Back at Square One (BEN Drowned)

29

I'd felt weird about that church since the first time I saw it, but now I was certain this was where the followers of Luna had been hiding all this time. Ben's story never really gave that much of a location, did it? All that could have happened to me.

It was about 2:00 in the morning when we left. A Friday night. I wouldn't miss anything if I came back home and didn't wake up until noon. The moon was full, and shining with was you could call glory. But I was starting to get sick of it. Besides, light pollution meant that I could still see in the dark, moon or not.

I had stuffed Ben's cartridge in my coat pocket along with my phone, just in case something happened or it got too dark and I needed a flashlight. Ben stayed close by; he refused to possess me again, so we figured him latching onto my arm and letting me lead him along would be the next best thing.

After lots of accidentally veering off path, awkward silence, broken branches and various "oops's" and "sorry's", we finally reached the building, in all its rotting beauty. Its white paint was so peeled off it was hard to tell what color it was even supposed to be, various planks were replaced and moss was everywhere. It looked like just the abandoned, old thing any kid would want to explore.

I didn't bother knocking on the door, and instead shook the handle lightly enough to judge if it would open, but not make too much noise. I noticed there was a small, lone window a few feet above the entrance, like one on someone's house. But it didn't feel like it belonged to a church; hell, it even had curtains that had been closed. No light seemed to come from anywhere within.

I opened one of the doors and stepped inside.

"What..."

I couldn't exactly believe what I was seeing. It was...constructed just like a regular house. Instead of a grand, candle-lit hall with a stained glass depiction of some Christian figure looking down on us from the back, we were met with an empty parlor with—you guessed it—nearly no sources of light, and made completely out of wood to boot. Right above the door we just came through was the ceiling; if I reached high enough I could touch it from where I was standing. Something was definitely off about it. I could almost hear Jason talking again: "I think they just don't wanna ask for the money to renovate it."

I took a single step forward and immediately a floorboard creaked. Loudly. The entirety of the house seemed to almost become more still and tense, like somebody knew I was here.

"I'd ask you to stop by, but we haven't had a new attendant in so long it'd be kind of awkward."

To my left, a single tiny ceramic statue sat on a shelf right by my head. I could only guess it was supposed to resemble what the Moon Children called "Luna" but then again, it looked too generic to possibly be anything else. I almost called into the darkness, just to make sure nobody was here right now, but stopped myself. I could practically feel Ben shaking behind me.

"Ave," he whispered, "I still think this is a bad idea, if you can believe it. C-can't you just go here by yourself, another time?"

"No. I can't trust your other side to be left alone at my house, let alone—"

"Hello?"

I stopped dead. The voice was so small and soft that for a moment I thought it was inside my head, but I looked to the stairs about five feet ahead of me and had a new guess. Without thinking I clenched my hands into fists and started forward again. Ben didn't try to stop me, simply letting himself be dragged along by the cartridge's distance limits. I raised an eyebrow.

"Can't you just...hide inside the game?"

His eyes seemed to light up as he nodded in realization, and just like that I was practically alone.