Ashanti

Chapter 16

2021. Lockdown is freshly over.
However, the church has been remote for a while now, since all the members left, including the stand-in priest because of a relentless odor coming from the basement, and the holy water room.

Ashanti groans at the voicemail left by the priest, but decides to check the scene out anyway. She takes a bus all the way across town to reach the old building, as she was flickering her eyes and preparing to sleep, Ashanti feels herself digging, she feels the texture of dirt under her nails.
The urge left when she arrived, the building and places around it resemble the look and feel of a ghost town. Ashanti opens the church doors, and she hears a low tune, “waaaaaaaaddddeee in the wateeerrrrrrrrr….waaaaaaaaaaaddddeeee in the waaaaaterr children waaaaaaaaddddee…”
The tune abruptly fades away when Ashanti reaches the front of the church, she puts her hand in the baptism pool. The freezing cold molecules start to creep into Ashanti’s skin, she remembers her baptism. They sing wade in the water every time a black girl gets dipped into the waters. They did it to pay respect to their past ancestors,  the slaves that never got the taste of freedom.
The interesting part of this tradition is that this church was open when they were freed, it was a hiding place for the people running from the fugitive slave act. Each person was hidden in the holy water room, the room she was forbidden in, the room she only locked but stayed away from. That is, until now.
Ashanti watches the water ripple towards the left side of the church, where the holy water room was. Ashanti curiously  looks and walks toward it.  Ashanti aggressively grabs the knob and unlocks it, the sound of the now unlocked door resembles the brutal sound of a whip. She slowly opens the door, the door creaks, resembling the sound of the crying slaves that didn’t make it. It resembles the many black brothers and sisters that were slammed to the cold pavement, this church sheltered many, yet Esther thinks something’s wrong with it. Why?
Ashanti opens the door, she continues to hear “waaaaaaaaddddeee in the wateeerrrrrrrrr….waaaaaaaaaaaddddeeee in the waaaaaterr children waaaaaaaaddddee…”
The familiar tune faded into a hymn often sung in many black churches, “hoooowwww greeaaaaattt thooooouuuuuu aaaaaarrrrrttt hoooooowwww greeeaaaattt….thooooouuuu aaaaarrrtttt….”
The hymns give Ashanti some form of familiarity, she felt safe in this room, that is, until she felt something hit the tip of her nose, it was red, squishy, it resembled the vein behind someone’s eye.
Ashanti looks up at the tall ceiling, rusted chains, swinging everywhere, the chains connecting to decapitated skulls. Some still have human flesh connected to them, after all these years, but the others were from the partially freed, they’ve been here for hundreds of years. Ashanti looks at the now multiple drops of blood on her hand and she sees Mary Grace, it looks as if a hole was drilled into her head to connect the chain. Her dark brown skin, tinted blue, her eyes, rolled back, the signs of life appeared to be gone. Yet somehow, they were still there, her head swings back and forth not breaking eye contact, Ashanti was frozen, her mother’s blood dripping into her hand, her poreless skin was interrupted by black ooze, dripping ooze, the ooze never fell, but it did in fact spread.
Mary Grace wasn’t the same, her face was distorted, the same sight Dr Roland saw before he passed. Her face quickly gained life, whatever gave her life had her cheeks pull back into a smile. Ashanti tilts on the edge of a panic attack, watching Mary Grace speak in the same deep voice, “Burn the church….” The voice starts to growl, “Burn it!...Burn it-...now….” The signs of life fade away, Ashanti stumbles out of the room, the door slams itself shut, and locks itself.
Ashanti looks out the window, it’s dark outside, she wonders, “How long was I in there?”