I still recall vividly the final day before the events that unfolded at that awful place. It replays almost on a loop almost daily in my mind, as I scrutinize every moment at which I could have prevented us from going there.
Ultimately, my conclusion is the same, that there is no knowing what could have happened, but I believe by then things were already too late.
There was very little I could’ve done to protect her and I from the sway of forces beyond our control and even understanding, any more than a twig could divert a flood. All I am left with is the chance to recount what we’ve been through on a platform that might be accepted, and hope no others make our mistake.
If you live in the Midwest, especially rural Illinois, stay AWAY from the Church of the Redeemed Fallen.
- -
When I arrived home from work that evening, Carla was sitting on the couch, nose deep in some sort of thick booklet. Whatever it was, she was clearly engrossed as the sound of my entrance hardly seemed to stir her.
A familiar scent hung in the air, though I couldn’t place it. It was faint but present, like meat, singed or soured. I wondered in passing if she might have burned her breakfast or something after I left.
If so, it would have to have been something like the fourth time in the last week and a half, as the odd smell had been reoccurring the past few times I’d arrived from work. I made a mental note to bring it up later.
It had been a long week, with work draining me of wll but the needed energy to function. School had gone out a few weeks before, leaving Carla at home with an abundance of free time she never quite seemed to know how to fill.
The weeks prior she’d picked up new hobbies, read several books, and attempted to start a garden before giving up after buying the seeds that were out of season.
It was to the point that she’d taken to waiting on the couch for my return towards the end of the day as a lackluster remedy to her boredom.
I could tell it was beginning to get ro her, the days without acting, it was making her feel restless, and in turn her behavior had gotten sort of odd in the days prior, more reserved, almost secretive, but I suppose I was too buried in work to think anything of it.
“Hey,” I called through the living room, sighing with all the tension of a long day’s work as I entered through the garage door.
There was no reply. She hardly even budged, apparently spellbound by whatever it was she was reading.
My keys clinked as they were tossed into the bowl in the kitchen which held all manner of miscellaneous junk, and I made my way around the island atop which the bowl sat to greet my wife who sat huddled on the sofa opposite me in the living room.
On the table before her sat two half-finished cups of coffee, beside each one of the small snack plates she used when offering refreshments to guests.
The plate was smudged with a thick sheen of something that must have been grease, a light, watery red on the porcelain plate.
“Hey,” I repeated a bit louder than before.
She startled, eyes shooting up from her literature, wide and surprised for several moments, as she glanced between myself and the clock on the wall, before the glaze of sudden shock gave way to another expression, something foreign on her face, but not unfamiliar.
She beamed up at me as I approached, eyes wide and glistening.
“Terry,” she breathed, her voice wavering, sounding raw with excitement and barely restrained emotion.
“Yeah, babe? Everything… okay?” The question was every bit as confused and reluctant as I felt asking.
She looked as though tears would spring forth freely at any second, her eyes red and wet, catching the light on the ceiling with an odd glint - yet, simultaneously, she appeared utterly elated.
The expression she wore, despite the thin trail running from her eyes down her cheeks the physical evidence of tears shed, her expression was one of wild-eyed jubilation the likes of which I’d never seen from her. It was familiar though, having grown up a church kid, I’d seen that look before in the faces of the devout. It was a look of awe, and joy, all a presentable face for the fear beneath it all.
The mix was…disconcerting, to say the least.
She blinked as though processing my question, before shaking her head fervently. The smile widened.
“No. No. I’m - I’m better than okay, my love,” Her eyes locked with mine, and I saw the glint of something beneath them, wild and unhinged.
I couldn’t quite identify it then, but I know now, that it was the look of bubbling fanaticism, clawing at the floodgates.
She breathed her response, looking and sounding as if she were taken aback by her own words. A faint smell clung to her breath, that same smell as earlier, like burnt meat but different in a way I couldn’t place.
It made my stomach turn, but was immediately an afterthought as Carla spoke.
“I’m - I’m saved.”
I squinted, understandably confused and slightly uneasy, though I wasn’t fully sure why yet. The language was that of some religious nut, and yet it was coming from a woman who, for as long as I known her, had been a fervent agnostic at best, downright dismissive of the very concept of religion at worst.
Surely, I assumed, this was some sort of joke I was simply too tired to get.
“What…are you talking about?” I asked with a nervous laugh.
“Saved from what?”
