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A Pilgrimage of Whipered Truths

By M. Jayne LaDow

Prologue

Allegheny County, Virginia, November 1, 1986

The church burned like a sacrifice.

Flames clawed at the steeple, swallowing the cross first, as if Heaven itself had turned its face away. The stained glass wept molten color. Charred beams split like ribs, exhaling the soul of the sanctuary into the night sky.

He watched from the roadside, hands clasped loosely before him. The posture of prayer learned long ago. Smoke curled around him like incense. To those who glanced his way, he looked like a man in mourning. A pillar of faith brought low by tragedy.

They saw only what he wanted them to see.

Deacon. Treasurer. Shepherd.

A middle-aged man, kind, a little slow to speak, a little too fond of sweets. No family of his own. Just the church.

The sort who remembered birthdays, cried during baptisms, and made his quiet loneliness look holy.

A man trusted with spare keys and whispered confessions.

A man no one would ever suspect.

He wore each title with the solemnity of ritual.

Bent his head in prayer.

But today, on All Saints’ Day, even the venerated ones had forsaken their vigil, leaving nothing but empty shadows in their stead.

He’d destroyed Holy Covenant Baptist Church from within, slowly, methodically, like termites in the pews, while the sheep of Oakville, Virginia smiled and nodded, mistaking his hunger for holiness. He knew how to make piety look honest, how to turn guilt into gold. He could have walked straight out of Chaucer, relics and all—Radix malorum est cupiditas, and all that.

Accounts shifted quietly. Insurance policies drafted under names of companies that never existed. Donations rerouted, laundered, sanctified with forged signatures and seals pressed from dust and age. The books always balanced—if you knew which set to open, and which to keep locked behind the vestry door.

And now, the fire. The final sacrament.

Behind him, someone sobbed. Someone else lifted their hands to heaven. The air reeked of smoke and scorched hymnals. A siren wailed in the distance, slow and solemn like a processional.

“Such a loss,” a voice murmured beside him.

He did not look. “God’s will,” he replied, his voice like velvet.

The east wing collapsed, and the fire leapt high, ecstatic, unrestrained.

He turned then, his coat catching the wind like a preacher’s robes in revival. “I’ll help rebuild,” he said softly, as if to the ashes themselves. “With all I have left.”

And then: “But first... I must go out of town for a bit.”

The lie tasted sweet.

His car waited at the end of the gravel road. The engine was still warm, trunk already packed.

Behind him, the bell tower fell, groaning like something ancient and betrayed. A single bell tolled as it died. Once. Just once.

He smiled, faintly, reaching into his coat pocket, fingers brushing the charred edge of a small, warped object: a fragment of stained glass, sharp against his skin. Red, like blood.

He’d pulled it from the grass, still warm. A warped souvenir of melted faith and misplaced trust.

A trophy.

A relic.

It would rest beside the others. Tokens from other sanctuaries. Other flocks. Other towns that never saw him coming.

He kept them in a narrow, velvet-lined box tucked in his luggage. Small enough to hide.

Not for God.

For himself.