Looting a Church

Oh god that title for this post sounds terrible.

I’d thought that we’d be going to the meeting mentioned on the pamphlet I-330 got. But when Wednesday night came, I-330 showed no sign of getting ready to leave. Asked her about that, and she answered, “What? Go when the place will be full of people? Are you crazy? I just wanted to figure out the location.”

So we went last night instead. All these late night escapades are really starting to get to me…. Felt like I was about to fall asleep the entire time.

Didn’t know anything about the place we were going to except for the name, so I thought it was going to be downtown. Instead I-330 led me to a forest at the edge of town, pointed at an overgrown dirt trail, and said, “It’s back there.” Where does she even get her night vision? I could barely see the trail. Hard to believe that there would be anything back there.

After fighting through what felt like a wall of branches and thorns, we reached a clearing where the church was located. When I first saw it, thought that its occupants were going all out with the Halloween décor. Then I realized, no, it actually looks like that. Small wooden church, crumbling rooftop, old cemetery on one side, broken windows, looked abandoned for years…. I-330 had to talk me into going inside that place. Was not feeling in the mood for dealing with haunted house style buildings. Not that late at night.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. You’ll probably be seeing tons of run down abandoned creepy churches by the end of all this. They’re almost as common as spooky libraries.”

Thanks I-330. That’s real encouraging.

Inside the church looked just as old and torn up as the exterior. Rubble from the collapsed roof covered the floor, termite eaten pews were scattered, old and moth eaten tapestries hung loosely from what was left of the walls. The moon shining down through the holes in the ceiling was the only light I could see by; caused me to trip a few times on the mess. Don’t know about anyone else, but this really didn’t look like the sort of place I’d hold meetings in.

The altar at the end of the church had been cracked in half, with a broken cross at the foot of it. I-330 stepped over it, and began to examine the floor behind it. It was pretty dark back there; apparently too dark for even her. She pulled a handgun out of her coat, and started to shoot the ceiling until enough rotten pieces of wood had been blown away for the moonlight to come in.
That there? That freaked me out. Panicked for a few moments; what was she doing, why was she carrying a gun around, WHY WAS SHE SHOOTING THINGS. She told me not to worry, it was alright…. NO IT’S NOT ALRIGHT YOU’RE SHOOTING THE CEILING! Calm down Lisa, I just needed enough light to find this….

“This” was a wooden hatch built into the floor. I-330 grabbed the metal handle and pulled it open; down it was a series of stairs leading into darkness. This didn’t look like a darkness which I-330 could solve by shooting things… so she pulled a lighter out of her coat and told me to hand her one of the old candle stubs lying on the floor.
WHY DIDN’T SHE JUST DO THAT EARLIER INSTEAD OF SHOOTING THE ROOF?

Not that the candle provided much light; still could only see a few steps below us. Least it kept me from falling over (much).

At the bottom of the stairs, the space opened up into a larger room. Don’t know what it was about the place, but if felt… off somehow. Colder than it should have. And there was a weird sensation of falling, even though I could feel the ground at my feet…. Couldn’t see any of it due to lack of light, but I-330 reached over to the wall, found a torch attached to it, and lit it. A real torch. Because this church wasn’t hitting enough horror clichés yet.

That gave us enough light to look around. Surprisingly little there…. Just a small, circular room, with an altar in the center. On top of the altar was a greenish colored statue, less than a foot tall. It looked like some kind of monster; a cross between an octopus and a dragon, holding a scroll in its claws. I-330 picked up the statue from the altar, and carefully removed the scroll. Then she threw the statue back towards me; I caught it (clumsily. It was heavier than it looked.) And she told me that it would make a great paperweight or garden ornament for our house. I’m not so sure about that. It’s pretty grotesque…. Not something I’d want to look at often.

Kept expecting for something to happen (we were stealing from an old church in the middle of the night only a few weeks before Halloween), but we made it back home without any incident. I-330’s been looking over the scroll since then; it’s covered in weird hieroglyphics, and she’s trying to make sense of them. They don’t look like any symbols I’ve ever seen before.

As for the statue…. I wanted to get rid of it, but felt like that would be rude to I-330…. So I stuck it in a really dark corner of the living room, face turned away from where I usually sit. It’s probably the weirdest item of décor I have in this entire house, bar none. But I-330 seems to like it, so… I suppose I’ll tolerate it.

-Lisa