Chapter Text
Being laid off was not the worst thing that happened to you. You knew better than anyone that eventually all your hard work and effort to get that promotion would mean jack shit to your boss, and that he was going to give that prick Dennis that manager title anyway, he was her nephew after all. No, it wasn't losing your job that got you pissed, it was losing your house too, owned by the company that fired you and now you have to live off the last four paychecks you were given as a 'sorry we fucked you over, good luck dipshit' consolation gift. It was enough money to last a while if you were smart, but now you had no place to turn but the same place you left years ago when you wanted to pursue better things. Your hometown.
Mama had always said you needed a place to go when shit hits the fan, even if you outgrew it all, home is there. So you stand there, in front of the house you grew up in, and feel like something just isn't the same. Maybe it's the beard you grew, or the deeper voice or the fact that you are greying at the temples just enough for everyone to know you've been busy and had no time to rest, but opening the door again-she never changed the locks-after so many years of not being home, all your problems are gone just like that. Being laid off means nothing, losing your fancy house overlooking a skyline was just the past now. You were home and you felt like you'd always craved being back.
You hadn't even been paying attention, the first few hours went by so fast that by the time your head hit the satin lined pillow of your childhood bed you were bone tired and more full than you've felt in years. Your mom had greeted you the moment you opened the door, plate of food in hand and more on the stove, your favorite dessert in the oven and everything you'd missed about the simple life of your hometown waiting to embrace you just as hard as she had. You'd had several helpings of mashed potatoes, greens, chicken and other home-made things and now you could hardly move to put the cover on. You kick off your clothes and place them on the floor as neatly as you can with everything in your body telling you to stop moving and go to sleep for three days. You barely manage to get your bonnet on before sleep took you and made you dead to the world. Best sleep in years.
You haven't had a genuine dream in forever, so when you woke up to a void, no light as far as you could see, dressed in the fanciest white suit you've never owned you assumed you had too much pinot grigio and not enough food to follow it. Then you notice how lightweight you felt, the slight floaty feeling of being in a lucid dream, and you relax. There's no other way to go but…forward? You have no clue what direction it is and at some point you are positive you were going fully backwards.
Eventually you came to a large door, it was a deep maroon accented with gold that seemed to glisten even with no light nearby to give it that pristine yellow shine. Everything in you told you not to open it, so you stood there staring at the door until it seemed to open on its own. After forever in darkness, seeing some form of light was like hope in a hellish place. You never take that step past the threshold of the door, you were lucid dreaming for once in a really long time, and you were not going to die by following horror tropes. You know you'd die first, even if it's only you in your dream. The warm candle light from inside the room invites you, but you stay ten toes down regardless of the need to see if there is more to this room.
Then a figure shows up, a tall shadow of a man that stares down at you with a fiery orange eye that flickers red, and horns that would clip the door frame if he tried to get close to you. He tilts his head at you and says nothing, so you also say nothing. It takes a while, you think maybe fifteen minutes if time worked in your dreams, but he leans under the door-frame and gets close to you. It happens so fast you nearly wake up from the scare, a deep rumbling shakes your chest and you feel that he's trying to talk to you. Word don't exist in this space, and you don't care enough to know what he wants from you. Wake up, damnit, you've had enough of this thing staring you down with that damn glowing eye. He's in your face and now you cant tell where he begins or ends, you don't like this one bit, so you do the one thing a lucid dream allows. You push him. He stumbles back into the lit room, and the large door slams closed. The loud noise jolts you awake, and you sit up in your bed. Greeted by the sound of robins singing and the sun just barely reaching past the horizon from your window, you consider that you need to get more sleep.
The rest of the morning was normal, the same routine you were used to with the difference of not doing anything alone. Your mom was cooking what smelled like pulled pork, so you figure she's getting dinner ready very early. She was never a breakfast person, and to be fair neither were you. You finish shaving and wash your face, staring at yourself in the mirror, you swear for a moment your eyes flicker, almost matching that orange from your dream. Sure, what the hell, you just woke up and your probably still jet-lagged from the flight. You let your tired brain recover for a moment, putting on your clothes to greet your mother downstairs as it does.
