ryan m. french

It started small. One night, as I walked into our bedroom, I noticed Andrea kneeling on the floor. Her hands were clasped, and she was muttering under her breath. I walked over to her and tapped her on the shoulder. She immediately left whatever state she was in and asked me what I needed.

I laughed. “I thought you swore off religion!”

Andrea shook her head and looked at me with a confused expression. She didn’t say anything, and I decided to forget about the incident. I knew she had been a part of some church or another when she was young, long before I met her. She never spoke about it, and I never asked.

After that, everything was normal, at least for a while. I noticed that Andrea was a little more quiet, a little more reserved. I didn’t think anything of it, since the change was gradual, but over time, I began to wonder if something was wrong. Andrea had never been the most talkative of girls, but she wasn’t usually this secretive.

Is she hiding something?

I work long hours during the day, and she worked the night shift at a local hospital, so we didn’t see each other much. A part of me wondered if she was cheating on me. That would explain the weird behavior.

Eventually, curiosity broke me and I decided to investigate. After I got home from work one night, I hid her phone underneath the mattress and put it on silent. As Andrea was preparing to leave for her shift, she searched up and down for the phone, but couldn’t find it. She asked me to call her number on my phone, which I did, but she couldn’t hear her ringtone. Luckily for me, Andrea decided to leave anyway, as she didn’t want to be late for work.

That left me with full access to her smartphone for the next ten hours. I unlocked it and started searching her text messages and social media DM’s for any clues as to why she was acting strangely.

However, there weren’t any clues on her phone. There weren’t any long phone calls with other men, no frantic text messages relaying some problem to her friends, nothing. She was scot free. The only thing I found on her phone that was even slightly bizarre was that she had downloaded the Bible app. Other than that, there was nothing.

So that was it, I decided. She had converted to Christianity, and was too nervous or afraid to tell anyone. To be honest, I didn’t care what she believed. I was an atheist myself, but she could be whatever she wanted. I decided that I would talk to her about it the next night, and fell asleep.

However, the next night came, and she was not home. I realized that I had left her phone on the bed the night before, still on silent mode. I looked for it, but it was gone. I pulled out my phone, and checked her location using an app I’d downloaded.

Andrea’s phone was apparently located in a church not far from our house. She must have come home, found her phone right next to me, and left for church at some point. I had no way of knowing how long she had been there, but I knew I would need to stay awake and confront her when she got home.

She would probably be mad at me for hiding her phone, but I was frustrated with her hiding her religion. Andrea should trust me, at least a little. Why was she being so secretive about this?

I stayed up all night that night, watching her location on my phone. She never moved. I figured that she must have left her phone at the church and gone somewhere else.

The next day, I kept texting her and watching her location, trying to figure out where she was. I called her parents to no avail. Nobody Andrea knew could tell me where she was. I decided, before I called the police to report her missing, that I should check the church to see if she was still there. Maybe, by some off chance, she hadn’t left. I left work early and drove over to the nearby house of worship.

Once I arrived, I jumped out of my car. The sign in the parking lot read, The Holy Communion. I had seen this church before, but had never been inside. It really was beautiful, I thought as I made my way to the chapel. Stained glass windows lined the walls and a massive steeple stretched toward the sky, ending in a cross about forty feet high.

I made my way toward the front door and tried it. To my surprise, it was unlocked, despite it being a Monday afternoon. I decided I’d check around, and leave as soon as I could. I honestly wanted to leave this whole thing to the police.

I opened the giant door leading to the chapel. It was beautiful as well. The church was small, but it was elegantly decorated with novelties that looked extremely old. I noticed a grandfather clock in the middle that could have been a hundred years old, but the pendulum inside was still swinging.

The room was arranged with several rows of pews all facing what I assumed to be the altar, a small stage with a pulpit centered on it. Behind the pulpit, a giant painting was hanging on the wall. I couldn’t tell what it depicted.

The chapel was completely empty. That is, except for a short, brown-haired woman kneeling at the altar, whispering quietly. Her words were fast, and she seemed desperate. Her hair was tangled, and she was sweating profusely.

The girl was Andrea.

I called out her name and ran to her. She looked up, looking dazed and tired. I could see that she had been crying.

“What’s going on? Are you alright?” I pulled her up and motioned for her to come with me. She didn’t answer any of my questions. She just stared off into space and walked along with me.

When we reached the car and I had ordered her into the passenger seat, she finally spoke to me. Her voice was as quiet as a whisper and her words were fast.

“I need to go back.”

“Why?” I asked, still frustrated that she hadn’t told me about any of this. “Why do you need to go back?”

Andrea didn’t respond. Instead, she just made a weak gesture with her hands, indicating prayer. I asked her how much more time she needed. All she did was shake her head. I told her that I’d give her an hour and that she would need to come out and speak with a doctor after her time was up.

She ran back into the church. I wondered if I had been too harsh. Maybe she had converted to some other religion and genuinely felt convicted of something. But I told myself that I was justified.. After all, she shouldn’t have been so secretive about all of this. She knew I was understanding, so why didn’t she just explain what this was all about?

I was worried about her too. I wasn’t completely sure how much time she’d spent in there, or if she had eaten or slept. Andrea was definitely distressed, but I had no idea why.

While she was inside, I took some time to research the church itself. It was part of a lesser-known denomination called the Communionists. In fact, from what I found, the denomination didn’t seem to be part of Christianity at all. Instead, it was its own religion, though very similar to Christianity.

The belief system, according to the church’s website, was as follows:

We believe that it is God’s calling to be loving and merciful to each person that walks through our doors, just as God was to us. Our Father is merciful, saving us from certain damnation out of his grace and love,, and we wish to spread his Message to all the world.

