The Statues Cry

The Statues Cry

Lark

The church had sat upon the hill, wilting in sweet summer heat; its crumbling foundation like chalk beneath our feet. Fractured stained glass windows hanging proudly towards the sun in limp frames. Great vines sweeping across a veiled entrance to a world unknown. It had once been a place of great pride, the Founding Fathers consecrating the very grounds they would bleed on in holy water and prayer.

Perhaps it was the dwindling funds, the rise of alternate religion, or simply- just a dead church. Some say it was a ritual gone terribly wrong. Others- a specter from the depths damning those to hell in place of its own punishment. Regardless of its beginnings, this church was left abandoned in the light of foraged bloodied prints and missing men of the cloth. This was reason enough for the superstitious townsfolk to avoid the church like they once avoided Black Death.

Not a living soul wandered the once sacred halls for so long, the church itself had forgotten its own name. In between the dust motes and tarnished silver lives the statues of the past Prophets, forgotten. They stand as sentinels guarding the church that has been given to time; hidden in the darkened corners and lost hallways that the light had long since abandoned. Always watching. Always waiting.

Until today.

Until now.

When a boy named, aptly, like that forgotten Saint Andrews, opened the door.

Sunshine filtered through the darkness in streams, shining brightly upon forgotten altar. The light cast upon darkened gazes of stillness: jolting, distorting, awaking. What was once timeless in abandonment came back to haunt the living from its carefully crafted graves. A lost boy seeking answers to questions pondered in premonition. Who had come to find that other half of himself. Hinges made more of rust than its trade, sounded in the stillness and echoed back to the boy. He was coated in shadows as pools of sunlight streamed around him; hunched within and hiding more than just blackened eyes of exhaustion behind too-large coat.

A careful shuffle of footsteps down a well-trodden aisle soaked in hopes, now coated in the fractured dreams of those phantoms who await with bated breath. Broken pews crawling with insects small, contributing to the rot that spreads; a small touch would crumble those seats. Where the ghosts listen to sermon spoken in dead air. Yet, the boy continues on.

The altar, cracked and crooked, burdened by the souls weighing heavily upon a frame too unsteady to hold its own legs. With gilded candlesticks and a tattered prayer book set open to verses left in the ruin of the elements. Blurred letters, and water-stained pages- a language lost to time itself. Only a following of sentinels in the wings, judges from the shadows, await for a taste. A flicker of innocence, to blur those lines and dampen spirit, a depiction from those molded pages like a directive from beyond those pearly gates. Taken like gospel and compelled by those phantoms watching; waiting.

And the boy, who longs for freedom, a master of his fate, has yet to realize. Who had forgotten or dismissed battles won. Hallowed by the survival of self, wearing a crown of the martyr. A frozen eclipse of permanent indecision bracing for a hand that would never hit. The boy was war heavy without ever having faced a fleet in battle.

Conviction forces the boy down those narrow halls, to bow to those false Prophets. Knees quaking on damp ground filled with dried tears of those who came before. A forced deity cast in sincerity fallen short of expectation. They feast on his sorrows of a life dulled by humanity; too young, too innocent. Those vultures peck, peck, peck, the flesh clean, their eyes move through those statues guarding- now quiet in contempt. Tracking each movement of contemplation from the abandoned home of spirits.

How the boy searches; looking for those answers that can never be known. Of questions he still has yet to ask. Those statues follow his lead, a prickling sensation no manner of turning back will fix. Down the halls left to their own demise, bringing the boy forth, only to cast him out once ensnared. Round and round he goes, gazing at those cracked facades of Prophets once cast in perfect porcelain. Each worshipped blindly, giving way to mottled bodies filled of gold, as the gravediggers free them of their hardships. Perfect veins reflected in fading sunlight, reminding the boy of the flames left dying in embers trying desperately to stay alight.

But the boy refuses to fall for their false promises. A future bathed in bloodied prints, burning scars, and torn bodies. He had seen that golden glow dulled by the tales that forewarned of a presence filled of desire. A dark creature beholden to that master who spins his thread of gold. A false ribbon of the coiled serpent drawing forth; an illusion greater mortals have fallen prey. Nations have burned; a slaughter filled with those same promises. Radiating heat of a thousand suns. Refusing to acknowledge the call of night will burn them out and turn their promises into curses filled with sharp teeth.

Too many have fallen for these deeds, too many to come to the church, blinded by that golden light.

But not the boy.

He learned to bend and break those shadows by becoming one with them. By tearing pieces of himself to devils satisfied by a morsel of flesh. Blending with those darkened corners and forging chains that tightened like a noose into a blade bathed in holy fire. These statues of false Prophets have forgotten their desires of all but that blinding light, luring others to their ruin. Burning candlewax upon feathered wings does not a bird make.

Even grave dirt tastes sweeter than ash upon the tongue.

And so, the boy learned his answers to questions never asked. Retreating from those statues that cry bloodied tears; faces twisted in an agony of their own making. The boy slipping from that abandoned church which God had forgotten, a curse from within, leeching through the stone foundation and between each mote and scrap forgotten. Where the buried secrets remain a potent mystery.

And perhaps one day- when that church has fallen into the void, there will be another brave soul to look upon the ruins and wonder why: the statues cried.