I stared into Preacher Preaker’s eye sockets as the two empty caverns seemed to look back at me.
Though one of the sockets was healed over and smooth, like the removal of the eye had happened long ago, the same couldn’t be said for the other. It was freshly scabbed, a deep reddish violet, tinged angry and inflamed around its edges.
“What’s… happening to us, then?” I asked, my voice trembling with trepidation.
The old man sighed, and began strolling back up the church aisle, moving with surprising confidence for someone with no sight.
Though we had limited interaction before all of this had started, something stood out to me about the Preacher. Or rather, about this Preacher. Despite the gruesome wound on his face, he seemed—somehow—less threatening than he had before he forced me into the confessional. Maybe it was something about the way he walked, or the way he held his shoulders, hunched in a tired, sheltering sort of way. Whatever it was, it wasn’t reassuring enough to put me at ease.
“We’ve both gone on a journey, Samuel,” Preacher Preaker said solemnly. He made his way up the steps of the pulpit, and stood behind the podium. “I’d like to tell you all about it, but I’m afraid I have some business to attend to first.”
I furrowed my brow, thoroughly confused, a feeling that only intensified when Preacher Preaker brandished his hands towards the pews before him. “Have a seat. The sermon is about to begin.”
“Uh—”
“Have a seat.”
He said it with such force that I had no choice but to do as I was told. I took a seat towards the front, my hands sweaty and clamped onto my knees. Silence hung in the air for a moment.
And then, the doors in the back of the hall opened, and the congregation poured in.
Only, it wasn’t the same plain-dressed crowd of men, women, and children, as it had been before.
This congregation was… well, it was impossible for me to say what they were.
At first, they had seemed ordinarily, entering silently with heads bowed, in dresses and cheap suits, just as the others had been. There were a great number of them, far more than they had been in the previous service I had seen. I stared at my feet, trying not to attract attention to myself, watching the crowd file in out of the corners of my eyes.
A woman sat directly next to me. I could tell because the hem of her dress brushed against my leg, making me jump in surprise. She must have seen, because I heard her give a slight, girlish giggle. Not wanting to seem rude, I looked up at her with an embarrassed grimace.
And then, my lungs stopped working.
There, curtained by long brown hair, was nothing.
No eyes. No Nose. No mouth. I couldn’t even see ears.
Her skin was completely smooth, as though pulled tight against her skull.
I slowly turned my head and glanced at the rest of the congregation. Just as I feared, there they were: an army of faceless church goers, patiently waiting for their sermon to start. There was no sound of breathing, no murmurs of greetings exchanged. I briefly wondered where the woman’s giggle had come from.
Trying to fight back the mounting panic that was rising within me, my eyes shot from the double doors at the far end of the church, which had just closed behind the last few terrifying guests. Then, my gaze traveled back up to the Preacher behind the podium. I didn’t know why I looked to him for guidance, but I did. And despite missing his eyes, he must have known, because he answered.
One, small, slow, shake of his head.
I sats back in the pew, trying to slow my rapid breathing. I resisted the urge to ignore the Preacher’s warning, to get up and flee the room, running as far as I could. I even let myself consider slipping back into the confessional, though I had no idea if doing so would take me back home, or put me somewhere far worse.
Before I could consider any of these options, Preacher Preaker began his sermon.
“Good morning, brothers and sisters,” he said, in a voice so calm and pleasant that I wondered if he knew what I did—that his congregation was not quite human. “How are we feeling on this wonderful Sunday?”
His question hung, limp and unanswered in the air, as the crowd offered no response.
“I’m so glad to hear it,” he said to the silence. He cleared his throat. “We’ve got quite a discussion planned for this morning,” he said amiably. “Turn your books to page 117, and we can get started.”
The faceless congregation moved in unison, leaning forward and pulling little red books from the wooden holdings in the pew backs in front of them. There was one for everyone—I even saw little toddlers holding them clumsily, their faces smooth and featureless. Again, not wanting to draw attention to myself, I did the same.
The moment that my fingers touched the books surface, I realized something: I knew this book. I didn’t know it from the other church, or from any bookstore.
I knew it because it was mine.
My little red notebook, the same that I use to write my stories in for Habitsville Gazette—this was it. The same one that I had seen floating at the top of Lake Lura, not that long ago. I had been sure the book from the Lake had my handwriting inside, so surely, these were not more copies of my journalistic notes.
I grabbed it, and flipped open the familiar cover. In a strange mixture of relief and dismay, I saw that it wasn’t my notebook. In fact, it had nothing on the first few pages at all. I flipped from one to another, but it was as blank as the faces as those seated around me.
