Paul Doherty - The Midnight Man

‘Monks,’ Stephen declared, getting to his feet. ‘Shapes of what once was.’

The hideous banging on the doors began again. Footsteps pounded on the stairwell. The door was tried, the latch clattering up and down; sounds at the windows made Stephen stare in horror. Dark shapes moved at the sixth window. Dust swirled down from the sill. A cold breeze smacked his face and Stephen gagged at a stench of corruption, the foulness from an open latrine. Anselm was reciting a Pater Noster. Stephen tried to join in. Candles guttered fiercely before snuffing out. The flames of the torches abruptly turned a light blue, flickered and died. Darkness filled the crypt. A hand clawed Stephen’s shoulder, pulling him back even as the clatter outside, the banging on the doors, rose to a crescendo before lapsing into silence. The crypt lay eerily still except for the soft slither of footsteps. A brick in the pillar was pulled loose, crashing to the ground. Again, silence. Stephen sensed they were not alone. Something or someone stood in the blackness before him. Anselm began the prayer of exorcism. Despite the dark he found the stoup of holy water. Anselm incensed the threatening, clawing atmosphere closing in around them. Stephen recited the responses to the prayers until the formal act of identification was reached.

‘By what name are you called?’

‘Peregrinus.’ The reply was low and throaty.

Stephen, as always, wasn’t sure if the voice was real or an echo in his own mind.

‘ Ego sum, peregrinus ,’ the voice replied in Latin. ‘I am a pilgrim.’

Stephen stepped back as a face, white and glaring, rushed through the darkness towards him. Ghosts swarmed, their voices mocking.

‘You are a wanderer — why?’ Anselm asked.

‘No rest, no peace.’ The voice was tired.

‘Where have you been?’

‘Here and there. I have met the jailers of the underworld. I have stood before its water black and bitter; around it lurk the ugly shapes of pestilence, fear, poverty, pain and death. I have sheltered under the great oak tree. I have been across the meadows of mayhem and misery where centaurs, gargoyles and harpies hunt lost souls like rabbits through the fiery grass. I have seen the dead flock and cluster, whispering like the dry murmuring of autumn leaves. I have wandered through the forest of the damned to confront the suicides. I have crossed the bridge of despair, over white-hot flame; I have glimpsed the iron towers of limbo and met the Furies who scourge the dead. I have encountered the Hydra with her yawning, poisonous mouth.’ The voice sighed and faded.

Stephen recalled how ghosts, like the living, often describe their own nightly dreams. Anselm often argued that no more truth should be attached to them than the ravings of a delirious patient.

‘Yes, yes,’ Anselm retorted, ‘but why do you not go into the light? Why dwell in darkness?’

‘Judgement.’

‘The Lord is merciful to the repentant.’

‘I cannot,’ the voice hissed. ‘I will not,’ it hurled back. ‘I cannot rest. You know the injustice.’

‘I know what?’

‘We have met before, at the other church where the injustice was done.’

Anselm tensed. ‘What other church? Saint Michael’s, Candlewick? What injustice?’

‘I cannot say,’ the voice rasped. ‘The guardians are here. You search for the treasure, like the rest?’

‘Are you Puddlicot the thief? The executed felon?’

‘The others asked the same.’

‘Which others?’

‘How can you describe a dream? Faces you see, all distorted, like gazing through running water? Give me peace; let me be buried. The sheer shame. How can I break free? Even Picard’s prayers do not help.’

‘Who is Picard? I adjure you to tell me the truth.’

‘The guardians have come, swift and deadly. You cannot see them. They are here.’ The voice crumbled into incoherent phrases, the occasional mumbled word. The clamour in the stairwell outside began again: the clatter of mailed feet followed by an incessant banging on the door, the latch rattling as if pressed by a mad man. Ice-cold draughts swept the crypt. The sound of dripping water grew as if a barrel was filling to the brim and splashing over. Spikes of fire appeared then faded. The blackness began to thin. The threat of impending danger receded. Anselm moved across to the table, searching for a tinder. After a few scrapes he forced a flame and lit the candles and cressets. The crypt flared into light. Stephen glanced fearfully at the pools of darkness. A disembodied hand appeared in one of these, long, white fingers curling as if searching for something, like the hand of a drowning man making one last desperate attempt to find something to cling on to, then it was gone.

‘Stephen, look at the walls.’

He did so. Hand prints scorched the stone, the same on the table and pillar as if some being, cloaked in fire, had crept around the crypt desperate for an opening. Stephen watched these fade even as Anselm, sitting by the table, began to slice the bread and cheese.

‘Eat, Stephen, drink.’

The novice did so though his belly rumbled. His throat felt dry, sore and sticky.

‘Is it over, Magister?’

‘It is never over, Stephen. Not until we free the nets and break the snares which keep these souls bound.’

‘The snares?’

‘Their own guilt, remorse and fear. Above all, the injustices done to them.’

‘And the guardians?’

‘Demons, Stephen, who prowl the wastelands between life and death, between heaven and hell.’

‘He talked about Saint Michael’s?’

Stephen bit into a piece of cheese and startled at the voice which bellowed: ‘We’ve shut him up, forced his mouth closed.’

Stephen dropped the cheese and whirled around in terror. Something moved in the pool of darkness. Abruptly the noise outside began again; this was repeated by the pounding on the door opening on to the steps to the crypt.

‘Enough is enough!’ Anselm sprang to his feet. ‘Why the door? I am sure it’s the door, Stephen. God knows why. Is it seen as a barrier or a representation of guilt? Why?’ Anselm opened the crypt door. He asked Stephen to bring the lantern horn and both began the arduous climb through the freezing stairwell. Every so often Anselm had to pause in a fit of coughing. They reached the wooden steps. An icy draught buffeted them. The wooden steps began to shake and, to Stephen’s horror, slightly buckle, as if some unseen power beneath was striving to break free. He clutched his lantern horn, steadying himself against the wall as Anselm prayed. The wooden steps rattled but then settled. They reached the top and opened the ancient door. Stephen was glad to be free of the crypt. He welcomed the rich night air, the comforting sight of torches flickering in their holders. Anselm, angry at what had happened, strode up and down the hollow-stone passageway, peering into the darkness before coming back to examine the door. ‘Nothing!’ Anselm exclaimed. He sat down on a stone plinth.

‘I’m satisfied about what we saw, heard and felt. I assure you Stephen, it was not of human origin.’

The physician, who stood narrating his tale fluently and lucidly, now sat down, grasped the wine jug and filled his goblet to the brim.

‘Is this a tale?’ the pardoner jibed. ‘Or the truth?’

‘What is truth?’ the physician quipped back.

‘But these voices, shapes and shades?’ The man of law spoke up.

‘My friends,’ the poor parson declared, ‘listen to my advice. If God has his contemplatives and mystics so does Satan; he can immerse them in raptures. I’ve seen Satan,’ he continued remorselessly, ‘like a deformed bird winging through my own church. Once a parishioner of mine beheaded two old beldames. She later confessed how she’d been walking in Summer Meadow when a devil appeared to her in the form of a man, garbed and cowled. He handed her a scythe so she could do his bloody deed.