The undoing

The night was still. Peter was anxious. Having just turned sixteen years of age, he was more tired than ever regarding where his life stood. His father was the priest of the Hailsworth Church, and he seemed more distant than ever. It was as if his only goal as a father was telling his son to work. Every evening was the same. If he didn't sweep, dust, and clean every inch of the church, his father would not feed him. Peter walked through the cobbled, unlit streets of Hailsworth carrying his lantern. The town was small, only home to a few hundred residents. Clouds had gathered throughout the day, and it soon began to rain as he walked. It was nearing three in the morning. Tucked under his arm was a thick, black tome bound in leather. The closely-packed stone and wood structures loomed over him on either side of the street, and the windows with pale white curtains looked down on him disapprovingly. The moon was large tonight, but only a faint glow managed to slither it's way past the thick covering of clouds.

At the end of the street stood the church, a structure that had stood for over eighty years. It was as imposing as ever. Tonight, he would see that the church met its demise. It would hold him prisoner no longer, and would liberate his father from his duties. Priesthood had molded him into the husk of a real man, keeping him from his son. With the church gone, he would finally meet the man behind the priest. He would meet his *father.* The thought warmed his chest and eased his nerves as he made his way through the gardens and graves surrounding the church and unlocked the back door. His father had not yet allowed him the privilege of holding the keys to the front door. For a moment he thought he heard the faint sound of breathing close behind him, and not for the first time, he glanced down at the tome under his arm and questioned his certainty in what he was about to do. Maybe, just *maybe,* there was another way to go about this, but he was more desperate than ever.

The wooden door creaked open, it's hinges rusted and old. The church was terribly dark, leaving Peter unable to see any further than his lantern allowed. The cold air within the church nibbled at his skin despite his ragged cloak that had kept him sufficiently warm until now. He navigated through the dark, making his way into the small library at the very back of the church. He found himself surrounded by old, worn bookshelves filled with all manner of religious texts. Yet this was only the tip of the iceberg. At the center of the room, a wooden hatch was sealed within the stone floor. The basement. It was the least-visited area of the church, and for good reason. It was an extension of the library, intended for books regarding occult magics. Many claimed it to be haunted, a prison for unholy spirits held captive by the church, and for the unfortunate spirits whose souls had become physically attached to occult writings. As far as Peter knew, nobody had gone down there in years. Peter examined the tome he held. He ran his fingers over the leather cover, remembering the day he had found it. He had been dusting the bookshelves when he saw it; a book unlike the rest. Entirely out of place. He was certain the book had not been there the day before. Rather than present the book to his father and seek answers for it's misplacement, his curiosity got the better of him and he seized the book for himself. It was a guide to the world of spirits and ghosts that dwelled on this world. He had studied it, analyzed it, and learned of an entirely foreign aspect of reality. Tonight, he sought to commune with those spirits, bend them to his will, and there was no better place than the haunted basement of the church.

He lifted the hatch open, and struggled to climb down a shanty wooden ladder as he held his lantern. The lower level of the library was deeper than he had imagined, but he soon managed to find his footing, despite almost slipping on the wet stone floor. Now that he could get a clearer look at the ladder, he found himself surprised that it had not collapsed underneath him. He was in a thin hallway, the ceiling above him too high to be seen by the light of his lantern. It only added to the crushing atmosphere. The ancient-looking bookshelves on either side of the hallway reached up towards the ceiling, fading into the darkness. There were hundreds of books, and upon closer inspection he saw there were often dozens of copies of the same book scattered throughout the shelves as if they had been confiscated and sealed away from the public. Among the collection he saw only a few other copies of the same tome that he had discovered. As he ran his fingers across the spines of the books, his lantern flickered and swung as if pushed by an invisible wind. The sound of breathing returned, heavy and close behind him. Peter resisted the urge to turn around, and slowly pressed forward through the hallway before coming across an ancient iron door that had begun showing signs of rust. By now the breathing had faded away once more, leaving Peter in an almost imposing silence broken only by the occasional patter of a droplet of water falling onto the stone floors from above.

The lock on the door had been broken, letting Peter ease it open. The cold iron hinges shrieked terribly and echoed throughout the basement like a chorus of banshees. Peter stiffened, then relaxed when the door was fully open. Something crunched beneath him as he stepped through the door. He looked down and found that he had stepped on large grains of salt that had been arranged carefully in a line in front of the door. He shuddered at the sight, then came to his senses and carefully pushed the salt he had displaced back into the line. Through his reading he had come to learn that using carefully-placed lines of salt was a common method of creating barriers which demons and ghosts were unable to cross. He hoped that he had not disturbed the salt to the point of breaking whatever barrier it provided. The sound of creaking wood echoed from the hallway behind him. The hatch had fallen shut. Peter shook off the feeling that he was being watched, and forced himself onward. The doorway led to a small, circular room with walls of gray bricks. His lantern lit up the room in its entirety, although he had to strain his eyes to see the walls. The air was colder here, unnaturally so. A sign that often came with the presence of spirits, as if the cold aura of death was infecting the air.

