I'm standing watch over a man's dead daughter - the second night

I messaged the father and told him I?d stand watch a second night. I took everyone?s advice from my last post and came prepared. I had a portable battery, headphones, an electric lantern, a book, and some other supplies. Maybe this was a stupid decision, but I really wanted that money and besides? I felt I had to see this through to the end. If I didn?t do it, then the father would trick some other poor soul into standing watch. At least I?d be going in ready for what was about to happen.
So last evening, a couple hours before sunset, I went to the church. I planned to loiter around the steps in the hopes of running into Christian and it appeared the man had the same idea, for we arrived at roughly the same time. He eyed me for a moment, then his stoic expression melted into one of absolute relief, so intense that I thought for a moment he might actually cry. It was like he melted, his shoulders slumping, the tension flowing from his body in one sudden rush.
?Let?s get coffee,? he said. ?You?re in for another long night, after all.?
He was an investigator for the CDC, he explained as we walked to the nearest place that served coffee (not a Starbucks). That was the best way to describe his job. Whenever the CDC started seeing alarming patterns, they?d send a couple people to go figure out where it was originating from so that they could get ahead of the problem.
?Are you talking about epidemics?? I guessed, stunned.
He nodded grimly. There?d been a number of alarming cases at the local hospitals. People sick with something like the flu: fever, headaches, vomiting. The first handful of cases arrived at the hospital dangerously ill because their doctors hadn?t realized what they were looking at and sent them home and told them to wait it out, thinking it was merely an early flu outbreak. They?d showed up at the ER later with swollen boils on their bodies, gangrene, and seizures. The doctors were quick to contact the CDC after they realized what they were dealing with and the CDC sent a team immediately, because while the bubonic plague is still around, an outbreak in our area was almost unbelievable.
Christian had started by interviewing the families of the afflicted, trying to determine if any of them had visited Africa recently. Then, when that didn?t pan out, he began to map out where each of the cases had occurred, thinking that perhaps someone had managed to bring a non-human host to the country.
Christian had connected all those data points and come up with this church as the epicenter. This church and the corpse inside that box.
?Look how stressed I am,? he said as we sat down at an outside table with our coffee so he could light another cigarette. ?I worked so hard to quit smoking and now here we are.?
I prodded him to explain how he made the connection between the bubonic plague and a dead girl. His gaze slid sideways and he stared at the ground, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He hadn?t figured it out, he finally admitted. He just started paying attention to the church and while sitting there brooding on the steps, trying to puzzle through what was happening here, someone came by to stand watch. He?d talked to them and how they?d answered a newspaper ad and then they?d gone inside and a day later their family filed a missing person report. Christian had contacted the police to find out how many recent missing persons had been reported but that information was slow in coming. He suspected a number of the sentries had simply taken the money and never shown.
He couldn't shake the feeling that the girl was the source of the outbreak.
She was quite dead, Christian said. Of that he was certain. Yet she?d been dead for over a month now, there?d been no embalming, and it was like she?d died only seconds ago. He felt like he was heading down a rabbithole, pursuing things that simply weren?t there, coincidences turned into patterns by his desperate mind. So he researched it at his hotel room, late into the night to avoid the attention of his team. He?d be up until the early hours of the morning and then collapse into bed, still wearing his clothes, and dream of strange things that he now understood to be instructions.
He?d decided to try it out. Worst-case scenario was it didn?t work and I never came out again. Second-worst-case was I came out of the church safely with nothing unusual happening and dismissed him as a crazy person. That would be more troubling for him, he admitted, as it would mean that he was delusional at this point. However, given what I?d told him? he had to assume this meant the visions were genuine.
?I?ve been reading folklore and all of this fits a theme,? he mused. ?I think this has happened before.?
?So we?re fully into supernatural bull**** territory,? I said evenly. Christian nodded assent. ?What do I do tonight? Stay in the pulpit again??
I was to stand by the altar this time, Christian said. Place one hand upon the Bible lying there and keep my hand on it through the whole night.
?I was hoping to watch youtube videos,? I sighed.
?I guess you could do that too,? Christian replied. ?Just don?t take your hand off the Bible.?
?I?m not religious.?
?Neither am I,? Christian sighed, standing. ?I?ll see you tomorrow evening.?
I went to the church and settled next to the altar. If it was anything like the night before, I had until midnight and there was no sense wearing myself out by standing half the night. I played games on my phone as the hours passed, an LED lantern at my feet to illuminate the church. It didn?t help much. The light cast sharp outlines on the walls and deepened the shadows in the corners and between the pews. At 11:45 I stood and put my portable battery on the altar and my headphones around my neck. Then I placed my palm on the leather cover of the Bible and waited.
Like the night before, I heard the scratching of the dead girl?s nails on the inside lid of the coffin. My mouth went dry and my heart began to race. I confess that even with Christian?s instructions I was still terrified. I felt exposed. The girl would be right beside me, on my level, not beneath me like when I took refuge on the pulpit. And what if it didn?t work? What if Christian was wrong?
I eyed the distance between me and the pulpit, wondering if I should take refuge there again. Fear made me uncertain. Up until this point I?d been confident in Christian?s instructions, but now, watching the minutes tick up towards midnight and listening to the scratching from inside the coffin, I doubted.
