I Didn't Forget Pt 7: The Church Of The Blessed Sacrifice - SCP Foundation

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Four Years Ago

I got on Discord with Theo right after I got home. I logged into Minecraft. Theo had told me he was ready to show me the thing he’d been working on. He’d been excited about it all day. “Hey,” I said once I got on the call. Immediately, I got an invite to Theo’s world.

Theo was waiting for me at the spawn point. His Minecraft skin looked a lot like him. It had shaggy brown hair with cartoony bangs and wore a red hoodie with black pants. There was no color on his hands, which made it look like his hands were in his pockets. For some reason, I found that cute. “Alright,” he said. “This way.”

I followed him.

It wasn’t long before I could see the enormous structure in the distance. As we flew closer, more of it rendered. It was clearly supposed to be a spaceship.

“That thing’s huge,” I said. “You should’ve asked me to help you make this. It must’ve taken hours.”

“I didn’t want you to see it before it was done.”

He brought me to the bottom of the ship, near the back. From a distance, it looked like it was touching the ground, but close up, you could see that it was held aloft by landing gear, and that a ramp near the back led up into it.

We landed and walked in. I expected it to be cavernous, full of open space that would easily use up the ship’s size, but it wasn’t. The side ramp led up into a small white hallway. There was a line of redstone along the roof, and a row of glass in the outside wall which let me see the hills we’d come from. The other side of the hall was lined with rooms. Theo led me down the corridor, showing me the rooms as we passed them. “Okay, so, these are crew quarters,” Theo said regarding the first set of rooms, and, indeed, there was a pair of beds in each of them. Theo led me farther. “Up here is the war room.” Inside, a huge, ornate table was surrounded by seven red chairs.

There was a bridge near the front of the ship, a lounge not far from that, and a kitchen near the center. All of it was linked together with what seemed to be a single, massive, interconnected redstone network. It snaked across the ceiling in every hall and room, like veins running through a body. Every room had a working light switch, and many of them had more complicated contraptions. “Is there a redstone network throughout this whole place?” I asked.

“Yep,” Theo said, the pride in his voice.

“That’s really impressive.”

“I put a lot of work into it. There are even some redundancies, so the entire thing doesn’t break if you destroy just a few lines.”

“That’s amazing.”

“I haven’t shown you the best part.”

He led me back down another hall, and through a pair of double doors. “Here,” he said, “is the mess hall.”

It was the biggest room so far, taking up nearly an entire deck of the ship. Tall windows lined both sides, letting natural light in. This light illuminated long tables lined with short seats. Up at the front of the room, there was a counter, behind which were stoves and chests. “So, what’ll you have?” Theo asked.

“Chicken, I guess,” I said. He opened a chest, presumably to get some chicken out, and put it in a stove to cook. “You’re making it fresh?” I asked.

“Everything’s fresh cooked here,” he said.

While we waited for the chicken to cook, I turned around. There were spacy decorations all over the walls, floors, and ceilings. In the center of the room, there was a giant statue. I couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be an alien or a human in a strange spacesuit, but it had a long, crested head and four arms, each clutching a large spear.

Once my chicken was finished, Theo took it out of the oven and passed it to me. We walked over to one of the long tables, and he told me to eat. I did.

“You put a lot of work into this,” I said. “It’s amazing.”

“Thanks. I tried really hard to make it feel realistic.” That struck me as a strange thing to say about a spaceship, but I didn’t say anything. “By the way,” Theo said, “do you have any plans for the dance later this month?”

The question startled me a bit. “Oh. I, I guess not. I doubt I’ll go. It’s a valentine’s day event. I’m not really in a relationship with anyone.”

“Oh.” He sounded disappointed. At fourteen, I was thick enough not to understand why.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

His voice brightened up again. “No. It’s fine. Ooh, I haven’t shown you the engineering room.” He got up and led me elsewhere in the ship.

Present Day

I pull up to Theo’s church in our car.

Using our car might be a mistake. There’s a chance it could be recognized, which may allow someone to deduce that I’m the one who came here, but the fact that it belongs to a member may also make people less alarmed by its presence. In any case, the only alternative is to take an Uber, which would be a massive risk.

I pull into a parking space under a tree.

I cased this place last night. There’s no way I’ll be able to enter the building without being seen on the cameras, which is why I’m wearing a ski mask. The church’s front entrance is a large pair of double doors decorated by a mosaic of Jesus bleeding from both palms. That’s not the entrance I’m taking. Instead, I approach a gray side-door near the back of the church. I pull some tools out of my pocket. Time to find out if that YouTube tutorial on lockpicking was worth anything.

It takes more than ten minutes for me to get the door open. Practicing on my apartment’s door wasn’t as useful as I had hoped. Still, eventually, the tumblers snap into place. I feel a burst of joy and pull the door open and enter.

Thin red carpet lines the floor underneath the church’s light brown walls, which are covered with strange decorations. There’s a mural on the wall beside me. Or, rather, a set of seven murals, each shaped like a number. Maybe they correspond to the seven days of creation? Number one does look like a burst of light. The others don’t match up, though. Number three shows a bunch of weird machines. Number four shows a four-armed humanoid figure carrying four spears. I feel like I recognize it from somewhere, but I can’t place it.

