Chris Holm - The Big Reap

“I know, because I’ve seen magic of this kind before. I wish to hell I hadn’t, but I have.”

The priest grinned mirthlessly. “I’d prefer you direct your wishes toward a higher power than that, my newfound friend.”

“Believe me, Padre, your higher power’s got fuck all to do with what’s up that mountain, and He sure as shit didn’t send me.”

“Don’t be so sure,” he said. “The Lord–”

“Works in mysterious ways?” I ventured.

“Has a plan for all of us, I was going to say.”

“Not for me. Not anymore.”

“So I’m to believe you’re some servant of darkness, then? Because if I may be so bold, you come across as anything but.”

I sighed. “You want the truth? Half the time I don’t know what I am, or who I serve. I’d like to think I try to do what’s right. But sometimes, what’s right is hard to figure. Sometimes, I’m too damned tired to even think about it, so instead I do what’s easy, and then convince myself it’s right.”

This time, the priest’s smile was better humored. “Your words aside,” he said, “you’re not a man who gives an impression of ever doing what’s easy.”

“Maybe not,” I said, “but it ain’t for lack of trying. Turns out, I’m just not smart enough to figure out what easy looks like. Which I suppose is just as well, since if I plan on breaching the castle, it don’t sound like there’s much easy to be had. Last one of these barriers I saw I only passed through alive on account of I was invited; I got no goddamn idea how I’m gonna get through this one.”

“Perhaps you put too little faith in the Lord,” he said, eyes twinkling with sudden mischief, “or, at the very least, in His humble servants.”

“Come again?”

“When I said you can’t just walk up to the castle ruins, I meant it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get you inside.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Hold on,” he said. “I’ll show you.” He retreated to the blond wood box that was the half-constructed altar and rooted around beneath a while. Apparently, the side facing away from the pews was open, and perhaps shelved as well. “Not much storage in an old church like this,” said Yefi by way of explanation. “No basement, nor outbuilding, and the small rectory that once stood beside it burned down some hundred years ago. I’ve had to make do stuffing things wherever I can manage. Ah! Here it is.”

He raised his hand in triumph. In it was a large leather-bound tome that I took at first to be a Bible, its cover dyed black and tooled into an elaborate filigree. A tattered ribbon bookmark dangled from the top of its spine and fluttered behind it like a train as he set the book down atop the altar. The spine crackled as he opened it, as if the book itself was protesting the intrusion on its sleep of ages. The pages were thick, yellowed, and stiff from years. From them emanated a scent like spiced rum. It reminded me of my time spent digging through the Vatican’s archives. It was the smell of paper’s sweet decay.

“I found this under the floorboards in the church’s entryway, beneath the carved sigil of the carpenter who designed and built the place,” he said. “A monk named Father Grigori.”

My pulse quickened. The young priest now had my full attention. “What is it?” I asked.

“A sketch book,” he replied. “It’s been of no small use to me, as much of it is taken up by detailed plans of the very church in which we stand. His woodworking technique is unparalleled, and his diagrams have proved invaluable in duplicating it, even if I do fail to grasp the more esoteric aspects of what he was trying to accomplish.”

“Such as?”

“His notes indicate he was very specific about the placement of this church, about the species of timber that should be used in its construction, about the patterns of the inlays, and even the very direction of the grain for every plank. There are notes that indicate he believed his design would result in a building outside the view of the Pretender to the Throne and the Adversary both. The Adversary, clearly, represents Lucifer, the Morning Star. The Pretender to the Throne, given the assumed date of construction of the church, I take to mean the conquering Ottomans, or perhaps the Habsburg monarchy, who also occupied these lands for quite some time.”

Yefi wasn’t wrong about the Adversary, but his interpretation of the Pretender was miles off. The Pretender to the Throne was the very God to which Yefi pledged his life and swore his fealty.

How’d I know? Easy. Charon told me.

“Your God is nothing more than a seditionist,” he’d said. “A pretender to the throne. For eons before him I ruled, and my dominion was Chaos, the Great Nothing from which this filthy rock you call a home emerged.”

Not that I was about to correct Yefi’s fallacious interpretation. He was a man of faith, after all, and even faith misplaced is worth something. Far be it from me to disabuse him of it.

Or, for that matter, to inform him the very Grigori he held in such regard and the beast I’d come to slay were one and the same.

“This is all very interesting, Padre, but how’s it gonna help me get into the castle?”

“Because church plans are not all Grigori sketched. He was quite the polymath, it seems. The book is filled with notes and sketches of local life — architecture, the annual harvest celebration, flora and fauna of the surrounding area, even a number of quite striking nudes of local townswomen, each annotated by name. The latter, I would have assumed, would have caused quite a stir, but perhaps the people of his time were more enlightened than we sometimes give them credit for. After all, he had taken a vow of celibacy, and all his nudes are religious in their iconography.”

“And you think some antique nudie-pics are gonna somehow help me sneak in?”

“No,” he said, jabbing a finger at the page to which he’d just turned, and spinning the book to face me. “I think this is.”

I eyed the page in question. On it was a sketch of what appeared to be a heavy iron door set into a wall of natural rock. In the foreground were a pair of crosses maybe three feet high, rendered ghostly by the fact the artist had chosen to draw them transparent so as to not obscure the door beyond. Beside the sketch was a short block of precise script that spoke of years of practice with a quill.

“My grasp of Middle Ages Romanian is pretty nonexistent, Padre. What’s this text say?”

“It says, in part, ‘Hidden entrance to the castle keep.’ Apparently, it was intended as a covert supply line should the castle ever find itself under siege, and an escape route from the keep down to the valley floor if necessary. His notes claim it accesses a cave system that leads directly to the main residence.”

A smile bloomed across my face. “Does it now?”

Father Yefi responded in kind with a smile of his own. “It does, indeed.”

“And do you know where this door is located?”

We breached the door at midnight.

Me, I would’ve preferred to go in, guns blazing, by the light of day. But guns don’t seem to be worth much against the Brethren, and anyways, Yefi insisted the cover of darkness was essential. The residents of Nevazut are quite suspicious of outsiders, he reminded me, and swore fealty to the castle on the hill. As he explained, local folk wisdom dictated that the castle and its rumored occupant were not responsible for the sorry state of Nevazut’s women — that was due to a curse of nebulous origin and dubious design, passed down through the centuries — but were, in fact, all that kept them aboveground. The stories passed down by the elders suggested the effect of the castle’s occupant was not life- draining , but life- sustaining , that without their unseen lord’s influence upon them (and his rumored midnight ministrations) the women would have died long ago. And what’s more, these people attributed every crop in this verdant valley, every child born, and every revolution this tiny hamlet managed to weather unnoticed, to that selfsame lord. So while the lot of them were frightened enough of their strange benefactor and his abode to steer well clear of the castle or its grounds, and none but the most fevered and delirious (and, coincidentally or not, the most beautiful) of the townswomen would even claim to’ve laid eyes (or lips, or other things) on its rumored inhabitant, they would no doubt take up arms against anyone who dared challenge him. And since the doorway stood at the rear of the small cemetery behind the church — within sight of the main square — that meant sneaking into the big, scary castle in pitch fucking darkness, or what would have been were it not for the moon hanging full and bright overhead, its face partly obscured by the towers and crenellations of the castle above: a bauble of beckoning silver; egging me on, daring me to scale the mountain, slay the dragon, and reap my knightly reward.