It was as though my words had some effect on her, like dowsing water over a rising flame.
Her strange, almost child-like excitement fading in an instant, replaced by an embarrassed and apologetic sort of expression.
“It - I - it’s nothing, sorry, “ she said quickly, pulling me in for a kiss, which I returned despite my confusion.
“I… lost track of time, didn’t realize you’d be back so soon.”
I nodded, though I was quite sure my face exposed my apprehension at her non-answer.
“Whatcha reading there?”
I gestured at the pamphlet folded in her hand, held behind her back as though she hoped I’d forget once it was out of sight. In that moment, I could swear something passed over her face, a look of unease, but it was gone as soon as it had come.
“Oh this,” she waved the pamphlet in front of her, laughing.
“I dunno, it’s silly. One of those door-to-door religious types came by and dropped it off. I was about to throw it away, but it seemed good for a laugh.”
I rolled my eyes out of instinct, nodding my understanding as I began to put two and two together.
“The “Church” again?” I asked, making air quotes around the word church.
Carla nodded.
The Church of the Redeemed Fallen has been something of a recent phenomenon here in Cold Lake, and an irritating one at that. While or town, like many other small, rural localities, is no stranger to…fringe religious beliefs.
I’m sure you’ve heard stories before about freaky cults with “prophetic” figures that take off to some farm, or mountain hideout. Cold Lake has had a few in its history that have come and gone.
There seems to be something about beautiful forests and open fields that draws congregations of cooks like a magnet, and the Church was the most recent of them.
They’d formed a little after 2014, under the guidance of a man named Harold Trager, a prophet if you ask his followers, and a two-bit conman if you ask… well, anyone else.
Their chief difference from most cults was that while other groups kept to themselves, they’d begun making a Jehovah’s Witness-esque effort to proselytize to the community at large.
Besides standing on literal soapboxes outside of stores or local businesses, preaching their strange pseudo-biblical apocalyptic religious views, it meant going door to door with pamphlets on their religion.
Towards the end of the school year, while Carla had been working, I’d turned away two of them already, and according to her, once the summer began they’d ramped up their efforts from weekly to daily, as if on some cult requirement drive.
They were always the same, some overly smiley person clad in white or tan robes like an off color version of something you’d see a monk wear, red blotches over either shoulder.
They’d show up at your door with whatever fruit or meat they were selling that week, usually strips of bacon from their farm, and offer you to “partake in their bounty”, i.e. buy their food.
10 times out of 10, it was a ploy to get in your home and preach to you about “the truth”, or their weird pseudo-abrahamic idea of it anyways. I’d never given one time of day enough to truly decipher their beliefs, but I knew enough to know it wasn’t for me.
Nor, I would have thought, Carla.
Apparently, they were persistent. Knowing it had been their literature, I could certainly understand Carla’s reading it for amusement.
“So what’s it say?”
As soon as the question left my lips, something shone beneath Carla’s eyes, brief but unmistakable. It was that same look in her eye as before, almost fanatical…It was gone as soon as it had come, that smile returning, but like a sudden hailstorm, its presence was unmistakable.
Something felt off. What it was, I couldn’t put my finger on, but the feeling seemed to grow the more we spoke, overtaking my mind slowly like cloud cover on a sunny day.
“Nothing, it’s the usual BS. The end is nigh, repent for the Flayed Angel rises, blah blah blah.”
She rolled her eyes dismissively, yet something in the expression struck me as unconvincing, almost, I don’t know…theatrical?
It was as though she were trying to make a point of appearing uninterested.
“You invited em in?” I asked.
The look that followed was one of surprise and immediate confusion before she gathered herself again with another laugh, much more forced than before.
“The coffee and the plates,” I nodded towards the table.
“Never known you to drink two cups, while using two plates in two places. Even you’re not that forgetful.”
“Yeah,” she began, chuckling ruefully, a faint look of guilt creasing her features.
“You know I suck at the whole confrontation thing. The lady who came, she was sweet and I didn’t want to be rude so I just invited her in for a bit.”
She paused, gauging my reaction adding,
“It was only for a bit, she explained their beliefs to me, had a bit of coffee, and left. Probably wasn’t even five minutes. I know you can’t stand solicitors and we shouldn’t encourage them and you’re right. I just didn’t want you to be upset.”
It struck me as odd that she hadn’t been upfront to begin with.