Until, I got to page 117.
There, in the center of one page, was something familiar, though it wasn’t anything from my little red notebook. It was a phrase, one I had heard for the first time only earlier that same day, though it felt like an entire world away, an entire lifetime ago:
What Have You Done For My God Today?
“What have you done for My God today,” Preacher Preaker said, echoing the only words in the little red book. “It’s a question we ask each day, and it’s an important one—What have you done for My God today?” he repeated. A few of the faceless heads nodded.
“If you come up short, if you don’t pull your weight, why should you be blessed with the good faith of My God?” he asked, and more of the congregation nodded more vigorously. “We have all sacrificed,” he said, and a few clapped. “We have all given away parts of ourselves to appease My God,” he continued. “And that appeasement is not something others should be able to reap the benefit of, without first giving away part of themselves.”
There was a lot of clapping at this, though there were no vocal calls of agreement, so once the claps stopped, the church fell back into its same strange stillness.
Then, Preacher Preaker did something I hadn’t expected. “As you all have noticed, we have a newcomer here today,” he said, and as he did, an entire hall full of faceless heads turned towards me. If I had been filled with anxiety the first time this sort of thing happened, back at the previous sermon, then this time my veins were coursing with absolute horror.
“Sam.”
I looked up at the two gaping holes, one healed, one bloodied.
“Could you come up here, son?”
I waited. This couldn’t be happening, not again. My eyes traveled back to the confessional. Was that the Preacher’s plan? Shove me back into the box and hope that I travel back to where I came from?
Then, the faceless woman seated next to me gave my arm a reassuring squeeze, and I stood straight up.
With weak-kneed legs, I made my way to the front of the room. I stood next to the Preacher, who laid a hand on my shoulder gently. The view from my seat had seemed harrowing, but it was nothing compared to this. An entire audience, hands folded patiently in laps, faces completely and utterly blank.
“Sam,” Preacher Preaker said, smiling calmly. “What have you done for My God today?”
I struggled for words. My eyes traveled back behind the Preacher, to that painting of the shepherd brandishing the bloodied sheep’s head to the rest of the flock. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t give me any ideas.
“I—I’m sorry. I don’t know how to answer.”
There was a pause. Then, the skin around the Preacher’s eye sockets crinkled, and he smiled. “That’s quite alright Sam.” He turned towards the rest of the congregation, his hand still on my shoulder. “It can be difficult to know if you have given enough,” he said loudly. “But that is the wonderful thing about My God, is it not? If you have given My God a gift, My God will give you proof of it. If you sacrifice part of yourself to My God, My God will not let it be forgotten.”
He turned back to me.
“We will help Samuel give his first sacrifice.”
His fingers clamped hard down onto the shoulder it had been laying on, and pulled me closer to him. I was surprised, and was unable to stop the sudden movement. He raised his other hand, holding it aloft over my head.
I looked up at the flat of his palm, positioned ominously above me, and pulled against the hand that had ahold of me. The Preacher had a surprising amount of strength for such an old man, and before I could wriggle out of his clutches, the hand came down, rapidly, towards the right side of my face.
There was a moment when I expected pain, and found that wasn’t the sensation I felt at all.
Instead, there was a moment, when the Preacher’s hand swept over the right side of my head, where everything went dark, and I felt something I never had before. It sounds cliché, I know, to say there was a presence. That I felt some higher power in attendance during that moment. There was no golden light, no sound of angels singing. I didn’t see footprints in the sand, neither one set nor two.
Instead, for a moment, I saw them. Hidden amongst a shroud of darkness, like depths of the confessional, there they were: hundreds upon thousands of bright eyes, all colors, their gaze directly at me. Breath whistled through an unimaginable number of nostrils, and hot breath came from mouths on all sides, following the same cadence as though they all came from one being. The noise was pressured and terrible, like the sound of my heartbeat had been in the oblivion of that wooden box. I held eye contact with the creature for only a matter of seconds.
And then, it was gone.
I opened my eyes, and there was Preacher Preaker. His hand had made its way back to his side, and he smiled at me. It was a tight, grim smile.
A ringing silence filled the air.
And then, one by one, each of the faceless members of the congregation began to clap.
It grew into raucous applause, and as it did, I noticed something strange. The noise in the room sounded different than before, in a way I found difficult to put a finger on.
And then, instinctively, I raised a hand to my face.
There, on the side of my head, where my right ear had once been, was only the smooth surface of perfectly blank skin.
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Credits
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