TRUTH IN SHADOWS
2015
This flash fiction story was featured in a 2015 digital feature at Flash Fiction Magazine.
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I gaze high into the rafters of the chapel ceiling. The beam from my flashlight stops before the shadows, unable to pierce through the abyss. As my eyes wander upward I remember the warnings I refused to heed. Leave, go back home. A force laid claim to this land long before God came into the minds of man. Stay away, I was told. There was nothing in that place but foulness, old and forgotten. Here I stand.
Vacant pews sit, broken down and weather beaten. Along the floorboards books are strewn. Moldy pages crumple under my feet as I move deeper into the old church. My steps echo in the hollow structure and my focus only on a secret that fear and superstition had guarded. I stop before the altar, the sight of such a thing an anomaly to me.
Research revealed to me the date of the chapel but the altar it housed appeared far older. Assembled from large stones and engraved with symbols both foreign and unreal, the shrine seemed to honor a force other than the Holy Father. I shine my flashlight on the altar and continue my inspection of the stones. The etchings become more visible but remain beyond my brain’s comprehension.
What were these strange swirling glyphs? Why are they arranged in much a mindboggling array? My questions are many but silence is my only answer. I decide to continue my investigation and move past the altar before I stop. There are no dancing shadows or phantoms in the dark that freeze my tracks. There is just a passage at the far end that gives my heart pause. I scramble passed the altar and descend the stairwell.
My walking grows faster before turning into a sprint. I gasp hard for air as I race deeper down. My light bounces from spot to spot like the sun rising and setting in a mad dance in my grasp. Descending further the stone walls of the church give way to clay and dirt.
Cold beads of sweat pour down my burning face before finally, I reach the bottom. I now stand in a tunnel, a burrow as if created by some great worm. In my mindset even this oddity does not slow me. Onward I go, keeping my mad pace my feet act on impulse. The snaking corridors of packed soil ends, I find myself in a vast circular room.
On the soft dirt the glow of my light reflects several protrusions of a yellowish, white, hue. Shreds of clothing remain on the objects lying before me. Skeletal hands still clutch onto lanterns, pens, journals, and other objects used to capture knowledge. In empty eye sockets the allure of forbidden secrets still linger.
My flashlight begins to flicker, with each pause the darkness grows and the shadows creep closer. I now know what secret waited for me. In the nothingness of the earth I stand, the black nothing of the cold soil wrapping around my body and soul.