The Harvest of St. Isidore

The first time I saw the Chapel of St. Isidore, I was driving home from the grocery store, and the late afternoon sun caught its white clapboard sides so that it glowed like a pearl set against the dark pines. It sat at the edge of a small town in upstate New York, on a road that curved unexpectedly, and every time I passed it, I felt a pull—not the pull of faith, but something older, like a memory of a place I’d never been. The steeple soared above the trees, and the bell tower cast a long shadow that seemed to reach toward my car, as if trying to draw me in.

After a few weeks, I finally stopped. A hand-painted sign by the door read ‘All Are Welcome.’ I called the number listed, and a cheerful woman named Margaret answered. She told me about the services, and about the congregation—small, she said, but close-knit. She mentioned the church had been built in 1889, had changed hands several times, and had been lovingly restored by the current members. She also told me about the harvest potluck they held every third Saturday in October—the same week I planned to move permanently. ‘You must come,’ she said. ‘It’s our way of welcoming newcomers.’

That Saturday, I drove up the gravel path lined with pumpkins. The church was even more beautiful up close: stained glass windows depicting saints I didn’t recognize, and a hand-carved wooden door that groaned when I pushed it open. Inside, the air smelled of old hymnals and cinnamon. A long table stretched across the fellowship hall, laden with casseroles, pies, and a large copper kettle of something steaming. Margaret, a plump gray-haired woman with a warm smile, greeted me and introduced me to the others—a farmer named Eli, a young couple named the Hendersons, and a shy girl named Ruth who kept her eyes down.

As the evening wore on, the conversation turned to the church’s history. Eli, who had a weathered face and calloused hands, leaned in and said, ‘You know, the original builders weren’t Christian. This land was sacred to a group of Dutch settlers who practiced a form of folk magic. They built this chapel over a spring that they claimed was a gateway to the underworld.’ Ruth shivered, and Margaret quickly changed the subject, but I noticed a pattern of small carvings along the floorboards—interlocking spirals that seemed out of place in a Christian church.

After dinner, Margaret offered to show me the basement where they kept the old records. The stairs creaked as we descended into a low-ceilinged room filled with dusty tomes and cobwebbed relics. In a corner, half-hidden under a tarp, was a large stone—perfectly smooth, about the size of a headstone, but with a hollow sound when I knocked on it. ‘That’s from the original well,’ Margaret said. ‘They used it to cap the spring when the church was remodeled in the ’50s. Some folks say you can still hear water beneath it.’ I put my ear close and thought I heard a faint trickling, and something else—a low hum, almost like a lullaby.

I left that night feeling uneasy but couldn’t shake the church from my mind. The next Sunday, I attended services. The sermon was strange—the minister, a thin man with piercing blue eyes, spoke about ‘the soil giving back what it takes,’ and ‘the harvest of the faithful.’ The congregation responded with amens, but their eyes seemed fixed on the floor. After the service, I lingered, and Eli approached me. ‘You felt it, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘The spring. It’s been restless lately. We’ve been offering what it asks, but it’s not enough.’ He looked at me with a kind of pity. ‘You should leave before the harvest.’

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I drove back to the church under a full moon. The front door was unlocked. The air inside was colder than outside. The stone in the basement was uncovered, and water was seeping from beneath it, spreading across the floor in a dark stain. As I watched, the stain began to form a shape—a hand, reaching up. I stumbled backward, but the hand grew, and a figure rose from the stone, dripping with black water, its face featureless except for a mouth that opened into a silent scream. It lunged at me, and I ran, but not before I saw the faces of the congregation in the shadows, watching, their eyes empty.

I made it to my car and drove without stopping until dawn. I never returned to that town. But sometimes, when I close my eyes, I see that white church on a hill, and I feel the pull again—a pull toward the spring that still waits, hungry for another harvest. And I know that beneath that chapel, the water is still rising, and the stone is not a cap but a gateway, and the faithful are not worshippers but guardians of a hunger that will never be satisfied.