Eclipse in the Chapel by gklemming

Adriana did not believe in the occult.She had long ago learned not to step on her girlfriends’ buzz when they brought up astrology. After all, it’s just for fun; nobody actually believes that garbage. Or at least, that’s what Adriana hoped. Sometimes their monologues about the placement of the planets would go on long enough that it was hard to tell.

But even the most stoic, sensible person would get the creeps in this place.

Adriana finished trudging up the hill, and no longer worried about tripping over an inconvenient rock, she flicked the beam of her flashlight upwards. It played across weeds, then lichen and worn, weathered stone, tolerating its unnatural arrangement with heavy finality. A small, poorly-maintained plaque explained to the few visitors what Adriana had learned prior to her trek.

The chapel had been started in colonial days, with lofty ambitions of imitating the grand European cathedrals. Then, as the colonists realized survival in a new land was harder than they expected, the project was abandoned in favor of smaller, more practical houses of worship. All that remained of it today were a few standing walls, and considerably more collapsed walls, which honestly wasn’t much different from its state when the hill was left fallow. And of course, somewhere in the rubble was the object Adriana was looking for.

Was it really that irrational to get strange vibes alone, at night, in a building that even its contemporaries had decided was better off left to rot? Only it never did, because it’s stone; defying, to some degree, a natural death.

Her visit to the chapel was partially her idea; after all, it was a known local gem. But it was her roommate and best friend Lizzie who insisted she do it during the lunar eclipse. She had been evasive regarding why, which frustrated Adriana a little. But she had a pretty good guess. A lot of old structures were built with celestial geometry in mind, so there was probably some sort of alignment with this saros that would produce a light show in what would have been the interior. At the very least, she expected to get some beautiful pictures.

The least compelling part of Lizzie’s recommendation was that she’d lost her virginity at the chapel. That was par for the course for her; she and her boyfriend Darien were practically joined at the hip. Or more accurately, joined at the crotch. They had a penchant for adventure, sexually speaking, often sneaking off to get freaky in strange places around campus, then regaling the friend group with all the details once they’d finished the deed.

Adriana pretended to be as uninterested in those stories as she was in whether Mercury was in retrograde. Unlike astrology, though, this she found fascinating.

Lizzie had been Adriana’s introduction to sexuality in more ways than one. Within the first month of arriving on campus, she went back to their room only to find her on her back, gasping, as Darien pounded into her from above. That was the first (and still the only) penis Adriana had seen in real life, and it was immediately burned into her memory. She’d stood there, stunned, at the door for a few moments. The two were facing away from her, and Adriana had gotten a full view of Darien’s balls slapping against her roommate’s ass every time his thick shaft plunged between her glistening, swollen lips. Her mouth dried out as the writhing pair produced all sorts of grunts and moans, punctuated by hasty, sloppy kisses and oh-fuck-yesses. At least she had the presence of mind to shut the door quietly before running off to the bathroom stall to frantically rub the curiosity out of her clit. In order to keep quiet, she’d had to bite her lip so hard it bled.

Lizzie was also bisexual, and consequently the first openly queer person Adriana had ever met. This was interesting in its own right, and initially brought up some questions that took some introspection to resolve. But when the dust eventually settled, Adriana was confident that she was at least mostly straight. She certainly thought Lizzie was pretty, but she wasn’t so sure she wanted to fuck her. Or get fucked by her, for that matter. Darien’s cock, on the other hand, she thought was magnificent.

Now, at the chapel, Adriana felt the faintest beginning tingles of arousal as she wondered where in the ruins the couple had gotten undressed and had sex. She brushed a fern out of the way and stepped through the threshold of the doorway, purely out of habit. There were enough collapsed sections of the walls that she could have created any number of entrances.

Despite not being enclosed, the interior of the church felt a few degrees cooler than the air outside. This wasn’t a problem in the warm May night, but the heavy stones seemed to suck the heat right from her, even as they blocked the night’s gentle breeze. The full moon cast its light unimpeded by any roof, revealing thatches of grass poking through the cracks of the bumpy floor. At the far end of the church was a step up. Presumably the altar would have gone there, but bare as it was, the step more closely resembled a stage.

