Chapter 4: The Unholy Communion

The forbidden book felt warm against Elias's chest, as if something living pulsed within its ancient pages. Around him, the cottage had become a pressure cooker of tension—Constable Morrison's pistol gleaming in the lamplight, Doctor Henley's horrified whispers to the townspeople crowding behind him, and through it all, Samantha's ethereal humming that seemed to make the very air vibrate with unnatural harmonies.

"Put the book down, son," Morrison said carefully, his weapon trained not quite on Elias but close enough to make the threat clear. "Whatever's in there, it's not worth protecting with blood."

But Elias barely heard him. The tome in his hands was speaking to him now, not in words but in impulses that bypassed his rational mind entirely. Images flashed behind his eyes—visions of gardens that defied earthly botany, of roses that bloomed in colors that had no names, of rituals performed by generations of Shearers stretching back into antiquity.

Same blood, same visions.

His father's words echoed in his mind with new meaning. This wasn't madness that ran in their family—it was inheritance. A biological key that unlocked doors better left sealed.

"The family Bible was a lie," Elias said quietly, his voice carrying a strange new certainty that surprised even him. "Wasn't it, Father? All those years of prayer, of study, of trying to understand God's purpose through scripture written by men who never glimpsed the true nature of existence."

Gideon's eyes met his son's across the crowded room, and in that gaze, Elias saw confirmation of his darkest suspicions. "I tried to protect you," his father whispered. "Tried to give you something clean to believe in. But the Rose... it calls to our blood. It always has."

"What rose?" Doctor Henley demanded, pushing past Morrison despite the constable's restraining hand. "Gideon, you're clearly delirious from blood loss. Let me examine that wound."

Samantha laughed—that silver-bell sound that made everyone in the room flinch. "Poor Doctor Henley. You spent so many years tending to our bodies, but you never understood what lived inside them. The Rose has such plans for you."

The book's warmth was spreading up Elias's arms now, flooding his body with sensations that were both alien and achingly familiar. It was like remembering a dream upon waking, except this dream had been dreamed by his ancestors for countless generations.

"There's something in here," he said, running his fingers along the tome's organic binding. "Something that will show us the truth. The real truth, not the comfortable lies we've been telling ourselves."

"Elias, no." Gideon tried to rise from his chair but collapsed back with a groan, more blood seeping through his fingers. "The rose water... it's not meant for the uninitiated. Not without proper preparation."

Rose water. The phrase ignited something in Elias's memory—fragments of overheard conversations between his parents, whispered references to family traditions that stopped abruptly whenever he entered the room. He had always assumed they were discussing his mother's garden, her love of cultivating the hardy blooms that could survive their harsh coastal climate.

Now he understood they had been speaking of something else entirely.

"Where is it?" he asked, his voice taking on an authority that seemed to come from somewhere outside himself. "Where do you keep the rose water?"

"Don't," Gideon pleaded. "Please, boy. You don't understand what you're asking for."

But Elias was already moving, the forbidden book clutched against his chest like a shield against doubt. His feet carried him toward the kitchen with the certainty of inherited memory, past the concerned shouts of the townspeople and into the smaller room where his family had shared so many ordinary meals.

Behind the cabinet that held his mother's good china, his hands found what they were seeking—a small glass vial filled with liquid that seemed to shift and swirl with its own internal light. The substance within wasn't quite water, wasn't quite wine, but something that existed in the spaces between familiar categories.

"The communion cup," he murmured, understanding flooding through him with terrible clarity. "This is how we receive the visions. This is how we see."

He returned to the main room to find chaos erupting. Constable Morrison was shouting orders, trying to maintain control of a situation that had spiraled far beyond his experience. Doctor Henley was demanding access to Gideon's wounds. The townspeople pressed closer, their faces twisted with the morbid fascination of those witnessing something unprecedented and terrible.

And in the center of it all sat Samantha, her dark eyes now reflecting depths that seemed to stretch into cosmic infinity.

