Unknown date and time: journal entry found buried in a pit beside an abandoned school. If you have any information on Judas please contact the FBI. We will be releasing what we can. Caroline Fritz is the leading officer in this case, if you’ve seen this man contact your local authorities. Do not engage.
“I don’t even remember my mother,” I said, pausing after a few seconds. My gaze drifted from the dog at my feet up to the computer screen where my therapist rapidly jotted down notes. Her large, round glasses sliding down on her hook nose.
“Well your father was a pastor,” she began, “and according to him so was your mother, it explains the anxieties you’re feeling about all this.” Her pauses made me feel the familiar clench in my stomach, my childhood was a nightmare that was heavily based in Christianity. The idea of going to this church was starting to cause panic like none I’ve experienced before. Was this a mistake? As if she could read my mind, my therapist spoke up.
“Do you think this is a good idea? I feel like it might cause issues down the line,”
Buffy huffed, lifting his head to look at me as if he could sense the edging anxiety that danced under the tips of my fingers. I absentmindedly started to rip at the skin around the nail as I stumbled for an answer. Bringing my hand up to my lips to chew at the cuticles only to pause and shove the hand into my pocket.
“I was kind of hoping, maybe I’d..um, get closure?” I said, laying down my thoughts one word at a time, “Going in there and having a job to do, maybe it’ll help me…I don’t know,” I groaned, letting my head fall into my hands as the memories of my childhood sparked through my skull, lighting up my anxiety like a Christmas tree.
“Well, can you leave if you’re too uncomfortable?” Her voice broke through the memories that turned my blood to slushy ice.
“Uhm,” I groaned, this was a bad idea, I could almost feel the universe screaming at me not to go, yet something inside me I couldn’t explain tugged me forward. As if an angry, devilish voice whispered sweet nothings into my ear, insisting that this was a good idea and the more I listened to that voice the more dread pumped into my system.
“I guess I could,” I said, looking back to her concerned face, she shook her head and started to dig through her papers in front of her.
“I just, something wants me to go…” I whispered this now as if I feared anyone else but her hearing it, “I know my Dad couldn’t possibly be there, so it shouldn’t scare me, right? He’s been dead since I was sixteen,”
“It makes sense you’re scared,” She reassured, “How about this, if I don’t hear from you by…July fourth I’ll call to the church,”
It wasn’t a bad idea, I glanced back down at Buffy and up to her again. It was stupid, right? I Needed her to call someone to save me. I shuffled for a few minutes as I continued to pick the skin off of my hands, blood dripped from the flesh due to my anxious clawing.
“Alright,” I finally said, she gave me a warm smile before writing down a few notes.
-
Glancing at the files on her desk, a cup of cold coffee sat on one set of paperwork that had been long forgotten. The man on the missing poster smiled at the camera with a nervous touch in his gaze, pale blue eyes troubled with things unseen to her. She was assigned to find him, to bring him to some sort of justice for the blood bodies that stained the old school yard. His therapist had alerted the police to his absents but when coming to find him all that was found was carnage, no amount of training had prepared her for the bodies that stacked up like bricks on a steeple.
“It had been some sort of Church,” She was told upon investigation, the locals had all deemed it as a cult with the leader being a man known as Judas. The “antichrist”. Yet his therapist sang a different tune, between her paperwork and the youtube videos on ‘Dog’s eye view’, DEV for short, she couldn’t put together how Judas had even become part of this cult. Let alone was leading it in any sort of way.
She shook her head a few times as if to scatter the thoughts that overwhelmed her, she had a lot of work to do. Smoothing the missing persons poster of Judas on the desk she wondered, where was his dog?
-
Buffy tore from one end of the large green park to the other, his tail between his legs as he gained speed. The go-pro around his neck blinked in watery sunshine, I watched the world through his eyes on my phone. My stream was up, people were chatting, Buffy barked happily as more dogs chased after him. A breeze rolled through my long hair which caused me to shiver, but I wasn’t cold.
‘He’s so fast!’ someone commented on the stream, Buffy took another turn around a tree before slipping over something and colliding with the ground. The video went static for a few rapid heartbeats before fixing itself, a couple more comments pinged as the large dog rolled his way to his paws and took off running again to catch up with his friends.
‘What type of dog is he?’ someone asked,
‘Great Dane mix’ I typed into the box,
I was trying to force back the anxious energy in my bones, in twenty four hours I’d be standing in front of some sort of strange church. My camera at the ready, old notebook tucked into my satchel, the idea of writing a report on a church continued to come off stranger and stranger. Yet Cletus continued to reassure me, insisting it was a good idea, that I would be an ‘idiot to ignore this opportunity’. I didn’t want to explain my childhood trauma to him, how my father insisted the world was ending. All the graves I was forced to dig when his strange group of friends and him started chanting in some sort of way over me. I could still smell the fresh dirt, I could remember how sore my arms had become by the second grave.
To this day I wondered what those graves had been for, they were far too small for a human body but I didn’t like to dwindle on that. His death when I was a teenager was a sigh of relief, I had allowed myself to relax, to enjoy life as if his horrific stories about fire and brimstone couldn’t touch me anymore. My phone pinged, I glanced down to the notification and smirked as an anonymous subscriber donated a large sum of money. I almost felt my eyes turn to dollar signs as I read the comment that went along with it.
‘Can’t wait to see the next D.E.V. mate. Should get footage of an old building or an abandoned farm, really creepy shit like that.’
The comment caused me to push my finger against my teeth as I tore the skin anxiously, I could taste blood but ignored this. For a few minutes I debated on what to say, should I mention my trip to the church? Should I talk about my plans for the channel? The dogs howled past me, Buffy continued to lead the pack of yapping mongrels. His paws thumping loudly against the dirt below, tossing bits of grass into the air. I heard a few of the other dog owners laughing as their pets pelted after Buffy. I continued to bite at my fingers till my fathers voice peeked into my head ‘Stop that! It’s disgusting!’ I quickly shoved my hand into my pocket, using the one holding my phone to reply to the message.
‘Yeah, keep your eyes open! Going to DEV at a cult’
I hesitated before hitting send, calling the Church a cult right off the bat might not be a wise idea but I couldn’t keep it from returning to my mind over and over.
‘A cult? What’s it called?’ The messenger asked, Buffy panting his way towards me. His caramel colored gaze shone with joy as he nudged his nose against my arm before sitting down.
“Ready to go, Buffy boy?” I asked him, holding out his bright red leash.
Buffy blinked up at me, his tongue lolling to the side. I shut down the stream, leaving the question unanswered for now.
-End of journal entry 2-