The Communion

Photo by Joshua Kettle on Unsplash

Magdalena, my little sister, faded away when I was 13 years old. My mum, a widow of five years at the time, found her vacant bedroom in the early hours of June 22nd, 1999. Since then, no one ever laid eyes on her.

Our maid, Mrs Berkeley, told the detectives that she saw Magdalena sleep soundly just hours before she disappeared. Not a single soul understood what was going on.

My mum, already thin and frail from an ongoing episode of depression, failed to recover and eventually succumbed to her own mind two weeks after this incident.

I knew what the word death meant, I had heard it before, but it wasn’t until my mum passed away that I had to face what it really entailed. 

Loneliness, despair, and fright. 

The police ruled out foul play after their first investigation, citing that there were no forced entrances, stains of blood, or signs of struggle anywhere in our modest, single-storey house down a twisting lane in the countryside.

With my mum’s passing, the missing person’s case was bound to close and become cold, and my little sister forever forgotten. 

I was sent to an orphanage soon after and that’s where I remained until I no longer could. I heard the caretakers talk amongst themselves upon first entering my new, dingy home that all my relatives knew of my existence but no one wanted me.

I couldn’t wrap my head around why for many years, but it all made sense later on. 

With no education or skill, I left the orphanage at eighteen years old. One of the caretakers, Mrs Johnson, offered me a job at her husband’s workplace.

She was a kind soul; while the others merely saw us, the orphans, as an exhausting chore, she took care of us like no other and saw us as her own children.

As I spent more time with the Johnsons, I learnt that the pair had no children of their own and had spent many tiring years – financially and mentally – trying to conceive a child by natural means.

When their endeavours were fruitless, they accepted their fate and decided to make life easier for children like me.

I couldn’t recall a happier time in my life than those spent with the Johnsons. We became a close-knit family. The Johnsons were like parents to me and they saw me as their biological son. 

When they bit the dust from old age, two days apart from each other, I knew the feelings of despair and loneliness would come back to haunt me.

I sold the property and the blacksmith shop and embarked on a lone journey one wintry morning on the 24th of October 2013. 

Death seemed to follow me wherever I trekked. Like the Grim Reaper, whoever I touched faded away and abandoned me as if I were a stray dog.

Yet there was only one instance where death did not pervade my life and turned it upside down. Magdalena’s disappearance.

It was difficult to translate my bereaved thoughts on paper, but I knew she wasn’t dead. In fact, I thought I knew what transpired that fateful night in 1999. 

Although I was thirteen at the time, I had a habit of wetting my bed. This was a cause of concern and distress for my mum and she would beat me up whenever she got wind of this, so I did my best to make sure she wouldn’t know.

As I was taking the soaked sheets to the laundry basket downstairs in the basement, I heard footfalls coming through from the drafty hallway and peered out from the ajar basement door.

That’s when I saw Mrs Berkeley talking with someone obscured from view in a hushed and alert tone. The other person did not speak a single word.

I snuck out as soon as Mrs Berkeley and the other person disappeared and sprinted to my bedroom down the hallway. Turning the rusty doorknob, I suddenly felt compelled to look at my sister’s bedroom door and noticed that it was slightly ajar.

Then I heard it. A muffled, barely audible scream. It sounded like someone being smothered repeatedly. I let go of the doorknob and was about to take a peek inside her room when another set of booming footsteps caught me short.

A dark silhouette was the only thing I saw before I locked myself into my bedroom and was all ears.

When the footsteps gradually ceased, I raced to the floor-length window and stared out into the gloaming. Someone forced Magdalena into a black van and then hit the darkness-shrouded lane.

I tried to tell my mum about this, but she wouldn’t listen. The loss of Magdalena, coupled with her own demons, was too much for her.

I couldn’t understand why someone would kidnap my sister, because we were neither affluent nor had any enemies, but I knew that Mrs Berkeley had something to do with it.

And with these thoughts in my bleak and despairing mind, I decided to track down her and find out the truth once and for all.

My leads led me to a desolate hamlet in the middle of nowhere and far away from civilisation. The nearest town was several miles in the southeast.

Our former maid lived in a ramshackle house. It was located beside a parish church with a black, towering steeple that cast its eerie shadow over the entire place.

As I passed by the foreboding church, I thought I saw someone watching me through one of the arched windows. Whoever – or whatever it was – it vanished as soon as I took notice of it.

I scanned the note with the address again, hoping to find an error and get out of this god-forsaken place, but there was no mistake. I was at the right address.

Trudging with heavy and careful steps, I soon realised that I wasn’t being watched by one entity only – the entire hamlet seemed to follow me with their hollow, detached eyes. Yet, for some odd reason, no one dared to confront me.

I peeked over my shoulder as a distant din reached my ears. The whistling wind picked up and swept through the vicinity with unprecedented force, as if it wanted to destroy everything in its path.

I broke off and let my darting eyes wander from side to side until they once again landed on the parish church. This time, the figure, the figures inside and beyond the windows, did not vanish into thin air.

