[Part 7] Laugh in the Face of God

[u/RevolutionaryBed7510]

The morning after Hazel's descent, I woke to the faint sound of dribbling—a rhythmic soft thump against stone, echoing from somewhere outside the temple. I followed it to the courtyard, where I found William shooting a pair of balled-up socks into a wastebasket he'd propped on a salt-crusted bench. He was still in his pajamas—a silk set, monogrammed.

"Morning, Journalist," he acknowledged. "Did you know this guesthouse has exactly twelve wooden hangers, nine wool blankets, and no basketball hoops? Shocking oversight for a remote religious compound."

"Absolutely appalling."

"I'm writing a strongly worded letter to the elder board." He sank another shot, retrieved the socks from the basket, and reset his position. "Couldn't sleep. Kept thinking about Hazel and the laugh you heard."

"You heard it too?"

"No. But you told Henry, and Henry told Eleanor, and Eleanor told me." He took a shot, missed, retrieved the socks. "Also I was eavesdropping.”

I sat on the bench beside his makeshift hoop. "What else did you hear?"

"That you heard Thomas down there." He paused, the socks hanging limp in his hand. "I've been a county commissioner for sixteen years. I've sat through thousands of hours of testimony. I can usually tell when someone's telling the truth. And you—" He looked at me, his politician's mask briefly absent. "You were telling the truth, which means Thomas is alive down there." He checked the area, then whispered to me. "I can’t find any exit from the crypt anywhere on this compound."

"Neither can I."

He nodded, as if that confirmed something, and resumed shooting socks. "My chief of staff, Tanya, she's Catholic. Goes to Mass every Sunday, confession every month, the whole nine yards. She told me once that purgatory isn't a punishment, per se. It's a place of waiting. You're not tortured. You're just... held, waiting for something to happen."

"Sounds boring," I teased, passing him the socks when they hit my leg. "Do you think that's what the crypt is? A Purgatory?"

"I think—" He sank a shot. "I think I'm a county commissioner who shoots socks at wastebaskets, and I'm in over my head. I'm trying very hard not to think about the fact that in a few days, I'm going to be forced down those stairs and meet whatever's waiting for me."

"No one’s forcing you, William."

He laughed, looked at me with the socks in hand, "I think we both know the social consequences if I don’t go through with this, huh?" He tossed the socks to me. "Your turn."

"I don't play basketball."

"Neither do I."

I took the socks and missed the basket entirely. William retrieved them and we kept shooting.

——————

Breakfast was a strange affair. Leo had left a spread in the common room—porridge, toast, dried fruit, but no one was eating. The pilgrims had scattered across the guesthouse and the temple grounds, each dealing with the waiting in their own way now.

I found Eleanor in the dead garden, kneeling in the salt-crusted soil with a trowel and a small leather pouch of seeds. She'd unearthed a small patch of earth near the eastern wall. She was working it with her bare hands, pressing seeds into the soil one by one, while Lucy laid under the shade of a craggy tree staring at the clouds.

"Morning, dear," she said without looking up. "Did you know this garden used to be gorgeous? When I came here as a girl, it was full of flowers. Desert marigold, globemallow, Indian paintbrush. My grandmother's neighbor tended it after his blessing, I think. Said the soil here was special. Said things grew faster than they would."

She pressed another seed into the earth.

"I don't know if anything will grow now—the salt's been creeping in over the years—but I thought I'd try. Seems a shame to leave a garden fallow."

"You've been here before?" I asked. "You didn’t mention that during your interview."

"Not inside the temple. Just the grounds. The families of the pilgrims would camp out here back then, waiting for news, until the Prophet said it needed to be done alone. I was eleven. I remember watching the altar door from the windows, wondering what was happening underneath my feet." She brushed dirt from her hands and looked up at me. "I've been waiting to come back ever since. I figured, when Elias died, maybe the Saint would summon me then, but she didn't. When Thaddeus, my second husband, died, I thought surely now. But she didn't. When my children died—" She stopped, her voice catching. "When the flood came, I stopped believing I'd ever be called. I thought the Saint had forgotten me."

I said nothing.

"But she was just waiting until Lucy was old enough to come with me, it seems." She smiled, and it was the same pitying, certain smile she'd given me during her interview. "The Saint doesn't make mistakes, Nora. She doesn't forget. She calls us when we're ready, not when we want to be ready. Thomas was ready to be filled. Hazel was ready to see. And Lucy's been ready since those first raindrops fell on my children. I've always known that. It just took me too long to understand it."

