Account 13: Restoration

Background information

• Name: Martin Flint
• Pronouns: He/him
  
• Date: May 2, 2020
  
• Occupation: Construction worker
  
• City of residence: Atkins, Michigan
• Date(s) of account: December 20, 2019
  
• Subject of account: The restoration of the Pierre Museum of Art
  

Account

My name's Martin Flint. I'm a construction worker from here in Atkins. See, I worked on one of the buildings that got struck by lightning back in September 2019, and the other day, a friend of mine told me about the message you got from someone else whose restaurant was destroyed.

That September was a hard time for everyone, of course, but it gave me and my friends a lot to do. Among other things, the Pierre Museum of Art- which I see you've already gotten a message about as well- was destroyed, and I was one of the people who worked on restoring it.

There's not a lot to talk about with the restoration itself. We waited a few weeks, maybe a month, for the museum staff to recover anything they could, and then we got to work: laid bricks, put in doors, pretty standard stuff.

It broke my heart knowing how much got destroyed in the storm, it really did. I may not have the look of someone who enjoys going to art museums, but I like to educate myself when I can make time for it, and that museum's been free to visit since the first time my dad took me there when I was 4 years old.

I'm getting off-topic. Point is, every day from September to December, I worked on restoring the Pierre Museum of Art- weekends excluded, of course. We started with the lobby, but that was pretty quick, so soon enough, we moved onto restoring the area that would house the main attraction. Naturally, that meant Pierre's sculptures, as well as the few paintings that could still be displayed.

Given how widespread the damage was throughout Atkins after the storms hit, the company couldn't spare a lot of workers for the Pierre Museum of Art. What that means is that most days, it was just me and a few of the other guys working there. That was the case on the night of December 20.

See, here's the thing. Something really strange happened that night.

It was cold. I mean, of course it was, it was the middle of December and the building we were standing in was half-finished. But something about it was different. I really don't know how to explain it- the cold was just different. It was definitely worse than usual, even with the coat I was wearing. I could tell everyone else there could feel it too.

A friend of mine, Jack Arden, kept trying to talk to me about who-knows-what, but he could barely say a word with how bad he was shivering. Eventually he gave up and took out a notepad, wrote something on it, and handed it over to me. It said something like "want me to go get some food?" or something like that. I just nodded, so he took it from me headed outside, leaving me to work alone in the museum.

At some point, I realized that I hadn't heard the sound of Jack's car starting up outside.

He never bothered parking in the lot, just drove right up to the section of the museum we were working on, so I should've heard it. I turned around and walked to the section of wall where Jack's car should've been. I couldn't see it, so I figured I must've just tuned out the noise of his car driving off. I mean, I can get pretty concentrated when I'm working on a job, if I may say so myself. It wasn't all that unlikely.

Still, Jack wasn't there. He wasn't there even though I knew, as much as I tried to convince myself that I had forgotten or simply not noticed, that his car had never left.

I took a slow breath in and began working again. But I could hear something coming from the back of the exhibit. It was quiet at first, but the louder it got, the more certain I felt that it was church music. Well, not church music exactly- a choir. I turned around and held my flashlight steady, but I didn't see anyone there, or anything else that explained it.

As I looked, I got this really weird feeling. It was like someone or something was looking back.

I breathed in and turned around. I started to work. But I couldn't stop that feeling that something was staring at me, and after a while, I finally turned back.

There was a statue standing there. The Seer in Stone, by Charles Pierre.

I shivered, from cold just as much as fear. See, this statue had been destroyed in the lightning strike that had burned down the museum. It was the only statue of Pierre's that hadn't made it, because a bolt of lightning had struck it directly, shattering it to pieces.

So why was it standing thirty feet in front of me?

The right arm of the stone monk should have been placed in front of his hooded face, palm facing outwards. But instead it was reaching towards me, like it was beckoning to me. I took a long breath in and backed away, but it felt like something was holding me there, forcing me to stare at him.

I thought I heard someone call my name. I turned around, thinking Jack must've come back with food, but he wasn't there. That was when I realized it wasn't Jack who had called my name.

I didn't want to look back at the statue, but that force was pulling on me, making my head turn around.

The monk's pose had changed. His hands were placed on his hood, and I swear I saw him start to pull it back as the invisible strings let me go and I fell onto the floor.

When I got up again, the monk was gone. I started to leave the building, but as I headed out the door, I saw Jack's car pulling up outside.

Jack could tell something was up with me, but I didn't care. I was just glad that someone else was there and the statue was gone.

But sometimes, when I'm alone and everything else is silent, I think I can hear a choir singing, and I get the feeling someone is staring at me.

Analysis

Another account that mentions Charles Pierre and his Seer in Stone. One that reads very similarly to the first, at that. I'd like to think that Flint simply read the account of Diane Richter and decided to copy it. Something tells me I'm being too optimistic, but that's only a hunch, and one I very much hope is wrong.