7 days to die, p.1
, page 1
Copyright January 2025 | Wisconsin | USA
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any from or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. For information on Between the Lines, visit www.betweenthelineswi.com
ISBN 9798338020647
Silas Harper was “doing the right thing,” or at least that’s what he whispered to himself as the silhouette approached through the fog. He’d done this more than a dozen times before, but this time it would be permanent. Timing would be everything.
Even with how dense the fog was, it couldn’t hide the bare limbs of the jagged Wisconsin tree branches. The air stunk of decaying leaves and frosted dirt. To Harper it was an awful smell, like the hill was using some natural defense mechanism. But he took the aroma in and savored it; it would be the last thing he smelt as a living man, after all.
While the silhouette ambled toward him from downhill, its features grew more distinct - a tall man…no, maybe a boy, actually…dressed as any college-aged photojournalism major might be, looking up at the trees through the viewfinder of his retro camera. The boy's soft brown hair brushed the edge of the lens. Harper's mustache twitched with annoyance. Any interesting wildlife or nature shots were sure to be obscured by the densest fog this area had ever seen, and his hair dancing in front of the glass.
The man-boy snapped another photo, the fog intensified the flash causing him to wince and lower his camera. Harper, more so resembling a middle-aged dad on a nature walk than a college-aged photojournalist, rolled his eyes.
“All right there, Lewis?”
“Oh god, this place is perfect.”
“My thoughts exactly."
Lewis stopped to shake hands. Harper’s tall figure and broad shoulders were an odd juxtaposition next to Lewis. The sharp, defined features of Harper's face gave the impression he was Lewis’s teacher, not a hiking buddy he met online. But despite their mismatch, Lewis relaxed while standing next to him. Harper had an almost fatherly quality to him. Even way up on this hill outside of town, Lewis found it easy to trust this man he’d never met until just now.
“It’s right up here,” Harper gestured uphill.
The pair trekked together, the fog thinning as they ascended.
“How’d you know about this place again?” Lewis asked.
“My family would take me here every Sunday as a kid. We only stopped going when it shut down.”
“Oh, that’s sweet, my parents let me choose if I wanted to go to church when I was nine.” Lewis was clearly more interested in his camera settings than their conversation, only offering Harper one-second glances as they carried on.
“… Anyway, since then, I’ve come up a few times and grabbed some decent pictures.” Harper's distant responses didn’t alarm Lewis. For both parties this was going exactly as they wanted.
“This is gonna be sick!” yelled Lewis, “I think I see it now!”
Bolting through the fog like some kind of unhinged squirrel, Lewis hurried up ahead. Harper slowed his pace while pulling a torn scrap of paper from his pocket. As he smoothed out the edges of the paper in his hand, its faded writing became more legible: 5th of December. Cementon, WI. Noticeable paranormal ability.
The wind fluttered the corner of the paper just enough to reveal its underside. It was from a newspaper. In the corner of the scrap was a picture of Lewis posing with a couple, smiling. Although crudely torn from the page, the full article was still intact:
LOCAL STUDENT, LEWIS SCHROETLIN SAVES COUPLE. Out for lunch with his sister uptown, Schroetlin abruptly sprinted from the other side of the road and shoved the couple over. Confused, they scolded Schroetlin when suddenly an out-of-control vehicle crashed through a storefront, the same storefront the couple had been dining in front of. Schroetlin claimed he “just knew” something was going to happen.
Turning slightly to hide his actions from the hyperactive photographer, Harper pulled a matchbook out of his pocket, struck a match and lit the scrap ablaze. While he continued walking uphill, he let the paper float to the ground, Lewis’s story going up in a quiet smoke.
The derelict building barely stayed together as a light breeze tried diligently to knock it down. He watched intently as Lewis scurried around the front of the building, capturing its peeling white paint, stained CHAPEL HILL CHURCH sign, shattered stained glass and splintered, rotten wood.
