He Who Flew Too Close

Chapter 1

There's a commotion going on around me, but I am not all there. The sound of someone else screaming sounds distant like I am hearing it from under a sea of static. I feel so numb and aloof that it is as though my soul has ascended; I am now but a lifeless husk of a body rooted to a nightmarish hellscape below. All I can do is stand there, simply stunned. I can't process what I am seeing. My beloved home, the church that had raised me when my family would not, has been tarnished by red. The once grandeur, ornate walls are vandalised with manic handwriting that bleeds into the intricate golden detail like the world's most gruesome sunset. The white flooring is now tainted with an abyss of black blood.

I read the words "your god is a liar" over and over, but I can't make any sense of them. Simply put, I cannot comprehend such a fact. After all he has done for this planet, I cannot believe someone has the audacity to not only call him a liar, but to slaughter in his place of worship.

Someone screaming my name snaps me out of my trance. Try as I might, I can't get that image of lightning strobing over those lifeless, glassy eyes out of my head. I gag, chewing upon my nails like a frightened mouse. I seem to have forgotten how to speak – all I can think about is the corpse. My mind's eye is too focused on the severed strings of flesh oozing red. My heart is too preoccupied on the fact this was a living, breathing person only moments before.

Suddenly, I am grabbed by the shoulders. Father Larious is there before me, face reddened with rage. As he shouts, sound explodes into my ear with the intensity of a gunshot.

"WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?" he screams, shaking me violently.

It takes me a moment to form words. To recall what actually did happen. I heard the sound of a piano and... no. That couldn't be right. There's no way the killer was playing piano after they killed him. That would be like they wanted to get caught. But then I realise that Father Darius couldn't play the piano. As unhinged as it sounds, it was the killer, or at least someone who was with them, almost as if they were taunting me.

"Check the doors!" I shout suddenly. "There was someone here only moments ago!"

I yank myself away and run to the doors. I pry them apart as far as I can muster and am blasted by torrential rain. The wind batters my clothes, howling like a banshee. Father Larious pries me back as lightning flashes; in the brief explosion of light I rake my eyes as far as they can see but there is nothing. The night returns to torrential darkness.

"Get back here!" Father Larious spits. "You're not going anywhere until you answer my questions!"

He yanks me backward and I search his face. His thin, shrewd lips are pulled back into a snarl and he is psychically shaking. Never before have I seen him look this angry.

I take a deep breath, trying to form words. My voice doesn't sound like my own when it finally comes out.

"I had... a dream," I say. I stop. I can't tell him about the dream with Apollo; if they find out that I'm having raunchy dreams about my own Lord and Saviour, God knows what they'll do to me. I move on quickly, simply hoping hell be too preoccupied with the murder to ask. "When I awoke, I heard the sound of a piano being played. It was... beautiful. I thought it was Miranda so I came to talk and when got here I found..."

I cut off. Those bulging, glassy eyes flash in my mind yet again. I shiver, icy goosebumps crawling like insects over my body. Once again, I find myself unable to speak.

I don't think he is going to accept that answer. None of it makes any sense. I happen to have a dream of my god that wakes me and when I do so, I am lured to the scene of the crime at just the right moment. Oh my God. My heart wrenches with anxiety. Are they going to think that I did this?