To Whom it May Concern

I was on a team of archaeologists who searched old, abandoned churches for artefacts relating to Christian antiquities. This particular one was a while ago now but it is still the one that sticks out to me the most as being the one moment of my life I regret. It was probably because what I had found disturbed me so much that I pocketed the manuscript it was written upon and went to many places in the coming days to study it further. Dirty and dishevelled, it was covered in soil and sand. I wiped it off and found it to be a lengthy piece of writing, like a letter. I wanted to pour over it before my director took it off my hands and into some storage place to be shipped off around the world and put on display for amateur sleuths to gaze at as if they knew what they were talking about. I am trained in these matters and I am telling you here and now that this is not a question of belief, but rather a question that opens many other questions. A question of whether to believe at all.

The church was a dilapidated mess. It was covered in a dry substance that when analysed, was noted as blood. I had never seen a church that contained so much of it. There were bits and pieces of decayed remains scattered around the pews and the windows were all but smashed. Glass littered the space around the church and so, I made a mental note that this would have been someone trying to get out rather than get in. ‘What happened here?’ I thought to myself. There was room to suspect violence before I actually read the manuscript itself. There was room to suspect a lot of things. The door had been barricaded from the outside, but the back door was off the hinges as if someone had been coming in and out regularly. The decay within did not stop at bits of body and blood along the main hall though. I found a skull at the altar. There was no skin on it and the bottom of the jawbone was missing. Like Hamlet I picked it up and tried to critically analyse anything that could lead me away from the idea of cult worship and sacrifice. It almost seemed cliché to think it was this and so, I looked for more evidence.

I went into the basement to see whether I could find anything else that pointed me towards one of the many theories swirling around my brain. I knew I was becoming obsessed with trying to find answers and so, I swung open the door which crashed on to the floor with a bang. There was nothing holding it in place and the chair that barricaded it from the inside was broken and smashed. ‘Someone was in here.’ I knew it. In order to barricade the door from the inside someone must have been inside. The blood that had dried on to the basement walls told me that this was a solid theory. There was also a carving on the far side of the basement, furthest from the wall. It read: “Save my soul for I know he comes here.” At the time, I had not yet unearthed the manuscript and so, didn’t know who was coming where. I realised that this person must have died in this room but there was no solid evidence to suggest that they had.

The manuscript was found about two feet below sand and soil in the basement and was written on the parchment paper normally associated with the church. A ‘Father Greyson’ penned the script and as I read more and more of it, though I became obsessed, I’m really not sure what I believe anymore. It was written in the style of a letter, almost like he wanted it to be found. I’m not sure I was the right person to find it though.

Now, let me reveal to you what I found…

The Manuscript

To whom it may concern,

I am the last person you could possibly ask about this and yet, it would be horrible of you to ask me what I had actually done to deserve this reckoning I will surely go through. For the last year, a terror unlike any other had revealed itself to this town piece by piece and, because of me, had torn itself apart through belief and rigour in a way that would make Jesus weep. Worse than any plague and more powerful than any epidemic - it became the single greatest horror any human being could witness because it was made. I am the sole survivor of the terror though, I am not sure as to why. Let me introduce myself to you and tell you what happened from beginning to end.

My name is Father Greyson and I was the leader of this town’s only church. For a time I was also their king, their master and almost their God. But now that I am sitting in a church basement waiting for the damp to collapse from the staircase and into the walls, my inevitable death draws close though, I do not know exactly how close it draws. The sounds of the squelching shoes upon the stairs should tell me, but I cannot be sure. There is something terrifyingly ironic about the events that unfolded this last year to bring me here. So without further interruption, let me take you back a year (almost a year to the day, in fact) to the bleak midwinter when the winds howled to the moon and the church grew empty with longing and echoes of the dead. When I destroyed myself and everyone in the town along with me.

It was the Sunday service once again and the congregation was dwindling. There could not have been more than five people in the whole church including myself. I read from the passage for that day and then went into silent prayer. The echoes of the church bounced from the wooden structures to the load-bearing walls at the back where the extension was made a decade ago. They statues were lined with dust and the lectern stank of rusting. The cobwebs with their large, spangly spiders did not even stick around for the prayer but instead, decided to pull back into the walls where the rats probably waited with toothpick sticks to wage a war for the cool and possibly only clean space in the whole building. Except for my own voice, the church was as silent as death itself. I opened my eyes upon the four members of the congregation who had their heads bowed into their laps and almost caught my breath in the back of my throat like a tennis ball had lodged in my larynx.

