Three Heart Echo

Chapter Two - Sully

"It's pointless repairing the roof when no one will occupy the church in just over three months," I mutter as I replace the bucket, not really caring that I slosh water onto the floor in doing so. I slide in the empty one, looking up at the slow but steady drip that falls into the Sunday school room.

"This is a house of God," my father says. "You'll not upkeep the House of the Lord?"

"He's obviously forsaken me, why spend my last days being his caretaker?" I walk out into the hall, opening the door to the back deck and toss out the water from the rain last night into the overgrown roses.

"You've abandoned this family's duties before, Sully, don't give up now. Not on the final stretch." His tone is pleading, but resolved.

"It's been a lovely chat, father," I say, grinding my teeth as I head back to the east wing, my booted feet clomping over the uneven floorboards. As I push the bedroom door open, my fingers fist around the pendant around my neck. I rip it over my head and forcefully shove it into one of the dozens of tiny drawers that line one wall of my room.

Three days. Then two, then one. And then the real countdown begins.

"It's pointless," I mutter to myself again. The sound of dripping echoes from the far end of my room, as if screaming out loud just how much decay has overrun the church.

Decay and ruin.

The embodiment of everything here in Roselock.

Angrily, I grab the pruning sheers from the desk under the window, too forcefully. The open blade catches the fleshy part of my thumb, cutting it open.

Just at the same moment a knock sounds from within the belly of the church.

Adrenaline instantly spikes in my blood, I can almost feel my pupils constrict, and every muscle in my body tenses as I turn in the direction of the intrusion.

It's been three and a half weeks since the last morbid idiot rolled into this abandoned town and started asking questions they couldn't comprehend the answers to. My teeth grind as my jaw clenches tight. Gripping the sheers tightly, I stalk out the door and down the hall.

Dim light spills in from the windows, but I duck into shadows and pull the door open leading into the chapel. Past the massive organ that lines the front wall, past the podium. Ten rows of pews reside on either side of the massive space, though some of them are little more than broken planks of wood by this point. As I walk down the aisle, my eyes fix on the scratched and scared wood of the front doors.

With the brutal anger of a starved jaguar, I rip it open, nearly pulling the decrepit thing from its ancient hinges.

A fawn stands there on the sagging front porch. Eyes wide, surprised, big and round. Startled, ready to run.

That's the best way I can describe the woman standing outside.

"What?" I grunt at her, looking around outside to make sure she doesn't have a camera crew with her like the last one did.

"I..." she stutters, taking a nearly imperceptible step back away from me. "I'm looking for someone. Sully? Sully Whitmore?"

The darkness on my face deepens and my fingers curl into fists. Her eyes flick down to the hand with the pruning sheers, fear creeping into them.

"You're..." she struggles for words once again. "You're bleeding. Did you know?"

I hardly register her words, but I look down automatically at my hand. A tiny puddle of blood now rests on the wooden floor, one slow drip at a time falling from my injured thumb.

"What do you want?" I say in a low voice, ignoring the injury.

"Are you Sully?" she asks, still staring at the blood dripping to the floor.

"I tell every single journalist that rolls through here the same thing," I say, grabbing the edge of the door and moving to close it. "The story here isn't one you want on the five o'clock news. I have nothing to say."

I've just about closed the door, already mentally moved on to the roses that wait for me in the back, when a tiny hand suddenly juts out and prevents it from closing.

"I'm not a reporter," she says, her voice pitched and desperate. "I'm not."

I back up slightly, my brow furrowed, every bone in me doubtful. Pulling the door open just a few inches, I look back out at her.

Those fawn eyes look at me, desperate and wide, pleading to me the request she has yet vocalized.

"Please," she says. The little quiver in her word softens something in me enough to fully face her once more. "I was told you could speak to the dead."