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Chase Cinq
There is an ancient legend of the Seven Chairs. In 16 A.D., there were seven chairs made by an unknown carpenter that were touched by the hand of God. God’s intentions were to make sure that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was the only individual to ever live without sin. This God based thesis is what Catholics believe today. These chairs would assist God in fulfilling his goal and Mary’s legacy. Mysteriously, all of the chairs could only be destroyed by their creator. The chairs were said to have been possessed by the Holy Ghost, and they were stationed in every continent at the oldest landmark. The fifth chair was placed in Paris, France at the oldest Catholic church in Europe called Saint Pierre’s. St. Pierre’s was a wonderful, colossal church with long and wide stained-glass windows. The church’s organ filled the whole back section, and the rest of the church was lined with pews all the way up to the beautiful altar which was draped with a purple cloth . The chair had been in a hidden broom closet in the church for centuries, until 1926.
In the year 1926, there was a nun named Sister Marie who lived on site at St. Pierre’s. She was in her mid-sixties, standing five foot three and weighing about 135 pounds. Her skin was light complected and her face was round. She had straight brown hair that swung down to the bottom of her neck. It was always known that she wore her nun attire. She was a pleasant, faithful old woman of her time who was always visiting the sick or going to mass inside St. Pierre’s. Everyone who attended the church loved her dearly as though she were a relative. Sister Marie did not have much money, but the little that she possessed was given to charity. She was said to be the most positive influence in France at that time, and most importantly, she had not sinned in her entire life. This was found to be an exaggeration to most people, but her closest friends believed it. Overall, however, nobody really knew for sure. Not only was she kind, but she was also brilliant. She worked at the local Catholic school. Obviously, she taught religion to all of the younger children. Sister Marie lived with her two closest friends, Father Jacques and Father Jean. She called them the double J’s because they both celebrated masses in the church that she absolutely adored. Father Jean was a short, plump man in his fifties. Father Jacques was a tall, thin, fast-paced priest who performed the majority of the masses.
One day in the middle of April, Sister Marie was asked by Father Jean to bring some extra Holy Water to the sacristy, but there was no Holy Water to be seen. Sister Marie was very useful, but she searched and searched and could not obtain any Holy Water. Frustrated, she decided to call it a day and just tell Father Jean that no Holy Water was left. As she was about to leave the church, she noticed a concealed staircase that no one ever spoke of. She figured that there could have been Holy Water down there, so she trotted down the steps into a dark, foul smelling room. The room had very old artifacts like paintings and cloth, but once again, no Holy Water. So, she turned to approach the staircase to head back up the steps, but she heard a sound. A very faint yet eager sound was coming from the back, right hand corner of the room. She turned on the back set of lights and converged toward the chair. The chair had a gold-looking lining around it which Sister Marie found marvelous. She thought to herself that she must bring this chair upstairs, so she picked it up and half-stumbled up the steps to show Father Jean and Father Jacques. She hauled the grand chair onto the altar. They found the chair to be dashing, and Jacques noticed an engraving on one of the legs.“It says JON,” he told his friends. None of them had any idea what it meant.
Later that week, Sister Marie was praying in the church by herself when she again heard a sound. This time, though, it was not a faint sound, but a loud voice coming from the direction of the chair. “Mary is the only true pure being,” cried out the chair.
Sister Marie froze and stayed as stiff as a board for a few seconds, but the chair spoke again. “You are without sin my child, and Mary shall be the only human to ever live who was without sin.”
“Why are you haunting me, and who are you?” asked Sister Marie.
“As I said, you have not sinned,” the chair continued, as a bright, ghost like figure appeared. “I am the Holy Ghost, and I have come to make you sin!”
Sister Marie was thoughtless. She had no clue on how to react to what had just occurred.“What will you do if I don’t sin?” she asked.
“There will be no thoughts of that. You will sin, and I will force you to!” shouted the chair. Sister Marie then fainted onto the cold church floor. About fifteen minutes later, she was shaken violently by her two friends. After regaining a normal state of being, she told them everything that had happened. The priests agreed to protect her from sin at all costs, so all three of them then crept toward the altar to remove the chair. Father Jacques tried to propel the chair with all of his might, but the chair would not yield. They all realized that now they were in a possessed church.
All of the masses were cancelled, and the church’s school was shut down, but Sister Marie, Father Jean, and Father Jacques still had to live on the property. One dark, rainy June evening, Sister Marie was sleeping in her bed. She was having sweet dreams of the church masses before it was shut down. Before she knew it, however, she was floating through the air from her room to the church. Her bearer was the chair, and she thought she would faint again. She let out a scream that was said to be heard by the entire city of Paris. The shriek woke Father Jean and Father Jacques, and together they sprinted into the church. They came to find that the nun, their best friend, was somehow hovering in mid-air with the chair directly under her. The chair was trying to force her to use God’s name in vein.“Do it, do it I say,” exclaimed the chair, but Sister Marie would not give in. She was confident, yet so scared in a way which she figured this whole episode to be a dream. “We will help you,” said the two priests, who were equally as scared. They both thought that if they prayed for the madness to stop, the chair would vanish into thin air. Arrogantly, they assumed they would be right, but two blazing bolts of lightening shot out of the chair and killed the two priests. Sister Marie began to mourn and she tried to pray for help. The chair that killed the priests, did not want to kill Marie however, because then she would die without sin. Marie was bound to the chair, so she could not escape. The chair continued to persuade her to say or do anything that was a sin in God’s eyes. She rose higher and higher toward the top of the church rafters. She could see Joseph of Nazareth’s statue from high overhead. An epiphany came to Marie’s mind just then. JON stood for Joseph of Nazareth, so he must have been the carpenter of the chair. Sister Marie began to scream as she prayed to Joseph of Nazareth, instead of God. Soon a radiant light expelled through the church doors, and it was the Ghost of Joseph. He held a staph in his hand, and a beam projected from his staph that vaporized the chair completely.
The Ghost departed without even explaining the legend to Sister Marie. She was in pain, exhausted, and greatly frightened by what had just occurred, yet she had no answers. In the following ten years of her life, Sister Marie stayed in her home all day. She had food and clothing brought to her. She always looked frail when she was just lying in bed. After she died, the funeral was said to be the biggest ever in Paris. She was proclaimed a Saint by the Pope and laid to rest in the cemetery directly next to St. Pierre’s Church. St. Pierre’s was torn down the next year, but the cemetery still remained with its most prized tombstone that read: “The one other who NEVER sinned.”
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