At Fear's Altar by Richard Gavin Read Free Book Online Page A

dark, but at least the blackness occulted his shameful condition. He didn’t dare stop, not until he was deep enough to be totally out of sight of the main path. The earth was clammy and cold against his bare soles. The air was gelid and raw.
    Finally, his throat constricted and his lungs raw, Colin collapsed among some dew-soaked greenery. He listened while the crickets and the toads lent a score to the night.
    A woman called his name again, and Colin scrambled to his feet. He pivoted on one heel and then immediately fell down again.
    The chapel was there.
    It must have sprouted overnight like some weird mushroom. It was precisely as it had been when he’d first encountered it, save for one alteration: its front doors were now parted widely, welcomingly.
    A flood of thoughts claimed Colin, questioning whether or not this was some kind of trap, or just maybe a sign of beckoning. He was still waffling about whether he dared enter the church when the figure came into view.
    It stepped languidly from the chapel’s darkened hull until its frame was just barely visible in the moonlight. It paused in the archway, stretched its ropy arms outward to clutch either side of the doorframe. It held its crucified pose; an artist’s model who welcomed the attentive eye of its master.
    The body was every bit as grey and firm as it had been when it was pinioned to its cross, but several new developments lunged at Colin and caused him to reel.
    To begin with, the Messiah’s gender had changed, or perhaps Colin had simply never noticed that the graven image had full breasts. The grubby loincloth had also been stripped away, rendering the once chastely hidden cleft exposed. Also boldly uncovered were the scaly patches of stretch marks and the bountiful wrinkles of old age.
    Only after he had noted these details did Colin’s eyes tilt hesitantly upward. If he were to see this shape moving without a head it would have been too much to bear. He was certain that such an aberration would have broken him. But the figure’s head had been restored. Had he played a part in this miracle, this weird resurrection? Perhaps by leaving the coined head to drift down the Styx Colin had unwittingly played a profound role in a rite that was utterly obscure to him.
    The face was masked in the grubby linen that had once served as the loincloth. The fabric had been wound and rewound over the head, as elegantly as mummy wrappings, as tautly as the dressing of a head trauma victim. The eyes were clearly visible and were a vibrant electric blue that practically illuminated the forest. The mouth and the nose were swathed. As the shape stepped nearer, Colin could see the fabric that was stretched across the mouth pulsing in and out like a tiny heart as the creature drew breath in and out.
    She was soon near enough for him to touch her, but Colin dared not. He recognized the liver spots and moles that darkened the pale flesh like dollops of sludge. Yes, the shrivelled wood-skin was indeed familiar to him. The couple simply stood, as innocent as the primal betrothed marvelling at their Garden.
    But Colin’s Eve swiftly departed. She began to run, stealthy as a frightened doe.
    He set off after her. No longer concerned about his pursuers finding him, Colin called out to the woman, called out to her by using Beverly’s name. Her passage through the starlit mire was a graceful, noiseless cascade; the antithesis to his stumbling, sloshing maraud.
    Then all at once she stopped and turned about to face him. She raised her arms and Colin did the same, feeling himself growing erect at the possibility of her touch.
    With stigmata hands the figure clawed the loincloth from her head. The mask unravelled and sank into the swamp. Colin was at last able to see what it was he had been chasing.
    The woods called his name. Another distant voice cried “Dad?!”
    He answered by screeching and running harder than he had ever known possible. He thundered wildly ahead; a beast without