The headstone grew and claimed its corpses.
It was a stranger who brought the news into the bar one evening, and it was luck, I suppose, that had placed me there for it’s not often I go into town for a drink.
He came in frantic, this young man, and there were bruises along the right side of his face. Blood was drying on his chin, and at least two teeth were freshly knocked out. There was a wild look to his eye, and his voice was tinged with hysteria. He spoke of a headstone erupting from the ground.
Of how something had sprung from it and attacked him and his brothers.
No one in the bar laughed.
These were old men I was drinking with, and while I looked younger than the stranger, I was far older than he would ever be.
“Where?” I asked him.
“North Road,” he answered, trembling so much that a steadying drink was pressed into his hands and brought up to his lips for him. “We were walking along a stonewall. My brother, Bobby, he was walking on top of it when the gravestone exploded out of the ground.”
All the men in the bar looked to me.
“What happened to your brothers?” I asked.
“They were dragged over the stonewall,” the stranger whispered, his eyes wide with terror.
“What else did they do?” I asked.
“What?” the stranger blurted.
“Your brothers. What else did they do?”
His mouth worked in silence for a moment before he whispered, “They were kicking stones down off the wall. We need to help them.”
I shook my head and motioned for another drink for him.
“No,” I replied, sitting back down.
“Why not?” the stranger demanded.
“The marker, was it a plinth?”
He nodded.
“Was there a name?” I asked.
“Pharr.”
“Then that’s why.”
“I don’t understand,” the stranger sobbed, held up by a pair of men.
“Because you can’t kill a stone god, boy,” I told him gently.
We spent the rest of the night getting him drunk.
There was nothing else we could do.
#horror #fear #art #writing
