The Three Crosses (Part 1)

 I returned to Ashwood in March when the ground was frozen solid, and the sky hung low like wet wool. The town hadn’t changed much—peeling paint, shuttered windows, the same rust-bitten water tower with “JESUS SAVES” barely legible beneath a graffiti dick someone never bothered to scrub off.

They said winter ends in March here, but they lied. It just shifts shape. The snow melts into mud, and the mud freezes into hard, bitter ruts that crack your tires and your bones. March isn’t spring. It’s a funeral the world refuses to attend.

I didn’t return to Ashwood out of fondness. No one fondly remembers Ashwood unless they're carrying a burden. I came back because my mother had passed away, and the responsibility of clearing out the house, a duty I couldn't escape, fell on me. No siblings. No caring cousins. Just me, Ruth Harper, the solitary branch on a withered family tree.

The Harper house, a looming presence at the edge of town, past the grain elevator and the burned-down dairy, sits like a creaking, drafty two-story beast. Its wallpaper peels like sunburned skin, and the basement smells like drowned earth, a scent that lingers like a ghost. It's the kind of place you can leave for a decade and return to find it exactly the same, except more hollow.

When I pulled up, I half expected to see her in the window. Ma wasn’t the ghostly type, but grief plays tricks on your brain. Makes shadows out of curtains faces in the glass. I stood on the porch with my hand on the knob for a long time, just breathing.

Then I opened the door.

The next few days were a blur of boxes, old photos, and the bone-deep ache of nostalgia I didn’t want. I found my baptism certificate in a drawer, tucked behind a stack of old church bulletins from a congregation that no longer met. There was a time Ashwood had three churches: Baptist, Lutheran, and something that just called itself “The Chapel.” That last one’s gone now. Torn down, erased. No one really talks about it.

It was on the third day that I noticed the hill.

Out past the edge of town, where the cornfields begin and the land slopes up like a quiet question, there's a rise everyone calls Cross Hill. No one officially named it that, but everyone knows what it means. The town builds three wooden crosses every spring just before planting. Rough-hewn things, maybe ten feet high, planted deep in the soil. They stand for a few weeks, then come down. I remember them from when I was little—how they loomed against the sky like watchmen.

I never understood the reason behind it. When I asked my mother once, she said, “It’s tradition, baby. Don’t worry your head.” But how could I not worry? It was a tradition I couldn't comprehend, a mystery that lingered in the back of my mind.

This year, the hill was bare.

I noticed it while driving to the post office. It hit me like a flat note in a song—something out of tune, off-rhythm. The hill should’ve had the crosses by now. March was almost over. But there was nothing there except wind and dead grass.

I asked around later. At the gas station, I mentioned it to Marla, the girl behind the counter whose eyebrows looked like they were drawn on with a Sharpie and who chewed her gum like it owed her money.

“They didn’t build ‘em this year,” she said, not looking up from her People magazine.

“Why not?”

She shrugged. “Dunno. Guess no one got around to it. Ol’ Bill Porter used to organize it. He died last winter.”

That made sense in a small-town way. One old man dies, and a tradition unravels. Still, it felt wrong—off-key. Like the town was forgetting something important, like we were supposed to remember but didn’t know what. The absence of the crosses seemed to weigh on everyone, casting a shadow over the town's usual rhythm and disrupting the familiar beat of our lives.

That night, the wind howled so fiercely it sounded like a chorus of screams. I lay in my childhood bed under threadbare quilts, watching the shadows creep across the ceiling like insects. I hadn’t been afraid of the dark since I was twelve. But that night, I was twelve again, consumed by a fear I couldn't shake off.

At some point, I dreamed I was back on Cross Hill. But it wasn’t empty anymore. The sky was bruised purple and red like a rotting wound, and the ground was black with ash. The three crosses stood tall—fresh wood, clean-cut edges—and something hung from them. Not bodies. Not yet. Just shapes. Bundled cloth. Waiting. The dream was so vivid I could almost feel the wind's chill and the weight of the impending horror.

I woke up gasping, the taste of copper in my mouth.

The call came just after dawn.

I was elbow-deep in a box of my mother’s ancient cookbooks when the landline rang. Yeah, the landline. Cell service in Ashwood is spotty on a good day, and Ma always swore by the rotary dial like it was a holy relic.

I let it ring four times long enough to debate not answering, then picked up.

“Harper residence,” I said, because apparently grief turns you into your parents.

A pause. Breathing on the other end. Then: “Ruth?”

“Yeah?”

“This is Sheriff Tiller.” His voice was slow and cracked, like gravel under tires. “We, uh... got somethin’ up on Cross Hill. Figured you might wanna come down. Since you were askin’ about it.”

