If I’m going to try and get one more story out by Halloween, I figured I needed to get a jump on it as soon as possible. This time I’m leaning into something a bit more historical, with a mood somewhere between Guillermo Del Toro, Lovecraft, and Sleepy Hollow.
It may not be perfect or fully refined just yet, but I like the idea of bringing folks along for the ride as the story unfolds. Almost like we’re discovering it together.
I hope you enjoy.
“Look at him,” she thought, eyes stinging with pride.
He stood tall, taller than she remembered, his fingers wrapped with reverent care around the pulpit’s edge. Dust-motes hung in the sunbeams slicing through the warped glass panes, and the way the light caught the soft curls of his golden hair made him seem almost angelic. A boy cast in amber. A son lost and then returned.
“My father taught me to till the soil,” he said. His voice was steady, deep for a lad of fifteen. “To feed the roots. To let them drink long and deep.”
The congregation sat still, spellbound; farmers and widows, black-frocked elders, all of them pinned in place by the gravity of the boy’s presence. Just three weeks past, he had been lost in the forest beyond the far river. Now he stood here, calm and clean and certain, like one who had heard the voice of God and returned to speak its shape.
“The trunk must bleed before it may rise,” he continued. “The ground must drink to birth the fruit.”
The crowd murmured softly in assent. A few heads bowed in silent prayer. One woman clutched her rosary tighter. Another wept openly.
But her brow furrowed.
“Is that from the scripture?” she thought. She tried to trace the words back, to recall if her husband had ever said them, but the sound of her son’s voice drew her thoughts away again. It wasn’t a boy’s voice. Not anymore.
He speaks like a man now.
And she smiled, despite herself.
His father would be so proud.
If only he could see him…
More to come as I write it. (Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 are up!)
Thanks for reading!
Mason Beck
Mason Beck Fiction 
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