Desertion of Frost

Hoarfrost coated coastal grasses crunched heavily under weary feet. Neither of the men took any delight or satisfaction from the sound, with rhythmic blasts of breath pluming through the air announcing their laboured march. Countless hours they had trekked, plodding along beaten tracks, through wilderness and, most recently, atop the broken cliffs of the North East coast. Fatigued, yet determined, they had continued with no set destination or pit-stop in mind. Until, within the last hour, or so they surmised, moonlight cast a beacon for them. 

Shimmering in an icy blue glittering of frost, roughly half a mile ahead from their position, sat a church, regal and pointed on the clifftop. Stopping with an intake of invigorating chill heave of breath the men shared a glance and a look of understanding. Before the aches of their march could catch up with them to lay claim to their strength they moved on once more, heading for the alluring spectre of the church. 

Although its sparkling majesty gently diminished with the rolling curtain of clouds over the moon, the building still teased of respite, a chance to stop, warm up and rest. Little detail could be gleaned of the church or its surrounding gardens and graveyard, as the men passed through its iron gate, the frozen hinges yielding with a tug. The curtain of grey and black clouds had thickened, to wholly block the silver glow of the moon. Passing by dark shapes, tombstones and memorial angels the men guessed, they made their way to the now looming darkness of the church. Unsurprisingly, the heavy wooden arched doors were closed, unmoving. 

“Typical” let out the taller of the pair as he stepped back from the sealed portal in resignation. His companion cast a mocking look with a laugh as, iron-wrought knocker in hand, he rapped on the door. “It’s been a long few days” said the first, shaking his head with an acknowledging smile. 

“I know, Ste. I know” remarked the smaller man, knocking once more this time with urgency and a sense of authority. 

“What now then Jim?” asked Ste, dropping to sit on the steps leading to the church door, unburdening his legs with a relieving stretch and ignoring the damp chill seeping through his clothes with numbing promise. 

“There’s usually a house or something attached to churches, right? For the vicar, or priest, or whoever? I dunno. Maybe check round back?” offered Jim, rubbing frost from his wiry ginger beard. 

Groaning through the pain of worn legs forced back into action, Ste stood and the pair slowly made their way around the perimeter of the building, narrowly avoiding bushes and almost tripping over a kerb or fallen gravestone. Several minutes passed as they skirted the walls of the church and came up short, finding no outhouse, side or even back door. Standing once more at the steps to the arched entryway, still shrouded in darkness for the clouds lingered, Ste was the first to talk, nursing raw fingers from where they had scraped along the rough and chilled sandstone walls in search of a door. “What now then?” 

Jim did not answer immediately, trying to catch both his thoughts and his breath which came increasingly conscious and cold. “Keep going. Break the door, or try. Find somewhere to huddle for the night.” He offered between shivering breaths. 

“Don’t think I have the strength for two of those. So, any ideas?” Ste asked, pulling his hat further over his bald head. A failed attempt to find warmth. 

“I mean...” Jim’s voice faded as he drifted briefly into thought “...we could luck out and find an open mausoleum. Unlikely, but still. Save for that? Sleep in the bushes, or... find a Devil’s table and lie under that? It’ll be freezing, but...” 

“Devil’s table?” 

“Yeah. Well, that's what we called them as kids. You never spot a stone table in a graveyard before? Just another kind of tombstone, I think. Don’t ask why, but we used to think you could summon the Devil or demons if one of you lay on it – mock sacrifice or something – while the others ran around reciting what was written on it. It was Latin for us, so seemed legit. But yeah, one of those could provide some shelter. Still be freezing, as I say, but better than nothing, right?” With a defeated sigh and as he had no other ideas, Ste agreed. 

The graveyard was an unforgiving pool of frozen darkness, forcing the men to rely on touch rather than sight to guide their search for a suitable resting place. Neither of the figures, tentatively feeling their way through the ancient burial ground (for they knew it not but no soul had been lain to rest there in over a century), held supernatural beliefs yet a smothering, unspoken yet shared sense of unease held them close. Jim, on the right, always within a finger’s breadth of Ste, to the left. 

Delving deeper into the darkness they perceived a peculiarity in the frost-biting stone memorials that their ever-freezing fingers glided across. Scant few felt like gravestones at all, or at least not in the usual sense that one would expect. It was Jim who noticed it first, that his fingers smoothly swept over the numbing surface a second or so sooner than seemed to fit. Keeping this discovery to himself for a moment he tried to conjure a logical image to match what he felt. “War grave?” he vocalised his thought. 

