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Jake’s question froze everyone in the room for a moment. Then Jenna responded, “That’s a good question, Jake. I mean, we don’t have any particular reason to expect there were any more bodies hidden here, but we have to find out.”

When she heard a sharp intake of breath from Father Walsh, Jenna added, “And how can we even go about looking without doing unnecessary damage to the building?”

“Father Walsh,” Pete’s voice cut through the silence that followed, “do the original blueprints of St. Michael’s still exist?”

The priest nodded. “Yes, they’re kept in the rectory. I can show you.”

“Please,” the caretaker said, “I think I can help if I can get a look at them.”

The group followed Father Walsh out of the Sunday school room, their footsteps echoing solemnly through the hallways to the rectory. Father Walsh moved to an antique cabinet, his hands trembling slightly as he withdrew a large, rolled bundle of papers. He unfurled it carefully on his desk.

Jenna watched as Pete selected the Sunday School room and aligned the edge of a ruler with the blueprint’s faded lines. “See here,” he said, pointing to the outline of a particular wall, “the depth doesn’t match up—which makes sense, considering what we found there.”

When Jenna leaned closer, she could see the discrepancy between the plans and reality. The wall they had broken to remove the body wasn’t part of the original plan. That closet had once been two feet deeper.

“Father, do you know of any renovations that might have changed these dimensions?” Jenna asked.

“None that I was made aware of,” replied Father Walsh, shaking his head. “But I never gave any thought to the depth of that closet. Or, for that matter, any other spaces like that.”

“Then we check for other disparities,” Jenna decided.

Together, the group pored over the blueprints, compiling a registry of potential caches. Jenna’s hand was steady as she jotted down measurements with cool efficiency.

With the list complete, Jenna moved to the photocopier, its whirr and flash sounding oddly mundane. She produced duplicates, distributing them to each member of the team.

“Jake, take the south transept. Pete, you’re with me. Officers, start from the parish hall and work back towards us.”

With copies in hand, they split off in their different directions. Jenna and Pete headed towards the nave, then paused at the threshold, taking in the solemn beauty of the church. The pews stood in orderly rows, light coming through the tall stained glass windows painted the room in colorful hues.

The search began, and the quiet of the church was soon filled with the rhythmic tapping of their investigation. Pete started working his way along nooks and corners in one wall, and Jenna’s own taps soon joined the chorus. Her hands brushed over surfaces, feeling for anomalies, tapping to identify any areas that sounded hollower than they should be. As she worked, memories of recent terrors in Genesius County surged through her mind—the Sablewood Reservoir drownings, the ranchers’ murders.

They were acts of violence that had shattered the peace, yet some of them had long remained hidden. It was a bitter denial of the idyllic town she remembered—or thought she remembered—from her childhood, a town where neighbors greeted each other with smiles, and where local legends were shared at the diner over coffee. How many more secrets did the tranquil facade of Trentville conceal? And was her twin sister Piper’s disappearance just another of those mysteries?

As Jenna considered the mounting evidence, she recognized a chilling truth: This was not the idyllic little world of innocence she once believed it to be. Its charm and warmth were undercut by darkness that crept along its edges and had seemingly burst forth without warning.

Jenna wondered, was it always like this? If so , why was the darkness only coming to light now?

She and Pete separated to check nooks and corners and closets around the nave. With the list clutched in her hands, Jenna opened a nondescript door to see a few hanging vestments. She measured the closet against the faded lines and annotations of the original design.

The dimensions did not match; the depth was off by a foot or more.

She tapped lightly, then harder, and a hollow sound confirmed her suspicions. The space before her held more than vestments —it was a potential crypt.

Jenna’s thumbs moved with precision as she composed the text message, an urgent summons in digital form: “Found something. Come to the back closet nave ASAP.” She sent it to Jake, Pete, Father Walsh, and the officers.

As she waited, Jenna’s gaze remained fixed on the closet door. Was whoever had desecrated this holy ground still out there? How many more lives had been claimed? How long had this predator moved among them undetected? Jenna knew the answers would come at a cost—the innocence of Trentville was already fraying at the edges.

The response to her call was swift, concern on each face as they arrived. She gestured toward the closet. “The dimensions are wrong,” she said, her voice devoid of inflection.

“Let’s see what’s behind it,” Pete muttered with dread on his face. Father Walsh crossed himself, a silent prayer fluttering on his lips.

The false wall soon yielded to Pete’s efforts, giving way with a reluctant creak. A draft of stale air rushed forth, the musty odor of decayed time assailing their nostrils. For a moment, no one spoke.

The sight that met their eyes was obscured, but visible enough to confirm their fears—the yellowed plastic, the linen shroud, the way the corpse seemed so eerily preserved. Another victim was right there before them. Pete stood frozen, his features drawn into an expression of disbelief. As the church’s caretaker, he had walked these floors countless times, unaware of the gruesome secrets they harbored. And now there seemed to be no end to them. Jenna knew that feeling all too well—the sense of betrayal when the familiar turned sinister.