That was it. There was no explanation or details; just that dragging Midwest understatement made everything sound more terrifying.

I said I’d be there in ten.

When I got to Cross Hill, the town was already gathered. Not all of it—Ashwood doesn’t do full turnouts unless there’s a parade or a bonfire—but enough. Half a dozen trucks were parked in the ditch, and men in baseball caps and Carhartt jackets stood around, arms crossed. A few older women with thermoses of black coffee. No one spoke.

The crosses were there.

Not just there—they were perfect. Clean pine beams, bound with thick hemp rope, were driven deep into the earth like they’d grown there. And hanging from them—three figures. Human-shaped. Motionless. Their features were obscured by the burlap, adding to the eerie atmosphere.

I stopped at the edge of the field, boots sinking into the soft, thawed ground.

They were wrapped in burlap.

Each body was swaddled like some macabre scarecrow, faces hidden, limbs bound tight. There was no blood, no sign of injury, just three heavy forms swaying gently in the wind, suspended on ropes that looked older than the wood they hung from.

“Christ,” I whispered, though it wasn’t a prayer.

Sheriff Tiller came up beside me, hands in his pockets.

“You ever seen anything like this?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Not in my time. Not in my father’s, neither.”

“You gonna cut them down?”

He didn’t answer right away. Just stared at them, jaw tight.

“Already checked. They’re not from around here. No ID, no missing persons match. Didn’t even have shoes.”

“Jesus.”

“Got the coroner comin’ up from Peoria. Till then… we wait.”

He turned and returned to his cruiser, leaving me alone with the wind and the dead.

By that evening, the news had spread through town like blood in water. Three dead. No one knew who. No one knew how. And no one knew who built the crosses.

I went to The Rusty Nail, the only bar in town that wasn’t technically a bar—it used to be a diner, then a bait shop, then just gave up and started selling Busch Light and calling itself a social club.

Inside, the lights were dim, the air smelled like fryer grease and spilled beer, and everyone was discussing Cross Hill.

“Some kind of cult thing,” one guy said. “Satanists, probably.”

“Aliens,” another offered, half-joking, half-serious.

But most people just shrugged. Sipped their drinks. Stared at their hands. Because no one wanted to say the truth.

This kind of thing doesn’t happen in Ashwood.

Except… it does. And we pretend it doesn’t.

I sat at the far end of the counter nursing a whiskey when Old Man Reese slid onto the stool next to me. He smelled like wet tobacco and something darker—mildew, maybe. Or rot.

“You saw ‘em?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He nodded slowly. “My daddy used to say those crosses weren’t for decoration.”

I looked at him. “Then what were they for?”

He tapped the side of his nose. “Can’t say. Not supposed to. But I’ll tell you this—when I was a boy, they never missed a year. Storm, snow, drought, didn’t matter. They went up. And nothing bad ever happened.”

“And now?”

Reese looked toward the window, toward the hill you could almost see from the parking lot. “Now we’re in for it.”

That night, I dreamed of bells.

Giant, rusted church bells ringing in some deep, forgotten place. The sound was wrong—too low as if it was echoing through bone instead of air. I was in a field, barefoot, and the earth was wet beneath me. Not mud. Meat. The ground pulsed when I stepped like something was breathing under it.

I woke up with dirt under my fingernails.

The next day, the coroner still hadn’t arrived. The weather turned sour—gray skies, sleet that stung like sand, wind that screamed through the trees like it had a face.

I went to the library, just a single room in the back of the old schoolhouse. Mrs. Fennimore, the librarian since God was a boy, gave me a thin-lipped smile.

“Looking for anything in particular?” she asked, though her tone suggested I’d better not be.

“Old town records. Traditions. The crosses.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re your mother’s daughter, all right.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She asked too many questions, too.”

That was news to me. Ma had always seemed so… normal. Reserved. Faithful, in that quiet, midwestern Protestant way. Church on Sundays, casseroles for funerals, never cursed even when she stubbed her toe.

I almost left right then.

Instead, I followed Mrs. Fennimore to a back cabinet, where she unlocked a drawer full of yellowed folders and microfiche reels. She handed me a stack and left without another word.

I started digging.

The town records were a mess. Faded carbon copies, handwritten notes in spidery cursive, ledger books with brittle pages that crumbled if you looked at them sideways. It was less an archive and more a fire hazard with good intentions.

I sat at the single wooden table in the back corner of the library, drowning in dust and names I didn’t recognize. Most of it was tax records, school rosters, and crop yields. But then I found a folder labeled Ashwood Chapel—Misc., and that’s where things got weird.