A man sat at the back of the church on the very final pew closest to the door and he was staring right back at me. His skin was pale and greying, his eyes were wide and beady with yellowing bits in them and his teeth were so large and sharp that his mouth did not close, but his jaw simply hung open - the muscles stretched at each end. He was dressed entirely in black with a cloak hung about him and his thin, dark hair was matted back smooth and almost on edge. The only thing I could hear when I stopped saying the prayer was the sound of what I could only assume to be his breath, whistling through the spaces between those sharp, dagger-like teeth in a manner befitting the wind from an empty forest in the middle of the night. He did not speak. He did not blink. He just stared, wide-eyed and expressionless.

Time stopped in those moments because I was not sure whether anyone else had seen him. By the end of the service, I felt so unsettled that I ran back for my offices at the far end of the church and locked the door. I came out five minutes later only to see that he had completely vanished - nobody else, I assumed, had seen him.

For a long time I thought this to be a figment of my imagination and honestly, I had not heard of anything about him for about a month before I saw him again. In that entire month though, I thought about him a lot. He was in my nightmares and raced across my mind. I often wondered about what he wanted in the church or, who he was sent by if anyone. I wondered about who he was and his motivations, if any. Was he good or bad? Was he a demon of hell? He definitely looked as though he was.

The end of the month had come around to find the town gathered around a man who had been seen wearing a hood and sitting outside the playgrounds of small children. Shouts came from the crowd for him to reveal himself, but he did not move. Ultimately, the townsfolk took it upon themselves to remove the hood on their own. I knew who it was before they did it. At that single moment, everyone took three steps back. A woman screamed. Children cried and ran away. He simply stood there without expression or movement, he didn’t blink and he didn’t say a word. At least, he had not said anything just yet. My eyes searched the townsfolk and from what I saw, not many of them had been to church in a little over a year with only four or five of them going regularly like clockwork. Here was something to scare them straight and I had not realised yet that he could be used to my advantage. Looking back on it now, I realise that I was completely out of my wits to be thinking this, but back then it was like God had answered my prayers for the congregation to be brought back. The numbers of the church would grow again and God would be at the centre of their minds once more. It could have been like a renaissance. It ended up being like a plague.

I was about to take the conversation and had opened my mouth to ask our newcomer a question. Before I could do so however, he spoke with the most demonic voice you could imagine. His mouth did not open or close, his jaw did not move and he stood expressionless and still. I could not find where his voice was coming from, but the voice was there. Perhaps it was coming from the grave from whence he walked forth on to the land. I did not know, I was not sure. But here is what he said…

“Consider me not your enemy…” Again, his mouth did not move, neither did his jaw. He was still, without expression and without any movement whatsoever in any nerve of his body. I noticed then that his feet were spaced like the hooves of a mountain goat - though they were not actually hooves themselves, they could have fooled the untrained eye. “I am not like you…” With this he raised his hand, a claw with long greying fingers, and gestured towards the crowd who took another jump backwards, afraid and startled. “Though, I need you to survive…” He held out his other hand and together, his fingers clawed at the atmosphere in a grasping fashion though they grabbed nothing. At this moment even I have to admit, I was a little bit frightened. “You see…I eat your kind…” I did not then understand how someone who did not move their jaw could possibly devour a human being, but apparently it is so. I have since seen it for myself.

Of course, I thought on my feet at that moment and decided to address the crowd. The whole while I was scared to death with my back to the creature - and he could only be called a creature for whatever he was, he was not human and that was clear. “Friends, listen!” I held up my hands to them as they created more space between themselves and the creature. I occupied that space quickly and moved towards them. “Listen! This has got to be a sign. The sign of all signs! This is a punishment from God for we have forsaken our beliefs, our morals, our goodness…” The creature, whom I knew could hear me, did not speak or react in any way. He simply stood there, breathing in that way that made my skin crawl, staring in that way that put me on edge and doing nothing in that way that I had seen in the church. An unsettling nothing.

