NanoWriMo 2009 - Fic 21

[deathpixie]

In the woods was a small shrine to the Virgin Mary. His grandmother would insist he escort her there every Sunday evening, so she could light a candle. It seemed a waste of effort, especially when there was a Catholic church much closer in town.

"I do not need to explain," she would retort when he protested that he had things to do, that he didn't want to go all the way out there, that it was too cold, too wet. She'd press her lips together and refuse to say anything more than: "It is what I have to do."

After the stroke, it was much more difficult for her to walk so he'd drive her out there instead. It wasn't such a chore at that stage; he was young and newly licenced and enjoyed the chance to take the car out. He'd stand back, to give her space as she went about her small ritual and he'd idly wonder about the shrine. Why make one out here? It wasn't like there'd even been a thoroughfare nearby - it was almost like the place had been randomly chosen.

He'd joked once, about the bars keeping the statue in its stonework enclosure so it wouldn't roam free and his grandmother had shot him a quick and terrified look. He'd been so surprised he hadn't pursued it, but the next time they'd gone, he'd looked at the tremble in her hands, the almost frantic movement of her lips as she prayed and he wondered just what it was that drove her to do this every week.

What was it she had to do?

She must have known she was going to die: she gave him a letter in her crabbed handwriting before it happened, telling him to make sure he read it before the next Sunday. He read it after the funeral. She'd charged him with her task, given him explicit instructions - the candle, the Hail Mary, the genuflection - and stressed that he mustn't miss a week, not one, or something terrible would happen. He'd tried to laugh it off as an old lady's wandering mind, but he remembered the fear in her eyes that one time and his laughter had died away.

He'd undertaken her instructions, telling himself it was a way of honouring his grandmother's memory; for a while, he'd managed his duty. Then there came the inevitable in a young man's life - he simply had better things to do on a Sunday evening. He barely gave the shrine another thought until the following Sunday.

Fog shrouded the path as he walked it and he pulled his collar up against the dampness in the air. The air was curiously still, deadened by the hanging fog he supposed, not a rustle of leaves or the sleepy chirp of a retiring bird to break the silence. It was so thick when he reached the shrine, he almost walked into it, his groping hand scraped by an unexpected edge of metal. He jerked his hand back, swearing as blood oozed into the graze. Then his hand fell, the hurt forgotten.

The statue was gone.

The bars were broken and bent outward, the candles scattered and trodden into the mud. He stumbled back, telling himself it was vandals, that someone had yanked the bars off with a tow rope and a truck, even though there were no tire tracks and that the only footprints on the path besides his own were a woman's, small and bare. He tried to rationalise - even if the statue was somehow alive, well, it was the Virgin Mary, wasn't it? You didn't get much more holy than that.

Except... his grandmother had been frightened when she'd prayed. Religious terror, rather than religious awe.

There was a sound behind him, the snapping of a twig underfoot. A hand, small and cold and as hard as marble, fell onto his shoulder, turning him around with implacable strength. The statue's lips still held that small, content smile but the eyes... the plaster had fractured and fallen away, revealing something inhuman. Inhuman... and hungry. And in that second he realised the statue had merely been another part of the prison and even that was failing now.

His screams echoed in the foggy darkness.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee...

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

This is too freaky! Don't think I want to see ANY statues! Very well written!
KK