Chapter 11: Return to the Altar

Chapter 11: Return to the Altar

The great oak doors of St. Jude’s groaned open under Leo’s desperate shove, the sound of rotting wood tearing in the unnatural silence. The air that washed over them from inside was not the hallowed, incense-scented air of a sanctuary. It was a cold, subterranean breath, thick with the smell of wet soil, churning mud, and something ancient and deeply wrong, like a grave disturbed after centuries.

They stepped across the threshold, and the chaotic sounds of the dissolving city—the backward-speaking voices, the upward-falling rain—were instantly cut off, replaced by a profound, listening silence. The silence of the deep.

The cathedral’s cavernous interior was draped in shadow, the magnificent stained-glass windows admitting only a dim, bruised light that seemed to be absorbed by the oppressive gloom. The long rows of oaken pews stretched before them like skeletal ribs, leading toward the distant, shrouded altar. They were not empty.

Seated in the pews were figures. Dozens of them. They sat perfectly still, facing forward, their heads bowed as if in prayer. At first glance, they looked like parishioners who had refused to leave. But as Leo’s eyes adjusted, he saw the truth. Their forms were indistinct, their edges soft and blurred, like watercolor paintings left out in the rain. Water dripped from their shoulders and fingertips, pooling in dark, spreading stains on the stone floor. They were Collectors, an entire congregation of them, waiting.

“They’re not solid,” Elara whispered, her voice tight with a fear that was both new and ancient. “They’re… echoes. Memories given form by the water.”

The destination was clear: the main altar, a pale shape of carved marble at the far end of the nave. It was a hundred-yard journey through a graveyard of silent, dripping ghosts. Every instinct screamed at Leo to turn and flee back into the chaos of the inverted world, but he knew there was no escape there either. The only way out was through.

They took their first tentative step onto the central aisle, the sound of their footsteps unnervingly loud in the dead air. None of the figures in the pews moved. Their heads remained bowed. But Leo could feel their collective, unblinking attention on him, a pressure against his skin, cold and immense. The Drowned Mark on his soul was a beacon, and in this place, it was screaming.

They were halfway down the aisle when one of the figures stirred.

It rose from a pew on their left, its movement not human. It was a tall, lanky shape that had once been a man in farmer’s overalls, his form now a shimmering, watery effigy. It was Thomas Miller, the first victim from the coroner’s report. The Collector straightened up, but its spine continued to bend, its head moving backward, downward, until it was staring at them from between its own legs in a horrifying, impossible arc. It took a step into the aisle, its watery feet making a soft, squelching sound, its body moving in that same, spine-shattering contortion that had destroyed Father Renwick.

“Don’t let it touch you,” Elara hissed, pulling a small, iron charm from her pocket. “The memory… the way they died… it’s contagious.”

The Thomas Miller-thing lunged, its long, fluid arms stretching unnaturally. Leo and Elara scrambled back, dodging to the right. As they did, another figure rose from the pews. This one was small, childlike, in what looked like a sodden Victorian dress. Elspeth Blackwood. Elara froze for a split second, a look of profound horror and grief on her face as she saw the echo of her long-dead ancestor.

The child-Collector did not move with the slow, deliberate wrongness of the first. It darted forward with the terrifying, jerky speed of a thing seen in a strobe light. It opened its mouth, and from it came a sound that Leo knew intimately—that low, wet, gurgling rattle, the laugh-sob of a man drowning in his own lungs. It was the sound that had haunted him from the priest’s dying moments, from the motel room’s shattered mirrors. Here was its source.

“Run!” Leo yelled, his voice raw. He grabbed Elara’s arm, snapping her out of her horrified trance, and pulled her forward.

The cathedral erupted into a silent, swirling nightmare of motion. The figures poured out of the pews, a tide of dripping, misshapen horrors. They were all there—the traveler from 1870, his body bloated and distended; the pair of siblings from 1875, their watery forms fused together at the shoulder. Each was a grotesque monument to a forgotten death, a walking echo of a past atrocity. They didn’t run; they flowed, they glided, they seeped across the stone floor, their single-minded goal to converge on the man with the Mark.