Startled, I turned around completely and stumbled backwards until I bumped into something. For the briefest of moments, I almost lost my cool and fled. 

“What’s a kid doin’ here?”

It was an elderly man in his mid-seventies with a shaggy, grey beard. His dark attire seemed foreign to me, perhaps due to the rising anxiety in my veins, but then I noticed the clerical collar and relaxed my shoulders.

My laboured breath came in quick gasps. Still out of it, I instinctively glanced back at the church, but the figures were no longer there. 

“I…” My voice trailed off. I didn’t know what to say or how to explain what I was doing here. “I, uhm, am looking for someone, sir.”

The priest took his sweet time replying. 

“No one lives in this place. It’s been a ghost town for as long as I remember.”

I blinked and took another look at the note. 

“A ghost town?”

The priest followed my flickering gaze.

“Who told you to come here?”

“I—someone from my old hometown told me. I- I’m sure this is the correct—”

The priest grabbed me by the collar. Everything happened so fast that I didn’t even have time to react. His eyes were in a state of delirium. 

“Who told you? I won’t repeat myself, kid! Speak up!”

“I- I don’t know his name. He worked for my parents when—Gabriel? Yeah, I think that’s what Mrs Berkeley called—”

The priest let go of me. “The Berkeleys?”

As I was about to answer, the man stepped away. His rounded eyes were fraught with terror, as if he had seen the antichrist himself.

I hardly took a step forwards when the man tripped and crawled away from me.

“S- stay away from me! Stay away—O Heavenly Father, have mercy! Keep me from the hands of the wicked! Lord, hear my cry for mercy!”

I broke off, astonished beyond what words could capture. He was praying. I couldn’t grasp what was happening. As if my confusion wasn’t enough, the church bells rang and reverberated through the entire hamlet.

I turned around. For the briefest of moments, I thought I was seeing things. The church porch was crowded with dark, faceless figures.

But they weren’t moving towards us. I squinted. Wait, they couldn’t move past the porch threshold? As I was about to ask the priest what this was all about, I belatedly noticed that he had risen back on his feet. 

Before I knew it, the old man punched me across the cheek with a rock and overpowered me. 

The cold, now bloody, surface of the rock hit me on the side of my head repeatedly until my view was obscured by red liquid.

The only thing I heard before my ears were punctured was the priest’s delirious laughter. His wide eyes were maniacal and his grin was that of a sinister being without a soul or throbbing heart. 

I blacked out as the final strike dislocated my jaw and twisted my nose. 

When I regained consciousness, I was inside a clear casket, stripped naked and vulnerable to the biting cold.

A grainy picture of an altarpiece depicting the Second Coming of Christ was the first thing that caught my attention.

But my senses were altered completely; my eyes failed me, my ears captured no sound, and my limbs were paralysed. A groan escaped from my lips as I tried to break free. 

I recoiled. Someone banged on the casket out of nowhere and wrapped its bony arms around it. I gasped for air, my eyes fraught with dread at the sight in front of me.

It was the unfamiliar face of an old and delicate woman. Her misty, bloodshot eyes looked at me with pity as she kept mumbling something, perhaps a prayer, and wrapped her hands tightly around the casket.

She was soon followed by another, who in turn was followed by yet another skeletal figure. The entire parish was here.

Photo by Giovanny Gómez Pérez on Unsplash

Those dark figures I saw now had faces and looked as human as they could possibly become. But I knew they weren’t. 

Mrs Berkeley was the last one to emerge from the deadly crowd. She hadn’t aged. As she embraced the casket and closed her eyes for a prayer, my eyes landed on the object around her throat. A pendant necklace. It belonged to Magdalena.

As if she could read my thoughts, Mrs Berkeley flung her eyes open and bore her hollow, empty sockets into mine. I flinched. The clear casket rocked from the impact.

My deaf ears regained their hearing with an excruciating surge of adrenaline and my numb extremities regained back control. I heaved after air, my heart pounding hard against my chest.

I instinctively touched my jaw and realised someone had put it back in place. I glanced at the woman with wide, bewildered eyes, confused and utterly lost.

A sinister smile crossed her skeletal frame right then, and she turned her back to me, raised her thin, decaying arms wide and broke into a fit of dismal laughter that chilled me to the bone. The communion of death followed suit.

With a sense of urgency, I kicked the casket repeatedly until it broke into shards of glass and interrupted whatever these morbid beings were trying to do.

I rolled out, seized a piece of the shattered glass on the wooden floor and held Mrs Berkeley in a chokehold with my arm.

The communion fell into silence as I threatened to thrust the glass into the woman’s rotting throat pulsating with old blood.

As I made my way out of the church with Mrs Berkeley, I knew my only chance at survival was to return to my car on the other side of the woods before these things found a way to cross the church porch.

While I was having these ruminations, drenched in cold sweat, Mrs Berkeley made her presence known to me. I had almost forgotten I was holding her hostage. 

“There’s no escape from this place, Damon. You can’t escape forever.”

“What? Do you think I’d fall for that? I just need to—”

“You know I’m not lying.”

