Silence

Darkness does not leave us easily as we would hope.

~Margaret Stohl

_____________

The altar's stone was like ice against his bare skin. 

All around him, voices were chanting, low and rhythmic, slipping out of sync with one another. Some too close. Some impossibly far away. 

"Jacob." The doctor's voice cut through them all. "Open your eyes."  

He opened them. He knew the consequences for refusing an instruction. 

The room was dark, candles ringing the chamber, casting flickering shadows over the figures gathered around him. Color was starting to bleed out of the room, making the red walls look pale, and the air began to fill with a deathly cold. 

It chilled him to the bone, as it always did. 

Let me go. A child's cry, repeated and desperate. The cold got heavier and more oppressive, as if it were a living presence, feeding on his fear and pain. I don't want to do this. 

"You belong here." The doctor's voice again. "You are one of our children, now." 

He couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Hands were on his skin. Hands that hurt. 

Then the figures moved back, retreating deeper into the chamber, and he turned his head. A man had stepped out of the semi-darkness, approaching the altar to stand over him. He had pale skin that seemed to glow with a cherubic radiance. 

The man reached down to touch his cheek, and his whole body went still, paralyzed by cold and fear and something else. The man's eyes burned brighter than the candles. 

You are destined for great things, my child. 

The voice came from a human mouth. But it had a deep, otherworldly echo. 

I have plans for you, Jacob. 

Jacob woke suddenly, breath tearing out of his chest. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was, only that he was in a place with white light and that the red room was gone now. But the cold had followed him here.

He looked around, awareness of his surroundings coming more quickly. He wasn't in the woods anymore. He was in a hospital room with beige-toned walls and a white tiled ceiling. The air was sterile, smelling faintly of antiseptic, and he didn't like it. Something about it reminded him of the sanitarium. 

There was a man sitting in a chair by the window, staring at him as if he'd been waiting for him to wake up. He looked young, not more than thirty, with pale blond hair and blue eyes. He didn't know the man's name, but he recognized him as one of Erika's deputies.

"Glad to see you back in the land of the living, Detective Cavanaugh." The man got to his feet and approached the bed. Behind him, the curtains were half-closed, letting in a dull, grey morning light that flattened everything it touched. "I'm Deputy Connors. Erika sent me to check on you." 

"What...what happened?" Jacob swallowed. His head still ached. 

"That's what I was hoping to ask you." Connors replied. "Seems like you took a nasty fall in the woods. You were out cold when we found you." 

He was quiet for a moment. If Erika were the one asking, he wouldn't have hesitated. But in anyone else's eyes his answer would make him seem like a lunatic. 

"I don't know. Everything's kind of hazy." He lied, gaze drifting to the IV line taped into the crook of his elbow. Clear fluid dripped steadily down the tube. "Where's Erika?" 

"At Hollander's rehab clinic." Connors said, eyes shifting. It was brief, but he noticed. "That girl you found...she's gone missing again."

The words settled like glass in his stomach.

"Mara?" Jacob sat up, ignoring the protest in his skull. Fear was starting to rise in his mind, drowning his thoughts. They could have taken her out of town by now. They could have killed her. "What do you mean, missing? What happened?" 

"Her room was empty when the staff checked this morning.” Connors replied. “No signs of forced entry or any kind of a struggle. They're thinking she may have run away." 

Jacob scoffed, shaking his head. "We need to search the woods, right now." He could have been there, he thought, a bitter taste of guilt in his mouth. He could have protected her. "They might have taken her back there-

"I'm sorry, Detective, but the doc says you need rest." Connors interjected, shifting his weight and glancing at the doors. Something about the movement struck him as odd. Like he was waiting for someone. "Sherriff Mayfield's going to be heading out there in a couple hours. She needs to go through the rest of the clinic first, make sure there's nothing that gets missed." 

"Mara could be dead by then." He snapped, a cold shiver sliding down his spine. That didn't sound like Erika. She wouldn't have waited to search the forest, not after what he'd told her, not when a girl's life or freedom was at stake. She would have had someone else on it. 

"We're going to find her before anything happens." Connors' voice was placating, calm. "Sherriff Mayfield's going to head out there as soon as she can." 

He didn't respond, his eyes drifting, instinctively searching the room for his coat. He didn't see it anywhere. 

  

“Where’s my jacket?” He asked, trying to keep his voice steady. Something was wrong.  

Connors frowned. His eyes flicked, just for a second, to the door again. “The doc's holding onto your personal effects until discharge.” 

"Why?" He demanded, the pit of unease growing in his stomach. They have eyes everywhere, the server's voice echoed in the back of his mind. Especially in the police department.

Connors did not answer, watching him calmly, and Jacob's mouth went dry. The room seemed to tilt slightly, the edges of things softening.

“What did they give me?” He looked at the IV line again, blinking hard. Was it dripping faster? He couldn't tell. Suddenly it was hard to focus. 

