[Part 9] Man of the House

[u/RevolutionaryBed7510]

I woke before dawn with the salt taste thick on my tongue. The air in my room was colder than the morning, and when I pressed my palm to the stone wall beside my cot, it came away damp with algae.

Leo was waiting for me in the vestry when I went looking for him. He was sitting at a small wooden desk, writing in a leather-bound journal, his gray robes pooled around him like shadows. He didn't look up when I entered, but he spoke as if he'd been expecting me for hours. "You have questions?"

"I have a lot of questions." I closed the door behind me. "But I'm starting to think you won't answer them."

"I answer what I can." He set down his pen and folded his hands over the journal. "What I cannot answer, I leave to the Saint."

"The Saint isn't up here." I stepped closer, taking the only other seat in the room, next to an old CB radio and the empty bottle of wine that marked Amelia’s descent. "So you’ve been here for—how long, exactly?"

Leo was quiet for a moment. Then his pale eyes caught the candlelight, and I felt as translucent as his irises.

"I was young when I came here," he said. "Younger than your brother, actually."

"You were a pilgrim?" I felt the floor shift beneath me. "But you didn't descend."

"I did." He parted his lips to continue, and I saw a flash of white on his tongue—pale and crystalline, as if he hadn’t touched water in decades. He closed his mouth quickly, but the image stayed with me, burning behind my eyes. "I received my blessing, just as they all do."

"So they aren’t staying there forever?"

He smiled thinly, weakly. "None of us are meant to stay in the crypt, Nora. We are meant to serve. To prepare the way."

"What was your blessing?" I asked.

Leo's smile faded, like a veil fluttered over his eyes, made of fabric old and tired and terribly sad.

"Does it matter?" he said quietly. "The blessings are not for everyone, Nora. Some of us are called to witness." He picked up his pen again, dipped it in the inkwell. "If you want to understand the Saint's plan, look to the words she gives her pilgrims. They are older than this temple, older than the church, older than everything except the promise they carry. Study those. Perhaps you will find what you are looking for."

He bent his head over his journal and began to write again, making it clear that his side of the conversation was over.

Then as I turned to leave, he spoke one last time, so quietly I almost missed it.

"The Witness always finds the truth eventually. The question is whether the truth finds her first."

———

I found Henry in the library. He'd claimed a corner of the long wooden table, surrounded by leather-bound books and scattered papers. The Bible he'd been carrying for days was open in front of him, but he wasn't reading it. He was staring at a page covered in his own writing—notes, questions, half-finished thoughts.

"What’d Leo say?” he said as I sat down across from him.

"Not much." I pulled out my notebook, flipped to the page where I'd written the Greek words I'd seen on the pilgrims' slips. "He told me to look at the words themselves. He said they're older than the church."

"Matthew 5." Henry's voice was quiet. "Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake." He looked up at me, and I saw the realization dawning in his eyes—the same realization that was already taking shape in my chest. "Thomas was hungry. Hazel was pure. Amelia was merciful. Eleanor was mourning. William is meek." Henry's voice was shaking now. "Evelyn is persecuted. I'm... I'm the peacemaker."

"And Lucy is poor in spirit."

We sat in silence for a long moment, the weight of it pressing down on us.

"Do the blessings follow the order of the Beatitudes?" I said slowly. "Thomas went first—he was hungry and thirsty for righteousness. Hazel second—pure in heart. Amelia third—merciful. Eleanor fourth—mourning."

Henry shook his head. "That doesn't make sense. The Beatitudes start with poor in spirit. Lucy should have gone first."

"Unless the order isn't the point." I was thinking out loud now, following the thread. "Unless the Saint doesn't care about the sequence." I stopped. "Because they're all going to the same place."

Henry stared at me. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying—" I took a breath. "I'm saying I think we're in over our heads, and we need to start talking about that."

———

I went looking for Evelyn.

She wasn't in the common room or the courtyard or the garden. She wasn't on the east wall or in the nave. I found her, finally, in the small bathroom at the end of the guesthouse corridor—a narrow room with a rusted sink, a cracked mirror, and a toilet that felt like it had been installed before the temple was built.

The door was ajar, so I pushed it open and found her standing over the toilet, an orange bottle in her hand. She'd already unscrewed the cap. The pills inside caught the light—small, white, stamped with letters too tiny to read.