I looked back at him occasionally and still there was no reply. The people around me though, they were eager to hear more of what I had to say. “This is God telling you to return to your church…” I began once more. “God has visited us and told us that he wishes for prayers to be delivered.” I kept turning back every few moments to see if there was any singular movement. “We should appease this…” I was careful. “This man.” Still no reaction. “We should appease this man and to him, deliver our wretched, cursed and criminal.” Immediately, there was a cheer from the crowd but again, the creature made no movement at all. I gulped my own breath into the back of my throat and slowly, carefully, turned to face the creature who had moved only an inch closer to me but entirely without my knowledge. “Do you accept this from our God? Will you bear our sinners and criminals so that we may be freed from evil?”

“Yes.” He made again, no movement of any kind - not a single muscle or expression except for his eyes that stared back into my own which told me that maybe, just maybe, I could rely on him for salvation.

That night the townsfolk raided the prison, hunting down those who had committed murder and one-by-one, branded them with a number without telling them what was going to happen. A man appeared from the mob as I waited in the wings. “Numbers 1 through to 30…” He started. “You will be the first to go…” He pointed to a man branded with a ‘1’ and opened the prison cell door. Edging out was a young man in his possible 20s to 30s, he had murdered his wife in a fit of blind rage about two years’ ago and was using up the tax money of the hardworking folk of this town to rot away in a cell. What better way to make use of this money if he were no longer alive.

Whilst they prepared him for the inevitable, I went back outside and towards the back of the church where I knew the creature was waiting. “Excuse me…” But he was already staring at me. “But would you like us to kill him first or…” He raised his hand to silence me.

“No.” His hand was blackening more than before, I thought this may be a sign of hunger at least if not his want to devour human flesh. “I must do this myself.” I nodded at him and left him there behind the church. As I came out towards the road, I saw the townspeople had vanished back into their houses and the prisoner was led by an elderly gentleman who used to be the mayor down to the church hall.

“Bless you son.” I said under my breath though I didn’t know whether he heard me as he didn’t turn around. The man was led into the church and the door was locked behind him. The elderly gentleman walked back down the steps as if he were leaving Isaac to be sacrificed to the Gods. I though, thought it necessary.

To this day, I have no idea what actually happened in there or how the young man died. Though I did hear a blood-curdling scream and the sound of chomping. I do think he was eaten alive. The creature walked back out to the back of the church and I approached him once more, this time there was bits of blood and flesh hanging from the sharp teeth that stuck out from his grim and pale face. “How are you feeling now?”

“Better. Thank you. I will require the same tomorrow.”

“That is not a problem. We have plenty…” I chose to appease this creature mainly for the fear of being eaten. “If you would like to seek refuge from the oncoming storm you may sleep in the church basement. I can set up a bed from one of the furniture stores if you like…”

He held up his hand to silence me again. “No. I will be fine in the church if you so allow. I have no need for a bed for I do not sleep.”

I gave him the key to the back door of the church so he may come and go as he pleased. He seemed to like lurking in the back the most for he was hardly ever actually inside. With that, I left him until the next day when I knew whoever was branded with a ‘2’ would come to be the feast for dinner.

This would continue until all thirty of the prisoners in jail for heinous crimes were completely devoured. But the appetite of the creature was nowhere near quenched for he now demanded that we bring him two a day instead of one. Was he growing? No. Was he changing? No. In fact, he had remained exactly the same from the very day he arrived. I found him at the end of the month in the back pew yet again - the one nearest to the door. He sat staring forwards, no longer at me. I fearfully sat beside him.

“I require two a day.”

“I’ll see it done.” I replied. “We will organise it as soon as we can.”

“Tonight.”

I unwillingly agreed and went off to tell the townsfolk that God was still angry with us for the creature now needed more than one person. With that I chose to seek out the people who were in prison for minor crimes - petty theft and maybe breaking and entering. There were many, many people in prison for this and for another three months this would quench the thirst of the creature that lurked in the church pews. The only problem was that he could only eat one person at a time, so horrifyingly you would hear the banging and screaming on the church doors of someone who had just witnessed their cellmate get eaten alive. Then came the scream of ripping flesh. After another 30 seconds or so, there would be silence.

The townsfolk wouldn’t hang around, going back inside their houses for the night they would get on their knees to plead with God and try not to listen to the screams of agony and terror that came from the church as the creature approached its prey.

