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A Mass for The Dead

Here is a story that my brother Chris posted to the subReddit No sleep. It is a tale that has been told in our family for years , that he took and made into a a short scary story. Hope you enjoy it. I have to preface this story before it begins. My great-grandmother was a great storyteller. She entertained generations of her families with stories of every kind. She would tell us of her late-husbands adventures in World War I, the story of her stormy passage to America as a young girl, and some as mundane as single handedly clearing the raccoons nest from the garage. There were those other stories too. The kind that would send us kids sprinting out of basement apartment where she lived and into the arms of our laughing parents, who knew she was filling our heads with the same guff she used to fill their heads with. The scary stories that had been passed down for years in our family. Among our favorites was the two monsters that lived in the crawl space under the house (that encounter is a story for another time). One story my Nonni (great-grandma in Italian nomenclature) told us was different from the rest, however. This was the one she always saved for last, the one where all the wrinkles of her aged, gaunt face would deepen when she told it. She didn’t recite this one like the rest of them, she would speak about it with her eyes looking inward towards her soul, almost as if she was reflecting on something deeper. Her other stories would change and evolve over time, she would jazz them up and change things as the years went by, but not this one. She recited this one the same, word for word, every time she told it. It sounded like she was reliving some traumatic experience. Whenever it was over, she would slowly rise from the armchair in the bedroom where she was holding court, and retrieve the rosary beads from her night table drawer and pray rapidly in Italian, rubbing the rosary beads over a birthmark on her forearm. What always confused us as kids was it was the only story that when we would ask our parents about later, they wouldn’t tell us it was just a ghost story. Maime was awoken by dawn light burning through her curtains. She was groggy, even though she had gone to bed early the night before, she awoke almost in a daze. She blinked away the sleep from her eyes and rose to begin the morning chores. She found it odd that the roosters in the small Italian village had not started signaling the new day yet, but went downstairs to fetch the bucket to retrieve the morning water from the well. As her feet slid across the stone floor of her small house she felt a sharp chill in the air. She opened the back door and strode sheepishly towards the fell, usually a spry morning person, today she felt the clutches of sleep and the night clinging to her mind, as if trying to pull her back into bed. Maime reached the well and immediately noticed there was something wrong. The water in the well, usually several feet down at the bottom, had risen to almost the top. It hadn’t rained in the village in several weeks, so Maime knew the aqueducts could not have flooded. As she peered into the water she noticed a bright white object reflected in the water. She turned and saw a full moon, brighter and larger in the sky than any she had ever seen. Maime looked around puzzled, and realized it wasn’t dawn at all, feint stars peppered the night sky, the clouds above the mountainous village, usually sailing effortlessly across the sky hung motionless, almost frozen in time. She noticed it was near pitch black all around her, even though the moon was as bright as she had ever seen, the light seemed incased in the night sky, unable to reach the ground. She looked around puzzled, “how could she have mistaken what was clearly the middle of the night for dawn?” “Why was the moon so bright?” “What time was it?” The questions raced in her mind. The chill that was in the air grew colder, and she shuttered as she pulled her night gown higher above her neck. It was then she saw it. The village church, several yards in the distance, was burning bright with the light of several lanterns. It stuck out profoundly in the darkness of the night, like a burning torch in a dark cave. Maime could not understand why the church was so lit up so late at night. The priests usually lit a lantern in the courtyard at night in case any travelers happen to be passing through but this was different. The church looked ablaze, light was pouring out of it, it was even brighter than it was on Christmas Eve or Easter. Even more odd was that the light seemed limited to the church and its courtyard, as bright at the church was, Maime didn’t see a single shadow cast beyond the gates, nor did she anybody in the town square that had noticed the church lights. Maime felt a strange sensation. She knew something was out of the ordinary - that much was clear. She was a clever girl, wise beyond her years and would never fall for the simple dangers and traps that befall most silly girls in scary stories the elders in the village told. She was adventurous, but would never run headlong into danger. Even so, she felt compelled to go to the church and find out what was going on. Her curiosity, or some invisible force, had overtaken her. She headed towards the church. Maime reached the heavy wooden doors and pushed