Haven

Written: 2010   |   Setting: Rural Virginia   |   1,660 words   |   10 Minutes minute read

1.

He drove home in silence. There was nothing on the radio and his mind lingered on the approaching deadline. A new release was always a torturous event. Who knew if the final product would be received at all, let alone successful? The current record maintained a seventy percent chance the album would be quite unsuccessful.

He rolled down the windows in the car as he began swerving through the perpetual curving back roads on the way to the cabin. It would be a nice break even if it were only for a few days. No electronics. No computers. No mixers. No instruments. Just a nice, silent vacation in the far corners of nowhere.

He rounded another curve and slowed. There was music out here? In his nice, quiet vacation area, music rolled softly through the hills. He stopped the car and listened. It was coming from a building far to the right. He squinted to try and see farther in the dusk, but he could only make out a shape. It was a church? Since when did they build a church there? He was only through there six months earlier, before the start of this project, and that area was vacant. It was also nine o’clock at night. Who would be playing music out here at this time?

He pulled the car onto the dirt drive towards the building. He approached a stucco church. It was a single-level building; the small white steeple jutted into the night sky. The music was a guitar harmonic, acoustic, perhaps two instruments. It sounded as if it were run through mixing software with a reverb. The song was classical and… it sounded so familiar. Where had he heard that?

He neared the building. The lot was completely empty, but the lights shone inside. The dark stained glass windows didn’t allow much light outside. They were arched, gothic windows with a pediment in the central top portion. What a strange church. There weren’t any stucco buildings in the mountains. There was no need.

He approached the front door and heard an out-of-tune piano. Someone was banging on it. It wasn’t an attempt to play at all; it was abusive and violent. He nudged the door open and stepped inside. The sanctuary was empty aside from one man who sat at the piano near the pastor’s podium. He banged the instrument with such force that his entire body moved.

“Hello?” he called to the caretaker.

“Hello, young man.” He stood. “Welcome.”

“I have a cabin just around the mountain. I didn’t know this was even here. I stopped to welcome you.” He lied. He stopped to be nosy. And to figure out where that music was coming from. He could still hear it, but it had grown fainter. He was so certain it had been coming from inside.

“Thank you, son, but you’re mistaken. We’ve been here a long time.”

“Really? I must’ve just overlooked it.”

“That happens often. What are you doing here at this hour? Did you have car trouble?”

“No, nothing like that. I thought I heard music here.”

“Well, if you can call it that. I like to bang around on the piano. I never learned to play, but I still enjoy the sound of it. We haven’t had a piano player in ages.”

“Actually, this sounded like a guitar song. It was excellent.”

“Guitar? No, there’s no guitar here.”

They continued discussing the song and its brilliant characteristics. If only he could pinpoint why it sounded so familiar. Why did it stick in his mind? He heard songs on a routine basis, but this, this was different. Very different.

The man smiled. “Call me Able. I’m Pastor Able Smith. Would you like to join the congregation?”

“That’s very thoughtful, Pastor.” He was used to rejecting people. He’d had more bad songs and even worse singers pitched to him in his career than he could recall. “I don’t think I would be a good member. I only come out here once or twice a year. I live in Roanoke.”

“Well, that’s better than nothing.” He stood. His frail body seemed to grow stronger after he stood. His shoulders seemed broader. Max backed up towards the aisle.

Something changed inside the church. Something began feeling darker. “Perhaps. I’m trying to get to the cabin. It has been a long day. I thank you for your time. It has been wonderful to meet you.” He turned to go.

The pastor didn’t respond and he returned to the main entrance. He opened the door and was pushed back. A crowd of hundreds of people entered the building with such force that he was pushed far back into the sanctuary.

“Welcome, members,” the pastor clapped. “Welcome. Let’s go to the other sanctuary.”

He tried to fight his way back towards the door, but couldn’t. There were too many people around him. The more he tried to gracefully push his way through, the more people poured in through the entrance. Maybe it would be better to just let everyone come in and be seated before sneaking out.

He stopped trying to mill through the crowd and began walking with them. That was much better. His shoulders were already aching from trying to move past so many. Where did all these people come from? How on earth could he miss such a popular church?

The crowd began walking down the steps to the lower level. He followed. Maybe he could hover towards the steps and just exit when everyone had crowded into the basement or whatever it was. He followed the pack into the lower room. It looked like a poorly decorated funeral parlor. Olive carpeting was installed from one wall to the other. Rows of light green couches lined the room as the pews did upstairs.

The pastor came into the room last and drifted towards the front of this room. Max looked over to the corner and grinned. There was Michael Adkins. He hadn’t seen Mike since high school.

“Mike?” He approached. “Is that really you?”

“Max?” His friend spoke in a distant voice. “What are you doing here?”

“I just noticed this church. I have a cabin down the road. I never knew it was here.”

“It’s always been here.” Something was wrong with Mike. He acted sick. His face was pale and his body seemed weak. His eyes were vacant. “I don’t remember when it wasn’t.”

He decided not to argue with the sick man, even though he was certain it hadn’t been here more than a few months. “Okay, Mike. How have you been?”

“I was sick for a long time, but I got better.”

“That’s great. Are you working?”

“It’s been a while. Not since I was sick.”

“What did you have?”

“Cancer.”

