NuclearBuddha wrote...
Forbidding in its size and bleak in its deserted aspect, the church loomed malignantly over the homes of its neglectful congregation. As we approached, Inspector Vakarian motioned for me to extinguish my lantern. In the resulting darkness a green and red phosphorescence, somewhat akin in appearance to the ignis fatuus, shewed with eerie lambency through the cracked panes of the edifice’s upper windows. As our eyes adjusted further, the glow seemed so strong as to suggest St. Elmo’s fire upon the steeple. The buzzing sound, replete with the awful suggestion of a source alien to the natural world, was once again audible, this time clearly resonating from within the supposedly abandoned place of worship. More terribly still, it seemed to be answered from various points in the starry sky, though what might be responding to that bizarre call was mercifully beyond our sight.
The door, boards clapped over it to emphasize the church’s desertion, required a small pry bar from the constable’s office to force before allowing us ingress to the darkened narthex. Only very faint lights sifted through cracks in the rotting door to the nave, and debris crunched softly underfoot as the inspector crept forward. A stalwart man, the inspector’s hand still shewed noticeable trembling as he pushed back the door allowing us full view of the interior.
The lights we had seen from outside seemed to be emitted by thick and foetid deposits of tarry stickiness that pooled in each desecrated ambry along the walls. Many of the pews were upended as if by considerable violence, and the iconography so beloved by those adhering to the Orthodox creed was scattered carelessly across the stone flags. A closer inspection of the nearest icons revealed that their subjects were blasphemies of the most abhorrent sort: saints in grisly torment, or depicted engaged in macabre acts with expressions of unholy glee. The altar was obscured by a tattered white curtain of gauze which seemed to ripple and billow at the slightest breath. Above, the groined arches of the ceiling were cracked and mouldering, and the vault above the altar had given way completely, leaving yawning blackness gaping beneath the steeple-spire. A noxious reek, half of rancid meat and half of some other unspeakable stench filled the air, setting both the inspector and I to fits of nauseated coughs. Miss Zorah, perhaps inured to such nasal difficulties by the frequent travails of her fragile health, sniffed keenly and seemed to shiver with fear or some other indefinable thrill.
Yeah... This is the part where it seems like a good idea to run, but morbid curiosity propels them onward.
Also, Miss Zorah is... invigorated perhaps?
Bad sign... Or a good one, depending on your perspective.