Chapter 5: The Tithe is Due

Chapter 5: The Tithe is Due

The warmth of the stone was the trigger. One moment, we were three boys staring at a carving; the next, the low hum that had been a subtle vibration in our bones intensified, becoming an audible, guttural thrum that seemed to emanate from the stone itself. It was the sound of a vast and ancient stomach rumbling. The hundred mouths on the blasphemous statue didn't move, but in the moon-drenched shadows, they seemed to deepen, to hunger. The air grew thick, heavy with that cloying, metallic sweetness, and a primal, reptilian part of my brain screamed one, single, overriding command: RUN.

Panic was a flash flood. My mind went white with it, washing away the moonshine, the anger, the last ten years of simmering dread, leaving only the terror of the immediate now. I grabbed the back of Isaac’s shirt, pulling him away from the monstrous altar. He stumbled back, his eyes wide with a horrifying mix of scholarly awe and pure, animal fear. He, the lore-keeper, had finally found his monster, and it was about to eat him.

"Out! Now!" Hunter’s voice was a raw hiss. He had already spun around, his knowledge of this place—a terrible inheritance from his family—making him our only guide.

The escape was a blur of blind adrenaline. We didn't run so much as we scrambled, a frantic, clumsy retreat through the oppressive darkness. I slammed my shoulder into the edge of a wooden pew, the pain a distant flare. I could hear Isaac gasping behind me, his breath coming in short, panicked sobs. The hum followed us, a physical pressure at our backs, a predator's growl that promised it would not be long before it fed. Every shadow seemed to writhe, every stained-glass monstrosity seemed to watch us with malevolent, celestial eyes.

Hunter shoved the deacon's door open, and we spilled out into the cold night air like startled rats. We didn’t stop. We plunged into the dark woods that bordered the church grounds, branches whipping at our faces, our feet slipping on damp leaves. The only guiding light was Hunter’s broad back as he crashed through the undergrowth, leading us on a path he must have known by heart, a path away from his own home's shadow.

I risked a glance back. The church spire wasn't a finger pointing to heaven anymore. It was a black, jagged tooth against the bruised purple sky, the root of all the poison in this town.

We didn't stop until we collapsed in the relative safety of Hunter’s backyard, shielded from the street by a line of overgrown pine trees. The hum of the church was gone, replaced by the frantic pounding of my own heart in my ears and the sound of our ragged, desperate breathing. I lay on my back in the damp grass, chest heaving, staring up at the indifferent stars. We were alive. We were out.

For a moment, a wave of giddy, hysterical relief washed over me. We had done it. We had faced the god of Forsyth and survived.

"Did... did anyone see us?" I gasped, pushing myself up onto my elbows. The world tilted, a lingering gift from the moonshine.

"I don't think so," Hunter rasped, his face pale in the gloom. He was scanning the darkness, every muscle in his body coiled tight. He wasn't celebrating. He was still listening. Waiting.

That’s when the cold terror began to set in, a slow, icy trickle down my spine that was far more dreadful than the hot rush of panic. The frantic aftermath was settling, and in the quiet, an absence became a tangible thing.

I looked at Hunter. Then I looked at the empty space beside me on the grass.

"Isaac?" I called out, my voice sounding thin and weak. "You okay, man?"

The only reply was the chirping of crickets.

A cold fist closed around my heart. "Isaac!" I yelled, louder this time, scrambling to my feet.

Hunter was already moving, his head snapping toward the woods we’d just burst from. "Isaac!" he roared, his voice cracking with a new, sharper fear.

We plunged back into the edge of the woods, calling his name over and over, our voices swallowed by the indifferent dark. We were met with nothing. A profound and absolute silence. The frantic image of our escape replayed in my mind, a chaotic, jerky film. I remembered pulling him. I remembered him stumbling. I remembered his terrified gasps right behind me. He was there. He was right there.

"He... he stopped," Hunter said, his voice a choked whisper. He was staring back toward the church, his face a mask of dawning horror. "When we were running. Just before the door. I looked back. He was just... standing there. Staring at it. At the statue."

The image burned into my mind: Isaac, the boy who had dedicated his life to uncovering the truth, mesmerized by it at the final, fatal moment. His obsession, the one thing that had kept him going, had become his anchor, dragging him down into the abyss.

"No," I breathed, shaking my head. It wasn't possible. He had to have gotten lost in the woods. He had to be hiding. Any explanation was better than the one solidifying in my gut. "He has to be here. We just have to look."

As I turned to run back towards the church, my foot kicked something lying in the grass just at the edge of the tree line. It was a worn, bulging manila folder. It had burst open when it fell, its contents scattered like fallen leaves in the dark.

Yellowed newspaper clippings. Hasty, scribbled notes on the town's history. A hand-drawn map of Forsyth with red circles around the homes of the disappeared. Isaac’s entire life's work, a decade of paranoid, brilliant, desperate research, lay ruined at my feet. He had dropped it. He had made it out of the church. He had made it this far.

My blood ran cold. He didn’t get lost. He was taken.

Hunter let out a strangled cry. He pointed a trembling finger toward the deacon's door, barely visible through the trees. Something was lying on the threshold. A single, dark object.

His handheld gaming device. The screen was cracked, the plastic casing splintered, as if it had been dropped or thrown in a final, desperate struggle.

"But... it's not the equinox," I stammered, the words feeling stupid and hollow. My mind clung to the patterns, the rules Isaac had uncovered. "It's not the solstice. There's a system. A schedule."

Hunter slowly turned to look at me, and the last ten years of silent, complicit terror were naked in his eyes. He wasn't a boy anymore. He was the survivor of a war we had just started.

"We broke into their house of worship," he said, his voice flat and dead. "We looked upon the face of their god. There is no schedule for blasphemy, Howie."

He took a ragged breath, and delivered the eulogy for our childhood.

"They took him as payment. As a warning. The tithe is due."

As if on cue, a mournful wail echoed across the valley. It was the 1 AM maintenance siren, a sound we’d heard a thousand times before. But tonight, it wasn't a test. It was a funeral dirge. It was the dinner bell, ringing out across the silent, sleeping town, announcing that the feast had begun. And our friend was the main course.