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(story) The Beginning of a Nightmare: An Old European Horror |
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This originally came from a nightmare of mine when I was 13. This legend part wasn't in my dream, it's just to explain the church and the graveyard which will take a minute to do. But it will eventually lead up to the actually story itself. I placed in a German speaking area.
THE BEGINNING OF A NIGHTMARE: AN OLD EUROPEAN HORROR STORY
Chapter: The Legend.
It started many centuries ago in a small European village called Nebelung. It was thieving in the mid-1400's; before the Black Plague came. It was just big enough to have a church built, and built it was. It was well over 100ft tall, in the Gothic Victorian-era style with the beautiful glass art that caused awe and joy in the town.
But little did the builders know, that something very horrible was about to be unleashed. For the time being, things were normal with the town ever expanding along with church. In 10 years time, as the legend goes, the Black Plague hit the booming town and caused many to die; those that were left, of course, buried them in the town's only cemetery.
Only time could help the survivors' broken and damaged hearts slowly heal, but no one's heart was ever completely healed. In the next couple of years, things timidly went back to normal. But it wasn't to last. Over the next few years, there were reports of odd things happening.
The officials slowly realized, in a horrifying pattern, it was mostly around the church and it's adjacent graveyard. But they decided, for the time being, to keep it from the public, fearing everyone would stop going to church and move to another town.
At first, it wasn't nothing bad, just mostly shoes, plates and chairs moved around; no one thought nothing of it and just blamed the local homeless people, they were tried in court and were found guilty and executed for their actions.
But once again, it happened a couple more times, and history repeated itself, blaming it on the homeless and, once again, they were executed. This repeated itself a couple more times until there were no more homeless people in the town. Unexplained things were still going on. So the church's head minister, named Father Leon Day, shut down the church for a while and he went on a journey to go to one of the bigger towns.
It took nearly a week to get there with a horse. After resting, he went to the biggest church in town and talked to the head minister about the odd things going on in Nebelung's church and graveyard. The man listen intently to his story and was just as bluffed as he was. He took a few men with him to the ministers hometown, and when they got there; they were all horrified.
The graveyard was a mess, with dirt piles in random places; completely covering known graves, even those with small monuments were completely covered. As they neared, the church's two main front doors, they noticed a couple of drops of blood.
None of them were worried about it; time from time, injured animals would come in, recover from their injuries and then leave. But as soon as they opened the doors, a foul, most disgusting smell hit their noses and made the men covered their noses as they went in... A decision they would regret very soon...
As Father Day opened the doors all the way, they found a most repulsive scene; knives, forks, and small swords butchered and gutted the nuns and fathers. One of the men threw up his recent lunch and ran outside to try and forget what he saw.
The other men saw, with mouths that looked more like a fish's than a human's, the gruesome scene and the others, threw up in their mouths a small amount. But what no one noticed was a broad sword sneakingly being moved off the wall with no one seemingly touching it. The sword moved and aimed for one of the men, but fortunately for them, they ran outside and closed the doors behind them, before something else happened.
But the sword went halfway threw the door and scared the men out of their wits. They quickly left the murdering church and headed towards town to the village elders and the richest men in town.
As the church men talked to the town's men; the town's men grudgingly told them that they've known for a while about the church and graveyard's tendency, to do odd things, they slowly find out that this wasn't the first time that the church that killed someone.
Five years previously, before the knives and such moved on its own, there was a murder in the church and it was discovered by one of the rich men and he had his slave pick up and bury the body. He threatened the slave that he is to forget what he saw and if he ever told a soul; he'd have his family and himself killed.
The church men listened intensely but horrified at the same time, at what they were saying. When they were done, Father Day demanded angrily why he wasn't told about the town's men that they're going to pay someone to extortionist the spirit out of the church.
Since they didn't tell the minister about the little incident. The town's men grudgingly agreed by saying they wanted to keep the incident away from the townsfolk. No one told anyone in town what was going on with their church. The townsfolk just thought the bigger town minister was there to celebrate the church's reopening in 3 days.
So one of his men went out to find someone who could exercise the spirit out of the church and luck was on his side as he saw an old friend in the forest. He told him that some odd things were happening at the local church and graveyard. It peaked his friend's curiosity and he decided to take on the job without a second thought... One time, he will wish he would have thought about it longer...
They rode together going to town, talking to each other, as old friends would, as they were going to the inn, they bumped into the church men and discussed the problem out of earshot of anyone else. They decided to take care of the problem that Sunday in between services. No one knows what happened from that day until the reopening of the church on that Sunday.
As far as known, nothing bad happened during the morning services. As services concluded and everyone went home; the other town's church men came in; as soon as the last person was out of sight from the church. That's when all the church men and the exorcist discussed a plan on what to do and how they should get the spirit out of the church.
They decided to do the normal exorcism and so the exorcist went inside the church and did what the church men agreed upon. Nothing happened, which puzzled everyone who was there. Once again, they discussed it but, they thought that since not even the chairs were moved; they all agreed that the spirit left quietly without putting up a fight.
So once again, they all set up the church for the evening time. All the people that were there for the morning services, were there for the evening services; the attending number was said to be the same exact number, 113. But instead of Nebelung's minister preaching, this time,it was the minister from the bigger town that was preaching.
Halfway threw the service, everyone heard a rumbling from outside, no one thought nothing special about it; it was that time of the year for it to be raining. As the minister was nearing the end of the services, it started to rain very heavily and there was a loud sound of thunder from the heavens above.
