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Ugh, another hard chapter to write. I went over it half-a-dozen times, and finally got some of the difficult passages to work, while some other passages I'm still not certain about, but, well, here it is.
Chapter 13
The Church Service
The sun rose slowly. Ryan waited out the sunrise minute by creeping minute. He sat on the couch, comfortably equipped with sheets and pillows and blanket, and watched the gradual lightening of the room, waiting for the others to awake while his mind endlessly plodded through the events of that night.
Did I really almost kill Dominic? he had asked himself over and over. Around four his limbs had given a convulsive jerk and he had kicked the blanket away. He had been drifting off when it had occurred to him: maybe he
had shot Dominic.
What if… what if, instead of going into his room, I had been coming out
of it when I woke up? I could have already shot him. No. No, no, no! I couldn’t have! Even if I could, I’d know if I did! Besides, a gun shot would have brought Emily running. Yes, of course. I’m worried over nothing. He took several deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down. No, he hadn’t killed Dominic, and he hadn’t almost done it either. The sleepwalking had only been the stress, the paranoia, the recurring dream. He just couldn’t allow himself to sleep again. That wasn’t the only reason to stay awake: he couldn’t trust Dominic either. His eyes
had been red. Ryan had spent the night worried that every creak and shift of flooring he heard might be Dominic rising from bed in order to seek his sister’s death. He’d startled off the couch so often, tiptoeing to the hallway and making sure no one was up and about, that he half-thought he had spent more time on his feet than on the couch. Around five, he’d tried turning on the television with the volume muted and scanning for something worth watching, but he hadn’t found anything, so instead he continued to rest on the couch, propped up on the arm, watching the light filtering through the blinds get brighter.
He remembered putting the gun back, but his sleep starved brain couldn’t recall whether he had unloaded it when he did. He didn’t think so. Certainly he wouldn’t have dared make a one-handed attempt at figuring out how to unload a gun. Ryan wondered whether he should have kept the gun with him. His heavy jacket had a deep pocket, so no one would even notice if he hid it there… like in the dream. No. That dream was already too insistent. It might be silly to worry about it, but he didn’t want to contribute to the circumstances which might make it come true.
The others started waking up around seven. Dominic was up first, and Ryan got off the couch once again, making a show of getting some water from the fridge, waving to Dominic as Emily’s brother slouched his way into the bathroom. Dominic yawned and waved back. He wasn’t wearing glasses of any sort right then, but Ryan was too far away to see what color his eyes were. Emily was up soon after, still in her blue nightgown, and finding the bathroom occupied by Dominic and the shower running, she went into the master bedroom. There must be another bathroom in there. Now that both siblings were up, and Emily had agreed to be cautious of Dominic, Ryan could relax a bit, and once Dominic had vacated the shower, he took one himself. He still had nothing clean to wear, but he at least brushed the dirt out of his clothes, and by the time he was washed and dressed, he felt decent if so tired he could have slept where he stood.
Damn, I haven’t felt this tired since my senior project. I got, what, ten hours of sleep that week?
When he left the bathroom, he found Dominic and Emily at the kitchen table, eating cereal. Dominic was wearing a white shirt with a red tie and khaki pants and, for once, he had on regular glasses. Emily was wearing a dark blue skirt and a white sweater. Ryan looked at them, his fuzzy brain chewing on the scene for several seconds before it pointed out the oddity. “So, why are you two dressed up?”
“For church, of course,” said Emily. “How’s the arm?”
“Better, actually,” Ryan said. It wasn’t a complete lie. It still felt weak, but it no longer felt dead. The prickling had returned, and the fingers at least twitched when he willed them to. “I think it’ll be okay.” That part was a lie.
“Great!” Emily said. “Will you be coming with us, then? To church?”
“Er, um… I hadn’t thought of that. I’m really not dressed for it.”
“Don’t be silly,” Emily said. “No one’s going to kick you out for how you’re dressed.”
“I suppose not,” Ryan answered carefully. They’d probably stare, though. “I’m not sure…”
Dominic said, “We’re not going to force you to go, but considering what you’ve just been through, I’d think that you’d want to check it out. There’s more to religion than the demons, after all.”
“Dom, that’s not the way I’d put it,” Emily said. “But you have a point.”
Ryan sighed. When you were worried about demons, church was the logical place to go. In any case, maybe he owed God this: he’d seen quite a few of his half-serious prayers answered. It was just that he hadn’t been inside a church since his father left. “Okay, I’ll go. When’s the service?”
“There’s one at eight-thirty, which is the one we’re going to,” Emily said. “There’s a later service, too, but as long as we’re up, we should go to the earlier one.”
