GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: ROOTS

Roots

My uncle Jonas was a recluse. I thought he was interesting, but nobody else in my family could stand him—especially my mom, his baby sister. She blamed Vietnam. It wrecked him, stole the big goofy brother she once loved, and replaced him with an imposter dredged from the putrid mud of a battlefield. When the war ended, Uncle Jonas moved in with my grandma and never left. After she died in the late ’90s, when I was just a kid, he and my mom fought bitterly. She wanted to sell the house, but he refused. Being the oldest, he had just as much claim to it as she did, and he dug his heels in.

Mom resented him for turning her childhood home into a hoarder’s labyrinth of clothes, toys, comic books, and baseball cards. But I loved it. He let me comb through his treasures and always gifted me things I showed interest in. He was the first person I knew who used eBay, selling junk he gathered from garage sales and flea markets across upstate New York. When I was twelve, they had another blowout fight, and that was the last time I saw him. We stayed in touch through email, though, until life got in the way and we drifted apart.

Ever since I was little, Jonas whispered legends and shared hushed warnings about the world, the supernatural, and strange things he claimed to have seen. I dismissed them as the ramblings of an aging eccentric. But when he died unexpectedly, I never imagined that sorting through my grandmother’s decrepit farmhouse would thrust me into a nightmare beyond comprehension.

His burial arrangements were paid for, and his will requested no funeral. Shockingly, he left everything to me. That meant I now shared ownership of the house with my mom. She wanted nothing to do with it. “Trash it and sell the lot,” she said. But I couldn’t. I figured there had to be something valuable hidden in the mess—stuff worth keeping or flipping on eBay. So, I took on the task alone.

I arrived on a gray, wind-whipped afternoon. The house was as ancient and ugly as the gnarled oak trees that surrounded it. The porch nearly collapsed beneath me as I entered through the sad mouth of a door. The place was a disaster, but the comics and collectibles were gone. It wasn’t what I expected. Instead, I found an overwhelming mass of dusty journals, faded photographs, and trinkets that seemed like occult relics.

That first night, I had a dream. Jonas stood at the foot of my bed, his eyes hollow, his skin waxy and gray. His mouth moved, but the words came in whispers, layered on top of each other like a dozen voices speaking at once. “Finish it.” His fingers, long and bony, reached toward me, but before he could touch me, I woke in a cold sweat. The whisper still echoed in my ears. The house creaked like it was breathing.

As I cleaned, the house grew on me. Maybe I’d keep it. And I think the house knew—because that’s when I discovered the hidden study.

A false wall in the attic led to a room unlike the rest of the house. It was pristine, lined with grand bookshelves and ancient framed parchments. A Barnes & Noble-style ladder ran along the shelves. Jonas had poured time, money, and obsessive care into this place. A modern wood stove nestled in one corner near a small octagonal window of green stained glass. It bore a strange circular symbol resembling an eye. I peered out, feeling watched instead of watching.

Flipping a switch, a mechanical hum rattled above as a large skylight opened to the heavens. The moon grinned, the stars winked—warning or welcoming, I couldn’t tell. In the center of the room, among relics and statues, lay a battered leather journal. Its pages brimmed with ancient symbols, newspaper clippings, and frantic notes about a hidden war fought in the shadows.

Jonas had been part of something called the Order of the Verdant Root. His writings told of an ancient pact—protecting the land from an unspeakable evil. According to him, modern Christianity wasn’t salvation; it was a façade, an unholy gateway through which demonic entities infiltrated our world. Every hymn, every sermon, every act of forced faith loosened the seal on something buried beneath the town’s oldest church.

I read late into the night, drinking until my hands stopped shaking. When I woke, my head pounded, and the morning light felt like judgment. I told myself I’d prove this was all nonsense, that my uncle had been a delusional hoarder chasing shadows. But three days later, I wasn’t so sure. Lack of sleep blurred the edges of reality. I saw things move in the corner of my vision. Whispers bled through the walls. My own reflection seemed delayed, as if watching me from somewhere else. The paranoia wrapped around my ribs like vines, squeezing tighter every hour.

Then I found it—the photograph that changed everything.

A yellowed Polaroid, dated Herkimer, Sept. 5, 1971. It showed hooded figures forming a circle around a stone altar, darkly stained with unmistakable old blood. Other images followed—grotesque rituals, sacrificial rites, robed figures bathing in entrails. My stomach churned and my heart ached as I saw the bodies of children—lifeless, in pieces.

Then I saw them.

In the background of the main photograph, I had first thought I saw people. But the longer I stared, the clearer the truth became. Their forms were wrong, grotesque, misshapen. Jonas hadn’t just collected artifacts.

And in the next image—God help me—the ritual played out in gruesome detail.

A child.

Helpless.

Butchered on the altar as the robed figures bathed in its blood.

I dropped the pictures like they had burned me. My heart slammed against my ribs.

It was real.

Jonas had been right.

I drank myself into oblivion that night, but there are some horrors whiskey can’t drown.

I spent three days unraveling the truth.

Jonas had been drafted into something older than war itself. Indoctrinated by a fellow soldier named Callahan, the last of an Irish bloodline sworn to keep something imprisoned beneath the earth.