“You want to check out the inside?” Harper called out.
“Hell yeah! Let’s go!” Lewis ran up the steps like he’d just seen a Student Debt Relief voucher. One step CRACKED and almost fell out underneath him as he did.
Trudging up the steps, Harper pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket and slid one into the padlock secured to the front door. Lewis’s excitement waned for a moment.
“How’d you get the key?”
Harper froze briefly before answering, “I know the owner, from when I was a kid. Remember?”
The padlock clicked open, in an instant Lewis was back to his photo hungry self. Harper pushed the door, but instead of opening, it just sagged as one of the hinges gave out. Apparently leaving all his patience outside, Lewis shoved the door the rest of the way open and ran into the church. Harper followed him in, shutting the door behind them best he could. On the other side of the door there was another latch for a padlock. Harper closed the latch and locked the padlock through it, sealing them in.
Lewis had forgotten all about his camera. It now dangled by the strap off his shoulder as his eyes danced around the room. Pinned to the walls were symbols crudely sketched on brown, frayed paper. Hundreds of sketches coated every surface of the church. The most repeated symbol looked to be one of a moon with spider legs wrapping around it from the back. Walking slowly now, taking it all in, Lewis moved from page to page until one caused him to recoil. A drawing of a sharp, malevolent looking mask shaded black with sharp teeth and deep green edges stared back at him.
Lewis backed away from the wall and quickly glanced around at the rest of the pinned-up images, trying to decipher the strange language scribbled across them. The more Lewis took this in, the more frenzied he became. Harper slowly advanced on him.
His breathing had grown shallow, “what is all this?”
“December fifth, right?”
“What?” Lewis was completely focused on Harper now, backing away slowly towards the altar, Harper advancing on him.
“Your birthday Lewis! Is that your birthday?!” His voice boomed off the pews like a deranged preacher.
“Yes! Alright let’s out man. I’m catholic, I think I shouldn’t be here.”
Harper squeezed his eyes shut as he uttered, “I don’t want to do this Lewis, you seem like a nice boy.”
“Oh no.”
Before he could lose his nerve, Harper quickly pulled a small pouch out of his pocket, dumped its dusty contents on the floor, struck another match and dropped it in the powder. It caught fire, burning low and slow. And purple, somehow. Lewis took a defensive step back as the light purple flame spread across the floor of the church. Before Lewis had a chance to scream, he realized that the fire wasn’t hurting him. He could see it licking his ankles, but it was doing nothing.
Fog poured into the church from the cracks in windows and slowly swirled around the room. The church pews and the altar began to smoke. Tears streamed down Lewis’s face in big, shiny ribbons.
In his panicked state Lewis stumbled over a pew. He’d eventually backed up into the altar, nearly toppling it over. He looked in all directions for an exit. There wasn’t one.
The distance between Lewis and Harper dwindled.
The fire had climbed into the walls, still not hurting the church or its contents. The swirling smoke was speeding up, creating a small draft.
“Stop!”
Dutifully, Harper took another pouch out of his pocket and pelted Lewis with it. This time a neon orange liquid erupted from it. It stained his clothes, sizzling painfully against his skin.
“What was that?!”
The air left Lewis’s lungs. Harper couldn’t see it, but the rapid rising and falling of his chest stopped immediately. He dropped to one knee and grabbed his throat, choking. Harper stopped a few feet away from him and watched. Luckily for him, Lewis didn’t get a look at Harper's stare, full of purpose, eyes bulging like he was holding his breath, bulbous veins protruding from his neck. If Lewis had seen it, he’d have died from the fright alone.
It was obvious to Lewis now that he was knocking on death's door. With his purple lips and droopy eyes, he dropped to his knees. But there was sudden relief. It wasn’t a healthy dose of air, but he was able to suck something in. He looked up at Harper.
