The Birthplace of Death

The pair of stone eyes gazed back at her. 

She couldnt tell if they were open or closed, watching her or if it was just her watching them. Life and death switched places before her like dancers in a never-ending waltz. With a start, she had the disconcerting impression that it was her own view she was seeing flitting in and out of existence…

‘Yyyouuu are surrrre about this?’ The voice was slow and grinding like a great weight being dragged over flagstones. It seemed to come from all around her and no place at all.

She looked around.

Rain lashed in all directions, over her, over everything. The dark limbs of trees overhanging the walls of the cemetery shook, the dried autumn leaves rattling like trinkets on some gypsy’s withered fingers.

The statue remained motionless but there was no question that the voice belonged to it.

A single chill gust shot through the graveyard, winding between the stones as though fired by a distant archer to twirl in the back of her hair.

Hanging beneath the timber eaves of the shrine like sleeping bats, a line of raindrops trembled, yet somehow remained clinging to the wood.

The sky was a single roiling grey cloud, like the slow unfolding of a disaster so vast its scale was impossible to comprehend.

‘Very wellll then.’ Again the statue’s grinding voice.

After a moment, the rattling of the leaves softened to a gentle quake, the subjects of a great king, whose anger had turned to fear at the alchemy of his command. Whatever violence had possessed the world lay still.

The moon’s luminous dial slid out from a pair of parting clouds.

She looked at the statue’s eyes again, grey in the half-light. She could see patches of moss growing on them, like landmasses on miniature globes. They seemed to expand in her gaze, as though her own were satellites being drawn in by a much larger body.

She thought for a moment she saw a flash of sapphire, then with a creak the eyes rolled back and in their place were two black tunnels, points of light deep within them.

Chooo-chooooooooooooo!

She could hear a distant chugging rising in the background. The points of light were growing, now two bright archways of white and green.

Chooo-choooooooooooooooooo!

This time steam blasted into the air and shot behind her. The archways had begun to merge into one. A deafening hissing noise filled her head, and as though it had cleaned out some dull fuzz on her brain she could now hear clearly the sound of pistons firing.

The arch of light rushed toward her and with a final screaming whistle she roared out into it.