Chapter 8: Amamet
St. Stella's Church was a building with yellow brick walls, a snow-covered roof, stained glass-windows and an ominous tower. The high wooden doors were open.
Matt hadn't encountered any monsters on the way to the church, which was of course nice, yet creepy. With forebodings, he stepped into the building through the big gate-like entrance, clutching his shotgun. There were four shots left in it.
While the building looked like an ordinary church from the outside, it was very different inside the nave. There were only seven benches left and they were lying in a heap between the four pillars supporting the ceiling. The same rusty cages Matt had seen at Carpenter hung from the ceiling, hideous things twitching inside them, hymn books lying on the floor, torches burning at the walls. A couple of crucifixes hung on the pillars, but the two statues of Jesus were decapitated and blood appeared to have poured down from the necks, giving the originally brown wood a reddish colour. As Matt contemplated them, he thought he could still see scarlet drops trickle down from the throats.
Matt slowly made his way towards the altar. He walked around the heap of benches and then stopped when he saw the coffin.
It was lying up at the altar: an ordinary wooden coffin, with an open lid, as if a funeral was currently in full swing here. There weren't any flowers, though. Just that little coffin … and Matt wasn't sure he wanted to see who was in it.
Nevertheless, he walked past a blood-filled baptismal font and up to the coffin to take a look at its contents.
It was Tommy. Tommy's dead body, with several ugly bruises and scrapes. Lying in the coffin with his hands folded over his stomach. A yellowish scrap of paper covered his face.
Matt gasped, drew back, tripped, fell, dropped the shotgun. With his face buried in his hands, he slowly stood. "This is not happening … I'm going to wake up in the plane soon …" he mumbled, attempting to pull himself together.
But no matter what he said to himself, he knew this was not a dream.
He walked back up to the corpse and removed the paper. The skin of Tommy's face was as pale as the skin on the rest of his body and his eyes were closed. Matt then read the eight words written on the paper with capital black letters:
YOU'RE LATE
AMAMET IS READY FOR YOU NOW
He immediately called to mind what he had read about this "angel" in "Lost Memories" back in the library's reading room.
… "specializes in showing sinners the right path and punishing them when they refrain from following it … also known as Hagio Anemo ("Holy Wind"), the original worshippers usually used the name Amamet …"
Matt dropped the paper. It floated gracefully to the ground before the coffin.
He suddenly heard the sound of doors being slammed shut and turned around. The big doors he had just opened when he entered the building were now closed and he knew at once that he wouldn't be able to budge them if he tried to get out. The pile of benches in the middle of the church was on fire, enveloped in menacing flames. The smoke and heat were slowly spreading …
And there, on top of the fire in the middle of the flames, stood a dark shape. The fire should be illuminating it, but the figure seemed to be capable of tyrannizing over light itself. Its head had an odd, somewhat rectangular shape, like that of a hammerhead shark. It wore a ragged robe and strange black leather boots and its muscular arms were folded.
As it walked down from the fire towards him, swiftly and easily stepping from bench to bench, it decided that it would let him see the rest of its body and the flames obeyed by illuminating it entirely, revealing more bizarre details. What Matt had assumed was part of the robe turned out to be gross tattered pieces of skin, stretched out between the elbows and knees like wings. From the elbows to the fingertips, long yellow latex gloves covered the creature's skin. Its face didn't have any features except for two parallel vertical slits ("eyes? Mouths?"), although these were hardly actual features. A strange 4 feet long sword had been driven through the head horizontally, the two ends sticking out of the "temples".
The flames seemed to ignore the being as it walked right through them without burning itself, almost like Moses wandering through the Red Sea without getting himself drowned. This was what convinced Matt that he was standing before something different than the other monsters. A so-called angel. Amamet … Was this the monster Tommy had mentioned?
"Were you the one who … who murdered Tommy and put him in that coffin? … Was it you? Can you even understand what I'm saying?" Matt stuttered.
After reaching the bottom of the fire, Amamet raised his right arm to point at Matt and chanted something unintelligible in a weird language. The angel's voice actually didn't sound like one voice, it was more like several different voices intoning at the same time. The voices of children …
"I dnatsrodnu gnityreve. Rafél mai amech izabi alm …"
The voices trailed off. Amamet reached up with his right hand and pulled the sword out of his grotesque head. It was a long thin sword with no handles, just a long blade that seemed to be as deadly as that of a katana, both ends sharp. Apparently, the angel couldn't feel the pain a human being would feel if it was trying to wield such a weapon, or maybe the gloves just prevented the blade from cutting into his hands. Whatever the explanation was, he could easily handle the unusual sword. He reached back and held the sword above the nearest bench for a few seconds until it began to burn. Then, armed with the fiery sword, he walked towards Matt.
The latter was about to try aiming at the angel, when he realized he had dropped the shotgun. Matt snatched it from the floor and took aim, but before he could pull the trigger, Amamet swung the sword at him and the flat of the blade hit his chest.
Matt sailed back through the air until he hit the wall and the shotgun flew out of his grip once more. He didn't know what was worse – colliding with the wall, landing on the floor or the sensation of the fire burning through his t-shirt. Screaming in pain and horror, he scrambled to his feet.
Luckily, the font was nearby.
Although he would have preferred water, the blood would have to be sufficient. He bent forward and plunged his chest into the gross liquid, extinguishing the flames and giving a new meaning to the expression "baptism of fire".
Gasping and with blood dripping from his upper body, he rose out of the font and stumbled back in time to see Amamet cleave it with his sword. Pieces of stone fell to the ground and blood rushed across the floor, soaking the angel's boots and Matt's ordinary shoes.
