GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: MIDNIGHT MASS

Story and art by Justine Norton-Kertson
(this story is also on r/nosleep)

***

I hadn’t been back to Grayer’s Hollow in over twenty years. Not since I left for college and told myself I’d never look back. But my mother died, and that’s the kind of thing that pulls you home, whether you want it to or not.

The first and most obvious thing I noticed when I crossed the county line was that the town hadn’t changed much. Same cracked sidewalks. Same general store with the same faded “OPEN” sign that never turned off. The same crooked church steeple rising over everything like it was keeping watch.

But something felt… wrong. Off, in a way I couldn’t name.

Everyone I passed on Main Street smiled at me. Not just polite nods—big, toothy smiles that held too long. Their eyes didn’t seem to blink. Some of them greeted me by name, even though I didn’t recognize a single face. And they all spoke the same way: slow, lilting, like they were reciting something they’d memorized a long time ago.

“Welcome home. We’re so glad you’ve returned.”

Returned. Like I’d been expected.

At the wake, I saw people I hadn’t thought about in decades. And one word kept coming up in whispers when they thought I couldn’t hear: “Midnight.”

Midnight Mass.

The words hit something old in me. Something I hadn’t thought about in decades. A buried memory.

Once a month, every adult in town would vanish after dark. The children stayed home—locked in, lights out. Told not to peek, that we should be asleep by then anyway, and if we weren’t, all manner of monsters lurked about at night looking for disobedient children to chase. 

My parents would come back after midnight… different. Creepy smiles painfully wide. Holding hands, humming something under their breath. One night, I woke up to the front door opening and crept to the stairs. I watched them walk in, glowing, skin damp with sweat. They whispered in unison: Bless the vessel. Feed the bloom.

I asked my mom once what Midnight Mass was. She smiled and told me its just a tradition. For the good of the town.

I stopped by the old cul-de-sac where I used to ride bikes until the streetlights came on. Some of the houses were boarded up now, but Mrs. Langley still lived in hers—same lace curtains, same plastic lawn flamingos.

She opened the door before I could knock and said I look just like my mother. Her smile was big enough to show molars. “We’ve been waiting for you,” she said.

I didn’t like the way she said we.

I asked her if she remembered the Midnight Mass. Her smile faltered for just a second—then snapped back into place, tight as ever. “Oh we don’t talk about that, dear” she said. “Least not to outsiders.”

“But I grew up here.”

“All the more reason.”

I left before the tea water finished boiling.

Later that day, I found Jesse Mallory—my closest childhood friend. He worked at the town’s only gas station now. Same crooked teeth, same nervous laugh. When I brought up the Midnight Mass, Jesse went pale.

“Jesus. You’re really asking about that?”

I nodded. “Did our parents… actually go? I thought it was just some weird church thing.”

He looked around, then leaned in. “Don’t go,” he whispered. “If they know you’re back, they’ll want you to join.”

A silence fell between us. He started to say something else, but stopped.

As I walked away, he called out after me. “He’s still here, you know. The preacher. Looks exactly the same. Twenty years, not a fucking wrinkle. Not a hair out of place.” He shuddered. “I don’t think he’s aged a day.”

The church sat at the far end of town, past the railroad tracks and just before the tree line thickened into proper woods. I hadn’t been near it since I was a kid. It looked smaller now, but somehow heavier. Like it was sinking into the ground with the weight of age and secrets.

Around 11:30 that night, I parked a few blocks away and walked the rest of the way on foot. The air smelled like wet stone and tasted like iron. The street was silent—no cars, no crickets, no wind.

At 11:57, the church lights snapped on.

Not all at once. One window at a time, like something waking up.

People began to arrive. One by one. No chatter. No greetings. All of them in their Sunday best—dresses, suits, polished shoes. Their faces were blank. Their movements synchronized. Everyone walked the exact same pace, like a processional they’d rehearsed their whole lives.

I ducked behind the bushes across the street, my heart thudding in my throat.

That’s when I saw the car. 

An unmarked black sedan pulled up without a sound. The passenger door opened, and a tall man stepped out. His coat was floor-length, dark velvet or leather, with symbols sewn into the collar—angular shapes that made my stomach twist to look at.

He didn’t knock. He didn’t speak. He simply walked to the door. And the doors opened for him, creaking not like wood… but like stone grinding over stone.

Then they closed behind him, sealing the church like a tomb.

After that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about the church. I told myself I was just curious—still grieving, still shaken—but it was more than that. I’d walk past during the day, gazing at the stained glass and the warped wood, starring at the crooked steeple like it would blink if I caught it off guard.

People in town kept smiling at me. Too wide. Too often.

I stopped sleeping. When I did sleep, I dreamed of my parents. Not how they were. How they looked after those nights—when they came home glowing, whispering. In the dreams, I’d wake up to find them standing in my doorway, holding hands, chanting the name of the preacher over and over.

He Who Walks Between.
He Who Walks Between.

One afternoon, I went up to the attic to look for old photos. Instead, I found my childhood notebook—covered in stickers and dust, tucked inside a shoebox. Flipping through it, I found drawings of the church. Page after page. Scrawled across one of them, in my own child handwriting, barely legible:

Don’t go to the church. He’s not wearing her skin right.