“Sure, sounds fine to me,” Ryan said. “Here, let me have some of that cereal.”
Ryan stopped complaining about being underdressed once they arrived at the church. True, most of the men were wearing suits or at least shirts and ties, and almost all the women wore dresses, but compared to the two hunters sitting in the back still wearing camo and smelling of dirt and sweat, Ryan didn’t feel so out of place. The church was not a large one. The sanctuary may have been able to hold three hundred people, but it was less than half full for the early morning service. There were two columns of pews, one on either side of the central aisle, and since neither Emily nor Dominic had been choosy on where to sit, Ryan had picked out a place for them on the far right near the back, where he could lean against the pew end. The pew had a hard wooden back, but the seat was cushioned, so Ryan thought that he’d probably sleep through most of the service. The windows lining either side of the sanctuary were tall but unstained, Ryan was disappointed to see, so the only stained window was in the back, behind the choir loft, and it just showed a cross with a thorn crown hung over it, with a dove overhead. Before the pulpit’s dais was a wooden table, the words “DO THIS IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME” carved across the front, a gold cross in the center, and a huge Bible with gold-edged pages lying open to one side and a thick white candle on the other.
The organ music started up shortly after they arrived, and the choir filed in wearing yellow robes, taking their seats at the front of the sanctuary, behind a low rail setting the choir loft apart from the pulpit’s dais. Soon afterwards, a lean, white-haired man dressed in a blue suit took his place behind the pulpit, instructing the congregation to rise and sing with the choir. Ryan looked on the hymnal Emily held and tried to follow the singing. It had been over a decade since he had gone to church, and he and his mother had been irregular attenders even then. He just didn’t know church music very well, and the two years of piano lessons which had taught him how to read music didn’t help much in trying to keep up. He kept getting lost in the hymn, “Be Thou My Vision,” especially when the music leader unexpectedly skipped a verse. So after a short stint of actually trying to sing with everyone else, he settled for mouthing the words. His efforts to understand what was being sung were even more futile. Many of the words were archaic, and the rest seemed to be in essentially random order. Ryan had a feeling that much of what was being said was a code, full of meaning for those steeped in the jargon of religion, but irrelevant to him. It left him feeling frustrated, and he was glad when he was able to sit down. Or he would have been, if he had been allowed to do so without first being instructed to turn and greet his neighbor, which meant shaking hands with total strangers. Since they all seemed to know one another—half a dozen people greeted Dominic and Emily by name—they recognized him as an outsider right away, and they were eager to quiz him about his identity, origin, and relationship to the siblings. At least those two made some effort to run interference for him, so he only had to give a few noncommittal responses.
Ryan was seething by the time he sat down, irritated at having been put on the spot. This whole exercise was a waste of time; he was exhausted, his head ached, and he just wanted sleep. He should have been dozing off, but he was too tense. His limbs were practically quivering with the need to move, to just get up and run out, and he felt like there was a tiny hyperactive bird in his chest, fluttering around, as frustrated as he was at being cooped up. Still, he bent his head and closed his eyes with the rest when the prayer started. He couldn’t follow that, either, but he wasn’t really trying. Even so, it was hard not to notice that the gentleman leading the prayer said “Oh Lord” at the beginning of every sentence. Sometimes at the end, too.
Trust me, man, God knows who you’re talking to. Then it was more singing that he could hardly understand, and then the offering plate was passed around while the choir sang without the congregation. Ryan dropped a couple of dollars into the plate, annoyed that he was expected to give to a church he was attending for the first time. And then there was something the schedule called “The Doxology.” Everyone stood up and sang it without the benefit of the hymnal, leaving Ryan feeling even more lost, but what the Hell? He was just mouthing the words anyway.
Then, finally, it was time for the sermon. The man who took his place at the pulpit was well overweight, with a grey speckled beard, most of his hair missing from the front, and a really bad comb-over to cover it.
“Is that your Father?” Ryan whispered to Emily.
“What? No, that’s the associate pastor. Daddy won’t be home from the retreat until this evening.”
Ryan wasn’t quite sure where in the hierarchy the associate pastor fit, but he supposed that it was something like an associate professor, and he was still in the middle of some sort of pastoral tenure track. The associate pastor lay out a stack of notes on the podium and started to preach a sermon on the sin of lust. Frankly, Ryan didn’t consider himself a very lustful person. Despite ready access to pornography thanks to high-speed Internet, he’d never taken advantage of it. Why would he want to look at pictures of naked women anyway? What he wanted was a real woman, and not just for sex. He wanted someone he could talk with and just enjoy being with. Hugs and kisses were fine, and God knew he had nothing against sex, but it was loneliness he wanted relief from. His eyes were drawn to Emily, who was watching the preacher with rapt attention. He wondered whether his attraction to her was supposed to be a sin, which was what Mr. Associate Pastor seemed to be saying.
