It was getting dark and the wind was blowing violently outside.
I decided that if there was any chance, however remote, of finally getting rid of Mr. Silence I should take it.
There was no time to doubt my sanity. The stranger on the telephone had mentioned that I must act quickly and that under no circumstances should I fall asleep before I reached my destination.
One by one I reviewed the files I had received through the forum in search of the list of items and the address to which I should go.
To my surprise I noticed that one of the files had my name written on it. In my desperate search for information I had overlooked it.
I hesitated for a moment before opening it.
My whole body trembled as my imagination ran through the different possible scenarios. It took all my willpower to finally open the file.
It was terrible news.
The place I was supposed to go was over 300 miles away from my home.
I had been awake for almost 24 hours, thus staying awake on the way there would be a daunting task.
A quick online search revealed that a church had once operated at that address, but had been abandoned more than two decades ago.
I found a series of old photos in a newspaper article in which parishioners could be seen attending the morning service, but something looked odd about their attire. It was too ominous for church.
All those present in the photograph were wearing dark colored clothes in shades of black or gray and each of them carried a strange symbol embroidered in deep red.Some men on had it on their sleeves or jackets and the women on the straps or folds of their dresses.
But the most unusual of these Dantesque images was the pastor of the church. He had posed for one of the photos wearing a strangely long, loose-fitting robe of an almost abysmal opaque black color, decorated with that same reddish spiral-shaped symbol. In his right hand he held an old leather book which, judging by its appearance, was no known version of the bible. But what was most striking was that the pastor was concealing the upper part of his face with a thick veil, while smiling sinisterly for the camera. That smile full of malice inevitably reminded me of Mr. Silence.
What kind of cult disguised as a church was this?
Although every fiber of my body wanted to continue to unravel this mystery, I remembered the urgency of my situation.
I went back to the file and found the list of items needed for the “procedure” as the old man on the phone had called it. Most of the items were medical supplies, gauze, scalpel, needles. At first glance I thought I was going to be undergoing a surgical procedure of some kind.
But when I read the last two items I needed I couldn’t help but feel like I was losing my mind.
-Your father’s bones.
-His prayer book.
And then it hit me.
I had not been able to recognize him.
Years had passed since the car accident and the image of my parents was becoming blurred in my mind. But I remembered that my father had a distinctive mark on his cheek, a small cut near his jaw that he said he had gotten from falling off a ladder when he was a kid.
I went back to check the photograph of the sinister priest…
The man in the veil was indeed my father.
In all my years living with my parents as a child, we never prayed or went to church. I could not imagine them as members of a crazy worship. Nor did I have any memory of the strange volume my father had with him in the picture.
But I was committed.
Something in the voice of the old man on the phone inspired seriousness. If I wanted to get to the heart of this I knew I would have to get my hands dirty. I had no choice but to dig up my father’s corpse in search of answers.
The cemetery was 20 minutes away. But I needed to wait at least until midnight to reduce the risk of being caught in the act by the caretakers.
I drank coffee and consumed pills to keep me awake while I reflected on my family and the deceitful life I had lived with them.
Life changes in an instant- I thought- and there is nothing we can do to turn back time or forget what we never wanted to know.
The clock struck two in the morning. I was tired, but I knew that sleep would be my ruin.
I turned on the car and drove off. I put on the loudest music I could find on the radio as I pushed the throttle over the speed limit.
The wind wobbled the bodywork as I felt the weight of my eyelids yearning to close.
The road opened up in a beam of lights and I was no longer on the ground, I was floating. Drifting farther and farther away from solid ground into a dark, dense sky. So dense that I couldn’t see anything.
My mind wandered in a thick layer of formless matter, there was no color, there were no objects, there was nothing.
Suddenly I saw it, a red glow in the depths of the void.I began to approach the spot at an impossible speed. I could now distinguish with dread what my destination was.
In the distance lay seated Mr. Silence. Spotless, unmovable, sinister. Always with a macabre smile and his garish red suit.
But something had changed.
He knew that I knew.
When I was a foot away from the demon I awoke violently to the sound of a truck horn. Desperately I turned the wheel and slammed on the brakes.
I was lucky I didn’t overturn the car. I had fallen asleep at the wheel for a few brief seconds and he was waiting for me, perhaps to finish draining the scarce light that remained in my soul.
I started the car again and rolled down the windows.
The wind would keep me awake.
After a few minutes I arrived at the cemetery where my parents had been buried. It had been years seens i’ve been there.
I took a shovel from the trunk of the car and walked to the grave as the tree branches swayed and creaked violently against the force of the gale.
I felt watched the whole way, although there was no sign of any caretaker, sheltered surely due to the harsh weather conditions.
My parents’ gravestone was still in pristine condition as if someone had visited it often despite the years.
Jack Clemens and Lucy Chambers
Beloved by family, cherished by Friends.
There was no time to waste. I started digging.
To my surprise my parents had been buried at a shallow depth. It took me less than 30 minutes to hit my shovel with my father’s ebony black coffin. I removed the remaining soil and opened the ominous casket.
Abruptly the wind around me ceased. A deafening silence invaded the atmosphere and I felt shivers all over my body.
I looked up
There 100 feet away in the darkness I noticed the unmistakable slim silhouette of Mr. Silence.
I was tired of being afraid.
“What do you want from me you fucking coward? -I shouted at him- “You have no power here, I will not sleep again until you cease to exist.”
The tall figure remained motionless and expectant. It seemed that my words had no effect on his twisted mind.
I began to stuff my father’s bones into a backpack. As I touched his shredded suit, I felt something rigid. It was the peculiar book I had seen in the photos. It had been buried with him.
At first glance the cover did not say much about the contents of the volume. It was made of thick black leather, worn with age and it was clear that it had been mended countless times. A strange red embroidered symbol stood out on the front.I quickly glanced at some of the pages that composed it.
It was even worse than I had anticipated.
The book was very extensive and was written in a strange writing alphabet that I could not identify, Phoenician or Greek maybe?. It had annotations in different handwriting accompanied by twisted drawings of human and animal dismemberments, desecrations and bodily abuses that I prefer not to recall.
Everything was perfectly organized and numbered as if they were instructions to follow and the gruesome illustrations were colored with a thick red liquid, most likely blood.
At the end of it I found my father’s name written in plain english followed by the number 3220. I realized that it was an extensive list of all the people who had had the book in their possession.
It was no time to stop, I had to finish the job. After all, I could still feel Mr. Silence’s presence close.
I looked again into the darkness, but he was gone.
The wind resumed stronger than before.
It was time to get it over with. I rushed to the car. If I hurried I could make it to the old church in a few hours.
I just needed to stay awake.
Would it be worth it in the end?