What? Why? How? Why did I write that? 

By that night, I couldn’t take it anymore.

I put on black clothes and headed out. I left my car two streets over and entered through the back. That’s where an old fire escape led up to a broken window in the choir loft. I crawled inside just before midnight and hid in the shadows, waiting for the sermon to begin.

When midnight struck the organ began to play. No one sat at the keys.

The sound was fractured—notes bent just slightly out of tune, rising and falling in a slow, unnatural rhythm. Almost like breathing. Like something beneath the church exhaling through the pipes.

From my perch in the choir loft, I could see everything. The pews were full. Not a whisper, not a cough, not a single flicker of movement. Every person stared forward, hands folded in their laps, faces blank.

The doors creaked open. 

He entered.

The preacher.

He was taller than anyone I'd ever seen—at least seven feet, maybe more. His suit was charcoal black, perfectly fitted, but the shape beneath was… wrong. His arms were too long. His fingers moved in slow, insect-like twitches. And his face—God. It was smooth, waxy, stretched too tightly over his skull. His eyes were deep-set, not quite aligned. And when he opened his mouth—

His voice came out like a chord. Numerous tones layered together, one high and lilting, one low and gravelly, and something in between—rasping, wet, too close to the mic.

“The blood has remembered,” he said. “The shell is ready.”

Acolytes in dark robes brought forward silver chalices filled with a thick, black liquid that shimmered like viscous oil. Each member of the congregation drank deeply.

Then they brought someone else forward.

Jesse.

My childhood friend. Wrapped in red silk robes, eyes glassy, like he’d already left his body. The preacher took his hand, drew a blade from his coat—a thin, curved knife etched with symbols—and slit Jesse’s palm.

No blood came out.

Instead: a golden, smoky mist swirled upward like incense. The congregation inhaled deeply as it rose.

Then, in perfect unison:

We are the seed.
He is the bloom.
Let him root in us.

I gasped. Too loud. The preacher turned his head, slowly, mechanically—like a ventriloquist’s dummy finding the source of a voice. Dozens of heads turned with him, all of them staring straight at the choir loft.

At me.

The preacher didn’t speak. He just tilted his head—slow, precise, almost mechanical—and smiled. But his smile didn’t stop at dimples. His lips peeled back to reveal too many teeth, thin and needle-like, packed in rows like a shark’s. 

The congregation stood as one, perfectly synchronized. Their eyes now glowed a faint gold, like candlelight trapped in bone.

I bolted from the choir loft. I didn’t care how much noise I made. I hit the stairs two at a time, nearly tripping, catching myself on splintered wood. Behind me, I heard footsteps—not fast, but steady. Purposeful.

They weren’t running.

They didn’t have to.

I slammed through a side door and into the night. Cold air hit me like a slap in the face. I ran across the lawn, leapt over the old cemetery wall, and flew into the trees. Branches clawed at my arms. Roots tried to trip me. Every time I glanced back, I saw nothing—but I felt them. A hundred eyes, just behind the darkness, watching.

I ran until my lungs burned. Until my throat tasted like rust.

I Found my car by muscle memory. Fumbled the keys. Got inside. Locked the doors.

My headlights flicked on—and for just a second, I saw Jesse in the rearview mirror. Eyes glowing. Smiling.

Then he was gone.

I drove. I didn’t stop until sunrise, two towns away, parked behind a diner with trembling hands and eyes that refused to blink.

I didn’t sleep.

I still haven’t.

And I don’t think I got away either.

Weeks have passed since night when I fled Grayer’s Hollow. I’m back in the city now. Trying to forget. Pretending to move on. But things feel… thinner. Like the barrier between that night and now is wearing down.

It started small. Strangers on the train started smiling at me. Too wide. Too long. One woman mouthed something as I stepped off, eyes locked on mine.

“We are the seed.”

I chalked it up to stress. Hallucination. But then the envelope arrived—no return address. Inside was a postcard from my hometown. Completely blank, except for a smear of black wax across the bottom.

I threw it away. Burned the trash. Then smelled something sweet and rotting for hours afterward.

Now I wake at midnight, every night. Paralyzed. Cold.

Something whispers in my ear, close enough to feel breath on my neck.

“Your place was prepared.”

And then there are the dreams.

I stand in front of the church again. Fog everywhere. The preacher opens the door, and he’s wearing my mother’s face—stitched at the corners, mouth frozen in that wide, wide smile.

She reaches for me.

I always wake up screaming.

But one night, I know I won’t.

I think they marked me when I went inside.

I haven’t slept through the night since.

Those blank postcards keep coming.

I tried to burn the clothes I wore that night—they won’t catch. They just smolder. Just smoke. Like they remember.

I don’t think I got away.

There’s another Midnight Mass coming soon. I feel it in my chest, in my teeth, in the base of my spine.

I’m already packing a suitcase. Even though I don’t want to go back.

But I need to.

And I think this time… I’m not just attending.

I think I’m part of the sermon.