A/N: I had a very long and specific dream set in this fic, and there were some pretty good plot ideas in there but the only parts I can remember are the weird ones. Orla died and got resurrected at one point, which (spoilers) will not be happening in this fic. Enjoy.
For once, Orla's quirks are useful. She takes a headlamp out of her pocket and flicks it on, illuminating ten feet of bare floor and the back of a pew. Erin tries not to sigh in relief too loudly. She's not averse to exploring abandoned churches with murder cults in them, she'd just rather not do it in the dark. The floorboards creak under their feet, and a very large spiderweb pastes itself directly across Erin's face. She splutters and wipes it off.
"We should spread out to search faster," Orla says cheerfully, strolling along the aisle like it's a runway.
"Absolutely the fuck we should not," Erin says. "We stick together. Especially because we only have one light." She sort of expects Michelle to make fun of her for being scared of the dark, but there's nothing. Something creaks, out in the darkness, and Clare whimpers.
They make their way along the central aisle of the church slowly, partly because they're all petrified and partly because Orla keeps stopping to shine the light along the battered pews. Erin expects rats scuttling away, or at least mouse nests, but the pews are clean aside from a thick layer of dust.
Behind them, there's a noise like Uncle Colm trying to bend his bad knee, then a slam. Erin yelps and jumps about a foot in the air. The entrance doors have shut, leaving the space in total darkness aside from Orla's lamp. It was probably just the wind, Erin tells herself, but she takes a step back anyway.
There's something brushing against her back. All the girls are in front of her, between her and the exit. Erin freezes in place, and feels whatever it is move slightly.
With a bloodcurdling scream, Erin brings the knife around and stabs blindly. She's not going down to a clown kidnapper that easily.
"What's happening?" Clare yells.
"Murderer kidnapper cultist!" Erin yells back, then takes another stab at the darkness. This time, the knife hits something, then gets stuck when she tries to yank it back out. There's not a sound.
"Did I just kill someone?" Erin whispers, staring at her hands, or trying too. It's bloody dark (possibly literally). Orla swings around and points the headlamp at her, and slowly, Erin turns to look at what she's done.
Emerging from the darkness, with Michelle's Ma's good carving knife protruding from his forehead, is Christ on the cross.
Erin crosses herself instinctively, although it's not going to do much good now. At least she didn't actually kill someone.
"Oh God, Erin, I think you might be going to hell for that," Clare says, and it's not funny, but Erin laughs anyway.
"It's more accurate now, with real wounds," Orla says cheerily.
"Let's just go find James and get out of here," Erin mutters, tugging at the knife again. It comes out easily this time. Too easily, with a slick, unpleasant sound like raw meat.
A trickle of blood, real blood, runs down the statue's forehead. Erin backs up. It's a miracle. It's divine vengeance. It's –
"Oh, that's just corn syrup," Orla says. "It's the wrong color."
"How do you know?" Clare whispers, putting her head up from behind a pew. Orla shrugs, runs one finger through the blood, and pops it into her mouth.
"Oh, nay, that is real blood," she says. Erin wails in despair.
"God's punishing me!"
"Fuck off, it's practically just Communion," Michelle says brusquely. She might possibly have a point, Erin has to concede that.
"Let's try the choir loft, maybe?" Clare suggests. "Or anywhere else far away from the creepy bleeding statue?"
The stairs creak worryingly under the weight of four girls, but hold up aside from the carpet crumbling under their feet. The choir loft is just as empty as the rest of the church. A few hymnals, falling apart with age, still sit on the benches.
"Where the hell else could he be?" Michelle says, kicking one of the benches. "It's not a big church."
"Maybe we missed him on the ground floor?" Clare suggests, and Orla shines her flashlight down over the railing. It's still empty.
"Maybe he's not in here," Erin says. "I mean, we just know the clown was here one time. Maybe this is the wrong place."
"Where the fuck else would he be?" Michelle snaps.
"Oh, I don't know, how about anywhere else in Derry?"
"Girls!" Clare snaps, and it's loud enough that they both stop. "There's a door down there. To a storage room, or something."
There is a door, almost hidden in the shadows behind the pulpit. It looks ominous, though to be fair most things do in the dark. There's something written on it, in shiny black letters.
They troop back down the stairs and approach the door slowly, like something might jump out from it. The writing says "Turn Back!" in sloppy letters written in what looks a little like blood. Orla reaches out to touch it and Erin swats her hand down.
"Well, this must be it," Michelle says. "Wouldn't bother writing on the door if there's nothing there."
"Maybe Saint Joseph doesn't want us intruding?" Clare suggests, and Erin rolls her eyes and pushes the door open. It's not even locked. Beyond is a tunnel barely tall enough for Erin to fit through, with rough edges like it's been carved out of the rock.
