Chapter 13: Gospel of a Grieving Mother

Chapter 13: Gospel of a Grieving Mother

The dorm room was a tomb, and the laptop screen was the only tombstone. Alex sat bathed in its cold, white light, the rest of the world dissolved into shadow. The silence was absolute, broken only by the frantic click of his own mouse and the shallow, ragged sound of his breathing. The blog was a stark, brutalist piece of web design, a digital fossil from an era of dial-up modems and Geocities pages. The text was plain, the layout artless. It was a raw, unfiltered feed directly from a mind that had broken apart two decades ago.

He began to read.

The first few posts were dated early 1999. They were short, fragmented, and drenched in a pain so profound it felt radioactive. Whitney Normanson wrote about her son, Daniel, who had died in his crib one starless night. Her words were the raw, flayed poetry of grief: descriptions of an empty nursery, the phantom weight of a child in her arms, the crushing silence of a house that was once filled with laughter.

May 14th, 1999 The world is the wrong color now. It's like a photograph left out in the sun. Faded. Daniel took all the colors with him.

June 2nd, 1999 I walk. I don't know where. I just walk until my legs give out. Today I ended up behind the old elementary school in Millfield. There are woods there. It was quiet. It was the first time I haven't heard the screaming in my head since he died.

Alex’s blood ran cold. The woods. Her path had crossed with his own, twenty years before he was even aware of it. He scrolled down, his fingers trembling. The tone of the entries began to shift. The raw grief was still there, but it was being overlaid with something else. A strange, creeping sense of wonder.

July 21st, 1999 There is something in the woods. Not a thing you can see. A feeling. A cold spot that moves. At first, it frightened me. But the cold feels… clean. It’s a silence that isn't empty. It listens. I told it about Daniel. I sat on a log and I told the quiet cold about my little boy.

The entries became more frequent, more fervent. Whitney wrote of a presence, a consciousness dwelling in the deep, dark heart of the forest. She didn't give it a name at first, simply calling it "The Listener" or "The Presence." Then, she started calling it a Saint. The Saint of Lost Things. The Saint of Unanswered Prayers. A forgotten god who had been waiting in the dark for a believer.

August 10th, 1999 The Saint made me a promise today. Not in words. In feelings. A pattern in the rustling leaves. It showed me that life doesn't have to end. It just needs a new home. It doesn't create. It transfers. It takes a life that is ending and pours it into a new vessel. But the vessel needs an anchor. It needs… food. It needs to be tied to the world with the love of others. It needs to eat memories to make itself real.

Alex felt a wave of nausea. This was it. The operating system of the horror. It wasn't a haunting; it was a biological, spiritual process. A form of parasitic reincarnation. Whitney’s blog was the user manual. He read on, his eyes burning from the screen's glare, unable to stop. He saw how her grief curdled into a fanatical new faith. She wasn’t just a mourner anymore; she was a herald. A disciple, preparing the way. And her Saint needed a new host.

September 5th, 1999 I saw him today. A boy. Sitting by the edge of the woods, drawing in a sketchbook. So pale. So thin. He had a little cap on to hide his head. I saw the shadow on him. The same one that came for my Daniel. This one was slow, though. It was eating him from the inside out. But his light… it was so bright. A perfect candle, sputtering in the wind.

Alex stopped breathing. He knew who it was. The description, the sketchbook, the location—it was a memory ripped from his own mind. He could picture it perfectly: Leo, tired from a round of chemo, sitting in the autumn sun, drawing one of his strange, macabre little flipbooks while a ten-year-old Alex skipped stones at the pond nearby.

October 16th, 1999 His name is Leo. I spoke to him. He is so afraid. Not of the pain. Of the ending. Of the nothingness. He doesn’t want to go. He told me about his art, about the stories he wants to tell. He told me about his brother, Alex. How he doesn’t want to leave his brother all alone.

The use of his own name was a punch to the gut. This wasn't an abstract horror story anymore. This was his family’s autopsy report. The next post was the last one. It was longer, written with a chilling, triumphant clarity.

November 12th, 1999 The pact is made. The Saint is pleased. Leo is so brave. He understands. I explained the price. I told him the Saint needed a vessel, and that the vessel would need to be rebuilt from the memories of those who loved him most. That his old life would become the fuel for his new one. He looked at me, his eyes so old for a boy so young, the chemotherapy having stolen all his tears. He didn't hesitate. He said, ‘Anything. I’ll do anything. I don’t want to die.’ He took my hand and we walked into the den, where the Saint was waiting. He is not my Daniel, but he will be my salvation. A new life begins today. A new gospel. He is no longer just Leo Vance. He is the host. He is the future. He is the Saint Reborn.

The page ended. There were no more posts.

Alex leaned back in his chair, a profound, soul-crushing cold seeping into his bones. The entire narrative of his life had just been violently rewritten. Leo wasn't just a victim. He wasn’t a puppet whose image had been stolen by some ancient evil.

He was a volunteer. A willing partner.

A terrified, dying 14-year-old boy who had been offered a deal with the devil in the woods and had shaken the devil’s hand without a moment's hesitation. The years of grief, the idealized memory of his brave, artistic little brother fighting a noble battle—it all collapsed into ash. The photos in the den marked with ‘INRI’ weren't a mockery. They were a coronation. The picture of Leo with Whitney, taken years after his death, was not a forgery. It was a victory portrait.

His brother hadn't been taken from him. His brother had chosen to leave, trading his family’s love and memories for a cursed and monstrous form of immortality. The pain in Alex’s chest was a new and complex agony. It was grief, yes, but now it was twisted with the sharp, bitter sting of betrayal. He hadn’t been fighting to avenge his brother. He had been fighting his brother all along.