It was the next Sunday after the last of the petty criminals were eaten and the creature sat in the front facing his audience as I read the sermon. The church was suddenly packed with all kinds of people and, as I counted, little over 300 people were squeezed into pews. I had not even started counting the crying children who could not bear to be anywhere near the creature. “God loves his people…” I cried out. “But he sends us a punishment…Well, that’s simply because he loves us too much to let us do wrong.” I closed the Bible and approached the creature. “He sends us someone to cleanse us of our wrongs and our sins, to make us good again…” The creature did not move or react in any way as I gingerly placed my hand on his shoulder. He just sat there staring at the congregation. He had a slight hunchback. “You do know what we must do next, do you not? We must live the simple life as the purer of heart once did…” And then I let it out on them. “From God himself came the law that no child of God should drink alcohol and so, I propose that we ban any beverage containing that awful substance…” There was an uproar from the congregation almost immediately. “From the word of God…” I shouted over the arguments that hurled back at me whilst the creature posed no reaction. “From the word of God I say this: all alcohol is to be banned from town limits and anyone caught drinking, selling or creating the beverage in any form shall be tried and punished in a manner befitting a criminal. They shall be fed to the man sent to us by God…Fed. To cleanse us.”

“Oh shove it, Father!” One man from the congregation cried out. “Me and my brother live off the money we make from the pub down this very road and I have seen you there too. Don’t give me this crap about ‘holiness’ and this ‘man sent by God’. I don’t know if you’ve realised this Father but that is no man. That is no human…” With this, the creature got up from his seat and made his way down the pews. I stood there as still as the creature himself once did in front of me, staring unblinkingly into what I believed to be a display of abject terror arising in our church.

“You think me not human?” The creature spoke to the man who was now standing in the middle of the church. His brother had not come to back up his claims but instead, cowered behind another man he stood beside. The creature did not sound angry nor alarmed. It was an uncomfortable calm as if he was just asking a question as simple as ‘how was your day?’ I would have preferred the anger.

“No.” The man started up. “I don’t think you’re human. You can’t be…Look at yourself!” The rest of the congregation fell into a dead silence as the man spoke with a shrinking fear attached to the back of his voice.

“Very well.” The creature turned around to come back to the place he was sitting, but made his point very clear. I had not a clue what this creature was planning but I knew it was big. He addressed the congregation altogether and all of them watched on. “You have heard your Father. You will follow his orders.” I dismissed the congregation after the prayer and met with the creature at the back of the church once more to talk about the uproar from the gentleman who owned the pub. “You need not worry.” He said. “I must do this myself.”

The next day I strode down the road to the church to see what the creature had been doing with his night and I had to admit that after the Sunday congregation, I was a little less frightened of him as I had been. I knew he meant me no harm as I saw that he had attached the severed heads of the two men who owned the pub to the church door with spikes through the foreheads. They had no eyeballs, the brains had been eaten and the place where the mouth used to be was completely devoured. At first, I was startled and a woman who came out from her house screamed so loud that the rest of the town heard. “Now you hear me, Father…” The man who used to be the mayor approached the steps of the church. “You get rid of that creature. You get rid of him now!” I could tell he was speaking in hushed tones because he thought the creature could hear. I simply shook my head.

“I told you. This is a punishment from God. We need to cleanse ourselves. The cleansing has only just begun. It is going to be a long and difficult process…” I held his shoulder as a friend would. “Nothing worth doing for God was ever easy. Take our town as Job if you will. We are being tested for our faith and we must prove true - that is the only way to reach true eternity.” I knew he didn’t believe me as he shook my hand from his shoulder and walked back down the stairs only to find the creature waiting at the bottom. He gasped and almost fell back on to the steps.

“Trouble?” He addressed me. I held up my hands in a way to signal that there was no trouble at all.

That night though, the creature must have gone to his house and devoured him and his entire family - including the three grandchildren. This was deduced from the fact that the only things left from them were their eyeless heads mounted on the brown wooden fence in front of the home. Blood streaked down them, still fresh and dripping. He would eat the remainder of the heads at a later time in the day.

How do I know? I saw him.

His jaw unhinged and the teeth opened wide like a shark would, but it locked in place as he inserted the head into his mouth and sharp daggers came down upon them, piercing the skin and bone - cutting through it like meringue. The sound of chomping and swallowing going on and on until there was not a single morsel left except for the bits of flesh that hung from his glistening sharp teeth.