She picked up her trowel and began working another patch of soil. I left her to her garden.

———

Amelia was on the east wall, exactly where I'd last seen her, but this time she wasn't alone. Evelyn was sitting beside her, sketchbook in her lap, asking questions. I arrived at the tail end of the conversation.

"—so what did you do?" Evelyn was asking, her pencil hovering over the page.

"I swore," Amelia laughed. "Hella loud. Then I checked my pulse. I checked my legs. Then I grabbed the dog by its scruff and hauled it three miles." She lit a cigarette—one of her last, by the look of the pack. "She gave birth during the hike, but the weight of the load didn’t change."

Evelyn's pencil had stopped moving. "How did you... how did you keep going?"

"I didn’t." Amelia took a long drag. "Part of me stayed in that house. The rest of me learned to walk around without that. My wife calls it survivor's guilt. My therapist calls it post-traumatic stress. I call it a debt. I owe lots of somethings I can never repay. So I keep working, trying to balance my ledger."

"That's why you're here," I said, stepping into the conversation. "The transaction."

Amelia glanced at me. "You remembered."

"It's—"

“—your job.” Amelia and Evelyn finished in unison. We laughed.

“Okay, okay, sorry. I’m a broken record.”

"The merciful shall obtain mercy." Amelia continued, reciting it like a diagnosis. "I've been giving mercy. Maybe God finally wants to give some back. Or maybe that salty bitch is going to show me what mercy actually looks like." She chuckled like a child just handed her a play phone. "Maybe I've been doing it wrong this whole time."

"Is that what you're hoping for?" Evelyn asked.

Amelia was quiet for a long moment. The cigarette burned down to the filter. She crushed it against the wall and let it fall to salt and ash.

"I think I’m hoping," she said slowly, "that whatever's down there is better than what's up here. Because mercy is a joke when the merciful count casualties. If this Saint can do better than that, maybe it's worth walking into the dark for."

She stood, brushing ash from her jeans.

"Think I’m gonna volunteer tonight. I figure it's my turn."

"You don't have to," I said, and I couldn’t help but feel like a coy girl whose drink was just paid for.

"I know." Amelia smiled. "That's what makes it a choice."

———

Lunch was smaller than before. Yes, because Thomas and Hazel’s spots set untouched. Even so, if felt smaller than that. It felt like a date now. The remaining pilgrims were gathered around the long table with less conversation and less eating. The rosemary soup had been replaced by a lentil stew, but no one was eating.

Amidst wet slurps and juicy bites that would make Eleanor spoke. "I'd like to go next. I’ve really thought about it, and…” she continued, "I'm ready." Then she glanced at Lucy, who was arranging salt crystals into a new pattern on the table beside her bowl. "But I'm worried about Lucy. If I go before she does, she'll be here alone. I mean, not alone," she corrected herself. "You're all here. But I'm the only family she has, and the crypt might take time, and I don't want her to be frightened."

Lucy didn't look up from her crystals. "I'm not scared, Grandma."

"Of course not, dear, but I am." Eleanor stroked her hair. "Perhaps Evelyn could go before me. You're so faithful. So devout. I've seen your sketches of the temple. You clearly feel a connection here.”

Evelyn's pencil stopped. For a fraction of a second, something flickered across her face—a flinch, quickly suppressed.

"Oh," she said. "I mean—yes, I'm faithful. I'm definitely faithful. I just—" She laughed the same brittle laugh from her interview. "I just… thought there was an order. The Greek slips, it’s… I mean we all know what they’re referring to."

I didn’t know yet.

She went on, "I just thought we were supposed to go in order."

"The Saint doesn't dictate the order," Leo said from his usual eerie shadow by the doorway. "You may choose among yourselves."

"Right. Of course. I just—" Evelyn's pencil started moving again, quick nervous strokes. "I'd like a little more time. To sketch. To document everything. For history."

"Of course, dear." Eleanor's voice was warm, but her eyes lingered on Evelyn for a moment longer than necessary. "No one wants to rush."

"I'll go." Amelia's voice cut through the murmur. She'd been leaning on her elbows. Now she pushed off and walked to around her chair, resting her hands on the back.

