Patriot's Chapel

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   Victor was a novelist specializing in history and cherished his lineage as a direct descendant of one of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence. He had been working on a book documenting obscure Fourth of July traditions across the rural South, when he received a piece of mail. The envelope had no return address, and inside it, there was only an unsigned postcard. The photo on the front of the card was a grainy drawing of a weathered-looking stone chapel surrounded by a pine forest. There was a caption across the bottom that read: Patriot’s Chapel, Currahee Mountain, GA.- 1776.

    An involuntary shudder caused the card to shake in his hand. The image didn’t unsettle him---what unsettled him was that he’d dreamed this image before… before he had seen the photo.

    Under the pretense of research, Victor decided to visit Patriot’s Chapel. He was really going there to see if he could find any clues as to who had sent him the card. He could not find the exact location of the chapel or any towns by that name, but his GPS did show a road that ran through the forest of Currahee Mountain. A few days before the July 4th holiday, he left home to begin his search for the chapel.

    In a dense thicket of pine and heat, the road narrowed as he drove---the trees crowding closer as though guiding him to a destination. He entered a town that was not listed on any of his maps. A town center appeared all at once. Flags hung in still air, and the paint on the buildings just faded enough to suggest permanence without change.

    To Victor, the town seemed somehow… off. It was too quiet… too… perfect. He stopped at the ‘General Store’ to ask for directions from a group who were standing in front of the building. He thought it strange that not one of the group answered his question.

     Only one of the women replied, but with a question, “Are you here for the ceremony?”

    “What kind of ceremony?”

    The group smiled, polite but practiced, as she answered. “You’ll see.”

     Victor thought it strange that every single one of them raised their hand and pointed as she said, “It’ll be just down that path at Patriot’s Chapel. We will gather there near dusk. It’s tradition.”

 “What kind of tradition?”

    Her smile didn’t change. “You’ll see.”

    Victor followed the path to the chapel. The building looked older than the photo---its worn stone streaked with moss, the walls leaning slightly inward as though anticipating collapse. No signs, just a door left slightly ajar. Inside the chapel, the air was motionless, and he saw no religious markings. There were no pews, no altar.

    At the center of the room stood a replica of the Liberty Bell, unpolished and immense, suspended from a wooden gallows. The silence was total---no birds, no chirping insects, no wind. His phone beeped once, then shut off entirely.

    Victor circled the bell, which was illuminated by the sunlight streaming through the open door. The floor creaked but the only other sound in the room was that of his slightly hesitant breathing. Being careful not to touch anything, he took photos with his digital camera, but something was wrong. When he tried to view them, the photos were all black. No, not exactly black---just completely blurred.

     He returned to his car and got a digital video recorder. Hiding the recorder from view in the treeline, he set it up to make a motion-sensing recording of the outside of the chapel. So as not to attract attention to himself during the ceremony, he went back to his car to write notes on what he had seen so far. Later that evening, he returned and retrieved the recorder to see what had been recorded. He saw a large group of people arriving from the woods and filing silently into the chapel.

     But in the video, their faces were indistinct, like the light had bent to avoid remembering them. Hours later, they emerged. Through the open door, inside the empty room, he saw the bell move. It moved only a moment and made no sound, yet he could see nothing that could have touched it.

    Victor stayed the night. He stayed in the woods and hid in the trees, hoping to witness and record more activity around the chapel. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he woke up, he was lying on the chapel floor with the light of the sun streaming through the open door. His equipment was lying beside him, but he had no memory of how he got inside---Just the echo of a bell ringing in his ears.

    He picked up his recorder to check if anything had been recorded. The footage showed no images, but the audio had caught something… a low, undulating tone. Not music exactly, just sound. Like a slow chant, layered and measured.

    As he listened to the audio, something on the floor focused his attention. It was a leather-bound ledger resting at the bell’s base. An open ledger. It was open to a page with only a single entry followed by a blank line:

    Victor Lewis ~~~ Witness, July 4: ____________________

    A pen lay beside it... Waiting.

    Victor gathered his equipment and hurried back to his car. He had decided to leave.

    The roads were empty. His car moved smoothly at first, trees unspooling in orderly blurs. Yet the odometer in his car refused to change. As he drove he began to realize that the passing landmarks were just illusions. He saw a silo transformed into a dead pine tree as he passed. The road had taken him in a circle. The same people at the ‘General Store’ were still standing in front of the building, smiling as though no time had passed. They waved when he drove by, but never stopped waving even after he had passed. Their faces seemed… rearranged somehow. Too polished, too…faultless.

    He kept driving and found himself driving by the chapel without meaning to go there. On his third loop trying to leave Patriot’s Chapel, the chapel came into view again---closer, this time. He stopped and walked toward it. The door was wide open. Inside, the ledger still lay open. The pen waited beside it.

    He stared down at his name. The place was not holding him by force…Not exactly. But the logic of the place…the rhythm of it…had closed around him like a net. He couldn’t leave until the book was complete. Until the act was affirmed.

    He picked up the pen. His hand trembled. The pen felt warm and the ink was viscous and the color of blood. His signature unfurled like a secret he’d always known but never spoken.

    The moment the pen left the page, the bell rang. Once… Twice… Thirteen times.

    Victor’s vision blurred. The room swam, not like fainting or falling asleep, something deeper. The walls dissolved, and time unraveled in soft, curling tendrils.

    And then…He was still in the chapel, but it was no longer empty. Figures moved around him, slow and solemn, their outlines flickering as if seen through heat waves. Dozens. Hundreds. Their forms translucent but unmistakable. Men and women, elders and children, clothed in earth tones and smoke, their eyes dark and unspeaking. They were the original inhabitants of this land. The dispossessed. The people whose land had been taken and whose names had been erased from every ledger. The people denied the very rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness being ritualized each year.

    They surrounded him. Victor tried to speak, but the air would not carry his voice. He could only feel.

    Cold hands pressed against his chest. Smoke slid into his mouth.

    One stepped forward. An old woman, with eyes like flint, placed her hand over his heart.

    He now understood. This was justice. It was revenge. It was retribution.

    As a descendant of those who had deprived them, he would now become the vessel by which they endured.

    His body stiffened. His limbs no longer listened to him; his will bent like damp paper. The spirits did not vanish.

    They entered him. Quietly. Deliberately.

    His life force would sustain them---not to bring them back, but to keep them from being completely lost. This land would remember what the nation forgets. He was their fuel… their declaration… their 4th of July.

    It was morning and Victor was standing in front of the ‘General Store’. Patriot’s Chapel bustled quietly. Flags fluttered. Children ran with bags of candy. Faces smiled with practiced ease. Music drifted from somewhere---thin and ceremonial. The kind no one really listens to anymore, but that everyone remembers.

    Victor raised a hand to wave at a woman who had just arrived. She waved back. He didn’t know her name, but something in her eyes told him he would. He adjusted his shirt, a bright blue one with a small flag pinned on the button-down collar.

    Today was the Fourth of July. He would return to the chapel, as he always would, year after year. To bear witness, to provide sustenance, and to make preparations for the next name in the ledger. The bell would ring again. But here, behind the facade of celebration, no one speaks of what had been traded to keep the flags flying.