He was sending out warnings for a reason I did not know but back then, I hoped it was because he knew the townsfolk were not listening to me.

After that, the entire town was drained of alcohol within a week, many people had been eaten in the mean time - mostly old and bitter men who could not give up the bottle, but also there were some women and the children of alcoholics. In grand total, around 58 people died this way but, our town was safe and so, the next Sunday there were still people in the congregation who waited and waited for a new sign. There were many people who, as they were not buying alcohol, saw themselves with more money and thought that this must be God’s work. They gave in to the demands of myself and that of the creature.

“God demands more of us…” I stared at the congregation, many of whom were agreeing with this new decree. “He demands that we wear simple clothes and no jewellery or makeup of any kind. We should not decorate ourselves, he says.” I stared behind me to the creature who was now standing at the lectern, staring down over the congregation like a vulture. One woman in the stands immediately took a makeup removal product from her pocket and wiped off her lipstick, she then took from herself her necklace and her rings.

“We should start a bonfire for them then!” She cried out and the congregation cried with her. The bonfire of the vanities was something I had only dreamed of. With that, the burning started, but the makeup store owners, the jewellers and more refused to partake in this cleansing as they would and as is their business.

A husband and wife, a young couple who owned a jewellery store on the edge of town were quickly packed and ready to go. They hurled their suitcases down the street and on the way to the train station were approached by a man who offered to drive them there. Apparently they agreed and got into the cab ride only to find the doors to be locked as they were rode back into town to be fed to the creature. I had opened a pandora’s box of belief and 124 more people would suffer at the hands of my want for complete peace. But to have peace, you must be prepared for war - and so I was prepared for people to disagree, and it would cost them dearly.

It happened one night after the bonfire, maybe about a week following the time we had agreed everything of decoration had been burned. A man was seen walking the shadows across town in the dead of night, I heard a cat run across the street screeching and so awoke from my bed to see what the trouble was. By the time I had left my house, the head of the cat rolled to my feet and the man had disappeared. I walked over to the back of the church where the creature gnawed and gnashed at the body of the shadowy man. He did this whilst looking at me dead in the face, unblinking and unyielding. “I’m sorry, but did something happen?” I waited for him to finish his meal. His jaw locked back in place and then he spoke with his usual unmoving nature.

“Yes, in fact it did…” There was a slight anger in his voice and my fears that had once been quenched returned in leaps and bounds. “This man here..” He gestured to the head he was saving for later. “You see, he came to kill me…” I left my mouth fall open in disbelief - I had taught these people what this creature was and I was far more concerned about being disobeyed than being frightened of this monster. “He stabbed me in the chest.” He showed me an open wound in his chest that was still bloodied. “It did not work.” The hole remained, the bloody wound still open and yet - the creature did not even feel dizzy. Instead, he was the same unmoving, unrelenting monster that waited at the back pews for me one strange midwinter afternoon. “I have sorted it out though…Make sure it does not happen again…”

I decided to tell my congregation that the creature must be respected and worshipped like a man of the church in order to please God. “This is a cleanser, people listen to me!” Nobody was really listening though - they had all heard about what had happened and the bloody and open wound in the creature’s chest cavity had not healed. It was only then that I noticed that his blood was much redder than any human’s.

“Silence!” The creature stood, bellowed and sat back down. Again, his expression did not change and his mouth did not move.

“Thank you…” I returned to the congregation who were now paralysed with fear. “We need to respect this man as a cleanser for our church. Any attempt made on his life will be an instant death penalty without trial. This is what God would want.” I knew I was not the judge, I was no law maker, I was no governing body, but I was possibly the only thing these people had right now. They all stared at me with eyes of disbelief. That was when I felt the creature’s hand upon my shoulder. He was standing directly behind me, if I had taken one step backwards, I would have stood on his feet. I froze under his grip.

“Lock the doors and get out.” He whispered through whistling gaps of sharp teeth into my ear like the snake that tricked Eve.

“Let us pray…” I returned to the congregation to lead the Lord’s Prayer and walked through the middle of the church towards the front door as I did so. Upon the end of the prayer, I locked the door behind me. “Amen.” And up it went.

