Chapter 30: The Chapel

Arthur’s boots didn’t just make noise on the gravel; they sounded like a countdown, each heavy strike marking one less second he had to find the girl before the storm buried the world in white. The air in Cypress Bend had turned from a biting chill to an outright assault, the kind of cold that crystallized the hair inside his nostrils and made his lungs feel like they were being scraped with steel wool. He didn't look back at the lights of the patrol car. If he did, he might realize how far he was walking into the dark without a radio that worked or a partner who wasn't currently unconscious in a hospital bed.

The chapel sat on the ridge like a hunched, forgotten beast. It was a relic of the old settlers, framed in hand-hewn cedar that had turned the color of dried blood over the last century. He stopped at the edge of the clearing, his flashlight beam cutting a frantic path through the swirling snow. 

“Maddie!” 

His voice was swallowed instantly. The wind whipped the sound out of his mouth and tossed it into the pines. He adjusted his grip on the heavy Maglite, his fingers stiffening inside his leather gloves. There was a single set of tracks leading toward the arched double doors—small, shallow indentations already halfway filled with fresh powder. She was inside. She had to be.

He crossed the remaining yards, his pulse drumming a frantic rhythm against his collar. The pressure in his chest wasn't just the altitude or the cold; it was the weight of every mistake he’d made since the snow started falling. He reached for the iron handle. It was frozen, a skin of ice bonding the metal to the wood. He braced his shoulder against the timber and pulled with a guttural grunt. The door shrieked, a high-pitched protest of rusted hinges that echoed through the hollow interior before the wind shoved him inside, slamming the door shut behind him with the finality of a coffin lid.

Silence fell, sudden and heavy. 

The chapel smelled of damp earth, tallow, and the suffocating sweetness of dry rot. Arthur swept his light across the pews. They were narrow, uncomfortable things, scarred by generations of faithful hands. At the front, the altar was a block of unadorned stone, and behind it, a stained-glass window that should have been beautiful but, in the dead of night, looked like a black tooth in a gaping mouth.

“Maddie? It’s Arthur. I’m not going to hurt you.”

He heard a soft, rhythmic scraping from the corner. It stopped as soon as he spoke. He tracked the beam toward the sound, moving past the pulpit until the light landed on a pair of mud-caked sneakers.

Maddie was huddled in the gap between the last pew and the rough-plastered wall. She was hugging her knees so tightly her knuckles were white, her face a pale smudge in the dark. She wasn't crying. Her eyes were wide, fixed on the light with a hollow intensity that made Arthur’s stomach do a slow, sickening roll. It was the look of someone who had seen the bottom of the well and realized there was no ladder.

“Hey,” Arthur said, dropping to one knee a few feet away. He kept the flashlight angled toward the floor so he wouldn’t blind her. “You picked a hell of a spot for a hike, kiddo.”

She didn't blink. A shiver racked her body—not a small tremor, but a violent, systemic shaking that set her teeth clicking together. 

“He’s coming,” she whispered. Her voice was a dry rasp, barely audible over the whistling wind outside.

“Who? Elias?” 

Arthur reached into his jacket and pulled out his spare thermal blanket, the silver foil crinkling loudly in the quiet space. He moved slowly, deliberately, the way he’d approach a panicked animal in a snare. 

“Elias is gone, Maddie. He’s out by the creek. He can’t get up here in this.”

“Not Elias,” she said. She finally looked at him, and the terror in her expression was so sharp it felt like a physical blow to his chest. “The one who told him to do it. The one who watches from the trees.”

Arthur paused, the blanket half-unfolded. He felt a prickle of sweat break out on his lower back despite the freezing temperature. He’d heard the nicknames the locals gave the shadows in the Bend, the stories whispered over cheap beer at the tavern about the 'Old Man of the Woods' or the 'Watcher.' He’d dismissed them as folklore, the natural byproduct of a town trapped in a valley with too many trees and not enough sunlight. But seeing Maddie now, he realized she wasn't talking about a ghost story. She was talking about a memory.

“Tell me what you saw,” Arthur said, his voice dropping into the low, steady register he used for witnesses. “Start from the beginning. Why the chapel?”

Maddie reached out a trembling hand and pointed toward the floorboards beneath the altar. “Because this is where they keep the names. Under the stone. He told me if I hid here, the names would protect me. But they don't. They just scream.”

Arthur stood up, his joints protesting. He walked to the stone altar, the Maglite casting long, distorted shadows against the walls. He’d lived in Cypress Bend for six years, and he’d never heard of anything hidden under the chapel. It was a Methodist foundation, plain and simple. Or it was supposed to be. 

He kicked at the rug covering the floor behind the altar. It was a heavy, moth-eaten thing that didn't want to move, but as it bunched up, he saw the seam. A trapdoor, flush with the wood, held shut by a recessed iron ring. 

“Arthur, don't.” Maddie’s voice was sharper now, laced with a sudden, desperate lucidity. “If you open it, he’ll know you’re part of it. He’ll put your name in the jar.”

“There’s nobody here but us, Maddie,” he lied, though his skin was crawling.

