever seen.
When it had fully extended out, everyone around me dropped to their knees in prayer. Meanwhile, I just stood there frozen in terror, unable to process anything that was going on. I guess I never have responded well in crisis situations.
I was finally shaken out of my daze when suddenly, the monstrous arm extended completely before slamming down with unreal speed on several pews on the other side of the aisle. I don’t know if it was the massive spray of blood coating the whole front of me, or the fact that I watched the writhing flesh of the arm grasp onto and fuse with the flesh of the poor guy it slammed down on, but I regained control over my body and started running.
It was only fifty feet to the door I came in from, but it felt so much longer as I ran towards it. Maybe halfway there I heard a massive crash behind me. I couldn’t even look back before one of the heavy wooden pews slammed into me, sending me flying and pinning me to the side wall. The next few minutes, as I lay trapped between the wall and the pew that had been sent carelessly crashing into me, were a blur as I was fading in and out of consciousness.
I remember seeing that thing grasp onto groups of people dotted throughout the room and start incorporating them into its flesh. You wanna know the most fucked up part about it though? As this thing was liquifying these people’s skin, they looked happy, content, even fucking excited, but not a single one of them looked scared. They welcomed it, allowing it to take them into its mass or sweep them into the hole it came from.
Then it slowly reached out to grasp at Ava, who was acting just like everyone else, kneeling and praying silently. Right before it reached her, she turned back to look at me for just a second. Believe me when I tell you, she looked fucking ecstatic, like she had been waiting her whole life for this. As the hand nearly the size of her whole body slowly closed around her, incorporating her body into its own writhing mass, she kept looking at me with that massive smile on her face. And this last part will be burnt into my memory forever, I swear right before her face became fully obscured by the shifting flesh of the hand, I could see her expression change to one of pure terror, as though she suddenly realized she was wrong about whatever this thing truly is. Whenever I close my eyes anymore, I see the face she made at her very last moment, and I wonder how scared she must have felt just then.
Slowly and methodically, the arm absorbed the remaining members of the church, its flesh grasping out at the remaining few. Not a single one of them fought back. Not a single one of them saw this as anything other than something to be welcomed with open arms. The entire time, I was laying trapped against the wall, trying desperately to free myself, to no avail. That wretched thing left me alone, I don’t know why, but it acted like I wasn’t even there. After it had fully taken everyone else, it slowly sunk back into wherever it had come from, the hole closing behind it.
Shortly after that, I think I finally lost consciousness fully, I woke up with some cop standing over me asking questions that I couldn’t really process in the moment. I finally regained enough awareness to answer his questions, and I doubt they believed my story but I really just didn’t care. They eventually cleared me to go home, and I’ve just been trying to process what the hell happened.
I needed to tell someone, and a friend told me you all might believe me. I don’t know what that thing was or what it really wants I guess, but someone needs to know. My best guess is that whatever was on the other end of that hole was some kind of fucked-up minor god or something, I just don’t know. I’ve also been wondering if Ava invited me down there, knowing that was gonna happen, knowing that thing would take her and potentially me. I just wish I knew anything at all about this whole thing.
All I know is that I’m not going to be going back to church anytime soon.