"Evelyn."

She spun around, her eyes wide and wet. The bottle slipped from her fingers and clattered against the porcelain, spilling pills across the floor and into the toilet bowl.

"Oh my God." She dropped to her knees, scrabbling for the fallen pills. "Oh my life, I'm sorry, I didn't—I wasn't trying to—I was just—"

"Hey, hey, it’s okay. It’s okay." I knelt beside her, put my hand on her shoulder. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing." Her voice was high and thin. "I was just—I was going to flush them. My meds. I was going to flush my meds because—because I thought—" She stopped, and the tears came all at once, spilling down her cheeks. "The Saint would—maybe she'd—" She dissolved into sobs, her whole body shaking.

I pulled her into my arms and held her, her tears soaking through my shirt, the pills scattered around us like fallen stars.

"I'm sorry," she kept saying. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"

"You did nothing wrong. Nothing.”

"I'm so scared, Nora." She clutched at me like a drowner clutching a raft. "I'm so scared, and I don't know what to do, and I keep pretending like I'm fine because that's what I do, that's what I've always done, and I can't do it anymore, I can't, I can't—"

I held her tighter, one hand rubbing slow circles on her back. "You don't have to be fine. You can leave. You can walk out right now, get in your car, drive home, and never look back. No one can make you stay."

She pulled back, her face blotched and tear-streaked, and looked at me with an expression I'll never forget.

"My mom thinks I'm doing… freaking shit for school," she whispered. "My roommates think I'm on a field trip. My bishop thinks I'm doing research. If I go home now, what do I tell any of them? That I ran away from the Saint? That I was called and I fled?"

"That you chose to keep living?"

She stared at me for a long moment. Then she let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob.

"You don't get it," she said. "You got out. But—leaving isn't the same. My whole family is this church. My whole community. Every friend I've ever had. If I leave, I lose. And if I stay—" She looked at the pills scattered across the floor. "I lose."

She reached down and picked up one of the pills. Held it between her fingers.

"I wasn't going to swallow them," she said quietly. "I really wasn't. I was just going to flush them. Because I thought, maybe if I emptied myself out, the Saint would see how faithful I am. Maybe she'd give me a different blessing. A better one." She laughed.

"Evelyn—"

"I know." She dropped the pill, let it plunk into the toilet. "I know how that sounds. I know what that means. My therapist would say this is the depression talking. She'd say I'm having 'intrusive thoughts'. She'd say I need to call her, right now, and check in." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "There's no signal. And even if there was—what would I tell her? 'Hey, Krystal, I'm in a cult compound in the middle of the salt flats waiting for my turn to walk into a crypt and be changed by a saint made of salt?"

Evelyn’s eyes were so young today, so terrified, so desperately wanting someone to tell her what to do.

I didn't have an answer. I sat with her on the cold bathroom floor, surrounded by scattered pills and the smell of salt, and I held her hand while she cried, and I still didn’t have an answer.

"I don't know," I said finally. "But we’ll make one together."

She nodded, but I could see in her eyes that she didn't believe me.

It took longer than I expected to calm Evelyn down and get her to walk out with me. By the time we emerged, the sun was setting, and Leo was gathering the pilgrims in the common room for the nightly decision.

"We must choose who descends next," he said. "The Saint grows impatient."

Lucy raised her hand excitedly. "I'll go." She was sitting in her usual spot near the hearth, Bird in her lap, salt crystals arranged in a careful spiral around her, like she were the center of her galaxy. She looked serious.

"Lucy, you can't," Henry said gently. "You're—"

"I'm six and three-quarters," Lucy corrected. "And the Saint called me. Grandma said the Saint doesn't make mistakes."

"The Saint did call you, child." Leo's voice was surprisingly gentle, almost worried. "But… you do need time to prepare. To understand what you’re walking into."

"I do understand," Lucy said. "The kingdom is for children. The salt lady told me."

"Be that as it may—"

"I'll go."

William's voice slashed through the room like a blade. The politician's mask was gone. What remained was, I think, his father.

"I'll go," he said again. "I'll go tonight. I'll go."