He Hooked his finger through the ring and pulled. The wood groaned, the sound of a bone breaking, as the door swung upward. A gust of stagnant, freezing air hit him—colder than the storm outside, smelling of copper and old paper. He shone the light down.

It wasn't a crawlspace. It was a cellar, deep and lined with stone. And stacked on wooden shelving that looked like it would collapse if a breeze hit it were hundreds of glass canning jars. 

Arthur felt the world tilt. He climbed down the ladder, his boots hitting the packed dirt floor with a dull thud. The cellar was small, maybe ten by ten. Each jar was filled with a murky liquid—formaldehyde, maybe—and a single slip of parchment. He stepped closer to the nearest shelf, his breath coming in ragged plumes of white. 

He picked up a jar. The glass was pitted and old. Inside, the parchment was curled, but the ink was still legible. 

*Thomas Miller. 1924.*

He moved the light to the next. *Sarah Greene. 1941.* 

And the next. *Leo Vance. 1978.*

He knew these names. They were the disappearances. The "walk-offs." The men and women who had supposedly packed their bags and left Cypress Bend for better lives in the city, only to never be heard from again. The town had a way of swallowing people, and the sheriff’s office had always called it wanderlust. 

He turned the light to the very end of the shelf, where the jars looked newer, the lids shiny and free of rust. 

His heart stopped. 

There was a jar with a fresh slip of paper. The ink looked like it hadn't even finished drying before it was submerged. 

*Arthur Penhaligon. 2024.*

 The date was tomorrow’s.

“Arthur?” 

He spun around, the light swinging wildly. Maddie was standing at the edge of the trapdoor above him, her face silhouetted by the dim light of the chapel. She looked down into the pit, her eyes reflecting the silver of the thermal blanket she’d wrapped around her shoulders. 

“He’s here,” she whispered.

Above her, the front doors of the chapel didn't just open; they exploded inward. The sound was like a cannon blast, the wood splintering as the wind roared into the sanctuary. Arthur scrambled for the ladder, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. 

“Maddie, get back! Hide!”

But she didn't move. She was staring past the trapdoor, toward the entrance of the chapel. Arthur climbed the last two rungs and hauled himself onto the main floor, his hand already going for his sidearm. He drew the Glock, the metal freezing against his palm, and leveled it at the swirling mist of snow filling the doorway.

A figure stood there. He was tall, unnaturally so, draped in a coat of heavy furs that made him look like a bear standing on its hind legs. He didn't have a flashlight. He didn't need one. He moved with a terrifying, fluid grace that suggested he knew every inch of this floor, every creak of the wood.

“Put the gun down, Arthur,” the figure said. 

The voice was deep, resonant, and horribly familiar. It was the voice that gave the invocation at the Founder’s Day picnic. It was the voice that had comforted Arthur after his wife died. 

“Preacher?” Arthur’s voice cracked. 

Preacher Silas stepped out of the shadow of the doorway. He wasn't carrying a Bible. He was carrying a long-handled wood axe, the head polished to a mirror shine. His eyes, usually so warm and full of false light, were as flat and cold as the storm outside. 

“The Bend requires a balance, Arthur. You’ve been here long enough to know that. Nothing grows in this soil without something else being put back into it. You’re a lawman. You understand the concept of a debt.”

“You killed them,” Arthur said, his aim wavering as the cold began to numb his trigger finger. “All of them. The jars... Thomas Miller, Leo Vance... you’ve been doing this for decades.”

“Not me,” Silas said, taking a slow, measured step forward. “The family. My father, his father. We keep the names. We keep the peace. The town thrives because we pay the price in the woods so the families in the valley can sleep. But you... you started digging. You started looking at the margins of the ledgers.”

Maddie let out a whimper and shrank back against the altar stone. Silas didn't even look at her. His focus was entirely on Arthur.

“I liked you, Arthur. I really did. I thought you’d be the one to finally stop asking questions and just accept the silence of the mountains. But some men are born with a splinter in their soul. They can’t leave well enough alone until they’ve bled themselves dry.”

“I’m taking the girl, Silas,” Arthur said, his voice hardening. He ignored the burning in his lungs. He ignored the fact that his name was already in a jar beneath his feet. “And I’m taking you in. Drop the axe.”

Silas smiled. It wasn't a cruel expression; it was almost pitying. “The storm is only beginning, Arthur. No one is coming for you. No one is going to hear a gunshot over this wind. And even if they did, who do you think they’d believe? The grieving preacher or the deputy who went unstable after his partner got hurt?”

Silas raised the axe. He didn't rush. He didn't need to. He moved with the slow, inevitable force of a glacier. 

Arthur squeezed the trigger. 

The *click* was the loudest sound he’d ever heard. 

He stared at the weapon in shock. He’d cleaned it this morning. He’d checked the chamber. He pulled the slide back—it was jammed, a thin wedge of ice having formed in the firing pin channel during his trek through the moisture and the plummeting temperature. 

Silas chuckled. “The mountain decides, Arthur. It always decides.”