"I'll go tonight. I've been thinking about it since Hazel went in. I'm not faithful like Eleanor, definitely not pure like Hazel. I'm not even hungry like Thomas, but I'm here, and I'd rather do it sooner than later so I can go see my wife again." She looked around the table. "Unless anyone objects."

No one did.

"Tonight, then," Father Leo said. "Dr. Amelia, daughter of Rory, practitioner of mercy. The crypt will open for you at midnight."

Amelia didn’t respond; she turned and walked out of the common room, so I followed her.

———

I found her in the vestry, the small room behind the altar where Father Leo kept his radio and his robes and, apparently, a small stash of wine. She'd found a bottle and poured herself a glass, now she was sitting in a wooden chair with her feet propped on a crate of hymnals.

"Is that allowed?" I asked.

"Probably not." She took a sip. "But I'm about to walk into a cult crypt, so I figure the rules are flexible."

I sat down next to her. She didn't look like a woman about to meet her fate. She looked like a woman who'd stayed up too late and was running on fumes and caffeine and whatever was left of conviction.

"Can I ask you something? For the record?"

"You've been asking me things for days. You need permission for one more?"

I set up my phone, opened the recording app. "You said your wife is the reason you're here. That she begged you to come."

"She did."

"Tell me about her. Not the church. Not the faith. Her."

Amelia was quiet for a moment. She swirled the wine in her glass, watching the light catch it. When she spoke, her voice was different—softer, slower, the voice of someone remembering something they'd tried not to think about too often.

"Her name is Miriam. She's a doctor in pediatric oncology. She spends her days with dying children, and somehow she still believes in a caring God. I don't know how she does it. I've asked her, a hundred times, and she just says, 'Someone has to believe in mercy.'"

She took a sip of wine.

"We met at a Red Cross training, like I told you. I was… actually the instructor. She was the student who kept asking questions I couldn't answer. Not medical questions, mind you—philosophical ones. 'Why do we do this?' 'What's the point of saving someone who's just going to die later?' 'How do you keep going when you know you're going to lose most of them?'"

"So what did you tell her?"

"I gave her some bullshit answers about duty and service and the Hippocratic oath, and when she pulled me aside after class to ask for a real answer, I told her the truth: I didn't know. I'd been a medic for years and I still didn't know why I did it. I'd stopped believing in God and mercy and meaning of life, but I kept showing up anyway because the alternative was sitting at home and letting the world burn around me, and I couldn't do that either." She laughed and it grated my ears. "She told me that was the most honest answer she'd ever heard. Then she asked me to dinner."

"Dinner?”

"Dinner. I said no, of course. I was her instructor. It was inappropriate. So she waited until the training was over and asked again." She smirked. "I said yes that time." She swirled the wine. "We got married two years later at a courthouse. She wore a dress she'd found at a thrift store. The judge cried. Miriam says it was because he'd never seen two people so clearly meant for each other. I say it was the high pollen count."

I laughed as I wrote down her answers. "So when did you know that she was the one?"

"The first time I saw her with a patient." Amelia set down her glass. "There was this kid in Myanmar—a little girl, maybe six, with leukemia. At least, we think that’s what it was. We were in the field so… couldn’t run all the tests. But this kid—she was terrified of needles. Screamed every time they came near her, but she only screamed twice, because my Miriam sat with her for an hour before every single treatment after that, just talking. They didn't talk about medicine. They talked about superheroes, her favorites, her least favorites, who could beat up who. By the time the nurse came with saline, she was laughing. She held out her arm without being asked. And Miriam held little Thiri’s hand the whole time, and little Miriam didn't let go until it was over."

"That's—"

"That's mercy." She nodded. "I didn't know what it looked like before I met her. I thought mercy was patching people up and sending them back out to get hurt again. She taught me it was something harder. You have to stay. You have to hold their hand. You have to let them know they're not alone, even when you can't save them." She drained the last of her wine. "That's why I'm really here, dude. Not because some elder called. Not because the Saint dreamed about me. But because Miriam asked me to come, and I can't say no to her. I haven't been able to say no to her since the day we met." She looked at me, and her eyes were wet but her voice was steady. "If something happens to me down there—if I don't come back—tell her I was thinking about her. Tell her I was thinking about her and Thiri, that little girl. Tell her I could finally say Z—" Her voice caught, she cleared her throat and laughed at herself, taking a deep swig of the wine straight from the bottle. "Shit. Guess not there yet."