It scared the babies and the children very closely to their parents. The minister decided to end it a few minutes earlier than usual. He allowed the families with babies and children to leave first, followed by the elderly with Father Day showing them path to town with a enclosed fire lamp.
But just as the clock struck the time that the church ended usually, all the church doors automatically closed and even worse the glass art windows were all covered in fresh red human blood.
As told from the legend, the elderly that had made it out in time told a tale of many women screaming, men yelling; trying to protect their women from whatever it was.
It's also said that they heard a very evil laugh from what sounded like the head minister from the other town, along with the hearing of bones cracking and begin smashed and limbs torned off from what the elderly could see threw the blood-drenched windows.
The younger families also heard their pained screams from pass the graveyard, which scared not only the children, and women, but even the men were scared. Some of the younger men ran back near the church but the elder men stopped them. The elders told them that they should go home pack their stuff and move to the next town over.
As they all agreed, the once-minister came near a bloody window, wiped an area and put his red eyes in view, that scared them off for good. It's said that after the church massacre, there was an evil laughter that lasted longer than humanly possible and it echoed more than a human's voice could possibly dream of.
As the survivors left their beloved, but murdering church and moved. One brave soul got some boards of wood, nailed it to the tree in the graveyard, got some house paint and wrote when translated, "Ye beware trespassers, once ye shall enter thy possessed church, ye shall never come out alive."
Once he finished up, they all heard that evil laughter coming from their old church and that gave everyone goosebumps. Everyone that survived it left the town and never came back to see it. But as the last few people left, the church and graveyard changed the once cloudy light sky into a dark gray, clouded sky. It also changed the beautiful green grass into a nasty, dry, brown, dead grass; even the trees lost their leaves, and it's youthfulness was sucked out of it and was given a more Modern-day Halloween tree look.
Since that day, the church nor the graveyard hasn't aged a day since the survivors left.
But once in a great while, a homeless person from a nearby town would come by; see the sign on the tree and run away from it in tears because once they try to get near the church. It would start the echoing evil laughter with the sound of bones cracking with the blood lightly coming down the windows. That itself would scare off anyone but the finishing touch would be the red eyes in the window, looking for the next victim to come in.
Luckily, it could never leave the church for all the door hatches were wrapped in a heavy iron/bronze chains that requires two men to pick it up.
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It was said that in the 1860's, it was rediscovered, starting from the abandoned town, everyone was puzzled on why it was abandoned. So they checked every home and business and were still bluffed on what the problem was.
Everyone broke up into teams and went into separate directions.. One group came upon the abandoned church and graveyard. As one member found the old wooden sign, he called for the others to come and check it out.
They all read the sign and another person recalled from his childhood that his mother would tell him a bedtime story of a town that was abandoned after the Black Plague because the church itself killed some of its members and he distinctively remember that his mom told him before they left for good that someone put up a wooden sign warning others of it.
Everyone else, except for one other person, dismiss the bedtime story as folklore, even though he promised it's an old story from an ancestor who was involved with it. Then the leader of the group, the other who believes the man's bedtime story, pulled him to the side to talk to him.
But just as he did, he heard a scream from near the church. It said that when he turned around, he nearly dropped dead. Some of the guys up-chucked their lunch. The church started to have the windows slowly drip brownish blood and the chains started to rattle a little.
Another guy, the one that told the story, told everyone it was time to run as if the hounds of Hell were after them. As they ran, they heard that same evil laughter that was heard centuries before them. They ran all the way back to the town. Once they got back to the group, they were all shaking and most of them puked up their stomachs again.
The guy in charge was of the trip, asked worryingly curious, about what happened. The church group told him the story of what they saw and one told him about the bedtime story as a child. He listened intently to their stories and decided to withdraw his group from the ghost town and go to the surrounding towns and gather some information from whatever resources he could.
He ran into a couple dozen people who tell the same bedtime story he heard from that group member. He asked them if they have any more information about it, they all said no except for one.
That one person was actually another descendent of one of the rich men from the town, and her ancestor wrote about the experience in a journal. The guy in charge asked if he could read the journal, she said yes to him with one condition; he couldn't bring it out of the house. He agreed to the terms and got started reading it right away. He read it for a couple days and paid the woman 2 gold coins for letting him read and staying there.
As he went to some of the other towns, he didn't find no new information about the ghost town. So he decided to get his group back together and think of a stagery that everyone would agreed to. Within a few days he was back with the group and coming up with a plan. Everyone was agreeing with him until he brought up his little journey about exploring the nearby towns of the ghost town. After mentioning it about half of his men said they'd quit if they went into that church. He decided, after much disagreement, to have the ones that would quit, go to the town; and the others agree to go explore the graveyard first then the Church. Once that was settled, everyone started the journey back to the ghost town.
As they were approaching the town, the weather changed from sunny with a couple of clouds to dark, stormy, rainy, with the winds howling up the storm more. some people were suspicious but didn't give it too much thought.As they headed to town, lighting strike the ground around them and some of the people wanted to go back to a nearby town for safely.
The people separated from the group and left and turned back to the other town. As the small group left, they noticed the weather beginning to get better. That made the small group decided that was the best decision they've made and agreed they feel sorry for the other guys.
 MiStress no YaMi · Wed Mar 20, 2013 @ 10:02pm · 0 Comments |
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