Michael Rowe - Enter, Night

In my hubris and vanity, I half-expected to hear a sound, perhaps a scream from beyond the shadow of the Valley, or the trumpets of angels and the beating of their wings as they celebrated my triumph over the forces of Darkness. But there was nothing save the sound of the wind high in the trees that danced in the moonlight.

Using the shovel, I scooped the dreadful mix of bones and ash into my bag. I lit the second torch by the fire of the one wedged between the boulders and by its light I made my way to the mouth of that abhorrent place, carrying my ghastly burden in my other hand. To say that the blackness of the cave was forbidding by daylight is to render the description of it at night, by torchlight, almost beyond possibility.

Deeper and deeper into the cavern’s depths I went, the aureole of torchlight illuminating only the area immediately around it. The silence was the silence of the grave. No sound broke that silence; no sounds save for that of my feet on the rock and, from far away in its recesses, the steady drip of water on stone. The weight of the bag seemed to grow heavier with every step I took into that obsidian blackness.

And then, suddenly, there was a sound. I stopped in my tracks, straining to identify what I heard, or what I only thought I’d heard. My torch sputtered and for one terrible moment, the fire burned low as though some wind had blown it out.

In that moment, as the darkness swam towards me, I heard the sound again. It was the sound of breathing-not my own, but coming from somewhere in the lightless recesses of the cave. And then I felt the horrible dead heft of the bag twitch against my leg as though there were something inside it, trapped, but still alive.

I screamed and dropped the bag on the floor of the cavern. Wildly I swung the dying torch in front of me. The low-burning flame revealed only the walls of the cave, appearing and vanishing like a chimera with every sweep of the torch. And the sound of breathing was no more, if indeed it had ever been.

I brought the torch, which again blazed to life, close to the bag containing the bones of Father de Céligny and bent down to examine it. The sweat soaked my hair and ran down into my eyes, but when I wiped it away with the back of my hand, and squinted to see, the bag was where I had dropped it, and it was still, unmoving.

Had I imagined it? Had the nightmare sensation of carrying a trapped animal that had been merely stunned, but was waking, been nothing more than a phantasm born of my terror? I had no answer but this: that the bag was not moving and my torch would not burn forever. I had to do what I had to do; I had to hide the remains of this monster where they would never be found, where no human hands would soil themselves with the contagion it represented. I crossed myself and pushed farther into the cave.

I have only a blind man’s reckoning of how much farther and deeper into the cave, and then underground, I went before I found what I was looking for-a natural recession in the rock, oblong and shaped like an sarcophagus, surely carved by centuries of natural erosion, a natural coffin for my most unnatural and unwholesome freight. Surely here, in the wildest, darkest part of this wild, dark wilderness, the bones of this monster would remain unmolested till the end of time.

I placed the bag into the recession and covered it with the weight of some of the large stones and boulders I found scattered about. The work was arduous and the rocks were heavy, and by the time I placed the last one on top of the makeshift grave, my hands were bleeding with my exertion. I wiped my hands on the robe, leaving the traces of my stigmata on the coarse fabric.

Then, taking up the torch again, I turned and began to retrace my steps through the blackness. After an eternity, I came to the mouth of the cave. I wept joy when I saw the glimmer of the first torch, the one I’d left outside the cave, wedged between the rocks.

From the position of the moon in the sky, I ascertained that I had been about my mission for the better part of the night, though dawn was still a few hours away. I took up the shovel and began to dig. By the time I had dug a grave deep enough to bury Askuwheteau, the sky had begun to lighten in the distance, pale violet streaks, and dark blue lifting from the blackness like celestial foam on a wave.

I laid his body reverently into the grave. I was surprised to find that I still had tears in me left to shed, but I did, and I shed them there as I covered his body with the dark, flinty soil upon which he had so bravely died. I bowed my head and prayed for the progression of his immortal soul on its journey towards the Light of God.

And then, from overhead, came a sound like the flapping of giant sails in a strong wind.

In the light of the torch, the creature dropped from some unknown height. As it landed, crouching like an animal about to spring, I had a brief, vivid impression of giant, unfolded wings, but the wings seemed to melt away, leaving in their place a pair of thick, muscled arms. Its head was bowed, and long dark hair streamed from its scalp like a black halo.

When it stood, I saw that it was of vast height, taller than any Savage I had encountered, but Savage it was-or, rather, Savage it had been in its original, God-ordained life. Now, reborn, its eyes burned with that familiar crimson fire and its teeth were deadly and terrible. From that mouth issued a high, shrill whistle that was human in neither pitch nor form, but somehow communicated a fierce, inhuman hunger that would, I realized, brook no denial.

Instinctively, I lifted my torch in my own defence as it leaped. The effect upon the creature was instantaneous. To my wonder, the thing retreated, as though terrified by the fire. Emboldened, I advanced on it with the torch. It screamed in rage and continued to recoil. I expected any moment for it to shift its shape, as I had seen these things do. I knew that if it did transform itself, it would effect an escape.

The thought filled me with terrible, righteous rage. In that moment, I saw it as the incarnation of all the pain and fear I had encountered since arriving in that Godforsaken spot. Now, worse still, it had even profaned the site of Askuwheteau’s grave. With an oath, I shoved my torch in the creature’s face.

Its hair exploded into flame. Shrieking in agony, the thing clawed at its face and hair attempting to put out the fire. Alas, for the creature, the fire only burned brighter and hotter, spreading to its face and arms by some supernatural providence.

The demon flung out its arms in an aspect of crucifixion, and before my eyes its body appeared to shimmer, dwindling and yet appearing to stretch, but becoming smaller. The arms elongated, becoming as the wings of a bird, or an enormous bat, beating furiously as it rose into the night, still burning, still transforming as it took flight into the darkness like a fireball streaking towards the village of St. Barthélemy. My eyes followed its upward trajectory for a few seconds, and then watched in awe as it crashed to the earth. Its screams as it fell to its death-or what I prayed was its death-were the pitiable lamentations of a damned thing.

But by then, my only emotion was joy, and I delighted in the foul creature’s death, a death I prayed had been agonizing beyond endurance.

And then, like a benediction, the air was full of snow, falling in heavy flakes as pure white as the wings of any angel, and in the red light of dawn’s advance in the east, winter was upon me with a hunter’s killing stealth.

On the edge of the village, the spectral shapes formed themselves out of the falling snow, moving wraithlike towards me. Exhausted, starving, blind with sweat, drenched in dried blood, I fell to my knees and accepted my death, for I was beyond fighting further, beyond the ability to endure any more of these horrors. When they reached for me, I closed my eyes and commended my spirit into the hands of Almighty God, and waited for the end.