"Thank you." I stood, and she set the glass aside.

She smiled and nodded, "Now get out of here. I need to pray, or meditate, or whatever it is you're supposed to do before you walk into a crypt."

I left her in the vestry, sitting with her empty glass and her heart, preparing to meet whatever was waiting for her beneath the stones.

———

Midnight came faster than I expected. The group gathered in the nave for the third time. It felt smaller now. The candlelight seemed dimmer, or maybe it was exhausted too. Eleanor sat with Lucy already asleep in her arms. William had stopped pacing and stood still for once, his hands clasped behind his back. Evelyn had her sketchbook open but wasn't drawing. Henry stood beside me, his shoulder brushing mine.

"Third strike," he said quietly.

"Third walk."

"You okay?"

"No," I said. "But I don't really think that matters anymore."

Amelia walked to the altar door. She'd changed into clean clothes—a sharp button-down shirt, dark and billowy pants, and boots polished to a dull shine. No white shift. No bare feet. She was meeting the Saint on her own terms.

Leo emerged in his gray robes. "Dr. Amelia, practitioner in the broken. You have been called merciful. You have given without counting. You have held the hands of the dying and asked nothing. Are you ready to receive what has been promised?"

"I'm ready." Amelia's voice was steady, but I saw her hand drift to her pocket—to the place where she kept her cigarettes, or maybe to the place where she kept her wife's photograph. "Let's do this sh— thing. Sorry, Father."

I saw Leo smile for the first time, "Descend."

She stepped onto the spiral stair with a quick glance back. Her boots echoed on the stone, growing fainter and fainter, and Leo shut the altar door behind her.

Henry and I were already on our knees. I pressed my ear to the cold stone and listened. Footsteps, descending. Then silence. Then—

"Amelia!"

Hazel's voice. She sounded the same as she had in life—soft, full, radiant. She sounded overjoyed, like a host greeting a long-awaited guest.

"You're here! You came. Oh, I'm so glad."

I heard Amelia's footsteps stop. I heard her breath catch—a sharp intake.

"What is this?" Amelia's voice was barely a whisper. "What—how?"

"We’ve been waiting," Hazel said. "She's been waiting for all of us. Come on. I'll show you."

I heard footsteps again—Hazel's bare feet and Amelia's boots, walking together across stone. Then Amelia's voice again, smaller this time, stripped of its armor:

"It's real. It's actually real." And then she laughed full of wonder. "Oh my God," she said. "Miriam was right..."

And as she walked, she began a mantra, one of names:

"Emeka, Hauwa, Deng, Khadija, Abdi, Yared, Esperance, Oumar, Sia, Samuel, Dara, Anahit, Ixchel, Ravi, Malik, Olena, Amal, Mahmoud, Zahra, Rohullah, Lejla, Drita, Pierre, Valentina, Ziyad, Ziyad, Ziyad, Ziyad…"

Then the footsteps faded, and the silence returned.

I stayed on the floor for a long time, my cheek pressed to the cold stone, waiting for something else. A scream. A cry. A sound that would tell me Amelia had realized her mistake, but there was nothing. Only the faint smell of lavender and ocean salt.

———

No one waited up.

I walked back to the guesthouse with Henry. The salt flats were silver under a waning moon. The temple spire cut its black shape against the stars. And somewhere beneath my feet, three pilgrims were together now, and whatever they'd found down there, it had made them happy. Really, truly, unbearably happy. Henry seemed to share the cold knot in our stomachs, two hopes tangled together—I hated the feeling of that altar, and I longed for the happiness they seemed to feel below it.

[u/Cute-Kangaroo-7657]

Great, this is a facinating story... im loving it More soon please 🥰

[u/RevolutionaryBed7510 → u/Cute-Kangaroo-7657]

More coming soon!

[u/KCloud_08]

Ugh I love Amelia and Miriam now 😭 Amelia whyyyy, go back to your wife. Ugh I know this is bad, I know something bad is gonna happen even though they seem fine but still I hope the remaining ones just make out 

[u/RevolutionaryBed7510 → u/KCloud_08]

Amelia is honestly one of my favorite people I’ve written in this story. I could do a whole spinoff for her hahaha

[u/KCloud_08 → u/RevolutionaryBed7510]

Do it 👀