JW stuck his head through the open door and let his good eye have the first look at the inside of the old church.
Spiderwebs hung from the rafters in tattered sheets that swayed in the breeze he let in. Dust danced in the beams of purple light streaming through the cracked stained glass windows and covered the floor in a thick layer like frost. Leaves sat in corners, heaped into piles from past storms. Tracks wove in little highways between the pews, left behind by mice or raccoons.
The last being that gave a testimony at the pulpit now lay coiled around its base. Part man, part snake, the skeleton was at least thirty feet long and consisted mostly of ribs. The skull, with its split bottom jaw swung wide, lay upside down at the foot of the steps leading up to the stage. He imagined the long black tongue that would have been hanging out of that mouth had the thing been freshly deceased.
With his elbows on his knees, JW crouched and took a closer look.
The skull had no teeth. He instantly found himself feeling disappointed. An enormous, curved snake's fang would have looked nice on the bookshelf in the living room next to all his other treasures. Or maybe it would have made a fine ingredient for the next spell Deuteronomy felt like teaching him. But no, the mouth was just jaws full of empty sockets. A squirrel had tried stuffing an acorn into one of the larger ones.
He tipped his head and looked down the length of the thing. The long spine was draped in old chains that might have been a precious metal, but they were so dirty that he couldn't be sure. He didn't have the know-how to restore gold or silver. Threadbare cloth wound around the creature's man-like chest. JW noticed that the ribs did not meet in the middle. No sternum. He thought about snakes for a moment and instantly knew why.
Had this creature been a devoted disciple or a charismatic cult leader? Was it the only one of its kind to worship here? Or be worshiped?
An acorn thunked against the church roof and made JW jump. He bit a swear in two and looked back down the aisle. The doors stood just as he'd left them, slightly ajar and flapping gently in the breeze.
Blowing out a breath, he turned back to the skeleton. Clutched in its long, curled fingers was a scrap of leather that might have been a Bible once upon a time. Around one wrist was a bracelet of joined and jointed in-set stones. They were brown from the dust. JW stole his nerves and reached out to carefully wipe off one of the stones with the tips of his fingers.
The tiger's eye glinted in the colored light.
JW was instantly hit with a wave of nostalgia. His grandad once had a collection of tumbled stones that he kept in a little wooden chest he brought back from the Great Smoky Mountains. He wished he knew what his grandad would say about the life he was living now. Barely holding it together as a cashier during the day and tracking down boogers at night certainly wasn't anything his grandfather had set him up for. Not that he'd known what would happen to him after the accident.
A breeze blew the church door inward and sent leaves skittering across the floor boards.
"Whelp..." With a grunt, he stood and arched his back so that it would pop. Interesting as the bracelet was, he knew better than to disturb a corpse. At least more than he already had, if wiping away a little dust counted for anything.
Maybe the old snake man would even appreciate the attention to his tomb. JW chewed on this thought for a long moment before fishing a quarter out of his pocket and tossing it into a nearby offering plate. Then, he turned and left.