I also learned that the Communionists used a different Bible from the one used in traditional Christian churches. The only thing different about it, however, was that it had one extra book in it.

I contacted a psychiatrist and told him about my wife’s odd behavior. He told me to put her on the phone when she returned, and I said I would call him back.

An hour passed, but Andrea did not appear. I gave her a few more minutes, and when she hadn’t come out, I went inside. There she was, praying as diligently as ever on the altar. I gently tried to shake her out of her trance, but she was completely unresponsive. I tried to make out what she was whispering, but she was going too fast. I tried pushing her, and she didn’t respond.

After yelling at her and trying everything I could do to snap her out of this bizarre state she was in, I decided that I had to call emergency services.

So, I called 911, and an ambulance was sent to pick her up. She acted normally after the ambulance arrived, and seemed, for a little while, to revert back to her normal self. I asked her what was going on with the whole church incident, and she just sighed and ignored my question.

After a few hours, Andrea was released from the hospital. The doctors told me that she was fine, and that she was just feeling stressed. I asked her what she was worried about repeatedly, but she just kept telling me that she was alright.

I really hoped that she would stay like this. I didn’t know the new Andrea. I didn’t understand her new, religious personality. It wasn’t the Andrea that I had come to love.

For a while, everything was fine. My wife had returned to normal, it seemed. We didn’t talk about the praying incident at all, and our lives were back on track. She still seemed a little on-edge, but it wasn’t very obvious. Our lives continued as normal, going to work, spending time together in the evenings, until eventually something snapped.

I’m still not completely sure why it happened. Andrea was about to leave for work when she started screaming. The shrieks were horrifying, like she was in unimaginable pain. I ran over to help, and I found her on the floor, curled up into the fetal position, screeching while tears rolled down her face.

I tried to ask her what was wrong, but she ignored me and continued on in this state. Just as I was pulling out my phone to call 911, she spoke.

“I must pray for mercy.”

After that, she got up onto her knees and returned to catatonic state of prayer, which she had been in a few weeks before in the church. No matter what I did, she didn’t even acknowledge me. I called emergency services again, and another ambulance was sent to take her to a hospital.

This time, she did not jump back to her normal self.

Doctors, nurses, and psychiatrists were called in to help her, but nothing seemed to work. She didn’t stop praying. They tried to pry her hands apart and move her into different positions, but it didn’t work. Andrea had become a living statue.

After a while, the doctors chose to pull her out of consciousness. They administered anesthesia to her through a mask, but it didn’t work.

Andrea was still conscious, praying ever diligently.

They tried giving her anesthesia through an IV, but that didn’t work either. NO matter what happened, she remained awake, praying nonstop. Since Andrea wasn’t eating or drinking, doctors had to insert a feeding tube inside of her to keep her alive.

I was heartbroken. The medical professionals at the hospital couldn’t prescribe any illness to this. The scans they took showed that she was fine mentally, though she was malnourished and dehydrated physically. No one knew what was going on. I told everybody the truth about what had happened; that this just started without much of a cause. I said that she started screaming on the floor, and now she was here.

From that point on, I decided that it was my duty to research a cause. I devoted hours upon hours to reading up on the Holy Communion, learning about their beliefs, and trying to decipher what this all meant. I knew that little church had to do with all this, but I wasn’t sure how.

This is the theory that I’ve cobbled together after my tireless research. And I’m certain that this is the truth.

In the Communionist Bible, there is an extra book, as I mentioned earlier. It took me a long time to find their Bible, as it appears they have hidden it from most of the world. In the additional book, God’s wrath is explained.

The book succeeds the final book of Revelation and describes the fall of civilization. It is extremely vague, but it alludes to the burning of the great cities and the slaughter of the innocent in droves. It is said that his punishment, this Valhalla of sorts, can happen at any time. At any point, whether it be in a hundred years or in a few hours, God can descend upon mankind and punish it for its wicked sins.

In order to prevent God from punishing us, the church must select a vessel to negotiate with Him. The vessel is required to pray for mercy until God’s wrath has subsided. It is believed that eventually, a day will come when He cannot be negotiated with, and humanity will end no matter what the vessel does.

The way the vessel is chosen by the church is random. They select the first person they see that is young and able to handle such pressure, and call upon him to become a negotiator.

The negotiator has no control over this. Instead, they are forced to see the visions.

Once one is called upon by the church, the visions begin. It isn’t detailed in the book, but the visions allegedly show atrocities so horrifying that one is shaken into the state of prayer that Andrea was in. Essentially, it scares you into begging God for mercy upon mankind.

The visions apparently start off small, and continue to grow worse and more frequent until the vessel is forced into a catatonic state of prayer. Once God chooses to have mercy on mankind, the vessel is released.

Andrea was selected to be a vessel, a negotiator with God. There are instances of this happening throughout history, though most of the time it is covered up by the church itself. Andrea saw the first vision the night I found her praying in our room. The visions started bearing her until she could no longer bear them, and she fled to the church to beg for mercy.

She must have been temporarily released from this hell when the first ambulance arrived. She must have thought she was free.

But then the visions started back the night that she began screaming. And now, she is trapped here until she dies or until God chooses to finally set her free.

That was my theory. I’m still not sure if it’s totally correct. However, I recently received some news from the hospital.

They have finally managed to force my wife into a medically-induced coma. This means that she is no longer praying. It also means that the church no longer has a vessel with which to speak with God.

Last night, I had a dream. A dream where I watched my city burn alive. I saw my wife, my parents, and my friends all die hopelessly, as the fire spread farther and farther. I looked around, watching the fire slowly consume everything in sight.

Was this one of those visions? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just paranoid. But somehow, I feel the need to pray, to ask God to relieve me of this pain. I certainly hope I am not a vessel, but who knows. If I can share the burden with Andrea, at least I’ll have done some good.