Sins 01 - Sins of Temptation

uncoil within me and I felt compelled to delve deeper, for I knew that I would exchange much to experience the riches this man had enjoyed.
    Running back down the stairs, I called out to my partner that I had to investigate further evidence outside. He shouted after me but I ignored him, caught up in the sensation that I must get to the chapel, and that time was of the essence. Part of me wondered at this desperate insistence but I felt possessed by something beyond my control. As I stepped outside, the light rain that had been falling morphed into an icy sleet and the heavy purple clouds above me split open with lightning. Thunder rolled across the desolate space between the house and the church and I was buffeted violently as opposing winds clashed all around. I pulled my coat tighter, fighting against Nature as if I was pushing a great weight ahead of me into a squall sent from Hell itself to tear this sombre valley apart.
    Each step across the open ground was a huge effort, but when I finally made it to the lych-gate at the entrance of the tiny churchyard the storm had eased a little, the rain lighter now, although the wind still howled around me. The church was old and partly ruined, with stone blocks that had fallen to the grass below, and eroded gargoyles hanging skewed from the edges of broken masonry. The present facade seemed to be built upon a more archaic structure, stones that had perhaps been worshipped as pagan gods in the days before Christ. I had imagined that I was running to sanctuary but now I felt that the miasma of the place was oppressive and malevolent. Yet I still wanted to enter, my curiosity deeply roused to search for the mysterious book.
    Stepping carefully along the overgrown rocky path, I noticed that the plants blooming in the churchyard were withered, all colour leached from them. Yet they still covered the earth thickly, rising up from around the edges of tombstones as if growing from the bones beneath. The fury of the storm surged again, crackling with energy, wind whipping round in tornado spirals, lifting the heads of strange albino flowers to the sky. Dust and ashes blew into my eyes, painting the scene with the desolate grey of mourning. I rubbed them frantically to clear my vision and hurried into the porch, my face brushing against something soft as I stumbled out of the wet gloom. I reeled back to see a dead crow hung by the neck above me, blue-black feathers still adhering to decaying flesh, its eyes open and unseeing.
    Pulling at the great door, I found it opened with a sigh, as the wind was sucked inside, filling the void with the desolation of chill air. I stepped through, my footfall stirring dust from the floor, the noise echoing around the deserted building, which absorbed the sound hungrily. The light inside was an amethyst haze from the heavy storm clouds that barely penetrated the nave through intricate stained glass windows. Looking up at them, I discerned the images of tortured saints, martyred in the most ingenious ways for the glory of their God. This place seemed to venerate death, rather than eternal life, and ahead of me, a life-size crucifix hung behind the altar, Christ’s face a skeletal version of the dead Faerwald, as if the Son of God could see what Hell awaited him beyond the veil.
    My eyes dropped to the altar, draped in cloth that had once been pure white but which now hung in dirty, dismal tatters. As the holiest place in the building, it was the most fitting place to bury such a book so I walked toward it, across flagstones carved with the names of those buried here. On one broad surface, the names of the dead ran into each other like the broken words on Faerwald’s body, a mass grave of victims who perished together in some ancient plague. I usually felt a calm peace within churches, a sense of something holy, but this place was malignant and hungry, taking each breath faster than I could exhale it.
    A pair of candlesticks coated in melted wax rested on the altar, the gold of their surface dulled by dust, but I could just make out the twisted figures of crucified angels, tortured by the implements of martyrdom, their mouths open and calling to a God who had deserted them. This was a strange church indeed where such objects were venerated, but I was compelled to discover more. In the centre of the altar was a box, a tabernacle for the Host, the bread of the Eucharist turned into Christ’s body for the consumption of the faithful. I pushed the