Sure, I’d never been a fan of those folks and their weekly harassment, but surely she knew it wasn’t serious enough that I’d raise an argument. Her reasoning felt…incomplete.
For one, she’d mention the coffee though not explained the plates which had clearly been used. Perhaps it was an oversight, it did seem a minor detail, though it somehow felt deliberately overlooked, and I didn’t see why she’d hide that.
I’d known the Church to occasionally sell baked goods and various meats from their farms, perhaps she’d partaken and felt…embarrassed at even humoring them given how often we’d joked about the possibility of them Jonestown-ing their food.
Still, I couldn’t see a good reason for pressing the issue, despite the curiosity beginning to claw at my mind like an animal behind a locked door - not wanting to risk upsetting her over what seemed such a minor issue.
I shrugged with a frown that said “I don’t care regardless” and planted a kiss on her forehead for good measure.
“You handling dinner tonight or should I?
She smiled, far more genuine than before, the faint traces of worry I felt I could see in her dissipating.
“I got it, you go take a nap or something. You look half-dead.”
I laughed, thanking her before making my way toward the stairs. Before heading up, I peered around the corner, back into the kitchen. She held the pamphlet with her until she arrived near the cabinets, nearly catching me as I ducked behind the wall to avoid her faze as she turned to check that I’d gone.
I heard the shuffle of papers and other things as she rifled through something.
When I looked back, she was closing one of the drawers in the island at the center of the kitchen, the pamphlet no longer in hand, before turning back and quickly occupying herself with dinner preparations.
I felt a heavy mass of unease, cold and uncomfortably, as it shifted in my gut, its tendrils digging even deeper.
She was hiding something, and I determined that I would find out what.
By the time I arrived in our room, and was pulling myself into bed, I’d already decided I’d be reading whatever that nutbag had left her the moment she was away from the drawer. As I began to doze, faint, lingering unease seemed to color my restless sleep.
I woke up an hour later at Carla’s beckoning, and we had dinner in the kitchen. Things seemed normal, we discussed our days, and she caught me up on some drama amidst her friend group and laughed as we ate.
So much so that by the time we were wrapping up, I’d almost forgotten my earlier intentions.
“Uh, I’ve got the clean-up, babe,” I said, rushing over to take her plate as she stood to make her way to the sink.
She looked surprised, but smiled and handed it over with a kiss, both of which I returned.
“I’m gonna shower, we should watch a movie or something later.”
I nodded and watched as she rounded the corner, listening for the sound of her footsteps fading up the stairs and the creak of the floorboards overhead.
As soon as I heard the bedroom door shut, I made my move, putting her plate back on the table and quickly rounding the island. I began pulling open each of the little drawers, rifling around under heat mats, and old paper until I found it.
She’d folded it, tucking it inside a folder full of recipes she’d printed over the years. The obvious attempt at discretion was strange, to say the least, and as I raised the pamphlet to read I felt my heart pound with anticipation.
On the cover of the pamphlet, beneath the name of the Church - typed in ornate letters - at the very center sat their logo. An image of what appeared to be a man on the cross, drawn somewhat hastily by appearance.
It was similar to the typical scene on the cross, the man wearing the same vaguely pained expression, head lolled to the side, arms outstretched, but with key differences.
The being on the cross had wings. Long and batlike and deeply tattered, and it most certainly wasn’t Jesus. Its skin was depicted as a deep red, and there was no crown of thorns.
Only a pained, open-mouth expression like a scream frozen in time.
“Creepy fucks,” I muttered.
I’d seen the logo before, emblazoned over the left side of the white smocks every member wore, and it hadn’t yet failed to be disconcerting.
How could anyone worship…whatever this was? And why was my Carla secretly hiding it?
This particular pamphlet was titled, the words running along the bottom in bright red letters.
“Rejoice and be merry! The Angel has returned, and the Day is close at hand. Are you saved?”
With a scoff, I began to flip through the pamphlet.
“I guess staplers and computers are against their religion,” I muttered.
It was compromised of several pages, all of which were seemingly done by hand, bound at the side with a length of twine that ran through holes cut into the papers.
I opened the first page and began to read.
From the pulpit of His Divinity, He Who Travels Beneath The Wing, Father Harold Trager - prophet of the Fallen Son. The following is both a dire warning, the most glad of tidings, and a warm invitation to those who the Fallen Son chooses to receive it.