Arthur lunged for Maddie, grabbing her by the arm and swinging her toward the side door—the small, narrow exit used by the choir. “Run! Don't look back, Maddie! Run for the trees!”

She didn't hesitate this time. Fear finally broke her paralysis, and she bolted, her small form disappearing into the dark of the side hallway. 

Arthur turned back to face Silas, swinging the heavy Maglite like a club. He didn't have a gun, and he was outmatched by ten inches of reach and a soul-deep knowledge of the terrain, but he was a Penhaligon, and he wasn't going into a jar without a fight.

Silas swung the axe. It whistled through the air, shearing through the top of a wooden pew like it was made of cardboard. Arthur dove to the left, his shoulder hitting the hard floor. He rolled, kicking out at Silas’s knees. He connected, feeling the solid thud of his boot against the preacher’s shin, but Silas barely flinched. 

The man was a titan, fueled by a delusion that had been baked into his bones by generations of madness. He brought the axe down again, the blade burying itself in the floorboards inches from Arthur’s thigh. 

Arthur scrambled up, his breath coming in jagged gasps. He backed away, toward the altar, toward the hole in the floor. 

“You can’t hide the truth in a cellar forever, Silas!” Arthur yelled, reaching back to grab a heavy brass candle holder from the altar. “The storm is going to break, and when the sun comes up, people are going to see what you are!”

“The sun doesn't shine on Cypress Bend the way it does elsewhere,” Silas said, wrenching the axe from the floor with a terrifying display of strength. “And you won’t be here to see the morning anyway.”

Silas lunged. This time, he was fast. The flat of the axe head caught Arthur in the chest, sending him flying backward. He hit the stone altar with a sickening crunch, the air leaving his lungs in a single, agonizing burst. He slumped to the floor, the world turning grey at the edges. 

He looked up through the haze. Silas was standing over him, the axe raised high, the stained glass behind him making him look like a dark saint carved from the night itself. 

“Goodbye, Arthur,” Silas said softly. 

Just as the axe began its downward arc, a scream pierced the air—not from Maddie, and not from the woods. 

It came from the cellar. 

A hand, grey and shriveled, reached up from the darkness of the trapdoor and grabbed Silas by the ankle. 

The preacher froze. His eyes went wide, the first flicker of genuine fear crossing his face. He looked down, and in that moment of distraction, Arthur found the strength to move. He didn't use the candle holder. He used his weight. He threw himself at Silas’s legs, tackling him with every ounce of momentum he had left. 

They both tumbled backward. 

Silas shrieked as he fell, his arms flailing, the axe flyng from his grip and clattering across the stone floor. Arthur scrambled away, his hands clawing at the wood as he tried to put distance between them. 

He watched, paralyzed, as Silas rolled toward the open trapdoor. The preacher tried to catch himself, his fingers digging into the floorboards, but the grip on his ankle didn't let go. 

“No!” Silas roared. “I served you! I kept the names!”

From the depths of the cellar, a dozen more hands appeared. They weren't solid, not quite. They looked like smoke given shape, or the memories of people who had been trapped in glass for too long. They pulled. 

Silas’s scream was cut short as his head hit the edge of the stone frame. There was a wet thud, and then he was gone, dragged down into the dark he had curated for so long. 

The trapdoor slammed shut. 

Arthur lay on the floor, his chest heaving, his vision swimming with spots. He stared at the wood, waiting for it to open again. Waiting for the hands to come for him. 

Silence returned to the chapel, heavier than before. The wind seemed to die down, the roar fading to a low, mournful hum. 

Arthur crawled toward the trapdoor. His hands were shaking so hard he could barely touch the iron ring. He reached out, his fingers brushing the wood. It was cold. Dead cold. 

He didn't open it. He couldn't. 

He stood up, using the altar to steady himself. His chest felt like it had been crushed in a vice, and every breath was a battle, but he was alive. He looked toward the side door where Maddie had vanished. 

“Maddie?” he called out, his voice a broken ghost of itself.

He expected silence. He expected to find her frozen in the snow or lost in the pines. 

Instead, she stepped out from the shadows of the vestibule. She was still wrapped in the silver blanket, her eyes fixed on the trapdoor. 

“They took him,” she said. 

“Yeah,” Arthur rasped, wiping blood from his lip. “They took him.”

He walked toward her, his legs feeling like lead. He reached out a hand, and this time, she took it. Her grip was cold, but it was real. 

“We have to go,” Arthur said. “We have to get to the car.”

“He’s not the only one,” Maddie whispered as they walked toward the shattered front doors. “The jars... there are more in the basement of the town hall. More in the old mill.”

Arthur stopped at the threshold. He looked out at the white waste of the Bend, the snow falling in thick, silent curtains that blurred the line between the earth and the sky. He thought of his name on that slip of paper. He thought of the date: tomorrow. 

He looked at the girl, then back at the dark interior of the chapel. 

“Then we have a lot of glass to break,” Arthur said.

As they stepped out into the storm, the first chime of the chapel bell rang out—a slow, heavy toll that shouldn't have been possible with the ropes frozen and no one at the pull.