I pull out a small digital camera and take a picture of each one.

The halls of the church are empty. Most of the doors are locked, though they have small windows which I can use to look inside. A lot of them look like classrooms. Some of the chairs that line the tables are shaped strangely, to the point that I’m not even sure they are chairs, though I can’t figure out what else they could be.

I do not have any such trouble figuring out what the bowls and razor blades in several of these rooms are for.

There’s no Christian iconography anywhere. Instead, the most common symbol is an ornate seven-pointed star, surrounded by strange shapes.

I reach a door at the end of the hall. Maybe I’ve already seen enough. This is a weird temple dedicated to a weird blood god, which makes Theo a weird blood cultist. Only, there’s something I haven’t seen that bothers me. As strange as the symbols here are, none of them particularly remind me of Spirituality Club. Callum’s cult was obsessed with stars, but I don’t think I’ve seen them use this specific star, or any seven-pointed star. There are no crystals around here either, and certainly no green stones.

It's not enough to know this place is weird. I need to know how its weirdness fits into the bigger picture.

The door out of the hallway is unlocked. I open it, and creep into a large front hall. I sneak across it, and into the main chapel. The large, red room is full of pews, which are divided into four sections by three aisles. At the end of each aisle is a cushion and an altar with a bowl on top of it. There’s a podium in the front of the room, behind which is a giant rendering of that same seven-sided star, flanked by drawings of the same four-armed, spear-wielding figure from the mural in the hall.

“Hello,” says a voice behind me.

I jump and turn around. There’s a portly black man dressed in long red robes, around sixty years old, sitting in one of the pews. He’s studying me, more curious than angry. I recognize his voice. He’s the priest from the recording.

Four Years Ago

One night, Theo and I were in my bedroom, playing Smash on my huge TV. I’d just finished kicking his ass, and my character was celebrating on the victory screen. “Wanna go again?” I asked.

“In a minute,” he said.

“Need time to recover?”

“No,” Theo said, defensively. “Look, I… I’m going to beat you someday, okay?”

“Maybe,” I lied.

I pressed a button to dismiss the victory screen. There was no need to keep taunting him with it.

“So, about that dance,” Theo began.

“Yes?”

“I… nothing’s changed about you not having any plans for it, right?”

“Of course not. You and I are basically the only gay kids at school.” Upon speaking that sentence, I suddenly realized the blindingly obvious.

“Well,” Theo said, his cheeks red, “that being the case, I, well, I was wondering if, maybe, possibly…”

“You want me to go with you?” I asked.

Theo went dead silent and made the most adorable face I’ve ever seen. “Yeah.”

I looked at Theo. He and I were each the other’s only friend. He didn’t look like a model, but was cute in his own way. I took a moment to imagine myself kissing or cuddling with him. I didn’t hate either idea, but there was something that felt wrong.

The silence lasted several seconds.

“So,” Theo said, “this is really awkward, so how about I just sneak off to the bathroom, and when I get back, we’ll pretend this never happened? Okay? Okay.” Theo stood.

“No.” I said. Theo turned back to face me. “Look,” I continued, “you’ve not done anything wrong. I’m not upset that you asked. It’s just that, for reasons that have nothing to do with you, it’s hard for me to imagine myself in, like, a relationship. It’s okay for you to ask, though. You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

Theo watched me. He waited for me to say more. The joy slowly drained from his face as he realized I wasn’t going to. I felt a pang of guilt.

He turned to leave.

I thought about objecting, about telling him not to go, but I didn’t.

“Damn it,” I whispered, once he was gone.

Present Day

“Your outfit is quite alarming,” the priest says. “If I didn’t know better, I might think you were a burglar.” I take a few steps away from him. At least he doesn’t seem to have realized who I am. Should I run? The priest stands. “That said, I can’t help but wonder at the odds of an ordinary burglar happening to target my church. I find myself worrying that you’re something more than that. Tell me; who are you, and what are you doing here?” He takes a few steps toward me. I tense.

“I’m no one,” I say. “I don’t know or care what’s up with this place. I was just here looking for money. There’s obviously nothing here for me, so if you don’t mind, I’ll be going.”

“Given the sloppiness of your break-in, part of me finds that believable. Still, just in case…” He raises his hand. In a thick, guttural voice, he says something in the same strange language he used during his service. There’s a glint in his eyes as he speaks, a glow so faint I could almost dismiss it as a trick of the light. “Now,” he says, with a force in his voice that finally reminds me of Callum, “tell me who you are and what you’re doing here.”

I try to think of a lie. I should stick with my story, right? That I’m a burglar? No. That’s stupid. Burglars go to jail. I want him to let me go. Is there any story that would lead him to do that? I try to think of one, but before I can, it dawns on me that he just used a mind-controlling spell, and I didn’t respond. By the time I realize that, he’s already figured me out. “You’re Theodore’s boyfriend,” he says.