“Please, please I barely even know you-”
Harper had done this dozens of times. Almost fifteen, to be exact, but this would be the last one. Everything had to be right. He closed his eyes for a moment, gathering himself, then grunted and reached into one of the pews, dug past a bible and pulled out a necklace. Dangling at the end of it looked to be a solid metal vial of some kind, shaped like a sharpened lion's tooth with intricate carvings etched into it.
Lewis’s skin went pale, then blue. Limb’s stiffening, eyelids bouncing up and down as he tried staying lucid, his fingers twitched as the fleeting moments of his life slipped through them. Harper didn’t even lay a finger on Lewis, but his life ended like all the rest. Lewis collapsed against the altar, dead.
After suc
The darkness lasted only a few seconds. Harper slowly opened his eyes, relieved to find that they were still in the church. Only, it was much different now. The pews billowed smoke, the small purple flames and whirlwind of smoke that circled them before was now a magnificent vortex. Lewis stood amidst the vortex looking down at a dead body. At first glance it looked as if two extra people had gotten into the church with them, but as Lewis was just about to discover, they were still very alone in the church.
His shouting barely made it over the ripping of the vortex. “Who are they? What’s going on?!”
Tears streaming backwards around his face due to the wind, Lewis gawked at the dead bodies on the floor. He used his foot to roll one of the men’s heads over, only to discover that it was in fact, also Lewis.
Harper looked down to see his own body lying motionless on the floor atop Lewis’s, right where he left it. He crouched down to inspect the stab wound, warm blood still oozing from it.
“Please make it stop!” Screamed Lewis as he clasped his hands over his ears.
Harper pried the tooth necklace away from his own dead corpse, stood up and rushed up to Lewis, but Lewis was too paralyzed with fear to evade him. Harper rammed the tooth necklace into Lewis’s neck. Lewis let out a pathetic whimper. The vial inside the tooth filled up with a silvery blue liquid like a syringe. The expression soured on Harper's face, almost as if he was actively regretting what he was doing.
But he didn’t. He wanted to regret it, to feel remorse, but he just didn’t. He couldn’t.
Harper plucked the tooth out of Lewis’s neck once the vial was filled, the strange blue liquid now gushing from Lewis’s new neck wound. As Lewis desperately tried to stop the liquid from pouring out of his neck, Harper draped the necklace around his own and backed all the way up to the door, grabbing the doorknob for support.
The floorboards in the center of the church cracked like a spider's web. The floor dipped towards the center crack followed by a series of crunching and splintering sounds. It looked as if the church were slowly being swallowed into a sink hole just below the floorboards. A small hole opened in the center of the crack which brought on a deafening SWISH. The floor dipped so steeply into the crack now that Lewis began slipping towards its center.
Somewhat frightened himself, Harper clutched the doorknob with all his strength.
A large flame jumped out of the now boulder-sized crater in the floor and engulfed Lewis like a massive, devilish hand. Only nail marks etched into the wood remained as the fire dragged him into the crater, screaming all the way. The floor sagged at an almost vertical angle now, Harper only seconds away from falling in himself.
The hole closed back up and the floor leveled out with surprising speed. While the cracks were still visible, the floor was again in one piece. The hellish vortex of smoke, wind and fire dissipated and the fires eating up each church pew were extinguished.
All that remained in the church was Harper’s soul, his separated, dead body and Lewis’s dead body. Harper rose from the ground and dusted himself off. An aggressive KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK echoed through the church from the door. He cleared his throat and fixed his collar before fiddling in his pocket for the padlock key. As he inserted the key, a blade slashed through the crack between the door and the frame, severing the padlock (and nearly severing his fingers). Dangling on its only remaining hinge, the door fell open.
A tall, hooded figure draped in a frayed black cloak softly stepped into the church. It lowered the scythe in its hand to fit through the doorway. Harper backpedaled to make enough space for the intruder.
“I’ve come for the souls of Silas Harper and Lewis Schroetlin,” said the figure.
