The Electronic Church

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Father Clement’s Arrival

The RV came slow down Main Street, white paint and faded gold lettering catching the afternoon light: Saint Gabriel’s Remote Ministry — Faith on the Move. The generator rattled, coughing a thin blue smoke.

Father Clement stepped down from the driver’s seat, long black coat brushing the dust, Bible under one arm. His eyes were pale, not with age, but with that washed-out look of a man who’d seen too much darkness and was still counting.

The townsfolk came to watch—Moonvale didn’t get many visitors. Grace stood near the back, Roy beside her.

Clement’s gaze swept the group, pausing briefly on each face. Then he inhaled slowly. His nostrils flared.

“…Licorice.” The word dropped from his mouth like a stone into a well.

A few people laughed nervously. He didn’t.

“You all smell of it,” he said. “But it’s not candy.” He stepped closer, boots whispering on the dirt. “It’s in your breath. In your skin.”

Roy shifted, but Clement’s eyes pinned him like an insect.

“The veil here…” Clement’s voice lowered. “It’s as thin as a funeral shroud. Hell’s shadow seeps through. I can feel it under my feet, hear it in the wind.”

His stare drifted to Grace. “And now I can smell it in you.”

For a long moment, no one moved.

Then his mouth curved—not quite a smile. “Service will be held tonight. Seven o’clock. Attendance is… advised.”

He turned and climbed back into the RV. The door slammed.

Inside, the air still held that faint, bitter-sweet scent—licorice and something older—like roots rotting in the dark.

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The Electric Church

— Grace POV —

By dusk, the priest’s RV had taken root beside the old feed store like it was part of the landscape now. Long orange extension cords snaked from the back to a gas generator that thumped like a restless heart.

Grace and Roy stood across the street, half in shadow, watching.

Clement moved with the slow precision of someone building something sacred… or dangerous. He set a black metal altar on a folding table, its surface etched with gold lines that didn’t match any cross Grace had ever seen. LED lights ran along the edge, pulsing faintly.

Roy muttered, “That’s not Catholic.”

Grace tilted her head. “Not Baptist, either. Looks… wired.”

He kept unpacking—candles wired to battery packs, a brass chalice with tiny ports and cables feeding into its base, a tablet stand already loaded with an open Bible app. He wasn’t reading from it; the verses scrolled on their own.

Clement lit the candles—not with a match, but with a small black remote. The flames sprang to life, bright and steady, untouched by the breeze. The light reflected in his pale eyes, making them look almost silver.

Grace felt the hair rise on her arms. “What’s he doing?”

“Calling something,” Roy said. “Question is… which side’s gonna answer.”

Across the street, Clement placed a hand on the altar. His lips moved—not English. Not Latin, either. Was it Hebrew? A low, steady murmuring that seemed to crawl under the skin. The streetlamps flickered.

Roy took a half-step back. “We need to know if he’s here to save people…”

“…or hunt them,” Grace finished.

They stayed there until he finally looked up, his gaze landing squarely on them.

And he smiled like a man who already knew the answer.

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The Sweet-Breathed Wolves

— Father Clement POV —

They came at first out of curiosity—some of the townsfolk and teens in faded hoodies, a few elders leaning on canes. No one in Moonvale expected a priest to roll into town. He could see it in their faces: the polite half-smiles, the amused glances.

Clement read from the Gospel of Matthew, his voice steady, the words old and solid as stone. But even as he spoke, the air tasted wrong. Sweet. Sickly. Licorice on every breath.

It clung to their skin, their clothes, the space between them. It wasn’t candy. He’d smelled it before—in the prayer tents of the Congo, in a mountain village in Armenia where an old well bubbled with black water. The scent marked a place where the veil was worn thin.

Here, it was everywhere.

He closed the Bible. “Friends,” he said softly, “I tell you this not to frighten you, but to prepare you. There is an evil in this town—”

A few heads turned, brows lifted.

“—and it is not of flesh and blood. Hell presses close here, closer than you know. The sweetness you carry is its fingerprint.”

He let his eyes sweep the small gathering. Most looked unconvinced. But not all.

Near the back, a man and a woman stood too still. The man had a fighter’s posture, the kind learned from years of surviving, not from training. The woman—her eyes followed every word like she was weighing them against a language older than his.

Clement felt it then: the power in them. But it wasn’t holy.

He continued the sermon, letting the scripture flow, but his mind was elsewhere. He was no stranger to darkness—he had carried the crucifix into war zones, faced down men who thought themselves demons—but here in Moonvale, the air itself seemed to whisper.

These people, this place… it was not the battle he had come for. This was something older, deeper.

And for the first time in a long while, Father Clement wondered if he was not the hunter here… but the prey.

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The Unwanted Alliance

— mixed POV —

The crowd drifted away slowly, murmuring in that half-embarrassed way people do when they’ve just heard a sermon that felt a little too direct. Someone laughed. Someone muttered, “Preacher’s been drinking his own communion wine.”

Grace and Roy hung back, not eager to be trapped in conversation. But Clement moved faster than they expected, stepping off the makeshift altar and striding toward them.

Up close, he smelled even more of incense and travel—dust, motor oil, and something sharper, like ozone before a storm.

“I’d like a word,” he said. His voice carried the authority of someone used to obedience, but there was a tremor under it.

Roy kept his face neutral. “We’re listening.”

Clement’s gaze flicked between them. “You carry the scent stronger than the others. That licorice. You know what it is.”

Grace felt her jaw tighten. “It’s nothing.”

He smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “In the mountains of Armenia, the villagers drank tea that smelled like that. Said it kept their minds clear when the darkness came calling. I buried most of them by spring.”

Roy shifted, putting himself slightly between Clement and Grace. “You think we’re part of the darkness?”

“I think you’re close enough to it that it’s marking you,” Clement said quietly. He glanced over his shoulder, toward the quiet houses of Moonvale. “And I think this town is sitting on a wound in the world. Hell is close—closer than I’ve ever felt. I came here to bring the Word, but…”

“But you’re not up to the fight,” Grace finished.

Clement didn’t argue. He met her eyes, steady. “Not alone.”

The three of them stood there, the hum of the RV’s generator filling the silence.

Finally, Clement said, “I can bless the ground, shield a doorway, and name the devils when they speak. But if what’s pushing through here takes flesh…” He looked at Grace, at Roy. “…I think you’re the ones who know how to kill it.”

Grace crossed her arms. “You’re assuming we want to help.”

“I’m assuming you want to live,” Clement said, and then turned, walking back to his RV without waiting for an answer.

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