So, if attraction is wrong, what am I supposed to feel? Love? I hardly know her. I like her, but love her? I don’t know if I even can. Maybe if she weren’t so damn crazy. He let his thoughts carry him away from the preaching, which wasn’t easy as it grew awfully loud from time to time. What was he getting so worked up about? Every time Ryan did listen for more than a minute or two, he ended up confused and angry. So Ryan sat there, his eyes burning and head aching, every nerve begging for this to end. He kept glancing at his watch, despite the fact that it had stopped running last night and he’d just put it on out of habit. Though he couldn’t tell the time, he was certain that the service had passed the hour mark some time ago.
When the sermon finally ended, it was time for the “Invitation.” Ryan hadn’t been quite sure what the word meant when he’d seen it in the schedule, so his wandering thoughts returned to the pastor as the organ started playing softtly and the pastor said, “Perhaps some of you this morning are slaves to Lust, and you want Jesus’s help to break the bonds. Now is the time to come forward. Perhaps you’ve never tasted the freedom that Jesus gives, not just from Lust but from a whole host of other sins. You want his help. He’s only a prayer away. Please, come now, as we sing.”
And so everyone stood up and sang “Amazing Grace,” all six verses. Then, when they were finished, the minister said, “I feel in my heart that God is calling someone here to come forward and repent. So we’re going to keep singing until he does.” They started from the beginning again, “Amazing grace—how sweet the sound!—that saved a wretch like me…”
Ryan gritted his teeth as his knuckles turned white from the grip they had on the next pew.
I can’t believe this! His head pounded, the fluttering he had felt in his gut had grown into full-blown nausea, and he couldn’t even find the breath to breathe the words anymore. His arms literally trembled. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. When they started singing “Amazing Grace” for the third time, he used his left hand to pry his right from the pew back in front of him—how could his weak hand have such a grip on the wood, anyway?—and walked out of the sanctuary, not caring how many eyes were on him.
As soon as he had gotten through the vestibule and out the front door, Ryan felt a tremendous wave of relief. He still didn’t feel well, however. His head ached and his stomach roiled, and the music from inside was loud enough that he could still hear it. Ryan pressed his left hand against the brick wall next to the front door and bent into the wall, his head bowed so that his crown nearly touched the bricks. He was actually panting, and he felt like he was going to throw up.
Good God, why do I feel so awful? And what was with that service? “It just went on and on and on. And most of it was uncomfortable and confusing. It was all just so…
annoying!” When his breathing had slowed and his breakfast felt like it might stay down, Ryan turned around so he could lean back against the wall. While it was cool out here, the bricks had been warmed by the sun, and they felt nice against his back. His eyes were looking directly into the sun, so he closed them, letting the rays try to warm his face faster than the chill air could numb it. It felt like an even battle.
His left hand brushed the rail next to him, and he looked down. He was at the edge of the church’s concrete porch, where the iron railing which prevented the congregation from toppling off met the wall. It was pretty badly rusted, and it looked like the screws which had held it in place had come loose. Ryan wiggled the railing and it shifted with alarming ease. He certainly wouldn’t trust that thing to hold his weight.
He heard the door swing open next to him, and he turned, unsurprised to see Emily. “What took you so long?” he asked.
“I wasn’t sure why you ran off. I thought you might just be going to the bathroom, but then I realized you had no idea where the bathroom was, so I thought I better look for you. Why did you go?”
“I wasn’t feeling well,” Ryan said truthfully.
Plus I couldn’t stand it in there any longer. I think—I think it was what was making me feel ill. “I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I have a headache and an upset stomach. Are they done yet?”
“They were on the fifth time through ‘Amazing Grace’ when I left. I think Pastor Dan’s going to keep going until somebody comes forward,” she said with a smile.
“I take it you think that’s a fine idea?”
“Not really. Daddy doesn’t like Pastor Dan doing that. He thinks it’s a form of coercion. If the Spirit’s working on someone, you don’t need to force him along with musical duress.”
“Huh. I’d thought you’d want to get people to God no matter what it takes.”
“That’s not how it works. It’s God who—,” she paused, her head cocking to one side. “Do you hear that? The music’s stopped.”
“I guess somebody cracked and went forward,” Ryan said.
“Yeah. Let’s go see if it was Dom.”
“He wouldn’t…”
“We won’t know unless we check.”
It was indeed Dominic who had gone forward.
This chapter is 3,005 words long, bringing this novella to a total length of 41,008 words.