They were herding them, channeling them down the main aisle, a gauntlet of grasping, watery limbs and silent, screaming faces that emerged and submerged within their fluid bodies. A hand, thin and gray, brushed against Leo’s jacket, and an invasive, bone-deep cold shot up his arm, a cold that felt like the bottom of a deep, dark lake. He cried out and tore himself away, stumbling forward.

The altar was so close now, a beacon of hope in the swirling darkness. But the space before it was guarded. Standing there, as serene and immaculate as she had been on the train and in the street, was the first Collector. Her floral dress was dry, her smile was perfect. She was the shepherd for this flock of horrors. She held no weapon, but her stillness was more menacing than any threat. She was the gatekeeper.

“The Patron is so pleased,” she said, her voice echoing in the vast chamber without raising in volume. “You have brought the Mark home.”

Behind them, the gurgling child-thing and the backward-bending farmer were closing in. In front of them, the primary Collector stood, an impassable wall of calm malice. They were trapped.

“The ritual,” Elara gasped, her eyes wild as she fumbled in her satchel. “We don’t have time!”

Leo’s mind raced, fueled by thirst and terror. The Collectors were made of water. They were tied to it. But she—the first one—she seemed different. More solid. More real. But she still dripped. He remembered the single drop of water falling from his keys in her hand. She was still a part of it.

His gaze fell on a row of thick, unlit votive candles on a heavy, wrought-iron stand nearby. An idea, born of pure, animal desperation, sparked in his mind. It was insane. It was hopeless. It was all he had.

“When I move, run for the altar!” he shouted at Elara.

Before she could protest, he lunged not for the altar, but for the candle stand. It was heavier than he expected, but his adrenaline-fueled strength was a raging fire. With a guttural roar, he heaved the entire stand, dozens of unlit wax candles scattering across the floor, and swung it like a battering ram.

He didn't aim for the Collector herself. He aimed for the floor in front of her.

The heavy iron stand crashed against the ancient stone flags, the impact ringing out like a cracked bell. The Collector, her smile never wavering, took a graceful, gliding step back. But Leo wasn’t trying to hit her. He was trying to break the floor.

A network of cracks spiderwebbed out from the point of impact. For a heart-stopping second, nothing happened. Then, with a deep groan of tortured stone, a section of the floor gave way. It didn't collapse into a pit, but a great, dark crack opened up, and from it gushed a torrent of black, foul-smelling water. It was the Well. Its influence was so strong here, so close to the surface, that it was seeping through the very foundations.

The effect on the Collectors was instantaneous and catastrophic. As the profane water pooled around them, the lesser echoes—the farmer, the child, the traveler—began to lose their cohesion. Their forms wavered violently, their features dissolving as they were drawn back toward the raw, elemental power of their source. They weren't individuals anymore; they were just water, being called home.

The primary Collector also faltered. For the first time, her perfect smile flickered. Her solid form shimmered, and for a terrifying instant, Leo saw her as she truly was: a swirling vortex of dark water, barely contained within a fragile human shell.

“Now, Elara! Go!”

The path was clear. Elara bolted, sprinting the last few feet to the altar, clutching the satchel to her chest. Leo scrambled after her, his feet splashing in the spreading, unholy water.

They reached the altar, a small island of solid marble in a rising tide of darkness. It was only then that they saw its condition. The great stone slab was shattered, a massive fissure running through its center, as if it had been broken from below. And in that fissure, they could see it. Not a well of stone and mortar, but a hole. A perfect, circular abyss in the church’s foundation. It wasn’t a hole into the earth. It was a hole into a world of absolute blackness and freezing, silent water. The Well.

From its depths, a low, resonant thrumming began, a vibration that pulsed up through the stone, through the soles of their feet, and into their very bones. The scattered, dissolving Collectors stilled, their watery forms turning toward the abyss. The waiting was over.

Something was rising.