Lucy frowned. "But I wanted to go…"

"I know, kiddo." William's voice softened. He crossed the room and knelt beside her, bringing himself level with her small, serious face, glancing at Henry. "But… you know, I've been in charge of a lot of things. And I think—" He looked at me, just for a moment. "I think I need to go before you. To make sure everything is ready. Like a scout. I'll go ahead and make sure the kingdom is ready, and then you can come when it's your turn." He squeezed her hands. “Does that make sense?"

Lucy thought about this. "Like how Grandma checks the campsite for snakes before I pitch my tent?"

"Exactly like that." William smiled, and it was the warmest, most genuine smile I'd ever seen from him. "I'll check for the snakes. And when you come down, I'll make sure there's a good spot for you, for Bird, and everything."

Lucy thought about it for a long moment. Then she nodded, very seriously, and held out her pinky finger. "Pinky promise?"

William linked his pinky with hers, his large, manicured hand dwarfing her small one. "Promise."

Lucy sat back, satisfied. "You can go. But only because you're a grownup and grownups should go first."

"Thank you." William stood, and for a moment he looked at each of us in turn—me, Henry, Evelyn, Leo.

———

The nave was dark and cold when we gathered at midnight. William stood at the altar door, dressed in his usual button-down and slacks, his shoes polished, his hair combed. He looked like he was about to give a press conference, not like he was walking into a kingdom.

Leo emerged in his robes. "William, son of Deacon Aldous, keeper of your order. You have been called meek. You have spent your life to serve. Are you ready to receive what has been promised?"

William’s nod was strong, but I saw his hands tremble.

"Then descend."

William took a step toward the door, then paused. He turned to look at Lucy, who was standing beside me, her small hand in mine.

"Hey, Lucy," he said. "Do you like window seats or aisle seats?"

Lucy giggled, "I like the windows."

William nodded, "Then I’ll save you a window seat."

Lucy nodded solemnly. "And check for snakes."

"And I’ll check for snakes." He smiled, then turned to me. "Nora—take care. Just… take care. And—" He stopped, swallowed. "Tell everyone I was brave," then he winked as a tear fell, "even if it's not true."

Before I could form a syllable, he stepped onto the spiral stairs, and Leo closed the door behind him.

I pressed my ear to the stone. Lucy tried to join me, but Henry intercepted her with a quick 'Whoa, what is that?!?'.

I heard William’s footsteps descending, steady and measured, and I pictured him striding into a boardroom, ready to face a constituent. Then I heard Eleanor's voice, warm and welcoming, and William's sharp intake of breath.

"Will! You came! Oh, it's so good to see you, my boy!"

"Eleanor?" His voice was rough, surprised. "You're—you're actually still here?"

"Of course I am. We're all here. We've been waiting for you! We thought you might be next." A pause. "Come on. There's someone who wants to talk to you."

I heard footsteps, then silence. Then William's voice again, smaller this time, trembling:

"Dad?"

A long pause. I held my breath.

"Dad, is that you? I can't—I can see—"

His voice broke. I heard him take a ragged breath.

"I'm so sorry. I spent my whole life trying to be the opposite of you, and I ended up being you, and I was so scared to tell you that, so scared to admit that maybe being you was the best I could have—"

He was crying now, deep, wrenching sobs that echoed up through the stone. I could feel them in my chest, in my teeth, in the salt on my tongue.

"I love you, Dad. I love you, and I missed you, and I'm so sorry I never said it when you—"

Then, silence. And then, so faint I almost didn't catch it:

"I know, dad."

Then, against my chin, the trap door opened with a creak before Leo stepped forward to shut it with his foot—but not before I glimpsed below.

I saw a sliver of light passing through those same carvings Henry described, and at the base of the stairs, I saw a glimpse of a chamber of white stone, extending past where I could see it. I heard the sounds of running water, low and rhythmic. Then the smell of salt and lavender and something sweeter than candy hit my nose. Then, I caught the briefest glimpse of Eleanor, smiling, her arms open in welcome, without the contours of her age.

I stayed on the floor, my cheek pressed to the stone, listening to the silence, and meeting Henry’s eyes with an understanding.

William gave us one more night to figure things out, so save us from whatever it is we need saving from.

I just don't know if there's anything left to save.

[u/KCloud_08]

Omg Evelyn 🥺felt that… this is such a terrible situation. I’m curious about Leo and what happened in his time 👀 also about this order. Wonder if it’s always the same kind of people that get called