The Silver Crucifix Part 2: A Town Called Virgil
By: Shain Slepian
Tags: Mystery, Fiction, Thriller, Supernatural, Series

Celeste kept a brisk pace while walking through downtown. She clutched the folder to her chest, half-expecting the residents of the town to see through its cover. She didn’t know what they would do then.

There was no explicit reason to be so afraid: her new city was astonishingly safe. Virgil had less than 100 reported crimes a year, despite a population of 150,000. The city didn’t look nearly that densely populated (main street was evocative of the tie-dyed and handwoven villages in the Hudson River Valley that Celeste had always longed to live in. Places with “boutiques” and basil flavored iced cream.) Nor did the town appear to sprawl over a large inhabited space: from the map, most of the town was occupied by woods.

But Celeste knew that the woods weren’t just populated by animals.

Several months back, Celeste was staying in a bucolic area of rural Connecticut with her parents-in-law. She wasn’t ready to go back to New York yet. She didn’t want to enter that house again, find it empty. So she’d find infinite ways to waste her time. She wanted to study birds, she said. Bluejays have this bizarre array of sounds — calls that sound like songbirds or seagulls, or car sirens, or the glupping sound fish make. She wanted to catalog all the sounds a bluejay could make and see what kind of music she could compose from them. That has gone nowhere fast.

Celeste stopped dead on Eleanor Street when she saw her. Kate had turned a corner and was now looking directly at Celeste. Her heart buried itself in her stomach. She thought about making a quick right into Andy’s Coffee Shop. It would look conspicuous. Kate’s gaze was casual and indifferent, but Celeste knew she saw her. Kate had known how and when she’d arrive at Eleanor Street, she realized. But did she know why? The slightest deviation from Celeste’s perceived path would signal to all observers, and there were observers, that Celeste was aware of the danger coming toward her. She chose to pass up the moment to hide in the coffee shop and continue. At that moment, Kate’s eyes popped open in recognition, her smile wide, as though trying to stop Celeste from passing.

It was on one of her day trips to study bluejays that Celeste had encountered “the knife.” She’d fallen asleep in a crouching position, her thumb holding down the button on her voice recorder. There had been no blue jays that day, or any birds at all.

She woke up at the sound of a vehicle zooming by her, going well over 100 miles an hour. There were never cars on this road. The nearest village was 10 miles down the winding cliff-side road.

She heard something metallic clatter on the cement as she got to her feet and wandered into the road. She stretched painfully. She’d never slept in a position like that before, on her toes hunched over in a fetal position, fist clenched on a voice recorder. Annie had always teased her about sleeping in weird positions — child’s pose, reclined criss-cross, the leg hooked under her arm. If it was a yoga position, Celeste had fallen asleep in it. Celeste experienced a moment of anticipation, a jubilant one, as she waited for Annie to tease her about her latest unconscious achievement. That feeling soared up through her chest before punching her hard in the jaw. Just as she’d determined not to cry, something sharp stuck into her back. And the tears came.

I should take out my wallet, she thought. She cried out “Please, don’t hurt me-” but the knife didn’t stop moving. Whoever was holding it didn’t want her money: they wanted her. Did she know them? Annie’s parents were wealthy, was she a hostage?

“Whatever you want, I can give it to you myself.” The knife wanted her to keep walking.

She didn’t know what to do. A knife? Why not a gun? Why wasn’t this person threatening her? She wanted to know what she was dealing with, so she took a gamble. She sprinted ahead and looked over her shoulder: they’d probably catch up with her, but at least she could report them if she got away.

No one was holding the knife. She screamed and turned to run, but the knife had caught up with her.

It wasn’t until later, when staring at the van, bloody and exhausted, that she knew what to do about her house back in Ulster County. She didn’t want to step foot in that empty house ever again. She wanted to find “Blood of Christ Church” and- well, she didn’t know what came next. Excise demons living among them? Sue them for damages? She had needed many stitches and she would need physical therapy for her back. None of it mattered. She wasn’t going home. And she was gonna raise hell.

Her journey had taken her to Eleanor street, in a town called Virgil, about to be greeted by the single most uncanny person she had met in the past year. Which was saying a lot.

“Celeste!”

Kate’s voice was high, sometimes bordering on squeaky, which lead to Sunday sermons constituting a benign form of torture. Celeste had gritted her teeth through them dutifully. But there was undoubtedly a quality to her voice that demanded attention. Authoritative. It sounded bigger than its depth should allow for. Maybe it was due to the emphasized last syllables and upward inflections of her sentences: they sounded like questions, prompting the hearer to subconsciously prepare a response. Maybe.

“It is so good to see you. You were not at Church this Sunday, everyone asked about you.”

Celeste doubted this very much. There were a select few in the Church Celeste made an effort to get to know, and these relationships couldn’t exactly be called ‘friendly.’ Not anymore.

“Oh, well… that’s kind of them…”

“Did something come up?”

Shit, this was not a false alarm, a question was actually being asked. Kate likely knew every possible and impossible thing Celeste could have been doing and had ways of verifying any answer she gave. Kate only needed a few well-considered questions and poorly-considered answers to find out that Celeste was somewhere she shouldn’t have been last Sunday. The cellar of GracePoint Church.

“Actually,” Celeste couldn’t believe her luck. Her terrible luck. “I wanted to be alone on Sunday.” She cast her eyes down, trying to subtly provoke guilt.

Kate barely heard her response before saying, “Oh dear, I cannot believe I forgot. Sunday was the anniversary, right? Of the loss of your…”

The word squirmed uncomfortably in her throat in the one emotion Kate was able to express genuinely: disgust.

“Partner…?” She finished, the upward inflection in her voice pronounced now.

Celeste said: “My wife, yes. Annie.”

Celeste thought: ‘Partner.’ Fuck you.

“You shouldn’t have been alone on a day like that. Come to my house for dinner, you must be so lonely in that tiny apartment.”

“I’m sorry Kate. But I will be… busy, this evening.”

“Oh?”

The upward inflection was implied, but the vowel came out as a single, dry note. Celeste couldn’t help a small smile.

“Please excuse me, I need to be moving on now.”

Celeste didn’t wait for a response. She brushed past Kate who spun around to observe and Celeste resumed her quick pace as she approached the police station. As she opened the door, Kate’s voice behind her was deeper than she had ever heard it before. It rumbled with a heavy base as though it’s foundation were about to give.

“Celeste. What are you doing. Celeste!”

She approached the front desk as the door opened again behind her.

“I’m here to turn myself in,” Celeste said. She slammed the folder on the desk with a bit too much force.

“Here’s all the evidence you need. I’m responsible for the Blood of Christ murders.”