Chapter 5
The Crossroads Church
Amy investigates a church where phantom hymns are heard at midnight. The pastor's diary mentions a secret sin tied to the land's original owners.
The Crossroads Church sat at the junction of two dirt roads that no longer led anywhere of consequence. The GPS on my phone had given up three miles back, and I’d been navigating by the faded landmarks Aunt Mae had sketched on a napkin—a bent oak, a rusted mailbox shaped like a catfish, and a crumbling stone wall that looked more like a pile of old teeth than a boundary marker.
I pulled my car to the side of the road and killed the engine. The silence that followed was thick, almost syrupy, the kind of quiet that only exists in places where even the insects have learned to hold their breath.
The church stood ahead, a whitewashed wooden structure with a steeple that leaned slightly to the left, as if bowing under the weight of years. The paint was peeling in long, pale strips, and the windows were dark, boarded up in places. But the door—the door was ajar, and that struck me as wrong. Abandoned churches in the Deep South are sealed tight, as if the community is trying to keep something in, or maybe keep something out.
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