The Chapel—capital “C”—was the third church Ashwood used to have before it mysteriously burned down in the late ’70s. Everyone always said it was electrical. The file didn’t agree.

There was a typed page—crooked, yellowed, dated March 1976. A sermon, I think. No name on it. Just the title:

> “Upon the Hill They Hung Three, That the Fourth Might Sleep.”

Poetic. Creepy as hell. I read on:

> “The Covenant was made in blood and wood, sealed in faith and fear. So long as we raise the three, the fourth shall not rise. So long as we remember the pact, the fields shall yield, and the ground shall not take more than it gives.”

> “Forget, and you invite the Hollowing. Forget, and the mouth will open.”

The rest of the page was garbled—half-burned, stained by what looked like oil or dried blood. I touched a corner, and it left a smear on my fingertip.

The Covenant. The fourth. The Hollowing.

This wasn’t the Christianity I grew up with. This was something older. Dirtier. Closer to the bone.

I asked Mrs. Fennimore if there were any records from before the Chapel burned down.

She hesitated. “Only what’s in the vault.”

“Vault?”

She sighed like I’d asked her to dig up her own mother. “Basement. Through the boiler room. Locked cabinet. Key’s on a ring labeled ‘Dumb Shit.’ Don’t make me regret this.”

Ten minutes later, I was in a basement that smelled like wet stone and old paperbacks, unlocking a cabinet that looked like it hadn’t been opened since Nixon was in office.

Inside: one leather-bound journal, cracked and flaking like it had been soaked and dried a dozen times. No title. No author.

The first page read: “Ashwood Observations – For Those Who Remember.”

Okay, ominous.

I flipped through. Most of the entries were short. Scrawled observations, dates, weird little anecdotes.

> “March 13, 1948 – Crosses went up late this year. Livestock was stillborn. James B. saw something in the well—won’t speak.”

> “March 21, 1953 – Woman in white walking eastbound past Cross Hill. No footprints. Snow untouched.”

> “March 18, 1961 – Crosses knocked down by storm. Put them back up the next day. Sheriff found his wife hanging from the middle one that night. Said she was smiling.”

I read that one twice.

There was a pattern. Every March. Something happened every time the crosses were late, damaged, or missing. People died. People vanished. Or worse.

And the town never talked about it.

They just kept building the crosses.

Until this year.

That night, I sat on the back porch of my mother’s house with a cup of something warm and entirely not strong enough. The fields stretched out behind me like sleeping giants. Cross Hill was barely visible in the distance, a dark bump on the horizon.

The wind rustled the dry grass. Something moved out there.

Not like an animal. Not fast. Just… movement. A slow sway, like someone standing and watching.

I stood up.

“Hello?” I called.

Silence.

Then, just barely, the sound of wood creaking.

I stared at the hill until my eyes watered. Finally, I went inside and locked the door. Not that it would’ve mattered.

I called Tiller the following day.

“Found something in the records,” I told him.

“I’m listening.”

“Whatever those crosses were for, they weren’t symbolic. They were part of something. A pact. People kept records—sort of. Old journals, sermons. The Chapel knew something.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“I figured as much,” he said. “I just didn’t want to be the first to say it.”

That gave me pause. “You knew?”

“I’ve been sheriff here twenty-one years, Ruth. I’ve seen things. Nothing like this, but... enough.”

He sounded tired. Maybe scared. I didn’t blame him.

“Do we know who the bodies were?” I asked.

“No ID. No missing persons reports. No one in the county or the state matches. It’s like they just... showed up.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“They’re still up there,” he added. “Haven’t touched ‘em.”

“You’re not cutting them down?”

“No,” he said. “Not yet. Doesn’t feel right.”

Later that day, I drove back out to the hill.

I don’t know why. Morbid curiosity, maybe. Or something deeper. Something that pulled.

The air was colder up there. Still. Heavy.

I parked and walked to the edge of the field.

The bodies hadn’t moved.

But now, there were footprints in the mud.

Not mine. Not Tiller’s. Not from anyone I recognized.

They led up to the crosses.

Then away.

And there was a fourth set.

That one didn’t lead away.

It just stood there.

Facing the middle cross.

Like whoever made them was still standing there.

Watching.

I dreamed of the Chapel that night.

Not the burned-out husk, but the original. Whole. Standing proud in a field of golden wheat under a sky the color of bruised peaches. Stained glass windows flickered with candlelight. The front door swung open, and I stepped inside.

The pews were full, but the people weren’t people. Not really. Shapes. Outlines. Eyes where mouths should be. They hummed in unison—a low, droning sound that made my teeth ache.

At the pulpit stood a man in a robe made of stitched-together hymnals. He had no face. Just a smooth plane of skin and a mouth on the side of his neck.

