It's a Blessing

The following is an account from Archbishop Gabriel Marsh of the New Beginning Church of the Hollow Wind.

I had heard of disturbing happenings from around the world, though here was no different. As my story will soon show, it does appear some have been affected in other ways.

I do not remember leaving the office. My previous job was a dull one, that of a low-on-the-rung accountant, but that isn’t important.

Fear was what I felt as I sped down the road, avoiding abandoned cars. There was something in the sky I dared not look at for fear of madness. I passed dead people deformed and disgusting people, people with that look in their eyes, the same look my wife had.

The purple hue from the sky above was bright yet also dulling, like dusk fighting with dawn. It painted my wife and the blood that covered her in a calming way that I found most disconcerting.

She ignored me as I walked in. She stared at the sky, pressed against the window, with a smile that used to be a laugh.

I had lost hope by this point. The blood had to have come from somewhere, and the house was silent.

I saw my boy first, lying on his back facing the kitchen ceiling. He wore a bright blue T-shirt with a dinosaur on it. The gashes and cuts were deep, and the blood had pooled so that when I lifted him, it gushed onto me. He was still warm as I carried him. It was like he was asleep.

I went upstairs and found a similar scene in my daughter’s room. It was harder to lift her from the crib.

I carried them both to the car. They deserved better.

I stopped and looked at my wife, still pressed to the window. She was but a blur to me through the tears.

“Why?” I said softly. I remember not wanting to wake the kids.

“It is the Will of them,” she said, without any form of emotion in her voice. I didn’t press her for more. At the time, I didn’t much care for her reason.

The church was a few miles out of town, sat atop Barrow Hill. Feeling surprise in my state of shock and, if I’m honest, now believing it was denial was an odd sensation as hundreds of people had congregated to look at the sky.

I stopped the car at the church gates, happy to be ignored by the crowd as I picked my children from their blood-stained seats.

My whole family had been buried at Barrow Hill Church, a plot reserved since my great-grandfather. I laid my children on the ground. The grass held an early morning dew. It was different, as though the water was being sucked from the earth, drops balancing unnaturally on the tips of the blades.

I could not find a shovel, though I didn’t look very hard. Unsure of what to do, I began to claw at the ground. Slowly and deliberately at first, tearing off clumps of grass, dirt, and stone. It soon became frantic as I realised the reason I was digging.

My hands bled. My nails peeled off. I dug for hours.

Laying my babies to rest was the hardest part. I would jump from the grave and bring them down separately. Standing over them, looking at their bodies, I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“It was the Will,” an older voice said from behind me. It was the reverend. He had the look in his eyes my wife had, though not the smile.

“Killing children should never be the way, regardless of what’s happening,” I said, my voice hoarse from crying.

“Has happened,” he corrected. “It is done. What needed to be done has been done.”

“Why kids? Was it God’s plan?” The reverend shook his head.

“The Will,” he said, pointing to the sky. He repeated it in the voice of a newly formed believer.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“Some have been chosen to follow. Some have been chosen to carry out the Will’s wishes.”

“Reverend, I saw horrible things. I saw masses of bodies walking the street as a singular entity, a blob.” My legs began to feel weak. “What is happening?” I whispered as I fell to my knees.

I felt a breeze hit my back. It wasn’t the wind I knew. Not the harsh blow of a storm nor the gentle cooling of summer. This wind was sharp. It had edges that pained my skin and threatened to cut me. It lifted the water from the grass and threw it against my body. The reverend placed a hand on my shoulder.

“The world is changing, shaped in the image of a truth.” His gaze shifted to the grave. “They will be remembered. The last of the old ways, buried believing in a false god.”

“If I don’t follow? If I choose not to look at the sky and blindly watch my feet?” I asked.

He let go of my shoulder and walked away as I began to shift dirt onto my children’s bodies.

I was made to work. Made to rebuild in the new world’s image.

Shaved and dressed, I was handed a pickaxe, one of the old prospector ones, with one flat edge and one sharp. My job was to take apart the church brick by brick.

I don’t know how long I worked. Days and nights became a forgotten luxury as I lifted and struck, lifted and struck again.

My wife came to watch over my work one day. She said nothing until I spoke.

“Why?” I asked again.

“They wouldn’t have contributed to the Will. So it was the Will that bade me to kill them,” she said. It was the last time I ever saw her.

My mind became fractured. I knew nothing but stone and wind. One breaking, one biting.

I slumped to the ground. The person sent to watch over my work approached to see the problem. When they were close enough, I swung violently with the pickaxe, catching them on the side of the head with the flat edge. The woman crumpled, dying instantly.

I looked over the body, exhausted. She wore a shawl, purple with a swirling pattern of gold embroidery. It reminded me of the wind. My skin felt raw, like tiny needles dragged across it every time that cursed wind blew. That, more than anything, was driving me mad.

I looked at the pickaxe embedded in the woman’s skull, the point raised in the air, and knelt before it. Bending, I lined the point with my eye and swung my head back.

I awoke facing the sky, blinded in my left eye, though I felt no pain. The wind was harsh and coarse on my body, but it was a reminder of pain, a pain I needed to remember and embrace. The heat from the blood that fell from my eye helped ease the stinging wind.

I prayed to the sky, to the Will. That is how they found me.

I told my tale to everyone who would listen, how the loss of my eye was the thing that made me see the truth. They came, and they listened.

The church was rebuilt by more unbelievers, who soon saw the errors of their ways, as I had.

Now complete, the New Beginning Church of the Hollow Wind stands where Barrow Hill Church once did, crowned with a swirling tower of wind named the George and Elsa Spire.

There are often reports that find their way to us, falsehoods about how the Will came to us. They say a cult brought the Will forth. Rubbish. The Will has always been and will always be. We know the truth.

Peace be with you, in the way of the Will.

Signed,
Archbishop Gabriel Marsh