Screams erupted from the church and the stained-glass windows were broken and smashed as people tried to escape. Agonising and blood-stained cries for help rocked the smashing of pews and what I could only hear as the crunching of bones. I stood there listening to it and less than half an hour later, the pews were laden with eyeless heads. Men, women and children had been devoured for their lack of belief in the creature and so, we were cleansed once more.

The creature was standing back at the lectern and the entire church had gone to hell. Blood was everywhere, the ground remains of bones and bits of brain littered the floor between the pews and the altar was packed with bits of clothing I assume the creature could not stomach. He just stood at the lectern and stared at me. My church was gone and everyone in it was gone too. I wondered about whether I had gone to far but my own fear of becoming the next meal squandered any thought of anything else as his eyes were fixated on me. 300 people were all just eaten away in less than half an hour. But in that half an hour I had heard sounds that made me want to throw myself from a bridge - sounds that I would never get out of my head. “Have you had enough yet, or do we need to provide more?” I tried to sound like I was asking nicely but I think he caught on to what I was actually saying.

“I am still hungry.”

“There are plenty of farms that belonged to some of these people, you know…” I stood where I was instead of getting any closer to a man from whom bits of small children hung from his teeth. “If you ever want some animals to pass the hunger, there are some down there.” I gestured in the direction of the largest farm before realising that the family who lived there were still very much alive. Of course, the family and their livestock were not alive for very long after that.

It would be another few months before all the livestock in the town had been completely devoured and he really left no trace to there ever having been cows, sheep, chickens or pigs in this place we once called home. Now, all we found was blood splatters on the streets, pews coated in blood and fleshy bits from people long gone, people going missing every once in a while randomly and worst of all, he waited outside the playgrounds of small children coated in a black hood. This time, nobody dared to disturb him as he chose his next prey. Sooner or later, the children stopped going to the playground and started to feel fear in anywhere but their own homes. He would appear at night randomly or in the afternoon. Nobody would hear him walk up, he would simply appear at a window and stare in. He would stare, and stare, and choose. He would then move on to a different house. It was like playing Russian Roulette with your own family and home. I once got the fright of my life when he appeared at my window whilst I was making lunch. One second he was not there, the next minute he was standing there and staring at me. Though realising it was me, he held up his hand and vanished back into the ether. I felt quite special about that. Well, I did back then.

I heard a loud knock at my door a few days later and knowing it could not have been the creature, I opened the door without a weapon. It was a young neighbourhood girl. She could not have been more than 8 or 9 years’ old. “Father, help.” She said frantically. “My mother is dying and she needs her last rites…” I could not help it, but whilst the child led me to the house I smiled a horrid smile of what can only be described as pure evil.

It was time to raid the hospitals.

I would perform the last rites of the dying and then, once they were dead - I would offer a discount burial service to the poorer side of town who’s businesses were blotted out in the prohibition and the bonfires. It was no burial, of course, but they could not afford anything better than what I had to offer. I felt they secretly knew about what I was doing and, thinking that they couldn’t do anything about it if they tried, went along with my offer. In fact, the people who had lost everything now came begging me for advice on how to stay alive in this new era of cleansing. My next sermon would be all about this, of course. However, it would not be at the church - it would be on the street in front of it. The church, now destroyed, would serve as a blood-soaked warning, a backdrop for a cautionary tale to those who wished to think differently.

There was a short handed problem to this: the thrill, he stated was in killing them himself. “I do not like to eat what I do not kill myself…” He stood, eyes I thought were wider than usual, skin that was scalier than usual. It was like he was shedding an outer skin but he wasn’t. So, it was up to me to now disallow the family into the room for the last rites to be performed but instead allowing my new friend here to embark with me instead.

Sunday was cold, but morning still had a rising sun though shaded by clouds - it revealed itself in stages of stinging rays upon my skin. Whatever was left of the town gathered for the sermon - it could not have been more than 2 or 3 hundred people. I was shocked but my initial thoughts were upon what would happen if the numbers dwindled lower and lower - the creature’s appetite was growing. The people believed whatever I was doing was correct and the ones left alive were only left alive because they were constantly in line with the rules.

