Jesse Bullington - The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

Of course it works that way! Who’s the priest here? Thank you, Hegel. But you know, after that first kiss we shared this has never tasted as sweet as it once did, and never has filled me with that old joy; only, when I have enough, a blissful absentmindedness.

Yes. We spent days if not weeks there, laboring with all our skill to cope with our grief and our strange new situation. But before I could join us in marriage she had me be her confessor, convinced without immediate absolution she would be forever damned.

That wicked Bird Doctor had taken a strong interest in poor, poor Elise, confirming my suspicions that beneath his avian mantle lurked a decidedly human pair of eyes. But he was more than human both in body and spirit, for before traveling to transmit his ruin he had studied the evil arts. A diabolist of self-professed prowess, he had described in gruesome detail to her how he had used the blood of babes and the fur of rats to summon up an entity from the pit, a demon straight from the old times of darkness and devilry. He welcomed this fiend into his own body and became a demoniac, and it possessed first his bilious humours, growing and nursing and encouraging him in his evil ways. And now he spread plague and ruin and reveled in it, masquerading as the cure for the very malignancy he carried. These and worse secrets he called to her through her bolted door, telling her as soon as the rest rotted alive he would take her as his own and let a similar demon into her virgin body.

My miserable Elise cried and cried, but sometime before dawn her tears dried and we completed a far more pleasant ceremony, with only the flimsy walls and the Virgin witnessing our marriage. Then such heavenly pleasure, and I do not use the word heavenly lightly, I mean-I’m sorry, Hegel, I did not realize such matters would offend. Oh, I see it on your face, no need to protest, I was being most crass, my apologies to both of you and the Lord and both Her and her.

I knew the Lord approved of our union, for I felt Him with me as strong as ever, but I worried about my brethren down below. So when our food ran out, but not our drink, for in that blessed time I drank no more than an old farmwife, I insisted we visit the monastery before traveling south to live our lives together in earnest. Elise pleaded with me not to go but I insisted, guilt at deserting my brotherhood when they most needed me overpowering my desire to carry my bride to safety. I cursed myself for not going to warn the abbot of the Bird Doctor’s true identity that first morning as a spouse, regardless of what he might think of me for casting off of my habit.

In many places the pest claimed only a few or at least spared a handful, but in that blasted valley none still lived. The abbey reared up in the twilight, an accusatory finger beckoning me back into the fold. Hand in hand we went inside through the same back door I had sneaked out through, and saw no lights lit for Vespers, the bell tower dark and silent as if it were a league beneath the ocean.

I built a bonfire in the garden to warm my bride and summon any who lived. They were all dead. Elise stayed by the fire but I ran through every hall, opened every door, only to find them piled in the chapel, the stench unbearable, unbelievable. I will not repeat the horrors I witnessed, the blasphemies marking every surface, written in odious-Yes? Sure enough, Manfried, that is further proof that we fought the same evil! No let me fin-Sorry, I get, I get, oh Hell…

Yes please. As I say, it doesn’t help like it used to. But it helps. Better, better.

Elise is screaming in the garden, and I run to her, and I see, I see, that filthy, oh Christ, his mask is off and he’s got his decaying face pressed to hers, the mask is at his feet and his skin is falling off. I beat him with my walking stick, I hit, I hit, and he fell apart like a rotten roast, chunks of meat and bone and he just fell apart but it was too late. I saw it enter her, oh Hell, I see, I see…

How long have I-Never mind, I’d rather not-Yes, very much so. Better, better. Benedictines, definitely. More? Ugh. First a touch more of this, if it’s all the same.

It had her. That demon had her, and only her eyes were her own, and it told me with her unforgettable voice what it would have her do, and I could not move, I was paralyzed with grief. And it laughed with her laugh, and told me all was my fault for abandoning my brothers and then leading her back to it. It thanked me with her angelic voice! Then it told me if I would give my soul and my flesh it would leave her with no harm done to her spirit or body, if only I would let it inside me. It said a monk would be good sport!

In blackest suffering only His Light penetrates, and it found me then, moments before the demon surely would have had me, and by my own volition. I adored her that much, Grossbarts, that had I, I would, I, I-

I did not. Instead, He inspired me. A demon that demands I offer my soul before taking my body is a demon which cannot take my soul unless it is given, regardless of what vengeance it wreaks upon my corporeal self! And if a fallen monk is still thus protected, what of an unblemished, edelweiss-pure soul such as Elise’s? I began to laugh and it strode closer in her flesh, eager to hear my answer, sure that madness had convinced me. Instead I swung my cane and knocked them into the fire and it pulled me in after, and if I wore a hairshirt then as I do now then we both would be lost.

I managed to douse myself in the snow, although my chest and belly are forever scarred from the blaze. She and it screamed in concert, but in her boiling eyes I still saw nothing but love through the pain. They ran toward the same drift as I but I mercilessly beat them back with my cane, and when she went silent and its blackening shadow tried to slip out I burst its skin with my smoldering cane, and heard it shriek my name as it seemingly expired.

Thank you, very kind. Actually, this one is about empty, do you-Excellent, thank you, thank you.

No. No, oh, but were it thus! What I took to be a death rattle was instead a cry of triumph, for behind me a traveler on horseback had ridden into the courtyard. Even as he retched atop his steed from the noxious mist billowing off her melting corpse the faintest, deflating visage of the thing shot toward me but balked at my flaming stick and instead fell upon this new arrival.

Was he an emissary from a nearby town or brother monastery or a soldier returning from a campaign or a merchant bringing alms? I know not, and I never even saw his face, but that awful night I heard him gag and scream as it slipped inside him, his horse galloping away of its own accord with the unfortunate rider astride it. I knew it had escaped me, but I also knew His Purifying Flame could be its undoing if only there were not other vulnerable victims to be had. Why did it not simply enter my body? Was it my cane which had caught fire and barred its way, or my deep faith that it could not harm me? Had I some immunity of a physical nature to its loathsome pox? I know little more now than I did then, except that my life has revolved around ferreting out that demon and its vile kin wherever they spread their pest.

What’s that? Of course, of course. I re-donned my habit then and there and took the vows which I had so eagerly shirked before, again He my only witness, and the only witness that matters. Unlike in my youth, these vows were meant with every fiber of my soul, I wept and wept, my tears sizzling on her smoking remains, and swore I would earn my place by her side as well as Hers in the eternal. I knew He wanted me to do more than even my order would allow, which is why I have become a priest instead of a simple brother. I have spent every moment from that until this searching, searching, for any clue at all! These last few years have actually been more fruitful if more perilous, for instances of the pest are far less common, guiding me ever closer to the victory which it seems you have taken from me. Better, though, for if I had been there only He knows what jeopardy I might have put my soul into, so deeply did I seek vengeance. And there were others between it and me, lesser powers, furry worms hiding inside the demoniacs, and these I ruthlessly suppressed and drove back, but always that one, that powerful malignancy, who prefers to receive rather than steal his steeds, meaning the man harboring it who I pursued through this range was either necromancer or diabolist, warlock or murderer. At the least a heretic, at the very least.