"You were with me, weren't you, Rebekah? Even then. When the river opened its eye."
---
The rain had been falling for three nights. It had sunk its teeth into the city's spine, cracked its ribs, and begun to hollow it from the inside. Gutters belched black water. Lamplight shimmered on the concrete like oil on diseased skin. Everything smelled like rust, bile, and old baptism.
I carried him through it—Brother Amos—what was left of him, anyway.
The satchel had been tan once, leather soft as wedding flesh. Now it hung from my shoulder in a steady drip, streaking my coat with arcs of diluted red. The seams were stretched. One pale hand flopped free like a drowned flower. His fingers curled every so often, but I knew it was only the nerves, twitching out their last heresies.
"You'd laugh," I said aloud. "He was wearing pink socks. Can you imagine?"
The city didn't answer, but it listened. The old windows with their broken shutters blinked with rain. Statues wept moss and mildew down their cheeks. The buildings—empty, abandoned—still leaned close to each other, like lovers whispering the names of the dead.
I passed a half-collapsed pharmacy, its sign hanging by a single bolt, the words "BLESS" and "DRUGS" melted into each other. I stopped beneath it and pulled my notebook from my coat. My fingers left red fingerprints on the paper as I scrawled.
> Rebekah,
He wept when I cut the throat. I think he saw you. Maybe you were standing in the door. Maybe he reached for you. Do you remember him from the sermon? Third pew, always nodding, always humming under his breath. He didn't struggle when I laid him down. He just… cried.
The pen scratched like bone on wood. I could smell the blood even through the paper.
I tucked the page into my pocket and moved on.
There were rats in the water now—fat ones. Their backs floated like bruised fruit along the sidewalk curbs. One squealed as I passed, gnawing on something long and pale. A child's finger, maybe. Maybe not.
The rain picked up, drilling down in slanted lines like nails. My boots squelched. Brother Amos moaned a little in the bag—not really—but I liked to think so. It made the walk feel less lonely.
"I'll make you beautiful," I promised him, patting the satchel. "Better than before. You were always kind, Amos. Too soft for this place. But don't worry. I'll give you a stage. I'll give you glory."
Something splashed behind me. I turned, slow.
A woman across the street.
Standing beneath a busted streetlamp. Long coat. Hat. Still. Watching.
I blinked and she was gone.
My chest stuttered. My grip on the bag tightened until the zipper teeth dug into my palm.
"Don't," I whispered to no one. "Not yet."
I took a left onto Redemption Avenue, where the theater lay half-swallowed in vines and scaffolding. Its sign read MAJESTY, though the "J" hung sideways like a hanged man. The front doors were split open like a wound.
I stepped inside, and the city closed its eyes behind me.
---
The Majesty stank of old piss, rotting velvet, and something sweeter—coppery. Intimate. The smell of death wearing perfume.
A chandelier hung above me like a ribcage turned upside down, its crystals stained brown with age, dangling loose like old teeth. Rainwater dripped through a skylight in the ceiling, painting thin rivulets down the faded murals of saints and angels. Their faces were melting. Their wings had gone dark.
I stepped past rows of theater seats, mold-eaten and half-collapsed, their cushions chewed to foam by rats or the years. Something moved in the rafters above me, a shuffle too light to be human.
"Don't mind the vermin," I said. "They only feed on what's left behind."
I found the stage just as I remembered—half-caved in, split diagonally like a broken mouth. The curtains still clung to their rails, red once, now marooned and torn like funeral banners. I knelt beside the orchestra pit and unzipped the bag.
Brother Amos spilled out like a prayer unsaid.
His head lolled to the side, mouth agape, eyes rolled back so far only a thread of brown iris showed beneath the cloudy white. His lips were cracked from where I had stitched them shut earlier—but the thread had snapped. He looked as though he'd tried to scream again in the bag.
I ran my hand across his face gently.
"Shhh," I whispered. "You're here now."
The rain beat harder against the ceiling, a constant metallic thrum that echoed like distant applause. I laid Amos out on a velvet tarp I'd prepared earlier. I pulled the tools from beneath the stage: shears, florist wire, a pair of brass hooks shaped like crucifixes. I began with the arms.
"Do you remember the story of Lazarus?" I asked as I clipped the tendons behind each elbow. The joints gave a twitch. "Dead four days. Then He called him back. That's all it takes, Amos. Just the right word."
The arms lifted more easily then, like wet rope. I bent them upward, hands raised to heaven, and wired them into place. His bones creaked. The head tilted again.