“I think it is time, my friends…” Silence fell across the street as I spoke. My voice echoed across this small amount of worried people. “I think it is time to rid ourselves of illness and disease. God does not appreciate us keeping our sick so that they may infect us.” It was true that I did not even know whether we could be infected or whether what the sick had was contagious. But I knew that my audience did not know either and that was the main thing. All the while, the creature stood there waiting and watching my every move. It was like one of those paintings where the eyes follow you as you walk but you know the painting doesn’t move. “We must act now before it is too late.” I do not feel like anyone heard me though I knew they were listening.

I walked off, back to my own dilapidated house above an office where a family once worked together, but were unfortunately eaten by the creature. My guilt kept arriving in my nightmares, nightmares about getting to the gates and being told I was no longer welcome. My entire life’s work would be ruined. I went back down the stairs of my home and saw that the creature hand his hands against the glass, flat so they looked as spiders may when they sleep. His face was pressed on to the window as if he were trying to tell me to let him in. I opened the front door though, I’m not sure why he didn’t allow himself in as he had done with others he had devoured.

“Where will we go?” He was hungry, I knew it.

“The hospital.” I replied as I shut the door behind me and we walked up for the next few minutes to the local hospital. There was a strange silence as we moved towards the hospital, the lights were out as if they were hoping not to be visited by us. I walked through the front door and felt that I may have been the creature, whoever was left there let out a collective gasp of breath in a worrying and nervous tone. The creature had not yet come inside but waited to be ushered in. “You have half an hour…” My voice quaked under my breath as I spoke to him. “Wait for my sign.”

I went back out into the sunlight and shut the door behind me, telling the creature to wait in the sidelines so that nobody saw him in the hospital. I grabbed as much wood as I possibly could manage and barricaded the door from the outside. A process that took about ten minutes, I spent time doing this so that nobody could escape. I walked up to the window, dragging my feet now as my sleep had become disturbed by dreams of my transgressions. I gave the sign of a blessing and mouthed the words “Half an hour…” I turned my back to the wall and slid down to my knees, choosing not to witness the screaming agonies of the patients who waited in their beds and the nurses whom I had forgotten about. I wept silently until the sound stopped. It felt like forever.

The creature simply appeared at the other end of the building, outside the emergency doors. I didn’t understand how he got out - maybe a window, maybe he pushed the door down though I would have heard it. All I heard were his footsteps out of rhythm and out of time, it could not tell me where he was. “Are you satiated?” I called out as I was approaching him.

“For now.”

“When will you require more and how much?”

“Tomorrow.”

I saw that in his claw hands were two skulls, both of nurses. They again had no eyes and their mouths were nonexistent. I assumed he would take these back to the church where he was still staying despite the condition it was in. At this point there were only fifty people left in the town and all of the children were dead.

The next day a young woman came up to speak to me about the creature and asked me whether the creature would be staying or whether he would move on once everyone was eaten. “I have no idea.” I replied. “You are better asking him yourself…” I gestured towards the church and shut my front door behind me. I would go and buy bread before I remembered that the baker was devoured as was his wife and children. The woman left towards the church and I sat outside my front door on the street floor wondering what I had done to this town.

It was to my absolute shock that she returned unharmed momentarily. “No…” She stood over me. “He says he will stay until everyone is devoured and then he may, if he feels, move on.” I was envious. I was the one who spoke to the creature without harm coming to me and nobody else could do so. How did she do it? Maybe she was lying to me but when I asked the creature, he confirmed that he was asked about his stay by a young woman.

“Yes. She came to me.”

“And?” I was eager to learn more about this strange meeting. My power was dissolving in my fingers and I couldn’t take it. Looking back on it now, I behaved in a manner befitting a pathetic tyrant.

“Nothing. I gave answers to said questions and she moved on. Why?”

“No.” I said. “I mean, nothing at all…” I felt sweat building up on my forehead. I knew that the creature was aware that ‘nothing’ was really ‘something’ and I felt my grasp on reality coming undone. The woman, I learned, had later moved to a different town to live closer to her parents and the creature never bothered her. She, as I later realised, had never been to a single sermon of mine - not even the ones about alcohol or the bonfire, she was never anywhere. I’m not sure she was even from our town at all. “God help us.” I said under my breath as the creature shut himself back in the church until the next day.

