Enter, Night (57 page)

The thought came to me again that I might be dreaming, for it
seemed impossible that they could survive, so lightly dressed in such
cold, or that their appearance had not wakened Askuwheteau or his men,
who could practically hear the day pass into night. But no, I pinched my
own face and knew I was awake.

And lo! I realized that the children must be from the settlement at
St. Barthélemy! If they were alive, then surely others must be also! But in
this cold, I knew they would not survive, especially the naked little boy.

Carefully, so as not to wake the others, I pushed back my blanket
and stood up. The cold struck me at once, and with terrible force. My
teeth began to clatter and my body reacted with a violent spasm of
shivering, but my only concern in that moment was for the two children.
I stepped back inside and took up the blanket that had been covering me
and wrapped it about me like a cloak. Carefully, I placed another log on
the fire. It crackled, and then slowly caught the heat from the embers.
Flames encircled it and a plume of smoke rose into the air. From one of
the packs, I took another blanket, intending to swaddle the naked little
boy with it before his poor little body froze.

I whispered to the children in my crude Ojibwa, indicating that they
should come near the fire. I sensed, rather than saw, their response, for
they stood as still as statues. And yet somehow I knew their bodies had
tensed in anticipation. I beckoned with one arm, making sure to keep
my own blanket wrapped about me for my own warmth. Still, they stood
motionless.

Then, slowly, the girl raised her own arm and beckoned to me.

The gesture was a perfect facsimile of my own, an invitation to move
away from the camp and come to where she was standing. Willingly, I
took a step towards her. She and the boy took a reactive step backwards,
farther into the trees. But at the same time, the girl beckoned me again.
This time, her brother (for that is how I had come to think of him)
gestured as well, as though imitating his sister’s invitation to
me
.

Then they took two more steps backward until they were nearly
invisible.

I called out to them again in Ojibwa as I walked into the forest. I
stared hard, straining my eyes to see where they stood. And while
I could barely make out the shape of them, I again thought I saw the
strange crimson firelight glow of their eyes winking in the blackness
like sputtering reddish candlelight. I felt my way through the trees,
occasionally colliding painfully with hard branches and stinging needles
of pine. I glanced backward and saw that I had walked a considerably
farther distance away from the camp than I had first thought. The whole
sequence of events had taken on the qualities of a nightmare. But still I
pushed through the trees in search of the naked little boy and his sister.

I heard a sigh, and then soft breathing, and I looked down. The
children were standing directly in front of me, silent and unmoving. I
reached out my hand to touch the little boy’s shoulder. His skin was
unearthly cold, and it seemed a miracle to me that he could be alive, even
given the legendary hardiness of these people.

Unfurling the blanket I carried under my arm, I draped it as best
I could around the little boy’s body and drew him to me. I felt his tiny
hand on my leg, stroking it as though to assure himself that I was there.
From the other side, I felt his sister’s hands on my other leg, her fingers
moving under the blanket, like spiders along the inside of my thigh
through my robe. When the child’s fingers caressed my manhood with
an insinuating knowledge surely beyond her years, I pulled back in shock.
I reached down roughly and pushed her fingers away.

What happened next must have occurred in a matter of seconds,
but I remember it as though it was hours instead, and it still haunts my
nightmares today.

My hand was seized in a vise-like grip. It was not the grip of a little
girl, though the fingers grasping mine gave every appearance of belonging
to a human child. I screamed in pain, for it felt as though the bones in my
hand would surely crack under the pressure. At the same moment, the
gentle caress of the little boy became a heavy, vicious clamp on my thigh.
A row of dagger-sharp fingernails ripped into the flesh of my leg and
dug deeper, securing the little boy’s grip. I screamed again, and I heard a
horrible serpentine hiss issue from the little boy’s mouth. I pushed him
away with all my might, but still he held fast. The little girl, too, refused
to relinquish her excruciating grip on my hand.

I shrieked in pain, twisted my body every way in a vain attempt to
shake them off. I lost my footing and tripped, falling to the ground with
the children still on top of me. The little boy’s teeth, impossibly long and
sharp, sank into the meat of my thigh.

I screamed out to Askuwheteau, beseeching him to come to my aid.
Behind me, I thought I heard faint shouts from the Indians, but it was
impossible to be certain in the din. The little girl’s fingers entwined in
my hair, brutally pulling my head backwards. I felt her other hand on
my chest. She ripped at the blanket, clawing it as though she sought to
shred it in order to expose the naked flesh of my chest underneath. I lay
contorted on the ground with the two child-demons writhing on top of
me, trying to push them away and calling out to God and the Indians to
help me, for in that moment the two seemed interchangeable.

And then her hand brushed against the crucifix I wore. A dazzling
flash of blue light lit up the surrounding trees, and I smelled an awful
foulness, like burning flesh.

The little Savage girl—for I could now clearly see her in the
supernatural viridian glow—leaped back into a crouching position
in front of me, snarling like some cornered, feral creature. Her mouth,
ringed with the jagged teeth of a shark, was open in a perfect oval of
agony. Peal after peal, she rent the night with her torment, flailing her
charred and smoking hand in the air as though to put out a fire. At the
sight of his sister’s injury, the little boy also relinquished his grip and
scuttled away from me in a sequence of crablike movements, taking up a
cowering position behind her. His own cries of thwarted outrage blended
with hers in an infernal cacophony such as I imagine must occur in the
very bowels of deepest Hell. She lurched forward, baring her teeth at
me and spitting like a cat, but again seemed to be stopped short by my
crucifix, the effect of which upon her was not unlike that which might
have occurred if she had hurled herself against a stone wall.

