“It’ll be open,” she said with one hundred percent certainty, and she was right.
The door swung inward silently almost as soon as I touched it, almost as if someone, some unseen host, had opened it for me. Come in, come in, Grady. Sit for a bit, warm your bones, rest your soul.
Goosebumps prickled my flesh and a shiver went down my spine, but like Ell’s shaky voice, I reckoned this wasn’t a result of the blistering cold.
I paused before crossing the threshold, and my eye caught a sign at the edge of my vision. The top of it jutted out of the snow, cutting the letters of the first line in half. I sidestepped over to it, cleared it off, and read these words:
Tallmadge Falls Historical Church
Built between 1822 & 1825, and
designed by Franklin Cantor
This historic landmark is the oldest
church building in Ohio still in
continuous use as a place of worship.
I found the sign slightly sad now that the church was no longer a place of continuous worship, but that didn’t make it any less welcoming. I turned and waved the others toward me. They came, and I went back and helped them up the steps one by one.
Ell was last, having been studying the edifice for as long as it took Stone and Mia to get to the door. She still held Mikey’s body in her arms. I took him from her, and together, we entered.
Darkness hung around the pulpit and up in the eaves, but it was not a malicious darkness, the kind which frightened us. It was just a regular darkness, if that makes sense—the result of an absence of light and not the result of supernatural beings. Still, malicious or not, hating the dark is built into our DNA, and when we spied the rows and rows of unlit candles lining the aisle and behind the stage, we wasted no time igniting them.
Stone limped to the pulpit with the help of his two-by-four, and sat heavily on the step. He shook his head, making the hood of his coat fall backward. “Man, for a place as old as shit, it’s not bad.
“Stone!” Mia snapped. She was sitting in the first row of pews closest to the stage. “You can’t say ‘shit’ in church!”
“You just did.”
Mia faked a laugh—har-har-har! “That doesn’t count, you ass—”
Stone raised a finger and pointed at her. “Ah!”
“—assin. You assassin! I said ’assassin’!”
Stone grinned. “Not that it makes any sense…but nice save.”
Their exchange made me crack a smile, but I didn’t join in their laughter. Though I felt safe and somewhat warm here, I was too concerned about Ell. She hadn’t moved from her spot at the back of the church, where I had laid Mikey on one of the pews. She was standing behind it, leaning over and staring down at her little brother with tears in her eyes. Every few seconds, one would drop and the sheet wrapped around his body would absorb it.
I cleared my throat. The others looked my way, and I nodded sideways toward Ell. They came as I put a hand on Ell’s back. Knobs of spine and ridges of ribs poked through the many layers she wore, and I wondered when it was she last ate—or slept, for that matter.
“What do you wanna do?” I asked.
“I wanna bring him back,” Ell answered, smiling somberly. “But I can’t, so I guess I have to let him go.” She stroked the end where Mikey’s head was. “And we can’t bury him. The ground is too frozen for that, plus we don’t have any shovels.”
“Even if the ground wasn’t,” Stone said, pinching my bicep, “Grady wouldn’t be much help.”
“I’d try my damndest, though. Know that,” I said. “If you want me to go outside right now and start digging with my bare hands, I will.”
Ell’s smile transformed from somber to something slightly warmer. “I know you would, Grady.”
Stone wrangled my neck and rubbed my head with his knuckles. “You’re a good guy, dude. Sometimes too good.”
Standing on tiptoe, Ell kissed me on the cheek, and pleasant chills rippled along my shoulders. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to do any digging, Grady.”
“Then what should we do?” I asked.
Ell shrugged. “I just want to give him a good send-off.”
“And leave him?” Mia asked.
Ell nodded. “Yeah. He’ll be safe here.”
So that’s what we did. I helped Ell clean Mikey up. Wiped the blood away, combed his hair, changed him into clothes that weren’t soaked red. Ell, God bless her, stayed strong throughout the entire process, and when we were done, Mikey looked close to the way I remembered him.
His body lay on a dais, surrounded by lit candles and with a large cross towering over him. Nice words were said, tears were shed, and Chewy howled.
Finally, in a beautiful church in a beautiful town, Mikey could rest.
The sun shined through the clouds a handful of hours later, letting us know it was time to move on. So we continued south, and when the sun’s already dim light dimmed more, we found shelter, waited out the dark, and then left again.
Rinse. Repeat.
It was maybe a week and a half after we had left Woodhaven when the light disappeared for the longest stretch in recent memory. We might have tried waiting out this darkness, but I knew we couldn’t with Mia so close to having her daughter. Although usually cool and collected, Mia had become increasingly worried—for good reason—and after much deliberation, a decision was made while we stayed in a bakery full of stale and frozen pastries and bread. The decision was that we would press on, because we had no other choice.
As long as the snowmobile’s headlights worked and the storms remained mild, not dumping another half-dozen feet on us, we’d be okay.
And so far, we were.
The monsters left us alone, but they stayed close. That, I know for