The words up until that point were scrawled in stunning handwriting, as though penned by some master calligrapher. Little of what I’d read was unusual, at least for the Church, echoing the usual greeting I’d seen on some of the posters or signs they would wave when preaching.
It was what followed that made a chill run down my spine for reasons I couldn’t understand. The words were bold, at the center of the page in such a large, alarming letters and scarlet ink.
HE HAS RISEN.
Rejoice. Rejoice. The day has come. On the night of June, 12th the year two-thousand and twenty-two on the calendar of the false messiah -
OUR LORD HAS RETURNED.
Arriving beneath the willow, as foretold by our Father Trager, the Winged One, the Fallen Son, The Flayed Angel returned to his flock, bringing to fruition the final sign to signal the beginning of the end of this world and the birth of a new. The Day of The Falling Stars.
It was a noticeable deviation from the usual rhetoric. For the little time they’d been in town, the Church of the Redeemed Fallen had been the typical doomsday cult, going on and on about an end of times they called the ‘Day of The Falling Stars’, with the usual apocalyptic messaging and vague arrival dates.
This? It struck an oddly confident tone, almost…celebratory? As though they felt their prophecy was no longer just prophecy.
Outside, the stubborn claws of winter still clung to the otherwise warm Illinois summer night, kicking up a howling breeze that echoed through the house.
That gnawing unease swelled into something far more present, and as I continued I felt much like a child reading a horror story they had no business with, small and strangely exposed.
The kitchen was rather dark, only one of the pilot lights over the stove on, as I had wanted to avoid alerting Carla as to my whereabouts if she woke up, and the only other light drifted faintly from upstairs, and the shoe room, near the garage on the opposite side of the house.
The house groaned under the continued offense of the wind, and I jumped despite myself. Swallowing against the knot growing in my throat and my rising disquiet, I continued.
You, who have received this message, are invited on this holiest of nights to the Temple on High, for a sermon by our Father as he reveals to us, finally, our winged God and grants us all the chance to revel and soar in his wake.
Be born again, angels in a new world.
I began skimming the pages, heart-pounding for reasons I wasn’t sure of, in search of something I hadn’t defined.
The rest of the pamphlet read much the same, providing more information on their crackpot beliefs, going on about this “fallen angel” of theirs and the message Father Trager claimed to have received.
A lot of it seemed to be alternate telling of stories already familiar to me from my brief time in a college religious studies class, but I’ll do my best to summarize.
They claim that Trager had been a broken man before receiving the message, “lost in the collective illusion” as they put it. All until one day wandering a field on the outskirts of town, beneath a willow - it appeared to him lying beneath the tree, an angel stripped of its skin, wings tattered.
It awoke at his presence at which point it would beckon him near and whisper to him a great truth. Apparently religion as we knew it was a lie, the stories skewed to denigrate the true protagonist.
His name was Ibiz, or had been, and he had been a former citizen of heaven, at one time beloved by the creator for his curiosity and wisdom. He had been close to the creator, looked upon favorably until the birth of Man.
The angel knew the creator had erred. It saw in man an innate evil, a corruption that would lead to the destruction of all that the creator had made, and when the error of Man led to the fall of the Garden of Eden, Ibiz felt certain of the fact, raising the issue with the creator.
I don’t think it matters which religion you follow, no version of God seems to enjoy being questioned, and the Church was no different.
The creator grew furious at the perceived challenge to his wisdom, lashing out at the angel, causing him great harm(hence, I believe, the tattered wings and missing skin), then cast him out of heaven.
Banishing him to the world of Man.
According to the Church, knowing what he knows and that the creator is unwilling to intervene, Ibiz has made it his goal to prevent the destruction Man will wreak, and make again heaven on Earth. In his new world, Harold would serve as his messiah leading a flock of those who heed his message to be born anew in this world.
It was…heady stuff. An odd mix of various Abrahamic doctrines combined with a heavy dose of batshit insane and horrifying.
Still, as utterly ridiculous and slightly disconcerting as it was, it didn’t explain Carla’s weirdness.
It wasn’t until I arrived at the final page, that it clicked.
There was a date scrawled in a similar font as the title had been, it was that upcoming Saturday, only a day from then.
Below it, scrawled in red letters was her name. It was an invitation meant just for her…
The piercing creak of the floorboards overhead made me jump, setting my heart to racing as I immediately began putting things away.