Then my damn phone battery died again. Yes, I had the screen brightness turned down and yes, battery saver was on. I struggled to plug it in one-handed and right when I was about to get the cable into the slot, the lid of the coffin was thrown open with a resounding crash.
I jumped in surprise and almost yanked my hand from the Bible. My phone, however, fell from senseless fingers and clattered to the ground, well beyond my reach. I had only a second to curse my misfortune before the girl leapt from the coffin, her eyes white, her hair bristling, and her jaw distended and throat glowing as if fire burned inside her stomach.
She raced down the middle aisle on all fours and hit the door, pounding on it with her fists and howling. Behind her came that black fog, boiling out to coat the floor of the church.
?Where is the sentry!?? the girl shrieked with that strange duality, like she was screaming with many voices. ?Where is the sentry I am due!??
This again. I clenched my teeth as her words bore into my skull.
?The promise is broken! Pestilence shall scour the earth and war shall sweep the nations!?
She clawed at the door and her voices bayed like dogs. Then she turned, her eyes fell on me, and I absently widened my stance as if to brace for the oncoming onslaught.
The girl bounded towards me, leaping like a rabbit, diving low around the side of the altar to come up just beside me. I felt her breath on my cheek, hot and dry and there was a low scent of ash and rotten eggs.
?Here you are,? she whispered in that multitude of voices. ?Take your hand off that Bible, so that I might take you apart.?
She circled me, belly to the ground, staring up at me and baring her fangs. She stretched out clawed hands and plucked at the edges of my jeans, at the hem of my shirt. I tore my eyes from the girl and fixed them on the cover of the Bible, staring at the plain gold print and refusing to look anywhere else. The girl hovered by my side, close enough that I could feel her presence, but not touching me; scarce an inch between us. I felt the weight of her attention, like a hand on the back of my neck, pushing me down to the earth.
She told me things. Each of her many voices whispered of things that were or things that would be. She spoke of the doom of the world, of the skies afire and the oceans burned away and poison in the soil, in our bones. She told me I would find the corpses of those I love, bloated and split open like overripe fruit, twisted up with sickness and even the maggots in their bellies would curl up and die from feasting on their remains.
Then she gripped the loose fabric of my sleeves and murmured yes, yes, this is how the world will end. Let go, let go, she urged, and let her end it quickly because there is no hope, only the destruction of everything I cherished in this world.
She spoke of my own sins, ones that I have committed, ones that I wanted to commit, and ones that I would commit. Heinous, terrible things that I hardly recognized as myself. My vices and my failings, set free and spun out to their inevitable end. She spoke of how I would destroy myself and how I would drive away everyone around me because how could they tolerate someone like me? And wouldn?t I deserve it? And when there was nothing left but my own seething pit of weakness I would unravel and in that unwinding I would inflict my suffering onto others. I was doomed to become a monster.
Yes, she hissed, better to join her in hell as brethren now instead of joining her as one of the damned. Let go. Let go.
I pressed my palm against the Bible so hard that my knuckles were white. She lied, I told myself. I barely recognized myself in the things she said. The world was not doomed to die. There was still hope yet.
And then a quiet, soft voice told me that her father was the one that killed her.
My mind focused on her words. He knew she would die, the girl told me in a voice that had to be her own. It broke with grief. He knew and yet in a moment of careless selfishness he?d disregarded all those long years of waiting and killed her. And now he was killing so many others, sending us to our deaths out of that same selfish desire.
She whispered that why would I try to save a world like this? I swallowed, wanting to weep, and replied that I was just here for the five hundred dollars.
My arm grew weary and my knees ached, standing there for so long in the same position. The muscles in my shoulder burned and I wondered how long I could keep this up, surprised by how challenging it was to simply stand still. Finally, mercifully, the windows brightened almost imperceptibly with the first light of dawn. The girl shrieked in fury and stumbled away from where I stood, the black mist billowing with her steps, crying out in her chorus of voices that she would have me yet and that my demise would be all the more horrific for daring to defy her. If I returned one more night, she said, nothing would save me.
Then the girl crawled back into the coffin and pulled the lid shut behind her as the golden light of dawn flooded the church.
I sent a message to her father saying that I?d stayed in the church the whole night. I asked if he really did kill his daughter. He didn?t answer that question, only offered to pay me a thousand dollars if I stood watch a third night. I said I?d think about it.
I?m getting sick. I threw up breakfast. I?m running a fever and my body aches all over and I?m not convinced that?s just from standing in one spot all night. I?m afraid this is not a coincidence but I don?t want to check myself into the hospital just yet, not until I?ve seen this through to the end.
You see, I?ve been thinking about what I heard all morning. I?m trying not to worry about what those voices said. Surely they had to be lies. I?m not a great person, but I?m not a monster either. And the world perishing in disease? Well, we can treat the bubonic plague now, right? The CDC is actively working to contain it before it becomes an epidemic. It?s not even at the point that the city is aware that this is going on. So? I?m trying to put all that aside.
There is one thing that?s stuck with me, however. That one voice that didn?t sound like the others - it was angry, but it wasn?t hateful. It was sorrowful.
I think it was the girl. I think she?s still trapped inside that body. And as she was crawling back to her coffin, I heard a faint whisper underneath all the other threats and curses.
One more night, she begged. Please. Just one more night.


Source.