Chapter III: Devotions of the Gutter

The bells of St. Cuthbert’s tolled beneath a sky the color of tarnished lead. The rain came down in sheets, steady and unrelenting, as though the heavens themselves wished to wash the city clean of memory. Yet London was not a city to be scrubbed. It clung to filth the way ivy clings to stone, feeding upon it, hiding behind it, exhaling it back into the lungs of its people.

In the nave of the church, all was not as it should have been. The candles guttered with no wind to move them. The pews, meant to hold the faithful, stood empty save for a scattering of parishioners who had come to whisper their devotions. They sat far from one another, as if each feared contagion from the soul of his neighbor.

The priest, Father Ellory, stood at the altar. He was a man renowned for charity, beloved in pamphlets and praised by those of means. Yet those who lived in his parish knew another side, whispered through cracked shutters. Rent collected with violence, alms withheld unless coin was given in return, comfort purchased as if it were a commodity.

That evening, Father Ellory read from his Bible, voice wavering. He spoke not of compassion but of obedience. Each word seemed to falter beneath the arches of the nave. The rain tapped steadily at the stained glass, each droplet striking like a finger against a drum.

At the third psalm, the sound changed. The tapping grew rhythmic, insistent, like knuckles against the pane. The congregation stiffened. The priest faltered, then continued, sweat running down his temple. He raised the chalice. The vessel, meant to hold wine, filled instead with rain that did not fall from the ceiling but rose upward, climbing against gravity until it brimmed.

The candles went out. Darkness folded across the pews. In that silence, there was a shift, a presence not seen but felt, like the weight of stone lowered upon the shoulders of every man and woman present. Some swore later that the stained glass seemed to bend inward, as though something vast pressed its face against the walls of the church, hungry to be let in.

Father Ellory’s voice cracked. He grasped his throat as though strangled by an invisible hand. When the candles sparked again, his eyes were wide and his tongue was dark as ink. He fell forward, striking the stone floor with a hollow crack. The chalice spilled its contents, yet instead of water spreading across the flagstones, it soaked upward into the ceiling, leaving the stone dry as parchment.

The congregation scattered. One woman swore she saw a figure move between the columns, tall as the arch itself, cloaked in rain, armored as if hewn from the very walls. Another insisted she heard footsteps upon the roof, heavy enough to bow the beams, though no tiles were disturbed. No one could agree, except that the church had grown suddenly smaller, as though the very act of breathing were crowded.

When the constables arrived, they found the hymnals stacked in neat towers upon the altar, ordered by size and wornness, a librarian’s precision imposed upon sacred text. Upon each cover, a line had been carved so thin it could not have been done with a knife. Together, the lines formed a sigil too complex to be born of accident.

Cats gathered in the nave that night, slinking in through the open doors, dozens of them, silent and unblinking. They arranged themselves before the altar, watching the chalice with eyes that gleamed green and gold. The constables beat them out with truncheons, but they returned, night after night, until the church was shuttered.

By morning, Father Ellory was laid out in the vestry. His body bore no wound, no sign of poison. Yet his tongue was as black as coal, and his hands were clasped not upon a cross but upon one of the iron keys tied with black thread.

And so it was whispered in London that the rain itself might one day tap your window, not to enter, but to watch.

Chapter III: Devotions of the Gutter

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