He had many great memories of school. Mike was a wonderful friend back then. But he hadn’t gotten over that illness. He still looked sick and he acted as if he were sick. He needed to be left alone. “I’m going right over there, Mike. I’ll be back. You take it easy.”

“I heard you like music,” Mike barely got out.

“Yes, I do. I work in it now.”

“You’d really like the guitars… they’re playing now.”

“I heard them. Who is playing that song?”

“God,” he whispered. “God is the greatest musician.”

“I know he is.” He nodded and left.

People were starting to take their seats on the couches. He drifted towards the back of the room. Maybe he could leave now. They seemed like good people, but he was so tired. He needed to rest.

The pastor walked up to the front of the room and smiled. “We have a guest today.”

He stopped at the doorway to the stairs. He turned and leaned back against the wall as if that was why he lingered there. He smiled at the rows of faces watching him.

“He’s newly dead.”

His heart sank. “What?” he said. Now, it was getting weird. He didn’t want to be there. His stomach knotted up.

The pastor nodded. “It’s always difficult in the beginning. It’s hard to accept.”

“No, no, no. You don’t understand. I’m not dead,” he reasoned. His brain finally caught up with the absurdity of the conversation. “This is ridiculous.”

“They all say that. Don’t they, Brother Mike?”

Mike half-stumbled as he rose. “Yes,” he agreed and fell over.

His first instinct was to dart off to his high school friend. He couldn’t. He’d moved to sit amid the mass that was watching him. No one moved to attend to him or see if he was okay.

The pastor smiled. “I’m sure you’ll love it here once you have accepted your fate.”

He couldn’t take it any longer. He ran up the steps on all fours. He had to get out. He had to get away. If his car was stuck, he’d leave it.

He ran through the double doors and out into the lot. It wasn’t crowded, though. There wasn’t anything out there but his car. He fumbled with the keys and hit the buttons on the remote to unlock and start the car. He jumped in and spun out of the parking lot.

What was that place? Who were those people? What was going on? All the while that damned guitar song played in the mountains. He spun out onto the road and rocketed towards the cabin. He was too tired. Exhaustion was playing tricks on his mind. He wasn’t dead.

He made it to the cabin and ran inside. He locked the door behind him. He shut all the windows and pulled the curtains. Thank God he made it through it. He didn’t know how it was possible. The clock blinking on the table said it was four in the morning. He wasn’t there that long.

He sat down in his chair and flipped the television on. Normally, he didn’t like electronics at the cabin, but this wasn’t normal. He needed to see something familiar.

His head nodded back on the cushions. Everything was so comfortable and felt so comforting to his aching muscles. He just needed to rest. He just needed some sleep.

2.

There was a thundering knock on the front door. He opened his sleep-encrusted eyes, still on the couch, still in the clothes he wore yesterday. He must’ve been exhausted. He smacked his lips, trying to moisturize his parched mouth. He glanced at the table clock. It was eight.

He rubbed his face as he crept to the door. He opened it to see an officer standing there.

“Are you Max Kline?”

“Yes, sir. Is there a problem?”

“I’m sorry to wake you, sir. We have had some trouble this morning. The Marsh family next door said to see if you were here. Did you happen to see anyone out last night or hear anything unusual? Anything at all?”

“No. I didn’t hear anything. I stopped at a nearby church for a while, though, and it was late when I got here.”

“We can’t figure it out. We knew him, knew who he was, we just can’t figure out how he got out here.”

“I hope he’s okay.”

“Well, actually, he died.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yes, he was a local man named Michael Adkins. He had cancer for a year. We have so many people reporting that they saw him walking down the road. He was well-known. His wife checked on him at nine last night and he was sleeping in his bed. She checked on him at ten and he was gone. We found him down the road, about ten miles from his home. He was in the latter stages and seldom able to leave his bed. We can’t figure out what he was doing out here. His car was at home.”

“I saw him at the church. The little church down the road.”

“I don’t know of any this close by. Would you care to show me?”

“Sure.”

He grabbed his keys and locked up the cabin. That pastor did something. They killed Mike. He would turn them all in. He knew he wasn’t better. He knew it.

They drove down the road and he asked the officer to slow. There was the turn, but the little patch of gravel stopped on the other side. It traveled over a large metal cylinder the tiny creek ran through and stopped.

“I don’t understand. It was right here.”

They pulled into the field and stopped.

“Are you sure you didn’t get your directions confused?”

“I suppose that’s possible. It was late. But I was sure it was here. That little bridge was there. But the drive went to the top of the knoll.”

A flat black pickup stopped at the patrol car.

“Excuse me, which way is town?” an elderly man called from the truck.

The officer repeated directions as if he’d answered the same question a million times. Max looked into the cab and there he was. The old pastor smiled at him as he pulled away.

“Officer? That’s him. That’s Pastor Able Smith.”

“Pastor? I think you’ve really gotten confused. I know all the pastors in the area. I’ve never seen him before. I’ve never heard of an Able Smith.”

He looked at the barren field where the church had stood. There wasn’t even a hint that a structure was there. The grasses were tall and untouched. The gravel didn’t fade into the grass; it abruptly stopped.

They started back to the patrol car and he listened. The familiar melancholy guitar music played somewhere in the distance.

“Officer, do you hear music?”

“No, there’s none to hear.”