IX. Hunger Swell

The good people of Green Hope endured, and six months later, they started planning a renovation. Or dreaming of one, more like. The offering plate hadn't exactly been overflowing. 

Fortunately, Pastor John had friends. Teddy Kelbow, a skilled carpenter and childhood buddy, jumped at the task without question. For weeks, he would spend any possible free time, usually at odd hours, happily building this or that for the church. It would be tiny drops in a rickety bucket, but that was no problem. Free labor in spare time for a good cause? Teddy was your guy.

That made it all the more shocking when Teddy drove his drill into his skull. 

He made so many ragged holes before collapsing that the police would have been investigating a murder were it not for the security footage. Plainly presented in crisp black and white: Teddy Kelbow, alone and distressed. Slamming his head with his hands. And then, calm. Resolved, almost, as he picked up the drill. 

No one at the church would say it. They didn’t dare say it. Quietly, some started finding new places to spend their Sundays. 

John was devastated. He wandered through Green Hope at night, searching for something that would make it all make sense. But Pastor John would not be given the time to mourn. Whatever malevolence slept there at the cursed church was awake now and making itself known.

Alone in the bowels of that hungry place, John found rooms he’d never seen before and couldn't find again. The unstable geography of a nightmare was bleeding over into the church. Visions of cyclopean monoliths and writhing rooms drowned his thoughts, and at the center of it all - distant figures wreathed in dark light.

Pastor John could hear the voice more clearly than ever before. “Feed me.” It was no longer a whisper in his mind but a constant, beating chant. “Feed me, and I will make you new.” 

John was no stranger to the shadowy parts of the world. He’d seen things at home and abroad that long ago convinced him there was more to the world than his eyes could see. He did not know what this was, but he would fight it. 

With all his strength, Pastor John rebuked the hungry force. 

And that made it furious.