Why do hymns echo long after the choir stops singing? What's causing those stained glass shadows to move independently of the sun? How do the pews rearrange themselves between services? What makes the pipe organ play by itself during new moons, and why do the baptismal waters form strange symbols on still nights?
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Hide yourself in God, so when a man wants to find you he will have to go there first.
― Shannon L. Alder
Welcome to the First Baptist Church of Arkham!
As the storm clouds rolled in on that fateful All Hallows’ Eve, I found myself drawn to the looming spires of the First Baptist Church on the outskirts of Arkham. Something strange was afoot within those forbidding walls that night, some unhallowed ceremony about to unfold beyond the sanctity of God’s house.
Peering through leaded stained glass dull with centuries of dust, I glimpsed within a scene from the pit. Dark figures had gathered in a frenzied coven beneath the nave, surrounded by the flickering of black tapers. Their guttural chants rose to a crescendo as, with obscene fluids, they smeared a Sigil of nameless wrath upon the very altar.
At the climax of their blasphemy appeared an object of such fell and alien design its mere sight shattered all rational thought. I knew then this heathen idol they venerated was no creation of mortal hands. As its unholy mass was unveiled, the cultists writhed bizarrely in an orgy of depraved ecstasy.
My shocked gasp alerted them to my grim discovery. Those sightless eyes, shining with the cold malediction of interstellar gulfs, met my frantic gaze. I bolted into the screaming night as their horrid howls pursued me swiftly through the churchyard and out into the mire of maddening shadows beyond, from which I emerged only by the skin of my soul, a broken man.
What unplumbed abysms of antique blasphemy lie still dormant in that accursed edifice, waiting to be stirred by the flickering candles of some future witches’ sabbath? I dare not guess.
