Friday Fictioneers : Weeping angels

PHOTO PROMPT © Liz Young

 

Shaun gazed down the steep slope, past the apple trees and their blushed blooms. ‘Strange place to have a burial ground.’

‘Still a couple of hundred bodies under the grass.’ Grace kicked through a drift of empty beer cans and crisp packets.

She loved graveyards, the crumbling inscriptions, the weeping angels. He didn’t. The thought of walking over the dead made him shiver, imagine skeletal fingers reaching, clawing …

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You’ve had your fun. Time for a pint.’ Blossom fluttered around him like pink confetti. ‘Grace?’ From somewhere came a sound like bones tumbling on stone.

 

Written for Rochelle Wisoff-Field’s Friday Fictioneers. See the pic and write a tale – see here to join in and to read the other stories.

The burial ground in the story was inspired by a disused graveyard down the road from where I live. The slope is bizarrely precipitous for a spot where over two hundred people are still buried. It’s now a public park and community orchard.

 

 

 

 

58 thoughts on “Friday Fictioneers : Weeping angels”

      1. Ah, Chris, you’re always so kind and supportive – thank you. I do hope with the current project I’ve lumbered you with, you won’t change your mind about that! 🙂

        Liked by 1 person

    1. Haha! Nice idea – especially for someone who doesn’t read horror! As for blossom, I know what you mean, but we’d use ‘blossom’ to refer to a mass of individual flowers gathered together ‘the blossom on the trees looks lovely’ rather than ‘the blossoms’. Hopefully, it still makes sense :). Thanks so much and glad you liked it.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  21. Super creepy and very well done, Lynn! In Melbourne there is a park in Fitzroy that was the earliest burial ground in Melbourne – now people lie on the grass where once were graves. It’s a lovely park, for all that, a peaceful place. The second earliest burial ground, home to literally thousands of graves, is now the Queen Victoria Market. They often talk about putting in underground parking, but every time they did they turn up bones. It’s also supposed to be haunted, as it was where bodies hanged in the nearby jail were buried – in unconsecrated ground…

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. We’re so very close to the past, wherever we are – it’s extraordinary to think what we might be walking over every day. I’m afraid the ghoulish side of me surfaces when I’m near a graveyard – I have to stop and read the stones, interpret the relationships between the deceased, look at the dates for patterns (you often find members of the same family dying close together, presumably from an outbreak of disease) I imagine their lives, their stories, how a parent could survive several children dying close together.
      There’s a village in Derbyshire called Eyam (pronounced Eem by locals) that had an outbreak of plague in 1665 – the only place outside the capital where the disease spread. They sealed themselves off, condemning many to death but stopping it spreading to neighbouring towns. The burial ground there has a lot of stones with the same date, many bearing a skull and crossed bones as a warning that the body within might still be contagious.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. Oh, I love reading gravestones too, and my daughter’s the same – when she was quite small she said to me it was so we could remember the people, which I thought was quite lovely. There are so many stories in graveyards – one stone can tell of an entire family. I find them fascinating. And I have heard of Eyam – have you read Year of Wonders by Geraldine Boorks? It’s about that year of plague, and it’s beautifully written. I also saw a documentary where the descendents of the survivors of Eyam are resistant to HIV, as it has a similar genetic pattern to the plague – the antibodies of their ancestors remained with them, giving them a natural immunity. It was fascinating. And this little green island of ours is just chock full of layers, isn’t it? It’s one of the things I love about living here 🙂

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I haven’t read that, but I’ve heard of it I think – sounds just up my street. What a fascinating story about the people of Eyam having immunity to HIV – as you say, those ancestors living on through their descendants. Amazing. We do live in a fantastic country, so much history all around us, living on in our towns and cities, our language, even our names and those of the towns we live in. A great island for historians – and meteorlogists!

        Liked by 1 person

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.