I had been sent to yet another far-flung town.
I hated this job. Yes, it was part of my holy duty to inspect these far-off little towns, quaint and picturesque and stinking and dirty, for the marks of heresy and whatnot, and then to remind them of their rightful place in the church and correct any major mistakes in their theology, but that didn’t change how boringly odious these places were. Give me a city any day; in a city, I can feel at home. These little villages, with their wide open spaces and few people, feel far too crowded, far too claustrophobic. There’s a feeling of being trapped, like being in a nearly-empty prison with strange, unwelcoming cellmates. They never were that open; if they were, they wouldn’t have to send people like me, the fishers of men.
It was cold here; something about the currents. It was cold at this time of year where I lived, too, if I could be said to live anywhere now; but it wasn’t nearly as cold as this; not a biting wind so much as a pervasive chill that infested the town.
Why was it that the fishing villages seemed to turn the worst? They always had the weird deviations in their doctrine, gospels of water and whales and fish and survival; it was something about the sea and the cold and the barren rocks. When the sea gave you life, when the sea killed you, when the sea judged you and moved you and protected you, then it looked like God, blurred through sea spray and twilight. Then again, it was really only the fishing villages I was sent to; I’m sure my fellow fishers had similar experiences in the places they were sent.
This village, however, was unusually unwelcoming. It was all cold shoulders and side-eyes, looking once my back was turned and steering clear away from me. At least this one had a lot of children; most were old and dying, but this one was bursting with kids.
Come Sunday, I asked to enter the church.
There was much hubbub about it, which was always a bad sign, but at around 10 o’clock the church doors were opened. I walked in expectant, carefully scanning for any signs of something amiss.
The walls had biblical murals on them, which certainly wasn’t wrong, but they were all rather maritime topics: the parable of the fishing net, Jonah, the fish and the loaves, parting the Red sea, and so on. Suspicious, but not necessarily bad; this could be a way of showing dominion over water, instead of worshipping it. They might just be suspicious of outsiders, and perfectly fine people; I had certainly mistaken such sorts for heretics before, and was not especially looking forwards to doing it again.
“The Fishers,” said the minister standing beside me.
“Hmm?”
“The Church of the Fishers, fishers of men. Certainly you are familiar with the parable?”, he asked, looking up at me. He was a bit shorter than average, features sea-weathered and sharp at the same time, like a well-used fishhook.
“Yes, of course.”
He nodded, tersely.
I think that was the most anybody had said to me yet in my nearly week-long stay there. Certainly, I hadn’t heard anyone else say much more.
It took me a few seconds to realize what was odd about the building. At first I noticed a biting cold, as cold as it was outside, even in the fire-warmed interior. The second thing I noticed was the pool; there was a two-foot deep small pond in the center of the church, about two yards wide, filled with water and small fish. It sparkled as the sunlight shone upon it. That, of course, was the third thing. There was a gaping 6-foot wide hole in the roof of the church, centered directly over the pond.
“We use it for baptisms,” said the minister, noticing my stare.
The sermon itself was passable, if vague. There was a bit on how food would be provided, about how worshippers would be taken up to heaven.
It wasn’t until the very end that I realized there was a gap in the wall where the crucifix once was, sticking out like the visible vacancy of a missing hand.
I inquired about it after the service, of course. The minister said it had broken a while back, and that they were intent on fixing it, but hadn’t gotten the money yet.
Hard to believe, but hardly proof. Nothing all that telling yet.
Except that an hour later they went to church again. Not a sin, certainly, but they still should have told me. They denied it, saying that it was just a meeting, but I decided to investigate.
I got into the church easily enough; they didn’t stay long, making it easier for me to snoop around. There was nothing amiss that I could find; no left-over bits of rituals, no smell of smoke, no bloodstains. I decided to sit down and finish the rest of my lunch, taking a seat on the pew nearest the pool. I idly flicked a piece of bread towards one of the fish in it.
They didn’t even rise to nibble at it.
I flicked in another, then a few more. Nothing.
I decided that I would try to sneak into the church next week. I bided my time, told people that I would be absent next Sunday, that I had to leave to go get something. I feel like they felt relieved. In any case, they didn’t check the church before the service, so I was able to watch unhindered from my hiding place near the long-unused organ, six feet above them.
Nothing happened. They didn’t attend. I waited for about an hour before I decided to get up and leave.
Then the people flooded in.
There was a hush in the room this time, expectant yet excited, more energetic, more emotional than the last service for all its silence. There was a gentle stirring, and people congregated around the pool, closing in around the edges, but never going over it. They stared at the hole in the roof, and so did I.
Something was being lowered through the hole in the roof. From my vantage point I could see how the rope vanished into the sky; I was checking for signs of human trickery before I even knew what was being lowered in.
But there was no human lowering the rope.
Though someone- something- hung from the end of it.
Impaled on a hook, something that looked vaguely like a human dangled from the hole. Mottled and flaking and encrusted with what almost looked like rust (though indisputably organic looking) with skin a pale off-brown, almost like bread, with few details other than the limbs. It had single clumps of flesh instead of hands or feet, like an unfinished clay model, and a face blank except for indentations which suggested eyes and a mouth. I saw the rope jiggle a little bit, and the figure flailed in a mockery of human movement, arms and legs whipping about like rubber, a puppet’s palsied dance.
The townsfolk rushed upon it, and started peeling off large chunks with abandon, throwing them to the side and eating them in equal measure. Some chunks fell into the water, and I could see the fish swarming to them.
The hook bare, they grabbed it and started heaving on it, pulling at it with rapturous joy. Soon after, the rope was pulled up again, and they let go.
Less than a minute later, it was lowered again, with yet another figure on it. It looked similar to the first, except it had a strange plasticy frill around the waist. It did the same morbid jig, however, flailing blindly and thoughtlessly at the pull of the line.
The people swarmed again, except this time they did not eat of it directly. Instead, they packed it away, putting it into large bags. They repeated this seven times, seven descents of the weird hook and seven surges forwards to collect its bounty.
On the seventh, however, they did not start pulling on it after eating. Instead, they selected an elderly man from the congregation. He had been marked beforehand by a white ribbon.
They ceremoniously took of all his clothes but his pants as he smiled widely. He stepped towards the hook as four others stood besides him. He laughed heartily, and then screamed in pain after they seized him
and pierced him with the hook.
Then he stopped struggling. Tears trickled down his face as he began to chuckle slightly.
He went up with an eerily childlike whoop after the hook was pulled and the rope drawn up. I could hear cracks of joyous laughter breaking through the pain as he ascended heavenwards.
I couldn’t help myself. I ran down the staircase, pushed through the surprised townsfolk, walked into the pool, now with swiftly-spreading drops of blood in it, and stared directly up at the sky.
And looked up at the Fishers.