"Rebekah would have liked you," I said. "You were never cruel. Always said 'bless you' when someone coughed. That's rare these days."
I took the thin bulb necklace from my coat—a string of golden glass, once a Christmas display, now dulled with grime—and coiled it around Amos's throat. A cracked spotlight flickered overhead, casting everything in a pale orange gloom. Dust swirled like incense.
His shirt was torn and soaked. I peeled it off, taking patches of skin with it. Underneath, the chest had collapsed a bit—post-mortem gas release, probably—but I told myself it was reverence. A bowing of the ribs.
I stepped back.
There he stood. Brother Amos, resurrected. Arms raised. Head tilted as if listening to a hymn only he could hear.
I felt the twinge again—between my shoulders, in the back of the skull. That tickle. That sacred itch.
"I know you're watching," I said softly, raising my eyes to the melted angels above. "You saw this, didn't you? He believed."
Then, lower—only for Amos:
"She forgives you."
I pressed two fingers to his lips—soft, cracking.
"I forgive you."
His mouth twitched.
I froze.
It was subtle. Too subtle. A phantom movement. But the jaw had shifted—just slightly—as if responding.
"…Amos?" I whispered.
The chandelier above groaned.
I leaned close, ear to his lips. The smell of death was thick—sweet, overripe, intestinal.
Silence.
Then—just barely, just barely—
A click.
A wet one.
My blood turned.
His eye. The left one. It had twitched.
Was it gas? Reflex? No. No.
I fell to my knees.
"You see, Rebekah?" I gasped, trembling. "He's listening. He's—he's still listening!"
Thunder cracked overhead.
The spotlight surged brighter. Then blew out.
Darkness.
Total.
I stood, heart hammering, hand brushing Amos's chest.
It was warm.
---
When the light returned, it did not ask permission.
One of the wall sconces had come alive—briefly flickering, struggling against its own rot. It cast a jaundiced glow over the theater, just enough to throw Brother Amos into silhouette. In that flicker, he looked almost regal—arms raised, head backlit in haloes of gold dust.
I breathed through my teeth, slowly.
"You'll draw the others," I whispered. "They'll come for the service."
I moved with care, reverent as an undertaker. The stage's edge was rotted but held beneath my weight. I climbed up beside Amos and unrolled the velvet banner I had sewn in a motel room three towns over: deep crimson, embroidered with a broken chalice and the words NO SALVATION BUT THROUGH FIRE.
I hung it behind him, draping the top across the curtain rail with long nails and a mallet. Every blow echoed like a rifle through the chamber.
The mold on the walls flaked like ash.
When it was done, I descended to the orchestra pit, stood among the gutted seats, and looked up at him as though he were preaching now.
My hands trembled.
He looked so proud. So willing.
His stomach had ruptured sometime after the rigging—wet gurgle, pale coils curling from the split. I ignored it. Even the martyrs bled wrong sometimes.
"Brothers and sisters," I said to no one. "The river runs thick tonight. I see the waters rising in the streets. The Lord does not whisper anymore. He howls. Can you hear Him?"
I turned slowly, addressing the phantom pews.
"I see the worms in your bones. The filth in your eyes. And still you hide in your churches, sucking down mercy like milk. But mercy is for children. For fools."
I stopped and faced Amos.
"But Amos—he did not beg."
I mounted the stage again, now feeling it under me like a pulpit. The old boards flexed beneath my boots, wet and soft in the center. I stood beside him.
"You showed courage," I whispered. "Not when you died—but when you believed. That's what they'll never understand."
The wind howled through the open roof.
I slipped a final relic into place: a gold-painted lectern, dragged from the wreckage of an old revival tent. I'd found it half-buried in weeds weeks ago. Its top was scratched with fingernail grooves, its base stained where I'd once spilled bone ash across it.
I placed my hands atop it now. Blood from my fingers smudged the gold.
"Rebekah," I said aloud. "Are you listening?"
No reply. Only the creak of the rafters above and the soft drip, drip, drip of water pooling on the stage floor.
"I made this for you. For what we lost. I want you to see what I've built. This city—they forgot what holiness feels like. They've paved over the tombstones. But this? This is resurrection. This is scripture."
I turned to Amos.
"Isn't it?"
His eyes were sunken now. A little more clouded. He'd slumped forward, just an inch, as if bowing.
I couldn't help myself.
I laughed.
It burst from me sudden and full, the kind of laugh that feels too much like crying, that strips the back of the throat raw. I pressed my palms to my mouth to quiet it, teeth digging into the meat of my thumb.