Jenna dialed Dr. Melissa Stark’s number, her eyes never leaving the grim parcel behind the wall.

“Another one,” she said, the words tasting like ash. “In the nave. It looks the same.”

Melissa assured her she was on the way back to the church.

Jake stood beside her, his sandy hair catching the dim light, his face solemn as he began recording the scene. They moved with practiced efficiency, an unspoken language between them in the quiet clicks of the camera shutter and the soft scratch of a pen on a notepad.

Father Walsh’s retreat to the nearest pew pulled Jenna’s attention away from her task. The priest’s head was bowed, hands clasped as if in prayer, his vestments muted and dull against the polished wood of the church furniture. Jenna felt a pang of sympathy. The sanctity of his world had been violated, the very foundations of his faith shaken by the malevolence that lurked beneath the surface of their small town.

When Dr. Stark and her team arrived in their white hazmat suits, the atmosphere shifted. With a nod to Jenna and Jake, Melissa began her meticulous work, her movements sharp and deliberate. Her professional detachment sliced through the emotional fog that hung over the rest of them.

As Dr. Stark’s team swarmed the area, Jenna stepped back, observing the replay of science and investigation unfold. It was a grim scene, the forensics officers moving with purpose around the newly revealed body, tools in hand, voices low but authoritative.

“Let’s move on,” Jenna said quietly to her own team. “We need to keep searching,” she urged. The others nodded, somber determination on their faces as they split up to continue their grim task. The sound of tapping began anew, a morbid symphony that echoed through the cavernous church, as they sought to uncover the full extent of the horror hidden within its walls. There could be more secrets hiding within these walls, and they would unearth every last one.

The forensics team worked around their leader with a quiet efficiency that belied the macabre nature of their task. They all focused on their various tasks until they heard the coroner’s voice call out to them.

“It’s definitely the same MO,” Melissa announced, her voice cutting through the hush of the room. She pointed to the discolored patches on the fabric, “Look here, and here—the use of quicklime... it’s identical. And it looks like another woman, but I think that this one might have been here a lot longer than the other.”

Jenna’s eyes absorbed every detail: the yellowed plastic, the linen shroud, the way the corpse seemed so eerily preserved. How many awful secrets were entombed within these walls, undisturbed until now?

As the forensics team carefully prepared to move the body, Jenna glanced at the somber faces of her team.

“We need to expand our search,” she said, her voice low but firm, resonating against the high ceilings. “This is now officially a serial killer investigation. We need to check every wall, every floor, every ceiling in this building. No stone left unturned.”

Jenna Graves surveyed her team, their faces reflecting the sober realization of what lay ahead. She met each of their gazes, seeing her own determination mirrored back at her.

“Let’s get moving,” she commanded softly, and they split up, spreading out into the sacred spaces with a new sense of purpose. Jenna heard the new taps begin against walls. Each knock was a question asked to the silent church, each potential hollow response an answer they were afraid to hear.

The sound multiplied, the tapping becoming a steady rhythm that filled St. Michael’s with its haunting beat. Jenna herself moved to a corner, listening intently. The noise of the investigation reverberated through the church, a chorus of inquiry.

Jenna headed to the nave, the quiet sanctuary now a crime scene. She drew on her gloves with methodical precision, her mind clear and focused. There was no room for hesitation; every moment mattered in the hunt for the truth. Her chestnut hair, usually neatly pinned back, had escaped its confines, reflecting the chaos that had unraveled around them. She tucked a stray lock behind her ear and approached the first wall with determination.

Her hand was steady as she began to tap again, listening for the hollow sound that would indicate another grim secret hidden within the church’s walls. The sound was stark against the silence, each tap a question, each echo a possible answer. Jenna moved methodically along the wall, her eyes narrowing as she concentrated on the sounds, deciphering their meaning.

Jake started his search on the opposite side of the nave. His presence was reassuring, his commitment to the case evident in his unwavering focus. They worked in tandem, though apart, each driven by a shared resolve to uncover the dark truths that lay buried.

The officers, each versed in their duties, spread out through the other sections of the church, their hands echoing Jenna’s movements. The tapping grew into a chorus, a grim soundtrack to the task at hand. Jenna felt a chill run down her spine, not from the cold stones but from the reality of what those sounds might reveal.

With each section of wall inspected, Jenna moved to the floors, her knees pressing against the hard surface as she examined each inch. There was no rush in her actions, only thoroughness, a reflection of her dedication to seek justice for the forgotten souls who had been concealed in these sacred confines.

The search continued, the persistent tapping a haunting reminder of the gravity of their investigation. Jenna’s intuition guided her, the same sense that had led her to so many breakthroughs before. It was a gift that came with its burdens, a connection to the unseen that often left her weary. But today, it fueled her, propelling her forward as they searched for the hidden horrors within the church’s walls.

It was a solemn search that spoke of secrets yet to be uncovered, of lives cut short and stories unfinished. Jenna wondered how many confessions these walls had absorbed, how many prayers they had heard.

Now, these same walls bore witness to something far darker. How many terrible deaths were hidden here?