Amamet roared with fury and, now holding the sword with both hands, ran towards Matt, who grabbed the shotgun from the floor, aimed for the being's head and squeezed the trigger. The bullet penetrated into the creature's shoulder with a nauseating "crunch" sound, but Amamet continued running as if the bullet had just whistled past him.
He soon reached his victim and swung the sword in a horizontal curve, but Matt managed to dodge the attack by clumsily leaping sideways. He raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger again.
And again. And again. And …
Click.
"Oh shit," he muttered, dropped the shotgun and reached into his backpack to get the table leg. But he was too slow. Before he could produce the weapon, Amamet hit him with the flat of the fiery blade again and Matt's feet left the floor.
This time, he landed on a bench in the big fire in the middle of the church. His body was immediately shrouded in flames. The heat and pain was beyond endurance. Lying on the bench, he screamed and squirmed as the fire easily burned through his clothes and consumed his body.
Amamet merely stood there and looked on. Suddenly, he raised his arms, thus unfolding the skin between his knees and elbows, spreading his "wings", and gracefully rose from the floor. Floating in the air above the fire, he pointed at Matt and his unearthly voice(s) returned:
"Ecarbme et semalf fho noispmeder …"
Then, he turned around, flapped his wings, flew out of the largest window, crushing the stained glass, and disappeared in the cold black night.
As the fire devoured Matt's flesh and he heard the familiar faint sound of sirens, he knew that he was going to die now and there was nothing he could do about it. Then, everything vanished and only a huge overwhelming darkness was left …
---
Truth may seem, but cannot be;
Beauty brag, but 't is not she;
"Hey, wake up …"
Truth and beauty buried be.
"Are you okay?"
Matt groaned. He had a slight headache. Someone was gently shaking him. He opened his eyes. It was Amanda, standing next to the bench he was lying on.
Memories flew through his mind – the heap, the fire, Amamet … He rose from the bench and stared at St. Stella's Church, stunned.
It was all back to normal. The cages were lamps again, containing bulbs, not deformed fetus. The font contained water and there wasn't any blood on his clothes and face anymore. The crucifixes were no longer beheaded and the hymn books were seated on their shelves. All the stained glass-windows were intact and the thirty wooden benches were placed in neat rows. There weren't any torches either, but the coffin was still there, up at the altar. The most notable change was of course that Matt was neither on fire nor dead or injured.
He sat down on the bench again and sighed.
"Are you okay?" Amanda repeated.
"Uh, yeah. I … I'm just a little tired," he lied, driving his hand through his tangled hair. Apart from feeling extremely tired, he was also confused, uneasy and slightly depressed. "Why did you run away?"
"What?"
"Back in the library. You ran away, remember? And you threw a book at me … Actually, it turned out that I needed that book, so thanks."
"Dunno what you're talking about," the girl said and strolled away towards the middle aisle.
"A kid with a short-term memory. Great," he thought.
Amanda turned around. "I don't like churches," she declared. "They're creepy, don't you think?"
"Well, this one certainly was very creepy," Matt said and gave a wry smile.
"Huh?"
"Oh, never mind. Why are you here, if it's so creepy?" Matt asked.
"Well, it's not so creepy when you're here, too. Anyway, my brother said he was here, but when I got here, I couldn't find him. Then I saw you," Amanda replied.
"Your brother's Tommy, right?"
"Yeah, that's his name. I haven't seen him for a while. You don't know where he is, do you?"
Matt turned his gaze down to look at his shoes. "Err … well, he's not here."
"I already knew that," Amanda said, annoyed, and started walking down the aisle. "What's your name?" she asked.
"Matt."
"Don't you have a last name?"
"Hardt."
"Your last name's Heart?" The girl giggled. "They must have teased you a lot at school."
"It's spelled H-a-r-d-t," Matt explained and looked up at Amanda, who was strolling up to the coffin at the altar.
The coffin …
Remembering Tommy's dead body, he rose from the bench and ran up to the girl. "Amanda, no! Stay away from that coffin! You don't …"
But the girl had already stopped when he yelled "no" and was now looking at him with a surprised look on her face. "It's too late for that," she said, "I already took a peek at it while you were sleeping. There's nothing inside."
"Whew," Matt said and walked up to it to put down the lid when he noticed the scrap of paper, shotgun and ammunition lying in the otherwise empty coffin. He picked up the paper. "I thought you said there was nothing inside?"
"Whoops. Guess I didn't notice that before," she said. "What does it say?"
"Your next destination is Brookhaven Hospital. There you may find your answers and new questions," Matt read aloud, "but the entrance is locked. You can find the key in the Baby & Kids Super Store. Who I am does not matter. My existence is without meaning, while you have a journey to complete. Godspeed, damnable soul." Frowning, he folded up the paper and tucked it into his pocket.
"Didn't it say that there was a key to the hospital in the Baby & Kids Super Store?" Amanda said.
"Yeah, I think it said something like that," Matt said. "Do you know where that is?"
"Sure, it's right next to that bar on Neely St."
"Okay, I think I can find it, then. I'd better go there now – are you coming with me?"
"Of course," Amanda replied.
"Okay," Matt said and turned around to snatch his shotgun from the coffin. "But it's going to be dangerous, with all those monsters out there, so you need to stay close to … oh no."
When he had turned around, Amanda was gone. He was alone in the church.
"Goddammit," he muttered, took the shells from the coffin, reloaded the shotgun with shaking hands and walked down the aisle to the exit.
The statues of Jesus watched him with sad looks on their faces, almost as if they felt sorry for the damned soul pushing the doors open. "Well, thanks for the pity," Matt mumbled and stepped out of the church, onto the sidewalk of a mist-shrouded Nathan Avenue.
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A/N: "Tune in next week" … Hmmm, I wonder who will be the first to figure out what Amamet said? -E.P.O.