When I looked back at him, he hadn't moved.
But the blood trail on the stage was longer.
And the lectern had shifted—ever so slightly.
Hadn't it?
My chest buzzed with light. My ears rang.
And then, very carefully, I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the Polaroid camera. Old, cracked, the leather peeling from one edge. It had belonged to Rebekah once. She used it to photograph baptisms, Sunday school, the food drives. I'd found it in the ash, buried under a scorched pew.
"I want to remember you," I whispered to Amos, and raised the lens.
The flash burst.
It lit up the stage like lightning.
For a fraction of a second, everything went white: the blood, the velvet, the teeth, the warped ecstasy in his eyes.
The photo ejected slow, whining as if reluctant.
I shook it, watching the image bloom like a bruise. Brother Amos appeared—head tilted just so, arms suspended in final devotion. A red halo around his scalp, crown of rust and filament.
I smiled.
Slipped the photo into my pocket next to Rebekah's latest letter.
"I'll keep you with me," I said. "You'll be the first page in the new gospel."
I kissed his forehead.
And the wound beneath his ribs let out a sound—a wet click, like a tongue on a tooth.
I sat on the stage beside him for a long time after the photo.
Not touching. Just near. Listening to the theater breathe.
The water on the roof made a dull, steady sound—like someone slowly tapping their skull against a stone wall, over and over. The rafters creaked as if they were old bones shifting in uneasy sleep. Something fluttered inside the walls—mice or trapped birds. Maybe ghosts. I wouldn't have minded ghosts.
Sometimes, I think this city is one long grave. A thousand miles wide. We're all just buried at different depths.
I leaned my head back against the velvet curtain, letting it soak through my collar. I closed my eyes.
And I saw her again.
---
The fire.
Always the fire.
It moves differently every time. Sometimes it starts in the pulpit. Sometimes in the nursery. Sometimes it crawls up Rebekah's legs like ribbons made of flame. She never screams. Just looks at me like she's confused. Like she wants to understand what I've done.
That night, the smoke made me a crown. The flames anointed me. I remember the rafters falling, the stained glass bursting inward, the river behind the church swallowing the heat. And above it all—her silhouette. Still and black against the fire.
I thought I saw her mouth a word. Why?
But that part always changes.
Sometimes it's: Run.
Sometimes it's: More.
---
I opened my eyes.
Amos had shifted again.
The head was turned fully now—facing me. The arms still wired up, but the neck was off by ten degrees from where I'd left it. A slick smear of blood trailed from his jaw down across the floorboards.
He was smiling.
A soft one. Sad, almost. Crooked at the edges, like a child unsure whether it's safe to laugh.
"No," I said quietly. "Not yet. Not you."
But then I heard it.
Not the building.
Not the rain.
Something wet. And small.
A breath.
Drawn in.
I stared at the mouth.
Frozen.
The lips moved.
They formed something. No sound. Just shape. I leaned forward, slowly, my pulse screaming.
"Say it again," I whispered. "Say it, Brother."
The jaw clicked—wet cartilage and split muscle grinding.
Then a whisper—so faint I could barely tell if it came from inside or out.
"You... left her."
I stumbled back onto my hands. The air tightened, my throat closing like a fist had grabbed it from inside.
"No," I gasped. "No, I stayed. I—I tried—"
"You let her burn."
It wasn't Amos anymore. It wasn't even the voice.
It was the theater. The water in the walls. The vines through the broken floorboards. The city speaking in one long, slow breath through the mouth of its prophet.
I scrambled to my knees.
"You weren't there," I hissed at the corpse. "You didn't see what she became. The way she looked at me—like I was nothing. Like I was… less than the men who touched her, hurt her, lied to her in His name! I gave her the fire!"
I was screaming now.
I slammed my fist against the stage and blood splattered from my knuckles.
"I GAVE HER THE FIRE!"
Silence.
Then—
Laughter.
Soft.
Childlike.
From inside the walls.
From beneath the floor.
From behind the velvet curtain.
I turned slowly.
All the seats were full.
Every row.
Occupied by wet, slumped figures.
Half-faced. Rotting. Burned. Staring.
Eyes shining with moonlight through holes in the ceiling.
They sat still, reverent. Waiting.
In the very front row—center aisle—sat Rebekah.
Her hair damp with rain. Her dress black with ash. Her hands folded in her lap. Her head tilted, just like Amos.
But her eyes—
They burned.