Title: Come as you are. Leave with God.
Author: J Rease
Summary: "Welcome to St. Augustine. Come as you are. Leave with God." Officer Paul Calhoun investigates the death of Finn Hudson. There were four witnesses and no one could tell him who did it. Because they kept their eyes closed. And they prayed.
Warnings: Violence. Horror. Gore. Character Death (It's just Finn…though)
Come as you are. Leave with God.
Prologue
The road to the St. Augustine Catholic Church was a winding sprawl of decaying overgrowth. The abandoned church was nestled behind old man Wilson's estuary, and most of the building was hidden from plain view by the mixed branches of the various trees surrounding the property. The fading road had no other destinations; and it ended abruptly due to a fallen tree. He parked his squad car haphazardly in front of the mammoth foliage, and fingered the flashlight clipped to his utility belt. It was nearly dawn; but the greyed sky cast an eerie soot over the wooded area; and he couldn't help but finger his sidearm with his other hand.
It was the morning of Halloween, and Mr. Wilson called into the station when his horses had been jostled out of the back stables. Mr. Wilson wrangled in his horses and called the police station again when he saw cars winding through the back roads of his farm. He knew it would wind up being a few kids, and he hoped he could bring them in before the sun came up. There were three cars parked on the opposite side of the fallen tree: a small red coupe, a silver Chevy and a pickup truck. He pulled his flashlight out and flicked it through all of the windows, and continued the small incline to the condemned church.
His hand was shaking by the time he got to the cul-de-sac blanketing the empty parish. When he turned onto the dirt path, the dirty white gate caught his eye. The church was small for a Cathedral. There were only two windows, both stained glass tales of saints and sinners. The doors were astride the foreboding archway, its hinges ripped from the frame on both sides. It was completely dark inside the walk way to the church, and his flashlight was casting sinister shadows against the scene set before him. He pulled his light over the stone marquee in front of the ancient building, and gulped when he slowly revealed what it said.
"Welcome to St. Augustine. Come as you are. Leave with God."
He walked up the first two steps to the building, trying to force his hand from stuttering against his wrist. He'd been a faithful officer of the Lima county police force for almost fifteen years. And in those fifteen years of active duty, he'd never once been afraid of anything. Really bad things didn't happen in places like this. He was safe and this was all in his head and he needed to shake it off and do his job. He would walk into that church and he'd find some stoned out teenagers sitting in the pews on a mischief night dare. He walked up the next four steps. His eyes were darting everywhere the dark was lurking, and he felt the dread of obscurities moving in his peripheral.
He circled on the spot, the beam of the flashlight whizzing in different directions. He took a calming breath and tip toed into the darkened church. His light found first the holy water basin. The damp crescent at the bottom had some murky sludge at the base, and he had to shake the nervousness from his thoughts. There were faint noises everywhere. The church was humming with a static quiet, his ears were buzzing against the tension wafting through the air. He took four more steps forward, the aisle between the pews wrecking his resolve. There are whispers as he inches forward, barely registering voices as he approaches the altar, which was sunken beneath a waist high stone wall. He has to step down into it to get a better listen. His light is only illuminating the path directly at his feet, and he is too on edge to venture into something he's not sure he is ready to see. He is creeping forward to the pulpit, trying still to keep his flashlight to the floor. There are different voices, mumbling feverishly at practiced prayers, two of them in well versed Hebrew.
He shines his light directly in front of him, and he gasps as it glints past five rows of sneakered feet, heels resting underneath rocking bodies, hands linked together through fisted, interlocked fingers. The pulpit is on a stone column directly in front of where they are sitting, thrusting the lectern eye level with the pews behind him. The crucifix leaned over the altar, and he stopped his beam of light from finding the face of Jesus Christ.
"Kids. I'm Officer Paul Calhoun. W-we have to head back to headquarters, we got a call from the farm owner and you guys are trespassing on private property…we'll have to call your parents…"
The whispering got louder as he spoke, and he coughed a few times before walking up to the kids. He stood behind them for a moment before stepping slightly in front of them. He flashed his light on the first girl he reached, and he knew her immediately. He'd busted Santana Lopez for shoplifting on numerous occasions, often driving her back the gentrified Lima Heights Adjacent area, and leaving her with her father to handle. She was crying, her face contorted in what looked like utter agony. He didn't touch her. He moved down the line slowly, the children seemingly shivering violently from the cold that drifted in menacingly through the open front doors. The next teenager his flashlight found was Noah Puckerman. The same Noah Puckerman who punched him in the face in a drunken tantrum the year before. His brows furrowed on his sweating face, Hebrew twisted his lips in experienced practice.
He didn't want to touch them. There was something so private about their prayers, something so melancholy and upsetting about them lined up in front of the church altar, their hands tightly wrapped around one another for support. His flash light followed the line next to Rachel Berry, a girl with dozens of noise complaints on her otherwise pristine criminal record. She was biting one side of her lip, pushing out her Hebrew prayers with what seemed like all the belief such a small person could muster. None of them were paying any attention to him. He could only hear their jumbled prayers and the noise his combat boots made against the dirty marble floors.
His flashlight next found Quinn Fabray, her chin pressed to her chest and her free hand clutching the cross around her neck. He only knows her from his own congregation. She sat sometimes in the back pews, quietly listening to the sermon. They wouldn't open their eyes. They were all sat before the altar clutching at each other through prayer, keeping their eyes closed as if the devil was hiding in the dark.
They all stop at precisely at the same moment. The quiet made the environment instantly dangerous. And the calm he'd felt in their prayer quickly transformed into a shaky panic. His flashlight was catching the most enigmatic spaces of the building, until he calmed his hand and caught the thick red puddled on the floor. He almost didn't want to follow it. He almost wanted to run. He felt like he had to get away. He was an officer of the law. Things like this shouldn't faze him. He was supposed to be the logical, impartial one. He gulped unintentionally, pulling his walkie-talkie out of the holster with an uncontrollably shaky hand.
He held down the call button, and drew a blank for the code he was supposed to remember in a situation like this. He let his flashlight follow the heavy trail of crimson along the floor, not moving from the spot that he'd declared safe from whatever atrocity he was about to witness. He let go of the button on his talkie. His light loomed over a sneaker, black and white and red all over, and he was getting closer to a torso—
"Paul you okay over there? Over?"
He'd jumped at the noise, his flashlight leaving the red in the corner away from him, his heart seizing in his chest before he gathered breath in his lungs again.
"Well, Paulie, I'm finished talking to Mr. Wilson and I'm heading to the church. How's it look? Over. "
His flashlight was getting dangerously close to where it was before, and he took a deep breath before aiming it at the source of the blood. By the time the breath escaped, they had all started screaming, four voices wailing in the wind that was howling through the archway of the bone chilling cathedral.
He'd almost forgotten they were there.
He shook his shoulders and stepper forward, away from the teenagers bent at the altar, screeching through some horrible experience while he walked diagonally across from the safety zone he'd been glued to. He dragged the amber light slowly up past the sneaker, to a bloodied shirt, to a twisted face. He'd known Finn Hudson all his life. He was the gawky kid who lived right next door to him. He saw him leave for school every morning, when he was usually getting off duty for the night. He even went to a few of Finn's football games- before he moved in with his new stepfather. He'd known Finn Hudson when there weren't blood stained tears crying from empty eye sockets. He knew Finn when there weren't words carved into his face. He knew Finn Hudson, when he was alive.
He pressed the button on his walkie-talkie, and let the breath collapse his lungs before whimpering:
"Call for backup."
He's not sure his partner could hear him over the teenagers still screaming; but he hopes he gets there soon.
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