Four Years Ago

As the final bell rang at the end of the school-day, the students of Cypress High filed out of their classrooms. Theo and I hadn’t spoken much that day. He’d sat away from me during lunch and hadn’t started any conversations with me between classes. When I asked him if he’d wanted to come home with me after school, he’d said he didn’t feel like it.

Fortunately, I managed to catch up with him after his last class. “Hey,” I said.

He turned around. “What?”

“Listen, I’ve been thinking about yesterday, and, look, I’m sorry—”

“It’s okay. You don’t owe me anything.”

“No. Let me finish, please. I’m sorry I didn’t give you a real answer, yesterday, about the dance. There are a lot of excuses I could give as to why. There’s stuff going on with me that I haven’t told you about, and I’ve always kept you at arm’s length because of that.”

“It’s fine.”

“No. It’s not fair to you.”

“You don’t have to go to the dance with me.”

“But I want to.”

His eyes lit up. “You do?”

“I do,” I walked up to him, and took his hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t say so right away.”

He stepped closer to me. “Thank you.”

I smiled. “It’ll be my pleasure.”

Present Day

“I suppose you’re here to investigate us?” the priest asked, as if this were the most amusing thing that had ever happened.

“Yes. That’s it. You got me.”

“Have you broken anything?”

“What? No.”

“No harm done, then. That will be the end of your business here. Please leave.”

I don’t want to leave, though. As much of a relief as it is that he isn’t calling the police, I have so many questions for him. Questions I know he wanted Theo to answer for me. Maybe he’ll be willing to answer them. “What’s going on?” I ask. “What’s up with this place?”

“To tell you would be to reward you for breaking into my church, and I don’t feel like doing that.”

“Please. Theo isn’t going to tell me anything. I know he’s lying to me about this place. I know he has no intention of bringing me in on it, ever. I need to know—”

“You don’t need to know anything. You merely want to know, and what you want isn’t my problem.”

“Is this church part of the same mind-controlling organization Aster Sterling and Richard Michaels were members of?”

“No. Those brutes have nothing to do with us, and neither us nor Theodore present any threat to you.”

“So, you’re a different star-obsessed blood cult?”

“We’re not a cult. We’re a religion dedicated to empowering beings who protect the universe. We give our own blood—only our own, never that of an unwilling victim—to empower beings who protect the universe. Unpalatable as they may be to the uninitiated, our offerings are noble sacrifices made in the interest of all the world’s living things.”

“Okay, so, you’re a different star-obsessed blood religion than the one Sterling was in?”

“I wouldn’t say we’re obsessed with stars, and as far as I know, the Fifth Church has nothing to do with blood.”

“The Fifth Church? So that’s what Sterling’s group is called?”

“Yes.”

“And what about you?”

“Listen to me, child, the forces separating my world from yours are not to be trifled with. You are on a dangerous path. Organizations can protect themselves from the people who keep the veil, but individuals like you, who become overly curious after getting half a glimpse of what’s out there, usually meet tragic ends.”

“But—”

“And that’s all I have to say to you. The door is that way.” He points to the church’s front door. “I’ll be keeping this.” With strength that surprises me, he suddenly snatches my camera out of my hand. I could try to take it back, but none of the pictures I took are worth fighting for.

I leave.

The rational part of me knows I’m impossibly lucky that he let me go. I’m certainly not going to try this again. Maybe I should just confront Theo. Now I’ve seen enough that he won’t be able to deny everything, maybe I can get real answers out of him.

Four Years Ago

The Gymnasium of Cypress High was lit by soft, warmly colored lights. Tables with pink and white cloth were lined with vibrant punch and various confections, including wonderful home-made fudge donated by Jess’ mom. The shadows in the pink light were shaped like stars and hearts. The music was gentle, suited for slow, romantic dancing.

That’s exactly what I was doing with Theo. We stood there, swaying gently to the beat. We were both a bit overdressed. Me, because I wanted to put my best foot forward to make up for the fact that I hadn’t returned his interest sooner, and him because he was nervous about his first real date with me.

That’s what this was. A date.

We danced, surrounded by other couples, stomachs full of sweets. The music grew a bit faster. The two of us tried to go faster to match it, though neither of us were very good dancers. At the high point of the song, I attempted to spin. I lost my balance, and my grip on Theo, and fell on my butt.

Theo gasped. He leaned down to help me up. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said, as I took his hand and stood.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No. Don’t worry.”

“I…”

I took his hand. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m fine. I want to keep dancing with you.”

He smiled, and we went back to dancing.

Eventually, the event ended, and we walked outside, where each of our mothers waited to pick us up. They were on opposite ends of the parking lot, so this was where we had to separate. We lingered. “This was a great night,” I said.

“Thanks,” Theo said.

“I’m glad I asked you here.”

“Me too.”

We stared at each other’s eyes for a moment. I leaned close to him. His face went bright red, but that didn’t stop him from leaning forward to meet me. We kissed. It was deep and passionate, and as long as we thought we could get away with. When it was over, or gazes lingered on one another for a moment before we had to return to our respective parents’ cars.

“Did you have a good night?” my mom asked, as I stared out the window at Theo.

“Yeah,” I said.

“So, are you… seeing him now?”

“Yeah.” I smiled. “I guess I am.”

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