The contents of the drawers I’d searched were strewn about the island, and as I heard the bedroom door open, I had little time to worry about order. Quickly, I shoved all of the remaining papers, and assorted knickknacks into either of the drawers.
I felt my heart in my throat as I threw the pamphlet beneath the recipe book, and shut the drawer just as I heard Carla’s footsteps arrive at the bottom of the stairs.
I closed the drawer, cringing as it slammed louder than I’d hoped. Moments later, she entered the kitchen.
“Hey,” I spoke, perhaps a bit too quick, turning my back to the island.
“Sleep well? “
She nodded, blinking slowly as she seemed to take in the scene. A cold, steady drip of unease ran down my spine, as an unasked question flashed beneath her eyes.
“Late-night snack?” She asked.
I laughed, the sound a great deal more forced than I’d have liked.
“No, just came for some water, and the mind got to wandering.”
She nodded again, then averted her eyes with a sigh. She grabbed her arm hugging it close, something I’d seen before many an argument or difficult discussion.
“You read it, didn’t you? The invitation from the Church.”
Fuck.
I swallowed hard, my mind wavering between lying and just coming clean. I settled on the latter.
“Yeah,” I admitted.,
“Why’d you feel the need to hide that from me?”
She closed her eyes, running her hands over her face with another deep breath.
“Because I knew how you’d react, you can’t stand the Church,” she said.
“Sure, but that doesn’t mean I’d get mad at you for reading the damn thing for laughs, I don’t get all the -“
“Listen,” she interjected, the word set my heart racing at a hare’s pace.
“It’s not a joke. That’s why I hid it from you.”
I blinked, my mouth opening though I had no response in mind.
“What - what do you mean?” I swallowed, my mouth feeling unusually dry.
Carla stepped in front of me, grabbing my arms and pulling me into a half-hug, looking up at me.
“Baby, it’s - they’re not what you think. When you’ve been at work they’ve come by a few times to talk, and at first I thought they were nuts but…” she paused a glistening look in her eye.
“But Trevor it’s…it’s not. You’ve got to hear them, baby, I thought they were crazy but… it’s the truth.”
I pulled myself away gently, moving towards one of the cabinets for a cup, quickly filling it with water and taking a drink.
She watched me with a hopeful, wide-eyed expression like a child hoping they’d convinced their parents of something.
“I…if this is a prank, I have to say it’s an odd one.”
She frowned, the legitimate disappointment visible. She was serious…it made no sense. Carla had been almost arrogant in her disbelief if anything, unswayed by religion despite growing up under the roof of a preacher.
I couldn’t imagine any sort of proselytizing getting through to her, let alone the most fringe, almost fantastical of pseudo-religious doctrines…
What could they have possibly told her?
“Just come with me… you read the pamphlet you know, come with me to the Church.” she gripped my hand tight, pleading with a wide-eyed, hopeful expression as if begging for me to step off of an open flame.
At the moment, I couldn’t explain the sensation her words bred in me. It was as though a window had been cracked, letting in a chilling breeze that gripped me with a sort of disquiet I couldn’t shake.
Yet, her expression was so hopeful - and the whole situation had caught me quite off-guard.
“Okay.”
She smiled as wide as I’d ever seen, and for a moment, I was convinced she would burst into tears before she pulled me into a tight hug.
“This is going to be, amazing for us.” She said, and I could tell she meant it.
I felt my guts twist inside of me, feeling for the first time in my life strangely uneasy in her arms. Still, I returned her hug, my hands running along her back, and as I did…I could have sworn I felt something shift just beneath her shoulder blades.
It felt as though a muscle or something like it was protruding from just beneath the bone. I slid my hand between her shoulders, eyebrows creasing in confusion at what I’d felt.
Whatever it was, it was there and then gone too quickly to even be worth acknowledging, but it only added to the mountain of unease I felt building.
Something was going on with Carla, and I was growing certain it had everything to do with whatever strange shit was going on with the Church of The Redeemed Fallen, and their seemingly upping their recruitment drive.
If only I could have foreseen the true extent of what was taking place, perhaps the story wouldn’t have ended as the sort fit for this forum.
I’ve got to wrap it up for now. It’s late, my body has been crying for the bed for the past hour, and my mind well, it’s done enough recounting of those events for now.
I’ll finish this tomorrow, until then, be wary and stay away from that goddamn “Church”.