Its voice clearly belonged to a young man, but the hood obscured his face so Harper couldn’t see. He stopped and stared Harper down, waiting for a response. The cloaked man held his hand out to Harper.
He added, “I’ve come to offer you safe passage to Mesis.”
Harper cleared his throat and put on his best “surprised” face.
“I’m Silas Harper. I accept your offer.”
The slow, incessant dripping from the faucet wasn’t enough to wake Kelly up, but the water seeping into her pillow surely was. Still not ready to open her eyes, Kelly tossed her pillow to the side, but it didn’t make the sound she was expecting.
SPLAT.
Kelly sprang up as if she’d been electrocuted. Her tall frame gave her a great vantage point of the bedroom from her cot. It was nearly impossible to see anything but a blurry outline without her glasses, but she was already getting a sense of how much trouble she was in as she felt around for them on the floor, splashing all the way. She quickly found the weathered old things floating a few feet away from her. As she went to put them on, she surveyed herself in the glass. She couldn’t make out the details of her normally soft face, but she could tell that her hair looked like she’d rubbed a balloon against it. She popped the glasses on.
The room was mostly bare, with peeling wallpaper, scratched wooden floors, and a dusty ceiling fan. After surveying the room, the issue became apparent; the floor was submerged in a half inch of water.
“No no no…”
Fighting the unruly mop atop her head, Kelly tied her long black hair back into a ponytail as she splashed out of the bedroom. The living room was just as plain, and time torn as her bedroom. Their only piece of furniture, a dried-out pink couch, had a thin layer of dust on it that was slowly turning to mud at its base as more water soaked into it.
The kitchen and living room were essentially the same space as there was no wall separating the two, it looked as if there was a wall at one point but was torn down. Water drained through the cracks where the wall once stood like an unwanted drainpipe, gifting their downstairs neighbors with an icy morning shower.
Wrapping duct tape around all the rusted pipes was Kelly’s twelve-year-old, peach fuzz faced, buzz cut brother Mattie. The boy was wrapping so fast he’d worked up a sweat. The temperature couldn't have been higher than twenty degrees outside, and with their broken heater, no more than sixty-five inside. Bless his heart for trying, that boy had always taken a liking to tinkering with things.
Mattie’s twin sister Grace, who was identical to her brother in every way aside from her angelic, white hair, stood next to the sink holding the roll of duct tape. She continued to feed Mattie more length as she waited for Kelly.
“What’re you two doing?!”
A BANG echoed through the house as Mattie cracked his head on the cabinet. A small red line streaked down his face as he looked up at his big sister.
“That pipe you installed cracked!” He winced and rubbed his head.
Grace ripped another foot of duct tape off the roll, “why’re you stopping?!”
“Why are you stopping?!” He mocked.
“Stop it, for God’s sake. Mattie, I’ve told you a thousand times that duct tape doesn’t work like that on pipes.”
“I told you it was just making it worse- I’ll do it, just move over!” Grace demanded, moving in.
“I’ll do it!” He shooed Grace away like a dog.
“Mattie, that’s enough!”
“Enough plumbing or mocking Grace?”
“Both!”
Kelly crouched down to get a good look. Water spewed from the creases of the duct tape, making a plump, grey sausage. She looked over her shoulder at the crooked clock on the wall.
Half past seven.
“You two have to be on the bus in ten minutes!”
“We just wanted to help. I’m surprised Boyld hasn’t stomped his way up here already, telling us how we’re the devil or something,” Mattie snatched the roll out of Grace's hand.
Kelly looked at the pipe, back at the clock, then over to her siblings. Now she was going to be blamed for the pipes, the water damage and the twin’s tardiness. But to hell with all of it if she didn’t admire their spirit.
“You’re right, but that doesn’t mean you should miss any school, you might need to know how to dissect a frog one day, or something. Drop the tape buddy, let’s move.”