She acknowledges you with a good morning, and you hug her as you try, and of course fail, to take some of what she's cooking out of the pot. You reel back when she nearly clips your hand with the spoon she's cooking with and curses you out for acting like a child, in which you tell her that you are a child, her child. She rolls her eyes at you and shoves you out of the kitchen before you can even grab water. It feels so nice to be home, even if you're only staying while you apartment search.
You sit around on the couch for a while taking in the familiar surroundings of home, the same walls and popcorn ceiling that you would stare at for hours when you had nothing better to do, the same contemporary art pieces of faceless brown-skinned women in hair wraps and intensely patterned skirts and dresses going about life in energetic and colorful serenity. You see a few plaques with bible quotes in the same places you had last glanced at them, and the overly detailed prayer hands almost mock you for the last thing you'd said before you left to be someone else. Shaking your head of those thoughts you remind yourself that you are well forgiven now, you and your mom are on good terms and that's why you're home until you move out again. You peer into the kitchen once more before getting up and offering to make her coffee from the big plastic container of Folgers you swear she's had since you were a baby. You make yourself a cup as well and you share a moment at the table together, trying carefully to not overly stain the glass with your fingers unless you end up being the one to clean it up.
Soon she gets back to cooking, and you offer to help her out of the kindness of your heart but she refuses to let you touch the stove even though you hadn't burnt food since you were 7 years old. Instead you're forced to go out and see what has changed while you were gone, so that is exactly what you did, mostly because she told you to and you would be a dead man if you said no to her, even now at your grown age.
So out you went, and everything seemed as normal as you remember, construction on buildings that have been covered in fences since you were months old, a few re-paved sidewalks and only a few new buildings that color the lines of stores with the vague concept that this city is still loved. You had a bit of cash to spare, you'd saved most because you didn't remember when they'd send your next pity check. Staring at the different buildings, new mini-mart, a bowling alley, a leather shop. None of them seemed worth going to just yet, then you glance to your side and see something that makes you think back to that large maroon door.
A candle shop, looking at the building gave you a weird pang in your chest. A pull like you need to go in there, you figure it wouldn't hurt to take a look, you likely won't buy anything, memories of those god awful wax squares you sniffed with the promise of a sweet pumpkin scent still haunt you to this very day. Regardless of past traumas you walk through the automated glass door, hit with several scents at once but soothed by the prominent fragrance of lavender. You are greeted by an overly cheerful employee who looks like they need a break and maybe a blunt, you nod at them and bee-line to one of the aisles to keep interaction short. Rows and rows of candles later you're nose deep in the blood cranberry scented candle in the occult section, in your mind any candle that is scented can't be used for any type of occult so as long as you're just sniffing it you're fine. You're about ten hundred sniffs deep of this sweet smelling wax jar when someone shoulder-checks you and the jar goes flying out of your hands and onto the floor with a loud clatter. You'll have to buy the candle now, even though the glass of the jar didn't crack it just feels rude to put it back now. Turning to the asshole that shoulder-checked you, it takes a moment before you can see his face from the on your knees position you were in to pick the candle off the floor -it had rolled under the aisle shelf. You see the vague making of a face, a man who looks just old enough to be maybe your grandfather, immediately no.
Standing up, you try to keep an amused huff from escaping as he has to crane his neck a bit to look up at you. He's brushing off his shirt as he makes eye contact, and it is literal eye contact, since he only has one of them- strange. That gave you pause for a moment, looking between his wildly uninterested eye and the sleek black eye patch covering the whole other half of his face. He blinks, tilting his head and running a hand through long hair as he sizes you up. It takes self control to not jump at him just to see if he would flinch, instead you ball your fists and stare back at him, if he won't say anything you sure as hell won't, and being honest something about him just doesn't sit right with you. His face slowly breaks into a smile, and you feel a shiver run through your whole body, it causes you to look away from him.
"Apologies," He starts to speak, and his voice resonates somewhere mysterious inside of you and you know for a fact you don't like it. "I suppose I wasn't paying the most attention. Are you quite fond of blood cranberry as well?" He purrs half of his sentence, punctuating words that spark red flags in your mind and his fuckass grin isn't helping his case. He brushes past you, getting closer to the shelves as he grabs a few candles like yours and two 'Copper Strawberry' candles from behind the other assorted smells. What in the hell does a copper strawberry even smell like? He excuses himself, walking to the counter and leaving you standing there dumbfounded-you find yourself deciding that day forward that you now have beef with this man, and the next time you see him it is purely on sight.
