Michael Rowe - Enter, Night

And then, out of that same blackness, came the sound of slow and measured footsteps. My heart leaped in my chest, for the cadence of those footsteps was human. I squinted to see. Again, that flicker of firelike crimson in the gloom, but it vanished as quickly as it had appeared. As I stared, a figure materialized from the shadows. It was a man wearing a black cassock tied with a cincture. And-O! The joy! I saw that his head was crowned with the flat black hat of our Jesuit priests.

I called out, “Father de Céligny, is that you?” The figure stood motionless in the shadows, not speaking. I called out again, “Father, show yourself. It is I, Father Nyon. You are safe, I mean you no harm!” They were odd phrases to have come to me, for why would Father de Céligny ever have reason to fear me? And yet the figure held back with an aspect that I can only describe as fearful. Again, I called out softly,

“Father?”

And then, he stepped towards me, and I saw that it was indeed the white-haired man I had seen the previous night, not a dream, not a revenant, but real as I was, made of flesh and blood. The joy I felt at that moment was the first joy I had felt in many, many months and the loneliness I felt in that desolate place left me at once. Finally, I thought, whatever fate I was to meet in that Land, I would not have to face it alone. And perhaps we would indeed escape together, Father de Céligny and I! Where yesterday there had been no possible hope for the future, there was now at the very least a glimmer of it.

In his face I saw the aristocratic lineage to which Father de Varennes had alluded in Trois-Rivières. It was the face of a descendant of nobility, the face of a refined man who belonged in the library of a fine country chateau, or presiding over Mass in one of the grand cathedrals of Europe. It was the face of a grand seigneur from an oil portrait of ancient riches. The nose was high-bridged and aquiline, the lips thin and red. His face held the pallor of long illness, and yet it was the face of a virile and healthy man. I opened my arms to embrace him with all the joy in my heart, but his voice stopped me where I stood.

“Father Nyon,” he said. “Come no closer. There is no time to spare! We must quickly seek shelter. There is prodigious danger abroad tonight; we are not safe here in this village. Follow me.”

With that, he began walking away towards the Jesuit house, beckoning me to follow him without turning back. I did follow him, struggling to keep up with him, for his own progress through the village was swift and sure, though the darkness was, to me, impenetrable.

As I think of it now, though I know Your Reverence will doubtless believe the fever guides my pen, he moved like smoke along the ground, appearing even to float. Which is to say, in one instant be appeared to be directly in front of me, then in another he was to the left of the path, then again, to the right of the path. I recalled the movements of the apparitions I had beheld earlier, flickering like wraiths throughout the village, but vanishing when my eyes strained to follow them. While Father de Céligny was plainly visible, the trajectory of his movements seemed likewise variable.

He stopped at the entrance to the Jesuit house and turned slowly towards me. Again, I was assailed by a sense of being on the edge of a precipice and looking abruptly down, for the tableau itself, Father de Céligny, the house, even the moonlight, seemed to sway before my eyes. I reached out by instinct to right myself, but my hands found no purchase and I stumbled and fell. He made no move to help me.

Though I would be hard pressed to explain how I knew, he appeared to take some private amusement from my discomfiture, but hiding it with the sort of slyness I would expect from the Savages, but not a white man, let alone a priest. But in his face, there was nothing to raise an alarum.

His voice was grave when he spoke. “Father Nyon, you must remove your crucifix. Hang it here,” he said pointing to a spot over the window adjacent to the doorway. “I will reveal all to you once we are inside. But you must leave the crucifix outside, for your protection and mine. There are forces afoot tonight that are beyond our power to fight, but which may be kept at bay through the agency of the Blessed Virgin and her Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. The cross will protect us.” Again, he pointed at the spot, looking away from it as he pointed. “Hang it there. It will secure our safety from what is afoot in this village.”

Of course I obeyed immediately, for who was I to doubt the older priest?

I was a very young man, and it seemed clear that Father de Céligny had some greater knowledge of what had brought the mission to doom, and he had obviously survived the onslaught of those forces, whatever they might be. I very much feared I might not survive them without his help, guidance, and protection, for I was lost in an ocean of unanswered questions and half-formed terrors.

Too, I was so enthralled by the notion of being no longer alone in this devilish place, where day and night held equal menace, I would have done anything to keep him close. I removed the crucifix and hung it where he indicated.

Father de Céligny smiled, but it was a vulpine smile, not a reverent one as might befit a gesture involving a holy object. Again I felt the vertigo, and this time a prickle of fear accompanied it, a primal instinct impelling flight, as one might feel upon discovering a snake. And then he slipped like smoke across the threshold into the house.

The building was cold and the fire had almost burned out. I shivered. I took a stick from the small pile I had assembled and stirred the embers. I placed the stick on the small heap of smouldering ash and watched the flickering tongues of flame shoot up from the ash to consume it. I added a few more dry sticks. The fire bloomed, beckoning shadows from all corners.

Across the room, Father de Céligny made no move to step towards the fire; rather, he stood against the farthest wall of the room, save for the whiteness of his face and hair, indistinct from the darkness of the room that wrapped him like a cloak. Again, I felt that haunting sense of dislocation and vertigo.

“Father,” I said, for I could no longer abide my frenzy of terror and ignorance, “please tell me what has happened here. Where are the Indians? Why was the settlement abandoned? I was taught to look for Satan’s work only after every other possibility had been exhausted, but I confess that all possibilities have been exhausted. I am at sea.”

From the shadows, his voice came softly, more akin to a serpent’s sibilant hiss than a sequence of words spoken by a human tongue, and it appeared to issue from nowhere, yet everywhere. My senses swam, and I staggered, righting myself in time not to fall. Again, he made no move towards me to come to my aid.

“Are you cold, Father Nyon?” he said gently. “This country is very cold, is it not? Very cold indeed. Cold and wild, and very dark in the winter. Do you not find it so? Winter approaches, even now, and the hours of daylight have grown so short. Do you see how dark it has become? Can you feel the night enter?”

And indeed I did see how dark it was becoming. The room itself was growing darker. The fire seemed very far away, and the only light in the room seemed to come from his voice. I cannot better describe it than to say that his words themselves seemed to me to shimmer in the growing dark. It was as though I had stared too long at the sun and had gone blind, and the sun had grown black, searing its image behind my eyes, blotting out all else except that burning shower of falling black stars. And yet, there was no sun. There was no light.

My knees buckled, and I fell to the dirt floor.

Father de Céligny’s mocking laughter came as though from a great distance. “Poor little priest,” he said. He sounded almost regretful. “You should never have come to St. Barthélemy. You should have believed the stories you were told about what happened in this place.” I heard the rustle of his robes and the sound of his feet as he walked slowly to where I lay.