them open. She was taken aback by what she saw. The church was filled with people. Never, not even when Bishop Puzzo died had Maime seen so many people in the village church. None of them seemed to notice the doors opening, they all were standing, looking directly forward to the priest at the altar. They were singing something, chanting almost. Maime couldn’t understand what, it was in no language she recognized. She stood there, memorized by their hymn for several minutes before she noticed somebody she recognized. Her godmother, Domenica, was in the front pew. Maime could see her, but it was as if she was looking at her through a veil, she was clearly standing there, but there was something off, Maime couldn’t figure out what. She began walking eagerly towards her, as she walked past each pew, the people in attendance looked at her with venomous stares, their eyes shot fire, Maime had never seen faces filled with some much anger, it made the hair on her neck stand up, but she felt compelled to keep walking. She hardly noticed that each person was dressed perfectly, the men in finely pressed black suits, the women in white dresses, and fine jewelry. “Domenica. Domenica.” Maime whispered as she reached the front pew. Her godmother turned and looked at her as if she didn’t recognize her. She studied Maime for what seemed like several minutes before a look of absolute surprise and fear spread across her face. She looked at Maime with obvious concern, but still said nothing. “Domenica, whats wrong?” “Who are these people?” Domenica did not respond, her eyes were locked on Maime, studying every inch of her. Before Maime could speak another word, her godmother interrupted her, “Maime, you aren’t supposed to be here.” The words pierced Maime’s ears. They stung. “Maime, you aren’t supposed to be here.” Domenica said again. She could feel the words cutting her. It was then suddenly everything came into focus. Maime realized why her godmother was telling her didn’t belong there. Everything suddenly made sense. Her godmother was dead. She had been dead for 6 months. Maime was with her when she passed, she remembered her funeral in the church, her burial in the crypt below town. Domenica was dead, but there she was, standing infront of Maime, speaking to her. Maime’s heart was in her throat, her mouth was agape, her feet rooted to the spot, paralyzed with fear. The chanting had suddenly stopped, an eerie silence had blanketed the church. Maime’s breathing sounded as if it was bouncing off of the walls, she could practically hear her own thoughts. The patrons of the mass were all looking at her now, she could feel their stares, each one burning a different piece of her. Their faces contorted into a horrifying mix of anger, fear and sorrow. They were not the faces of living beings. Maime stood, petrified. She couldn’t breathe. Tears began to well up in her eyes. Her heart was racing, pounding the inside of her chest. The church began to spin out of focus, Maime felt her grip on this world slipping away. “Maime, run!” She turned and ran as quickly as she could towards the door. She noticed some of the audience began to move towards her. She ignored them and kept running, her bare feet skidding along the ice cold floor. The door seemed like it kept getting further away, the harder she ran, the more it was out of her reach. As she ran a hand reached out and grabbed her arm. Long, thin, and cold fingers made a full grasp around her forearm. Maime screamed, it was unlike any pain she had felt before. It burned, but not the burn of fire, the burn of frost bite, she felt the icy, numbing pain stab her like a dagger, reverberating into her bones and up her arm. She could feel her skin dying under the man’s grip. Maime turned and saw the man who was holding her, his face motionless, his eyes a solid gray, with no pupils or irises. She screeched again, the pain in her arm so great it took away almost all of her energy to scream. She struggled mightily, and final pulled so hard that the force that broke the man’s grip threw her off balance onto the floor. She turned and sprinted towards the church doors and into the courtyard, back towards her home. Maime did not awaken till late in the afternoon the next day, when she did she saw a sea of worried faces, her parents, her younger sister and the town doctor, who had all tried in vain to wake her up. She felt incredibly nauseous, her head pounded incessantly, and she had a burning fever. Her arm was marked with a scar roughly in the shape of a hand print. It was the blackish red color of blood, and despite Maime’s terrible fever, it was ice cold to the touch. Despite her sickness, what scared her family most was that her hair, normally a tremendous auburn, had turned a dull, grey. No doctor, nor the priests in the town could explain what happened to her. She remained sick for a full month, and it took almost a full year before her normal brown hair began to grow back to replace the grey.

Reddit link https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/4imr7x/a_mass_for_the_dead/

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me: sets a perfectly reasonable deadline for myself to accomplish a task

also me: ignores the task, the deadline, myself,

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Thigh highs get me every time

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