I had never noticed this chapel. You had to dare to take that narrow path that climbed to the cliff. It was necessary to cross the hawthorn barriers and aggressive mulberry trees. Force yourself to face the sea wind stronger and stronger. Fight.
The sea was not far, one could feel his salt breath, his breath iodine, one could hear his throaty roar, his hoarse call.
Frightened seagulls circled the short gray arrow. A fine drizzle began to invade the sad moor. The little church was not very far, I hastened to take shelter under his porch. Ugly gargoyles spit me their venom. I leaned against the heavy door to escape their acid jets. It was then that I felt the door swing hard on the rust of its hinges. A grim grinding sounded and a smell of old wax caught me in the dark, icy nave. I stood petrified for a moment. The chapel was empty and seemed abandoned. Some of the messy priests seemed to receive only heavy, sticky dust. A single dark-colored stained glass window represented, it seemed to me, a frightful scene of medieval torture.
I was cautiously advancing towards the altar, which I could hardly see in the darkness. As I approached, I saw that he was covered with a thick black cloth. I could not repress a thrill.
Outside, the rain had turned into a roaring shower. The water was beating the walls and the roof of the building with so much force that one might have said it had been plunged like a wreck into the bottom of an unleashed ocean.
The night had arrived in advance. I bumped into an upturned chair that I struggled to put back. The clatter of feet squeaking on the slabs echoed in a thousand broken echoes on the vault. I felt guilty of making so much noise in a place that normally called for serenity. I held my breath to listen to the noise that had been multiplied gradually. At last, the silence returned, but it brought me more anguish than the noise.
Nothing. A complete and disturbing absence of life. Only the warrior song of the water of the sky that ravaged the neighborhood was screaming with truth. Everything else seemed a nightmare.
Yet from the bottom of a dark corner, I received a kind of complaint ...
The suffering of wood?
What was behind the enormous pillar?
I remained a forbidden moment, listening more attentively. A groan ? An exhortation?
In the thick shadow I could see the squat mass of a sculpted confessional. I approached cautiously, trying to pierce the disturbing darkness. It seemed to me that the groan was coming out of there. A bitter priest was to murmur his litanies ... The access to the confessional was closed by a wooden door. The voice had to come from the grid. A roar of thunder tapped in my heart, jostling him with the strength of a bull. This storm made me feel uncomfortable. I felt like I heard a chuckle from the bowels of the booth. Had I been startled? Was I observed?
I was attracted to the black lair, mysterious and scary, as one is drawn to the emptiness that scares us. The temptation to enter it was the same as that which impels us to sin. Resist only amplifies the desire to succumb.
I did not even have time to reason my fear, I was already bent on the used kneeling. An infamous odor was emerging from the central lodge. A monstrous plague of musty and dead animal rose to my nostrils. Something or someone scratched the wire mesh that separated me from the priest's cabin. What did I have to confess? I realized that my throat was nailed, my larynx paralyzed. It was then that a pale gleam emerged on the other side of the gate. Too weak to see but clear enough to emphasize, shriveled on itself, a human form ...
Or almost...
I did not have time to question what I foresaw. The shape had jumped on the grate, and long claws grabbed me by the hair. A strident howl escaped from an atrocious mouth and I felt myself die.
At that moment when I thought I was going to disappear, caught up in the black mystery of the chapel, devoured by a savage curse, an excessive chime echoed, piercing my eardrums with cruelty. At the same time, the being had sprung from his hiding place, standing before me in a blood-red halo! The deafening bells amplified their din, the walls of the chapel began to tremble. I was down. The monster dominated me with all its fury. I saw him with terror tear down his mouth wide open on me ...
My clock radio was right for my sleep at 7:15. I woke up swimming, breathless, ravaged. I watched with horror all around me: I was in my cozy little room. My programmed coffee maker was whistling, sending out jets of boiling steam. A delicious smell of coffee filled the room. A good breakfast and this horrible nightmare would be forgotten.
I rejected the blanket at the foot of the bed. I got up and sat down to find my slippers. My foot scoured the carpet.
As usual, I could not find my slippers. Sighing, I leaned over. Where my foot had touched the floor, the carpet was torn, slashed. Four long scars.
I looked with dismay.
What I saw tore my heart: going beyond the leg of my pajamas, this hairy horror was NOT MY foot!
