Gossip on the Church Steps

I loved the story, but I did think it was lacking a little bit of emotion. But overall it was great. I think some parts could have been more scary. Some of the lines where genious.

8.8 out of 10



Hope that helped. I'm not much of a reviewer.

Suzanne wrote:Mr. and Mrs. Belmer lived in a small house on the outskirts of our town for over thirty years and no one had seen them come out of the house except to go to church on Sundays. #FF0000 ">That's one long sentence. oo" Maybe chop it down a bit? Were it not for that, we might have considered the house inhabited by ghosts and dust alone and torn it down earlier. #FF0000 ">The succession of ands makes it kind of choppy.But when we saw them amble through our side of town to get to the church, we were reminded that they lived in that house and they were real human beings like the rest of us.

The last we saw them, they came through town to go to church on Sunday like usual, though this time they went in caskets carried by the priest and other church men instead of on their own feet. #FF0000 ">Tis sentence has won my approval.[ I didn’t suppose to know how they died but when rumors heat up in this town, it’s hard to keep the water from boiling over. #FF0000 ">The tenses of the verbs in this sentence shift. :S I'm not sure if it's right or wrong, though. oO It makes sense, but at the same time, it doesn't. Louis said they’d killed each other in a fight while Amis was sure they’d died of old age or heat or both. Garth told stories about the coyotes tearing their bodies into bloody chunks while they were on an evening stroll in the fields. Jenny insisted that Mrs. Belmer had made a pact with the devil and they only went to church every Sunday to pray for forgiveness, but the devil still ate their souls like soup on a snowy day. Licked his lips of them, she said.

When the priest who buried them started telling stories about their never-described-yet-looked-down-upon #FF0000 ">I added dashes in there because I think there ought to be dashes. behavior which led to their demise, even those of us who never set foot in the church started thinking the rumors had gone too far. Not to mention all that gossip made us more curious than satisfied. So when the sheriff and his cronies went to dig through the old Belmer estate, no one was surprised.

That is, no one was surprised until they’d gotten inside it. Right out of Sheriff O’Connor’s gaping mouth: “It smelled so bad of shit you could taste it.” Him being the kind of man to never use foul words for fear of God cutting off his tongue, we could trust the house surely did smell of shit. “A wet dog rolling in rotten flesh and shit,” his deputy amended. #FF0000 ">I love that paragraph. It's so...I don't know. oo"

No one could understand how a house could reek so strong yet never be noticed ‘til one stepped inside it, but they’d forgotten that entirely once they found the source of the stench. Down the creaking basement steps and through the dust and cobwebs, in the farthest corner of that cold, condemned place was something none of our gossips could have thought up on their own.

Five, six, maybe ten bodies laid down and lined up with their heads against the wall, stomachs cut open like pigs at the butchers and all their guts missing. #FF0000 ">OO I didn't expect that at all. The number of bodies could never accurately be accounted for first because none of the men, previously considering themselves “tough as nails”, could stand to look at the scene long enough to count them and second because no one from the town had ever gone missing. Whoever was left to spoil in the Belmer’s basement, they sure as hell weren’t from our town.

“Teeth marks on the flesh,” Sheriff O’Conner mumbled through heavy breaths. “Missing insides. Bloody…” whatever he planned to say next faded out only to be followed by a growling noise and Sheriff turning away to regurgitate his lunch. #FF0000 ">I think it could have been a lot more scary though. At the moment I'm pretty stunned, but the impact isn't as strong as I think it could be.

The next day men with axes weakened the support beams of the house and burned it down. Some of us stood outside to watch it collapse and decay while others, mostly those who had gone into the house themselves, kept inside #FF0000 ">At first I understood this to mean that the people who'd already been in the house stayed inside the house as it burned down. Took me a second or so to really grasp it. Maybe rephrase it a bit?. The Sheriff especially wasn’t seen for several days. He didn’t come out of his home until the meeting at the church, where all gossip about the Belmers was laid to rest.

“Not another word,” the priest started, “about this couple in our town.”

The sheriff took over for him quickly; he knew most of us wouldn’t listen to the priest no matter what he said. “There’s nothing left of this house, this couple, but gossip. I’ve had many knock on my door to ask if the town is safe from the skin eaters, as some have started calling them. There’s nothing left, I tell you.” The sheriff slammed his fist into the podium. Perhaps he hoped that the thunder of his fist would make his words stronger than he ever could, having lost all his physical and emotional strength after his venture into the house.

So no one spoke again of Mr. and Mrs. Belmer or the house on the outskirts of town or the skin eaters. No one asked any questions about the old couple’s death or the stench or the bodies in the basement. Sheriff O’Conner retired a week after the meeting at the church and moved away. The other men who had gone into the house left soon thereafter.

Most of this town forgot any of it had happened the moment it disappeared from gossip. Stories of coyote attacks, prostitution in the next town over, and the sins of a neighbor quickly took its place.

Until we found another body. #FF0000 ">O.O

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Look, a short story from me! It's like an extinct animal. Anyhow, I wrote this for Adam's (Alteran's) contest. It's inspired by American Gothic by Grant Wood.