But the Church—the real church—wasn’t what we thought it was.

It didn’t fight evil.

It fed it.

Every prayer, every sermon, every act of blind faith chipped away at the seals, weakening the boundary that held them back. One day, if the Order failed, the Church would finally finish what it started. It taught hate and fear in the guise of righteousness.

He had fought to keep the darkness at bay. Vietnam had stolen his innocence, but it had also delivered him into a war far older than any government.

This wasn’t insanity.

This was real.

And in two days, the full moon would rise once more.

I had to act.

Using Jonas’s notes, I gathered the necessary tools—roots, oils, talismans of protection. I tracked down rare ingredients in hidden shops across Syracuse and Binghamton. I wasn’t going in blind.

Then, on the appointed night, I made my way to the church.

The rain came and went in waves as I crouched in the shadows, waiting. My patience wore thin. Jonas had given his life to this fight. I couldn’t let it end with him. Midnight was the cutoff. If nothing happened by then, I was walking away. Forever.

By 11:30, I had no fucks left to give.

I crossed the threshold.

Inside, the silence was absolute except for the relentless drip of water echoing off cold stone. The church’s ornate interior was a macabre juxtaposition of beauty and decay as I ventured into the oldest church in Herkimer. My flashlight cast grotesque shadows as I followed his notes through the nave, past the altar, to a hidden spiral staircase. The stone steps bore inscriptions in a language I didn’t recognize, their meaning clear nonetheless. Worship. Devotion. Sacrifice.

In the darkness of the cellar, the air was rank with rot and the coppery tang of blood. As I crept forward, my heart pounded in my ears to the low hum of chanting resonating from deep within the gloom. The further I ventured into the vast subterranean chamber, I could see an eerie, emerald glow. In the center of the room, a profane altar stood slick with congealed gore.

There, in the flickering half-light, I beheld a horror beyond mortal ken. Those figures I saw in the yellowing, blurry photos from 1971, now twisted in front of me. They were hideous, malformed creatures—hybrid beings with human features contorted into monstrous parodies who crawled and writhed about the altar. Their limbs, elongated and sinewy, ended in taloned fingers that scraped against stone as they chanted in a guttural language that clawed at the edge of sanity. These were the demonic emissaries the church had nurtured in secret for centuries. Their eyes were pits of burning malice, and every shift of their malformed bodies released a stench of decay.

I retreated into the shadows, my fear gnawing at me as I saw the carcass of a dead child in a puddle of blood. The creatures clawed at the child’s innards with their twisted arms and sinew, their eyes black pits of malice. These were the Church’s true disciples. And they were preparing for something.

I swallowed my fear and reached for the talisman. The roots and oils of the ancients pulsed against my palm. Whispering the incantation, I spat inside it, beginning the ritual.

A shriek ripped through the air.

One of the creatures lunged, moving with inhuman speed. I barely had time to react before it slammed into me, claws raking my chest.

I gasped, pain exploding through my ribs. My fingers clenched around the talisman, whispering the incantation Jonas had left me. My heart pounded. No turning back now.

I had only seconds.

With every ounce of strength, I hurled it at the altar.

A blinding flash erupted as the chamber trembled. The symbols on the walls burned, their emerald glow turning molten gold. The creatures screamed—agonized, furious—as the earth rumbled below my feet. One of the creature’s claws raked across my skin—leaving a gash that spilled dark ichor—a force surged from beneath the floor. The ancient earth magic, the same power my uncle had devoted his life to, awakened. Thick, twisting roots burst forth from the stone, ensnaring the creature and wrenching it apart in a shower of viscera and shrieking terror. It ensnared others and began dragging them into a dark hole in the earth.

I stumbled as a clawed, leathery hand clasped around my ankle. It pulled hard, yanking me toward the earth. My scream ripped through the chamber as I fell onto my back, kicking wildly. More hands surfaced, clawing, grasping. I fumbled for the knife in my jacket and slashed blindly. The blade sliced through flesh, severing a wrist. The thing recoiled with a soundless shriek as its severed hand tumbled into the open hole.

I pulled myself away from the hole, gasping. I saw the talisman shimmer in the torchlight and crawled toward it. I stuffed it into my pocket and scrambled to my feet.

Their screams echoed off the cold walls, one by one, as the ghastly beings were pulled into the depths from whence they came.

And then, the church bell tolled.

I ran. But I knew the truth now. This was real. It had always been real. And it wasn’t going to stop.

In that moment, I understood: Uncle Jonas had not died in vain. The Order of the Verdant Root had been formed to keep these horrors at bay, to seal the gateway between our world and the abyss. But the church’s unholy covenant had begun to falter, and their demonic allies were growing bolder.

Jonas had given his life to this fight. Now, it was my turn.

The Order of the Verdant Root still had work to do. My roots were now a curse. But I take solace in my despair, knowing that there are others like me. I’m looking for them.

Are you one of us?

—-

Art and story by Hal Hefner.
Produced by Catmonkey Studio

This story is also located in the r/nosleep sub reddit: My uncle died, leaving me his house—and a chilling secret: our prayers are opening doors to horrors lurking beyond reality.