"He's going to drink it," she said with delighted certainty. "Elias is finally going to taste the Rose's gift. Oh, how wonderful. How perfectly, beautifully necessary."

"No," Gideon gasped, attempting once more to rise. "The visions will destroy him. He's not prepared. He doesn't understand what he'll see."

But Elias was beyond caring about preparation or understanding. His entire life had been built on foundations of sand—false scripture, manufactured faith, comfortable delusions about the nature of his family and their place in the cosmic order. If he was going to face the truth, he would face it completely.

He held the vial up to the lamplight, watching the strange liquid dance within its crystal confines. "How much?" he asked, his voice unnaturally calm.

"A single drop," Samantha replied before their father could object. "Just one precious drop on the tongue, and the garden opens like a flower in springtime."

Constable Morrison raised his pistol higher. "I don't know what you people are involved in, but this ends now. Put that... whatever it is... down immediately."

Elias looked at the lawman with something approaching pity. How small their concerns seemed now—questions of legality and social order when the universe itself was so much vaster and stranger than any human institution could comprehend.

"You want to understand what happened to the McGoverns?" he asked, his thumb working at the vial's cork stopper. "You want to know why my sister speaks of roses and gardens and hungers beyond naming? Then you'll have your answers."

The cork came free with a soft pop that seemed to echo through the cottage like a gunshot. The scent that emerged was indescribable—sweet and organic and utterly alien, like flowers blooming in soil made from crushed stars.

"Please," Doctor Henley said, his professional composure finally cracking. "Whatever that substance is, it could be poisonous. Let me examine it first."

But Elias was already tilting the vial toward his lips. A single drop of the rose water fell onto his tongue, and the world exploded into impossible colors.

His knees buckled as visions crashed over him like ocean waves—images of realities that existed parallel to their own, dimensions where geometry followed different rules and time moved in spirals rather than straight lines. He saw the truth of what the Shearer family had always served, the entity that had chosen their bloodline as its earthly servants across centuries of careful cultivation.

"Samantha," he gasped, understanding flooding through him. "Father. You need to... we need to share this. We need to see it together."

His sister was already beside him, her movements fluid and predatory. "Yes," she breathed, her eyes alight with anticipation. "The communion. The true communion, not the pale imitation they practice in their little church."

Gideon was shaking his head weakly, blood now flowing freely from his mouth. "The visions will kill you both. Your minds aren't prepared for what you'll see."

"Then we'll die enlightened," Elias replied, offering the vial to his sister. "Better to face the truth and be destroyed by it than to live forever in ignorance."

Samantha accepted the rose water with reverent hands, tilting it to her lips without hesitation. Her eyes rolled back as the substance took effect, her body going rigid with the force of whatever revelation was unfolding behind her closed eyelids.

The townspeople were backing toward the broken door now, their faces pale with the recognition that they were witnessing something far beyond their comprehension. Even Constable Morrison seemed frozen, his weapon forgotten as he watched the impossible scene unfold.

"Your turn, Father," Elias said, extending the vial toward Gideon with hands that no longer trembled. "It's time to stop protecting us from our inheritance. Time to see what we really are."

Gideon looked at his son with eyes full of three decades of carefully hoarded guilt and love and terror. "You don't understand," he whispered. "Once you see the garden... once you witness the Rose in all its terrible glory... there's no going back. No returning to the comfortable lies."

"Good," Elias replied, his voice carrying the certainty of the truly converted. "I'm tired of lies. We all are."

His father accepted the vial with shaking hands, his weathered face resigned to whatever fate awaited them all. As he lifted it to his lips, Elias felt a profound sense of completion—as if his family was finally stepping into their true purpose after generations of denial and concealment.

The last thing he saw before the visions claimed him completely was the look of absolute horror on Constable Morrison's face as three members of the Shearer family convulsed in perfect synchronization, their minds opening to truths that no human consciousness was meant to contain.

The rose water burned through their veins like liquid starlight, and somewhere in the vast reaches of space and time, something ancient and hungry began to bloom.