“What?” asked Ste, startled out of silence. 

“These graves not seem smaller to you? Narrower?” 

“Haven’t thought much other than my lungs turning to ice. I swear it’s getting colder!” Moaned Ste. Ever one to vent – kept him sane, apparently. Let off steam, little and often so as not to boil over. 

“Yeah, it’s cold alright, but do you not find it odd? That there’s like, normal headstones – or what feels like them – with then plenty of these smaller ones? I don’t know why it bothers me.” He stopped still for a moment, hand atop one of the subjects of his confusion, ignoring the nip of the frost which threatened to lay claim to his fingers. 

Sighing, Ste stopped with his friend “feel like heads to me. It’s a graveyard. They’ll be statues. Either way, it’s cold and standing here wondering about gravestones isn’t helping.” 

“Seems a lot of statues, small too. But I guess you’re right” conceded Jim, unconvinced. Near blind and with a creeping exhaustion the men continued their lumbering search. 

A few hundred feet to the East, beyond the cobble-walled perimeter of the church grounds, waves began to lightly tap against the cliff face. A soft slapping of water on rock heralding the return of the tide. It was not long, however, before the gentle tapping swelled into solid knocking and then the unmistakeable uproar of the crashing sea. Foam and spray shot upwards through fissures, an unrelenting assault of skeletal hands seeking to lay claim to the earth and all who dwelled upon it. The first signs of the coming gale. 

Quarter of a bell, or so they guessed it, after the commencement of their investigation the men stumbled upon what Jim had called a Devil’s table. A solid sandstone slab held up by six thick columned legs, three to side. Although it would be a tight fit, the men figured they could each squeeze underneath and, perhaps, be warm. 

“You never did say why you came with me” mused Ste, perching back on the tabletop. 

“You never asked” responded Jim, moving to sit beside his friend. 

“Well, I am now. So?” 

With a sigh Jim fell back onto the table, feet still planted on the floor, and watched the slow re-emergence of moonlight as the clouds were swept by with the approaching storm. “It wasn’t for me”, he said “I couldn’t separate the expected pride in defending our home with the fact we were destroying others’. It was shallow, you know? Tainted. Cursed. Every victory stung like defeat. It kept me up at night. Still does. The pain, the questioning and doubt. Is it worth killing – slaughtering – someone, their family as collateral, in their home for something they haven’t yet done, or may never do, to us at ours? I can’t deny that those we set out to kill are bad people, but does it have to be us? Did it have to be me? I know it came easy for most, but I couldn’t - can’t - switch it off. The questioning.” 

Not knowing what, if anything, to say Ste placed a firm hand on his friend’s leg with a comforting squeeze and slight shake. They sat like that for a while, in silence. 

Feeling a deathly chill caress through his body and stroke his cheeks, Jim sat up just as the last cloud slid from the moon. The task did not come easy. He found his movements impeded by a gripping cold in his joints; his wrists and elbows ached as he slowly pushed himself upright; his back stiff as though frozen; his hips seemingly unwilling to accept their burden. Through the pain he managed it. 

Illuminated in lunar splendour the graveyard seemed to ripple and pulse, soothing and lulling whites and blues set to the backdrop of the otherwise black night sky of the horizon beyond. A pressing desire to sleep flooded Jim with a welcoming and enticing warmth as he marvelled at the grim beauty before him, a slight smile curving up one side of his face. Ready to concede, to give into the temptation, his focus was pulled to the statues – what he had believed were war graves. They were all in the shape of man (no wings), some full bodied and standing tall, others – the majority – from the knees up. All glowed a dim blue under the light of the moon, coated in ice as they were. 

With considerable effort, a tightening grasp of freezing pain tearing his insides, and not heeding the still form of his friend, Jim heaved himself off the table and struggled several steps for a closer look at one of the ice-covered carvings. Dropping to his knees in the frost he stared expressionless, for he had little remaining agency over such things, at the sculpture with which he was now eye-level, gripped by the brown eyes within the ice. Horror and fear filled those eyes. A look he knew well. A look that could not be captured by stone or in ink. A look all too genuine and all too alive. A look that was now mirrored in his own eyes as his gaze drifted across the hundreds of preserved souls within the grounds. He turned at last to his friend, still and frozen on the table – the icy sarcophagus already taking form. He blinked out a single tear which, frozen, was caught up and swept away with the arrival of the storm.