Adriana picked her way through the tall grass. Her flashlight wasn’t as much of a help as she had hoped while inside, because now that she’d left the trail, any protruding rocks or bumps were obscured by foliage. Thankfully, this wasn’t a huge problem. The settlers had done a serviceable job smoothing the floor, and further erosion had only helped. Even so, it prevented her from treading with her usual sure-footedness, and she stepped carefully through the grasses and weeds. Before long, she’d found her way to the other side of the building. She stepped up onto the ledge and turned around to survey the view from the slight elevation it offered.

Being able to take in the whole scene at once helped counteract the creepy factor of being alone at night in an abandoned building. She noticed some order to the collapsed walls; near a corner, one section had fallen onto another and brought down both of them. Another hole revealed the boulder that had rolled down the hill and punched through it. It was still there, of course, and it poked out from above the patches of tall grass. This wasn’t so bad, she decided. It would have been much worse if the church had been completed and a cemetery built alongside it, or if a roof had been there to keep out the moonlight.

Then, finally, she saw it, near the wall and behind a pile of collapsed stones that had kept it out of view from the entrance. Even damaged, it was just as beautiful as Lizzie said it would be.

The gargoyle sat crouched, craning its neck to peer over its bent knees, and to offer its tongue as a ramp to funnel rainwater outward. Its legs were tightly folded, and its arms were wrapped around them, assuming the position of a cannonball dive into a pool, thought Adriana. Or of someone curled up in fear.

The expression on its face contrasted with its fearful posture. Behind the rainwater spout of its tongue lay pointed teeth, once sharp but worn dull by the weather. Its brow was furrowed in a mocking expression, and a ring of small horns formed a crown around its bald head.

It sat on the balls of its bare, clawed feet, balancing like a catcher with the help of an additional bird-like, backwards-facing toe. It sat facing the wall, showing the altar three stubs where its wings and tail had fallen off centuries ago. Most of the pieces still lay strewn underneath it, where it sat ironically perched on the ground.

It must have been carved in Europe and brought along on the voyage, Adriana surmised as she stepped off the ledge and parted the brush on her way to examine it more closely. The statue was smaller than she expected, the top of its head only reaching the middle of her thigh. She knew it was wrong, but the moment compelled her to do it. After a second’s hesitation, she reached out to touch it on the shoulder, even while she did so fearful to damage the antique further, or knock it off balance. Her shaking finger made contact.

Nothing happened. The stone was cold to the touch; exactly as cold as the floor and walls. It did not tip over, and it did not react, because it had already assumed the most stable position that centuries of weather had forced it to take. Also, it was not alive.

Adriana left her hand on it. She stood there for a while, just like that, contemplating, as the sounds of an open field at night took over and roared softly in her ear.

Above her, the moon had not yet begun to redden, or even darken. She’d made better time than expected from the parking lot (really more of a section of expanded shoulder along the unpainted main road), along the trail, through the field, and up the hill. Not only was the moon looking normal, but there seemed to be no special alignment with any of the features of the ruined church. There was still a while to go before the main event, she realized, and having already found all her objectives, her mind began to wander. Finding a subject adrift in the sea of her thoughts, her concentration clung to it like driftwood.

Where in this mess might Lizzie and Darien have had sex?

There were no pews, no altar, no furniture at all, and not even any wood. So it had to have been on the floor. The obvious candidate was the step/stage, since the stone floor was thicker there and there were fewer cracks for grass to grow through. Not that it didn’t try. But it made sense that they would want somewhere to go where they wouldn’t be prodded by as many protruding stems.

Adriana’s hand slipped absently under the waistband of her shorts, and she hardly noticed. It simply felt right.

Maybe that didn’t matter, though, she reconsidered, since Lizzie said it was her first time. Surely Darien had wanted to make it special for her. He probably brought cushions, or a blanket, because even if there was no grass, lying directly on stone isn’t the most comfortable option, especially when you’re not wearing any clothes. Adriana liked the thought of them not wearing any clothes, her supposed heterosexuality be damned.