The Frog Church

This Weeks Prompt:76. Ancient cathedral—hideous gargoyle—man seeks to rob—found dead—gargoyle’s jaw bloody.

The Prior Research: Sacred Guardians

The Windgift church is a large, if vacuous one. The city has withered away around it—moving mostly up river or down roads. Folks still call it the cathedral, but the diocese is based out of Morgstadt now a days. Pilgrims still come and go—the old icons and relics are still held aloft for display. I think that’s what got Leon Pyrmont’s attention first—the relics gold and glittering cases. Maybe it was the bones instead, calling to him like dead men are so often called to grace.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Cathedral has one other, notable addition—the Gargoyle. I’m sure you’ve seen it. Its become sort of famous. Some horror movie big shot came and took photos of it for his monsters, and then people in the know referenced the movie with their own homages. Yes, yes, the gargoyle is really old. It’s not like those pictures you might see of a gargoyle shaped like an Alien or astronaut or Darth Vader. Those were all put there recently. They look old, but that’s because there supposed to look old. No, the Gargoyle of Windgift is an original.

It looms over the front of the cathedral, a three headed hunched over human, with a tadpole tail. The three frog heads all look down on the masses coming in and out—its a bit creepy honestly. Worse when you realize there’s a fourth mouse, closed and grinning with teeth, on it’s belly. No, yeah, that’s actually there. They didn’t add that for the movie.

Leon didn’t come to see the Gargoyle, though. I first saw him examining it on the church steps. It is certainly eye catching, and even tourists off to better known traps will stop and stare at the stone warden, leering down at the crowd. He—uh, Leon, not the Gargoyle—was dressed like a tourist. Slightly off green coat, baseball cap, jeans. Roamed around with the tour group as well. Really, he wasn’t that note worthy except he wasn’t taking pictures. That and he seemed…aware of what he was doing. Walking with purpose you know? I decided to have a chat, seemed nice enough.

Leon said he was a tourist, kind of, going to all these churches that had unique architecture. We talked about the history of the cathedral a bit. I rattled off some of the healings I’d seen. You know, kids with cancer, broken backs, wasting disease. Showed him my own patched up scar. His eyes sort of wandered as I talked, but you know, I thought he was just taking it all in. And I guess he was.

His eyes fell upon the old story of the Gargoyle, and asked about…well, it is gruesome display on the glass. St. Remus and the beast. I love that story, honestly. Some academic tried to tell me it was just a bastardized version of St. Slyvanus and the Beast, but that thing was a wildman. We, on the other hand, have a genuine beast. A real devil. In the story, the beast lived in the local bog. The pagans used to keep it satisfied by offering thieves and murderers to it. And you know what? When they drained the bog, yeah, there were over a hundred corpses at the bottom. So, someone was tossing bodies down there for some reason, and—

I’m getting ahead of myself again. Anyway, the beast lurks in this bog. It’s troublesome, but mostly it just…eats folks. Sometimes runs around wearing their faces, luring people off trails. But its, you know, just the weird cannibal monster in the woods. Then Saint Remus comes along.

Now, okay, he’s not a saint yet. This is one of like, twenty stories about St. Remus doing cool stuff. But the monster story is the best. Now, Remus learns that this town of pagans is sending its criminals to be thrown into a bog. And being a good Christian, he can’t exactly tolerate that sort of behavior. So he goes with his staff and bangs on the kings door—yeah, probably not called a king yet, but who cares—and demands he stop in the name of God.

The King tells Remus to sort it out himself if God’s so great. So Remus decides to go up with the next criminal. Now they head up to the bog, but the beast knows Remus or something. So he hides in the bog, and makes terrible noises to scare him off. Remus thinks it just some gas I guess. Either way he leaves, and everyone has a good laugh at it. They all decide, hey, we’ll send you guys up next month.

Except, the monsters mad now. It hates Remus, wants him gone. So it flies out and starts throwing skulls at the town. Raging around, killing people Remus talks to, burning houses he sleeps in, poisoning food around him. Just hates him. And, well, people hate Remus too. Messed up a good deal they had going. So, they send him up early.