Something stirred in the back of the room, a subtle motion made by a shadowy figure pressed against the already dark wall. If it weren't for that motion, Peter wouldn't have seen it. It seems he had found what he was searching for. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he set his lantern down on the floor and sat down beside it, crossing his legs as he opened the tome and flipped through the fragile, thin pages searching for the incantation he needed. He looked up momentarily, seeing nothing. Whatever shadowy form with which the spirit had manifested itself had now receded back into invisibility. As he scanned through the book searching for his desired incantation, several droplets of a slimy black substance fell onto the pages from above. Peter looked up, seeing nothing but the darkness that obscured the ceiling that his lantern could not illuminate. Several more droplets fell from above, staining the pages, some falling on his head. The slime-like substance was cold. Colder than anything Peter had ever felt. A heavy breathing echoed throughout the room, yet it was not Peter's. He stood up, alarmed, lifting the lantern above his head to illuminate the ceiling amidst the droplets of black slime that were now descending upon him like rain. When he looked up he saw not stone, but a black, shapeless fleshy mass. At first glance he was unable to comprehend what he was seeing, the strange alien-like *thing* couldn't register in his mind. It throbbed, it pulsed, parts of it's fleshy blob-like form convulsing violently. Bubble-like boils were forming throughout the mass, growing until they burst to release an eruption of the black slime that had now formed a large puddle on the floor. The thing was descending, slowly but surely, the fleshy blob growing closer and closer to Peter's head as if seeking to consume him.

He turned towards the door, only to find it being closed by the hands of dark, shadowy humanoid figures. Soon, they were crawling all around him. They had pulled themselves through the stone walls, and were dragging themselves across the floor as if their shadowy bodies had become physical manifestations upon entering the room. The screaming of the door closing almost relieved him, as the sound drowned out the heavy breathing that was now emanating from every manifestation. As the shadows drew closer, their faces became clearer and more defined, and Peter was able to distinguish their features despite their shadowy form. He felt something grasping his ankle, and he looked down to see the face of his mother. She had died one year prior from an illness unknown to local doctors, and had been buried on church grounds. Her face contorted in pain as she let out a low, feminine moan. He shook his leg free, and looked up to see that the black mass was almost upon him.

He ducked his head, and soon fell to his knees, cowering away from the thing above him. The shadows threw their hands at him desperately, grabbing hold of whatever they could. He was coming to recognize more of their faces. His deceased uncle, his cousin, and several other villagers who had all been buried around the church on holy grounds. His mother lunged at him, gripping his shoulders and pushing him over backwards. He lost hold of his lantern and it fell to the ground and shattered instantly. His mother's shadowy form was colder than ice as she draped herself over her son, gripping him tightly, moaning lifelessly into his ear.

When she was pulled away from him, Peter could not tell. All he knew was that the cold grasp of his mother had been replaced by the thick blob that had descended from above. Strangely enough, the mass of flesh was warm. It enveloped every inch of his body, and it's black ooze entered his body through his mouth, nose and ears. It was unlike the droplets that had fallen previously, their warmth filled his body from within while the mass consumed him from the outside. He soon found himself drifting off to sleep, his body relaxing from the warmth deep within. He never even noticed that he had been suffocating, his lungs and throat filled with the warm, black ooze. It was a most peaceful death, indeed.

An ancient evil had been unleashed upon Hailsworth. A timeless evil. An evil that had been buried long, long ago. An evil that had been held prisoner beneath the church of Hailsworth. Peter's disappearance had barely been noted, as there was no time to mourn. Every family was fleeing, and it soon became every man for himself. Many were consumed that night, in the hours before the first light of dawn. By the time the sun had risen up to cast her heavenly glow upon the world, the evil had already retreated beneath the ground, seeking shelter where it was once a prisoner. Peter's father had gone down to confront the evil, but had never returned. By the following night the village was deserted, save for the shadowy men and women that now roamed at night, their souls bound for all eternity to the great Evil of Hailsworth, as they now called it. Today, the village is said to never see the light of day, shrouded by a thick black fog that obstructs all sunlight. Even Mother Nature herself had succumbed to the Evil, the landscape around Hailsworth shifting from thick, pine forests to filthy, rotted swamps. Many foolish travelers and explorers have entered the swamps, searching for the now-mythical village, only to vanish and never be seen again. Some say that merely upon nearing the swamp, you can hear the anguished moans of all the poor souls still enslaved by the Evil. There is no priest, no church, no prayer that will contain the Evil. It will spread. It will consume. It will devour. Such is the nature of the undoing of Hailsworth.