"Orla, up front with the light," Erin says. "I'll be right behind her." She pauses. She doesn't like the idea of Clare or Michelle to watch their backs, really, but if someone does attack, Clare will probably just scream and run. "Michelle, bring up the rear and make sure nothing's following us."
"What do you mean, nothing?" Michelle asks, wrinkling her nose.
"No-one," Erin corrects herself. "Obviously."
Their footsteps echo around the tunnel, loud enough to almost drown out Clare's little whimpers of fear. Erin can't see her own legs, just the back of Orla's head in silhouette and the ragged ceiling. Her foot bumps into something, and she bends down and picks it up.
It's a shoe. A black patent-leather Our Lady Immaculate uniform shoe.
"Orla, did you lose a shoe?" she asks, and Orla turns around, pointing the headlamp directly into Erin's eyes.
"Nay, that isn't mine. Says in here 'Property of J. Joyce'."
"Jenny's down here too. We're in the right place," Erin says, then winces. Jenny's been gone for days. There's a good chance she's already dead.
"Could be James Joyce," Orla says, and Erin frowns at her.
"James Joyce died in 1944."
"Aye, so he doesn't have much need for shoes, does he?"
"Let's just keep going," Erin says. Much as she doesn't want to be exploring a tunnel in an abandoned church that probably has clown cultists at the end of it, trying to hold a sensible conversation with Orla is still worse.
They keep walking, feet crunching on debris that Erin resolutely does not look down at. Clare's breathing almost in her ear. Suddenly Orla stops dead and Erin walks straight into her back.
"There's some wee doors," Orla says cheerfully. Erin and the girls squeeze out from behind her and into a room, or at least a bigger space.
"What's behind all the doors?" Clare whispers, and Erin can practically hear Michelle rolling her eyes.
"Probably what it says on them, Clare."
The left door reads "Not Scary At All", the middle door "Scary", and the right door "Very Scary", all written in what Erin can now recognize as blood. That's cheery.
"Which one do we take?" Orla asks.
"Not Scary, obviously," Erin says. "We'll be fine there."
"But what if it's a trap?" Clare says. "What if the clown murderer knows we'd pick Not Scary and he's behind that door?"
"He's not a fucking clown murderer!" Michelle says.
"I want to see what's in Very Scary," Orla says. "I bet it's cracker."
"Obviously we shouldn't go through the scary doors!" Erin snaps. She crosses to Not Scary At All and yanks it open.
Something looms out of the darkness beyond it. Erin doesn't even have a word in her very impressive vocabulary for it, a mass of flailing limbs and metal spikes all reaching out towards her.
Erin yelps and slams the door shut.
"Not that one, then," she says unnecessarily.
They stand there for a moment, looking at the doors. Erin's contemplating opening another one just to see what happens when Clare tilts her head.
"Am I going insane, or can you hear footsteps?"
"That does sort of sound like footsteps," Michelle says. "Sounds like back there."
Orla turns to face the tunnel they came in through, leaving Erin in the dark. The headlamp's pretty dim, but it does almost look like there's something just beyond its reach, in the shadows. The rhythmic sound echoing down is definitely footsteps.
"Get ready," Erin says, setting her feet in what she thinks is a fighting stance. "This could be kidnappers."
Someone lurches into the light of the headlamp. She's wearing the Our Lady Immaculate uniform, and they all relax. Her head's still in the shadows, which is odd. Erin squints.
Clare's piercing scream makes Erin drop her knife, and she scrambles to pick it up.
"She doesn't have a head!"
The girl walking towards them is bleeding from the stump of her neck.
"Let's go!" Erin yells, and heads for the doors.
"Wait, we don't know which door's safe!" Clare shouts.
"Do you want to stay in here with that?" Erin shouts back, and grabs Clare by one arm.
"That wain's only got one shoe on!" Orla says, and Erin grabs her too and drags them blindly towards a door. Very Scary opens at her touch, and she hustles the girls through and slams it behind them.
Clare puts her full weight on the door, and Erin does too, but nothing seems to be trying to get through. After a few moments they relax. Erin takes a deep breath. Clare's here, Orla's here, the creepy headless girl who might be Jenny is on the other side of a nice sturdy door. They're okay for now.
Orla shines her headlamp further along the tunnel. This one's made of crumbling bricks in an arch. Half the mortar's gone, and the floor is wet and slick.
"Let's keep going," Erin says.
Setting notes:
James Joyce died in 1941, but Erin doesn't know that.
The running syntax joke is no longer funny. It was never all that funny. I am going to keep making the syntax joke.