“Pain meds. Fluids.” Connors replied quickly. Too quickly. “You were dehydrated.”

“I...I want to talk to Erika." Jacob demanded, his heart pounding, the blurriness in his vision deepening. “Give me my phone. Now." 

“You need rest, Detective." Connors' voice was oily smooth. He moved back as the door opened behind him and a nurse entered the room, approaching the bed and reaching for his IV stand. 

“Good, you're awake.” She was smiling pleasantly, but for a moment he thought he saw something dark and familiar behind her eyes. Then it was gone, her features getting murky. “We’re going to adjust your meds just a bit, okay?”

“No.” He gasped, trying to move away from her. “Don't-

She pressed something into the line. Warmth flooded his arm, heavy and invasive, and his whole body went slack. The room began to grow dim, colors bleeding together into pale smears.

“How long will it take?” Connors' voice sounded like it was coming from a long way away now. He caught a hazy glimpse of the deputy looking down at him, his face blank. 

“Not long.” The nurse replied coolly. 

Jacob fought to stay awake, but his eyelids were getting heavier and heavier. The light waned-

And the dark, patient and waiting, took him. 

_____________

He woke to the feeling of cold, hard stone. 

He tried to push himself upright, but his muscles felt sluggish, wrong. The chamber around him came into focus slowly, resolving into something vast and ornate. 

A chapel. Or a dark imitation of one.

It looked like it had been built into a deep cavern, the stone walls rising up to a high, domed ceiling carved out of the jagged rocks above. Stained glass windows lined the far end of the chapel, reflecting no light from the candles on either side of the room. They depicted grotesque creatures; mishappen bodies with grey and black skin, things with limbs  things without faces and things with more than one. 

Looking at them hurt. 

Beneath the windows, an altar stood, made of copper and iron. A girl was lying on top of it, naked and pale, four men holding each of her limbs tightly against the sides of the altar. Mara. The realization made his stomach turn. She looked more lucid than she had in the clinic, but exhausted and weighed down, her face heavy with a terrified, hopeless resignation. 

"He's awake." A deep voice echoed through the chapel, pulling his attention towards the sound. Rows of pews stood in front of the dais, all of them occupied by people in crisp, clean clothes. They looked like ordinary men and women; they did not hide their faces or wear anything that would draw an observer's notice. Somehow that was more terrifying than the opposite. 

"Good." Another voice came, one that made his blood run cold. A woman was approaching the dais, walking down the center aisle between the pews. Her hair was grey. Her face spotted with wrinkles. But the glacial eyes remained the same. "Now we can begin." 

He finally rose to his feet, his entire body filled with a creeping, thick dread. The sharp memories of the sanitarium were rushing back, betraying him and making him feel like a child again, afraid and helpless. 

But he wasn't that child. Not anymore. She had made sure of that. 

"It has been a long time, Jacob." The woman smiled, faint and flickering, and it made his skin crawl. "You've grown so much." 

"Not long enough." Hatred thickened his voice, masking the fear, the shiver up his spine. "Let the girl go." He tried to move towards her, but hands seized his arms from behind, stopping him cold. 

"We need her." She said, with a quiet, eerie serenity. The whole chapel had fallen silent. Watching. Waiting. "Just like we need you." 

"You can't keep us here for long." He said, but there was a hollowness inside of him, an uneasy doubt. "Sherriff Mayfield's already looking for us. She'll find us here soon."  

"I have no doubt." The woman replied, unworried. "But not before you have fulfilled your blessed purpose." 

"Whatever you want, you're not going to get it from me." His voice was icy sharp.

"They will make it so." She looked up, briefly, at the stained glass windows. Her voice was reverent. "We have spent many years preparing both of you for this moment, when your union will at last be consummated."  

It took a moment for the implication of her words to fully sink in, but once it settled, the realization was followed by a wave of cold horror and disgust. "She's still a kid." He spat, fighting against the hands that held him, but they held him fast. "There's nothing you can do to me that'll make me do that." 

"They will guide you." Again the faint, cryptic smile, and fear coiled in his gut. "They always guide our children." 

"We're not yours." The words felt like they were torn from his chest. From an old, deep wound. 

"You've always been ours." The certainty in her voice chilled him, in spite of himself. "You were ours long before you were born." She stepped back as men began to rise from the pews, forming a semicircle around the dais. 

Then they began to chant, low and rhythmic. Words he didn’t know yet understood on some deeper, more terrible level.

The candles flickered. The air shifted. But this time the room did not change. A weight began to press down upon him, the heaviness of that familiar, alien presence. A cold that seeped into his skin, invading his thoughts and memories, getting sharper and sharper until he couldn't move or breathe. 

The voices rose. Mara screamed.

Then the noise faded. His vision darkened. He felt like he was falling farther and farther away from himself, sinking down into a terrible place beyond the cold, beyond the darkness. A vast, deep nothingness. 

It swallowed him whole.