He raised one hand and said, “We name Him holy. That He may forget what He is.”

I woke up screaming.

The next day, I went back to the journal. I couldn’t stop thinking about that line: the fourth shall not rise. What the hell was the fourth?

I flipped through the last few entries, searching for anything new. That’s when I found it—pressed between two pages like a dead leaf.

A torn scrap of newspaper. No date. No source. Just a headline:

> LOCAL WOMAN CLAIMS CROSS TRADITION “WRONG,” “BLOOD-BOUND”

Ruth Harper Denounces Ritual; Calls for End to “False Worship”

It was my mother.

The photo was grainy, but it was her. Mid-thirties maybe, hair pulled back, eyes fierce.

I read the article twice.

Apparently, sometime in the late ’90s, she stood up at a town meeting and told everyone the tradition of the crosses wasn’t Christian—it was pagan, passed down from something older. She said the town was worshipping a thing they didn’t understand—a god with a false name.

Then, she vanished from public life. No one mentioned it again.

So many things made sense now—her quiet nature, the way she avoided town events, how she only went to the Lutheran church out of obligation.

She knew.

I returned to the library and found Mrs. Fennimore still at the front desk, knitting something that might’ve once been a scarf.

“Did you know my mother tried to stop the crosses?”

She paused mid-stitch. Didn’t look up.

“People say things,” she said softly. “Especially when they’ve been touched.”

“Touched by what?”

That made her glance up at me—eyes sharp, precise.

“By Him.”

I sat down across from her, journal in hand. “Who is ‘He’? The fourth?”

Her lips thinned. “He has many names. But the one the town gave Him is ‘Elial.’”

“Elial.” I let the name roll around my mouth. It tasted wrong. Heavy. “Sounds biblical.”

“It is,” she said. “Sort of. Comes from Belial. One of the false kings, before the texts were edited. Before the old gods got dressed up in white robes and renamed.”

“And the crosses?”

“They keep Him dreaming. Keep the mouth from opening.”

I felt the chill crawl up my spine again. “The mouth.”

“This land was never empty,” she said, voice low. “Not when the settlers came. Not before. There’s something beneath the soil. Always has been. The crosses are... a cage. A warning. A deal. We build them. We remember. He sleeps.”

I swallowed. “And if we forget?”

She met my gaze, steady.

“Then He remembers.”

I left the library with shaking hands.

It all felt too big now. Like I was inside a story someone else started writing a hundred years ago, and I’d just been handed the last page.

At home, I pulled down the attic ladder and climbed up. The air was dry and itchy from insulation and dust. I rummaged through boxes until I found an old photo album labeled Church Days’ 93–’98.

There she was—my mother—standing beside the old Chapel before it burned. Next to her was a young man with sunken eyes and a crooked collar. The caption said Pastor Alden.

I’d never heard of him.

But behind that photo was a handwritten letter addressed to my mom. There was no envelope. It was just a single sheet.

> “Ruth—

If you’re reading this, then I’ve failed. The town is slipping. The old names are returning. The hymnals do nothing anymore—the people only sing out of habit. We once kept Him bound with faith, but now we rely on wood and rope. It will not hold.

Three is the seal. The fourth is the truth. I’ve tried to rewrite the gospel around Him, but I fear I’ve only made it worse. They call Him Elial, but His real name is more profound. Beneath speech.

If they stop building the crosses, you must finish what I began.

You must remember the real name.

It is not in the book. It is in the blood.

– A.”

I sat there a long time, staring at that signature.

Then, something moved below.

A soft thud, like a boot on the floorboards.

I leaned toward the attic hatch.

Another thud. Closer.

I held my breath and listened.

Nothing.

Then—

Creak.

A floorboard in the hallway.

Someone—or something—was in the house.

I climbed down slowly, one step at a time, every creak of the ladder like a gunshot.

The hallway was empty. The front door locked. Back door, too.

But the basement door?

Wide open.

Dark as a swallowed scream.

I should’ve called Tiller. Should’ve grabbed the shotgun from the closet. Should’ve done a lot of things.

But instead, I stepped down into the dark.

The air was thick. Damp. Smelled like rust and earth.

Halfway down, I saw it.

A handprint on the wall.

But not a normal one—too long, too wide, with fingers that curved incorrectly. Like they wanted to crawl back into whatever made them.

At the bottom of the stairs, something had been scratched into the concrete with what looked like a nail.

Three crude crosses.

And beneath them, a name.

Not Elial.

Something older.

I couldn’t read it. My eyes slid over it like oil on glass. My brain refused to understand it.

But I knew, at that moment, that my mother had seen this too.

And she’d kept it secret her whole life.