In the coming days, the numbers slowly went lower and lower until the only two people left were me and man at the the fruit stand that was situated outside the town hall. He had done nothing wrong, but had done nothing at all. He offered the creature free fruit often and though I didn’t know where he was getting it all but it was working. That was until I found his head amongst his apples. “He had offered himself as sacrifice.” The creature said. “He came to me.” A religious nut, of course. He believed every word I said. “That is not true.” The creature spoke. “He explained to me that he thought he was the last person alive and there was no hope anymore.”

He thought his priest would have already sacrificed himself after what had happened at the hospital where his mother was staying at the time. I grew pale and weak as I ultimately realised I was the only person left alive.

That night I stayed awake with nightmares floating about my skull, the darkness lent me no relief and so, I turned on the lights that flickered as there was nobody to fix the lighting for miles. I could not sleep and so, I got up and got dressed to seek out the creature who, by now, I hoped had started moving on. When I arrived at the church it was still desecrated with blood and bile, with body bits and brain tissue. But the creature was not there. I went to walk home with a feeling of ‘what if he is waiting there for me’. The feeling overcame my being and I grabbed the nearest torch, igniting it under my grasp. The creature was nowhere to be seen for now and I made my way down to the church basement in hope he would think I had ran away. In reality, I had no idea where he was but I knew I did not want him to be here. He knew where I lived, He knew where I frequented. He had been following me all this time and knew every step of this town - I found escape futile and so, I barricaded the door, I locked myself in. In my soul though, I knew that this was a hopeless endeavour. He would come. It was only a matter of time.

I heard footsteps across the church floor and that very same whistling sound from the sharp teeth that locked the jaw open. I knew where the stairs were and that I had to listen for anything that would squelch down them in the creature’s usual footsteps.

There is nothing yet.

I hope there will be nothing for a while.

I am currently repenting, down on my knees I weep to my God wringing my hands together and, as I write, my tears litter the parchment I am recording this on. I will bury this along with my rosary, beneath the church floor. I am no longer worthy of the rosary and so, it should be confined to the earth. I will say no more about these terrifying events. For when you read this, I may cease to exist.

End of Manuscript

I took the manuscript and as I said, pocketed it. Walking out of that basement, I lied to my team stating I had found nothing of any importance except for evidence that there may have been some ritual sacrifice taking place down there. To this day, I know and you know that it was no ritual sacrifice. It is here though that the plot thickens.

That night I walked back home but instead of going straight home, I made my way to the archives to check the computer for a man named ‘Father Greyson’. It came up with nothing. I went to my own local church the next day and asked around before a priest sat me down to explain to me what had happened. He handed me a photograph which was apparently of himself on the left, and Father Greyson on the right.

“I did my Biblical studies with Greyson.” He started. “He was always in search of some religious power. Some evidence that God existed. But I am afraid it was only self-serving.”

“What happened to him?”

The priest shook his head. “One day, he disappeared.” He looked straight at me. “It is thought that the entire town he presided over vanished with him…”

“Does anyone know the truth?”

“I can point you to one person who might.” That’s when he recommended that I stay in the church a while so that I could meet him. I nodded and thought this may be a good opportunity for an interview. “I hope he can help.”

The priest left me in the church by myself until night and I was initially confused about why he did not come back until I saw a man, unmoving in the doorway. “I think you may have some answers for me…” I called out. As I approached him I knew exactly what I was looking at - the large, sharp teeth and the claw-like hands, the unblinking eyes. He was even more horrific and terrifying that Father Greyson had described. My voice broke as I tried to speak to the creature. “I know that you knew Father Greyson…”

He approached the pews and I took steps back, knowing now that there must have been some truth to what Father Greyson had written down, though I was still unsure as to how much.

“Father Greyson had faults that his institution could not allow.”

“Allow?”

“I am sent often to fix things.”

I tried to ask him who he was sent by but as fast as he had arrived, he was gone.

30 years’ later a small town in North Germany had disappeared under similar circumstances with many of the items found by the search teams matching what I had found at the desecrated church.

Alas, I am retired and edging closer to death. I approach my 100th birthday soon and know that death may get me before I am able to find out the truth about what happened there. I am tired of it all and this situation in North Germany reignited my fear that something may have gone horribly wrong. Being too old to do anything or even think too long upon this horror, I hand it over to you. I ask you to find him and find out what he wants.

Do it quickly. For the love of God, do it quickly.