Come Sunday, you did nothing more than pace your room and stare at the candle you bought, you never lit it but you have considered doing so. Your mom was having no more of your sleep, eat, sleep routine and once again sent you out to do literally anything. She was getting ready for church so you figured you would too, though she told you she'd changed congregation a few years back- not that she was forcing you to go with her, she remembers the fights years ago that caused you to leave. She goes when you do, driving off to wherever while you walk your way back to the church where the rift all began. Except this wasn't the church you'd been familiar with, the only thing unchanged was the address, and your hesitation to get close enough to the building for any of this to matter. You're heavily under-dressed and unprepared to set foot in a church again- yet there was a pull towards the building that you couldn't ignore despite the voice in your head saying to take your ass home.
You stand in front of the building, you can tell from the entrance that they never tore down the old church, just built over it with more windows and spires than a normal church needs, and once you got into the narthex you realized that while you were gone for those years this church went from basic inner city Pentecostal to full blown catholic. Uninterested in the intensity of Catholicism you decide now is better than later to turn and leave, as you reach the door of the vestibule you feel a hand on your shoulder. In that moment you almost full back-handed a nun, and you're lucky you stopped mid swing before this poor woman was on her back and closer to God than she signed up to be. She takes a quick step back and smiles at you, a familiar chill runs up your back and to your finger tips as she does so.
"Going? So Soon? Service hasn't started yet." She holds out a hand, a slight tilt to her head as if she expected you to know what she wanted from you. "I am. Sister Elizabeth." It was like her words were calculated in real time or something, you were not going to touch her hand, or stay here longer than you wanted to. You shake your head and back away while facing her because you know that the likelihood of being killed by a nun isn't zero, so you know better than to take chances. Reaching the door you turn and walk out of it, feeling so much better now that you were breathing in the air of the outside. You lean against the wall of the church while you take a few deep breaths, being in there was suffocating and you have no idea why.
"Not going to stay?" You knew that damn voice. You'd only heard it once before but it was ingrained in you from the start. "What a shame, it isn't often we have visitors, the same congregation can get boring, you know." You slowly turn your head, and you start to feel as if you were suffocating again. It was that man from the candle store, staring at you with his single off-blue eye. You felt your face twist in disgust, and you remembered your promise of it being on sight if you ever saw him again. Pushing yourself off the wall you start to prepare yourself to fight him, hoping that taking him by surprise and knocking his ass out on the pavement will solve this unnecessary beef that is most likely one sided and started by you non verbally- you realize as you start to size him up that he came outside from somewhere in the church, and you realize that you can't attack him, not out in public with people walking by often enough to cause stares. You curse yourself, realizing that even if you wanted to you can't.
You curse internally, and he fucking smirks at you as he opens the door of the church and leads you back inside. Everything in you starts to scream again, you want to leave you have to leave, but you want to punch this man right in his face and maybe break his nose. You make a point to not pass the threshold of the vestibule door, standing defiantly in the narthex, close to the outside-and easy escape. His eye looks over you unimpressed, the feeling of him looking at you only adds to the claustrophobic feeling that this church gives you, your nerves are firing on all cylinders to get you to make a move, in or out, leave or stay. He's staring, make a choice damnit make a choice.
"Something keeping you? Service doesn't start for an hour." His voice cuts through your internal monologue smoothly, you look at his face and your anger reignites, you ball your fists and take a step past the doorway of the vestibule towards him, preparing to swing the moment you close distance. Sister Elizabeth walks right between you two and you nearly knock her ass out for the second time today. She smiles at you as you flail to keep from hitting her, and she turns to the man as you straighten up. "With all respect, you are a bit late for preparation, Father."
You blink really hard three times, staring in disbelief at the man as he runs a hand through his hair and nod, thanking the nun who smiles at you again and leaves just as quickly as she arrived. Holy shit, no way, you cannot believe it. Just your luck you think, that you decide to pick a fight with some random man over something he apologized for the same day, that you find yourself standing in a church staring him down, that you almost knocked out a nun-twice in one day before you'd even had breakfast. What really kills you with all of this is one thing, what the nun had said to him, the name he was called. Your dumb-ass decided that out of every person in the world to hate on for a dumb reason, it had to be a priest.