But…the monsters still afraid of him. Yeah, following him around and messing with him—I think it was invisible or something? I don’t know. But either way, ti lurks at the bottom of the bog. This time, the guys who took him out there won’t take Remus back, though. I mean, they don’t want their stuff burned down either. Or food poisoned or, you know, angry monster. So…everyone just stays there, all day. Remus is sitting on an old stump. Probably poking the bog with his stick.

Turns out, next day is Sunday. So Remus gets up, turns to the dozen or so people gathered there, and asks if he can read Mass. And the executioners and the dead dude look at each other—here’s this nutter asking to say Mass at his death bed. They shrug, say sure. Or whatever fifth century is for sure. I missed Latin. So, St. Remus gets up and starts preaching to no one. The sermon is on Saul’s trip to Damascus, and Remus gets so patient about it that the thing in the bog hears.

Imagine that—well, I mean you can see it in glass at the church. A five headed, winged, snake armed thing floating out a bog. It’s covered in gray mud, and it’s dripping with blood probably. You’ve seen this thing eat people. And it’s floating there, behind this preacher. Not saying a word. Just…there.

And when it finally talks, it asks this random priest…it asks this priest if it’s true.

So Remus turns around, and hand it to the guy, he has a talk with this monster about God and Christ and Heaven and baptism and all that. And he leads it back to the temple—they have a big baptism, the beast becomes a Catholic defender of the new church, and they agree to pardon a dozen thieves every summer or something, I don’t know. That parts not in the stain glass, so. You know. Who cares.

So I start telling this to Leon, and he’s not really paying attention. I mean, he’s paying attention to other stuff. I follow his eyes, and realize he’s kinda scoping the place out. He’s looking at the entrances and exits, hes scoping the place out.

Later, it broke that this was Leon’s part time gig. It’s not a common job, or wasn’t, but its profitable. You’ve got small, dying churches that have more than a few holy items. A shroud, a bone, an icon, a bit of jewelry. It’s old, it’s powerful, and more than thirty people remember it. But the old churches? They aren’t that secure, they aren’t seen that often. It’s a waste of a miracle to let it just stay there, gathering dust between displays.

That’s where people like Leon get involved. New churches, or churches that are new to their providence, they need relics. And if no one or nobodies are using the old ones, well. Who’s going to notice, right? And hey, if they notice, you just hide it for a while. Then it’s ‘miraculously’ found out in the wilderness by the priest and whoops their relic now. Its…well, its business I suppose. Wonder if we ever hired anyone like that…anyway, that was Leon’s work. Normally, the genuine relic is replaced by a forgery. I wasn’t clear who switched’em—seemed like Leon did it sometimes, sometimes the church did it to hide the robbery, whatever.

At the time, I think he’s just worried. Maybe he’s here to hide out, or whatever. I shrug, and go home.

What happened next isn’t really clear. The church doesn’t have security cameras—the police do, outside, so we know that at one o’clock at night Leon went into the cathedral. He got through the door with some lock picks—they were found still in the door the next day. From there, it gets harder to figure out exactly what happened. He got inside, but the interior was really messed up when he was found. And a stone floor doesn’t leave many tracks.

It seems likely he left shortly after entering the vault. Or, rather, attempted to leave. Leon’s body was not located—however, his right hand was found gripping the remains of a reliquary, behind the altar. There were a number of bloodstains on the inside, although most were cleaned up before I arrived. A drop fell from the gargoyle—I thought it was rain. Looking up to see the storm, I was horrified to see a red stain from the four amphibian heads.

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This story started as an anonymous history, before I found a good voice. I think it could have been done better–its unclear why the story is being told or to who or when–but the concept is rather solid. The premise itself is limiting–there’s not much to do right now with a simple heist. There could have been more, but I…honestly couldn’t think of an expansion.

Next week, we resume a discussion of gargoyles and demons–but there dances and parties this time!

 

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