I panted, trying to decipher whether she was playing mind games or telling the truth. My eyes kept drifting to the other side of the hamlet where I could see the beginning of the narrow forest trail I trekked to get to this place.

I was supposed to see the hood of my car due to the decomposing and sparse vegetation, but I couldn’t. The weight of her words dawned on me as I frantically tried to find it. 

“W- where’s my car?”

“Damon, think, why did you come here for? What compelled you to this place?”

“To- to find my sister, I—”

“But you already know what happened to her. That night, I saw you. We all did. Even your dear, senile mother did.”

I tightened my grip on her throat, panicking, drenched in cold sweat. 

“Cut the crap and tell me where the damn car is!”

“Your mother hated you, Damon. You reminded her of the man who left her with two kids and fled with another woman.”

“I- I don’t remember, I…”

“That night, you went into Magdalena’s room, Damon, didn’t you? And you did something to her. You wanted your mother to feel pain.”

I shook my head, “No. That- that never happened. I would never hurt Magdalena.”

“Oh, dear, you didn’t want to hurt her! But you panicked when she woke up and—”

“No!” I pierced the glass into her throat. “You wicked thing! I didn’t do anything to Magdalena! It- it wasn’t me! It wasn’t me! Do you hear me? I didn’t do anything!” 

As crimson blood spilt to the damp ground, the woman’s lifeless body slipped through my fingers and fell. The shard of glass was thrust all the way into her wrinkled skin.

Surprised, I backed away and stared at my bloody hands. The communion of death, still held back by the porch, bemoaned her death. Their hollow sockets crying blood.

I- I didn’t mean to kill her. It was an accident. 

The deranged priest shoved the bony figures aside right then and came forward, kneeling in front of Mrs Berkeley, convulsing, and totally out of it. He kept repeating:

“Open your eyes, open your eyes…”

Distant memories I thought I lost flooded my mind upon hearing this. It was him. The guy Mrs Berkeley talked to that night Magdalena disappeared. An excruciating pain hit me as the memories returned and I collapsed on my knees. 

That wicked grin… as the man saw me through the cracked basement door, I could still see it as clear as day in my dire mind. I remembered. I remembered it all!

That night, when Mrs Berkeley left, and he saw me, I ran to my bedroom and locked the door. He tried to get in, tirelessly and repeatedly. Until he no longer did.

Then I heard my sister scream.

When I opened the door and looked out into the hallway, my sister’s bedroom door was ajar. As I trudged towards the open door, I became aware of another presence on the other side of the hallway and broke off. It was Mrs Berkeley.

I returned to my room, locked it and put a pillow over my ears. That night, had I not wet my bed and gone down to the basement, I would’ve been the one kidnapped. But why? The answer to this question came much quicker than I anticipated.

“You ruined it all! You ruined it all!” 

The priest lurched forward with inhumane speed, ready to knock me out, but I saw it coming and dodged it. As he staggered back to his feet, he charged at me again and I punched him to the ground.

Still, albeit he was in no condition to fight off someone of my calibre, he tried to get back on his feet. His eyes were that of a madman.

I picked up my sister’s necklace from Mrs Berkeley’s throat and kicked the priest in his gut repeatedly until he stopped moving about.

“You… ruined it all… You devil, you…”

“What did I, or Magdalena, ever do to you people but good? My family gave you a roof over your head, fed you and clothed you! We didn’t do anything, did we? So why?” I kicked the man with more force this time. “Why, Goddamnit?”

I blinked. A sinister grin crossed the priest’s face. I backed away as soon as I noticed his bloody smile, which sent a shiver down my spine and rooted me to the spot. 

“It’s… it’s too late.”

“W- what?”

“This is not… not the end. This,” he said, pointing at me, “is only the beginning.”

I followed his swollen eyes to the night sky devoid of stars. As I did that, the church bells rang for the second time. I turned around.

The dark figures were no longer bound by the porch; they were closing in on us. In a fit of rage, I crouched and held the man in a chokehold.

“What the heck did you do!? Tell me, you piece of shit!”

But the man couldn’t say. He was already dead. But that wasn’t the only thing that happened. Both the priest and Mrs Berkeley turned into dust and perished as if they had never existed.

I stood up at the drop of a hat and ran with all that I had as the figures pursued me to the other side of the haunted hamlet.

Only when I followed the narrow forest trail and found my car did I heave a sigh of relief and slouched forwards in my seat.

Without looking back, I hit the road and watched the ghost town disappear around the curving roadway. 

When I lifted my eyes off the steering wheel and looked through the rearview mirror seconds later, a little girl appeared on the passenger’s seat from thin air and bore her sunken eyes into mine.

She beamed.

I hit the brakes.

The world around me became bathed in blinding brightness. The next thing I heard was the blare of a truck and shot open my flickering eyes. 

The little girl was right in front of me. Her disturbing screams mimicked Magdalena’s when I smothered her until she stopped sprawling about. 

A subtle smile played on my lips as I recalled how her soul slipped away in the darkest hour of the night, reliving the moment I long suppressed before my neck snapped.