At once, I heard the thunder of many feet behind me. An arrow sang
past my ear and embedded itself in a tree, just above where the children
were crouched. The little girl glanced upwards at the arrow, then back at
me, her face full of hate.

Before my eyes, as if by a miracle, the demon-child’s body appeared
to collapse upon itself, turning to smoke that blew away into the night. I
saw that her brother, too, had similarly vanished, leaving in his wake that
curious smoke which appeared to move of its own volition into the forest.

I stared at the spot where they had been crouching mere seconds
before. For a moment, I again doubted whether or not I was dreaming,
but I could feel the blood running down my leg where the little boy had
bitten me, and I still felt the little girl’s grip burn on my throbbing wrist.
The arrow wobbled in the tree trunk as though stirred by a strong wind.
The Indians stood behind me, their terrified faces recording that they
had seen the entire hellish spectacle. This comforted me, as there was a
part of my mind that refused to register what had just occurred. But the
expression on the faces of the Savages was proof to me that I had in fact
seen the demonic spectacle, and that it had been no nightmare.

But growing in me at that moment was the surety I now held
the secret to the difference between faith and true knowledge. While
the very existence of those two devils itself was a blasphemy, it could
only be a warning from the Lord of the potent deviltry hidden in what
I thought were the harmless pagan superstitions of these poor, lost
people. Whatever witchcraft had been arrayed against me that night, I
had defeated it with the power of Jesus Christ, through the medium of
the symbol of His suffering. Triumphantly, I brandished my cross at the
Indians, exhorting them to draw close and listen.

“Behold!” I cried. “You have now witnessed with your own eyes
the miraculous banishment of demonic spirits from the forest, sent to
torment us, but who fled at the sign of God! Can you doubt, any of you, the salvation that lies in accepting Jesus Christ and becoming one with
Him? Askuwheteau? Can even you doubt? Your arrow could not hurt
them, but the cross of Christ burned them. Will you now accept to be
baptized before we forge ahead on the journey to St. Barthélemy? Shall
we gird ourselves in the armour of God and finish the task to which we
have set ourselves?”

To my shock, the Indians jumped back away from me and averted
their eyes, as though I myself were one of the very demons of which I
spoke. Two of them seized their bows and laid arrows in the nock, pulling
the string back and aiming them at me.

I threw up my arms in front of me, though I knew that if the Indians
chose to let their arrows fly, nothing I did by way of self-preservation
would save me.

And yet they did not: the arrows remained pointed in my direction,
but the intent seemed more to warn me not to come closer than as the
issuance of any sort of threat.

“Askuwheteau,” I demanded, trying not to betray my terror, yet at
the same time striving not to unnerve the Savages whose arrows were
aimed at my heart. “What is the meaning of this?

Askuwheteau said nothing to me by way of reply, and the Indians
were silent. Then Chogan spat on the ground. He whispered something
to Askuwheteau, then turned and stalked determinedly away. The other
Savages muttered amongst themselves and threw angry glances in my
direction. Askuwheteau said something to my two would-be murderers,
who lowered their bows, but did not look away from my face.

“What is wrong?” I asked Askuwheteau, gesturing towards Chogan.
“Where is he going? What did he say?”

“He said I should kill you and leave you here,” Askuwheteau said. “He
says to leave you to find the other Black Robe by yourself.” Askuwheteau
pointed to my leg, where the little boy had bitten me and the blood had
soaked through my robe. “He says your people brought demons with you
to this place and that you are cursed. He says he will not take you any
farther and we must not bring the other Black Robe, the
Weetigo,
to us.”

“But you yourself saw, Askuwheteau, that the demons were Indian
in form and feature. They were spirits that sprang from your own forests.
They did not spring from the realm of Christianity. I did not summon
them, they were here already. I sent them away.”

“Enough,” said Askuwheteau. “Enough lies. You have brought terrible things here with you, you and the other Black Robe. You have cursed this
land. You have brought death, and worse. They,” he said, gesturing to
the Indians, who were rapidly packing up the camp and carrying their
belongings back along the path to the lake, “want me to leave you here,
but I told the French I would protect you. You can come with us now,
Black Robe, or you can stay. The choice is yours to make. But we will not
go farther. You choose.”

I felt as though all the blood had drained from my body. Surely I was
not to be left here alone in this place to find the mission and Father de
Céligny without their guidance and protection?

I begged and pleaded with Askuwheteau to stay with me, but even if
he had been thusly inclined, he was outnumbered. There were some who
actually wished me dead and it had become clear to me that he was the
one person who was keeping me from that fate. I told him that, with me,
even the deviltry of his own people was powerless before the power of
Christ in the hands of one anointed.

I threatened that the French would punish them for abandoning
me, but even as I said it I knew that it rang hollow. The Indians would
say that I had drowned, or perished in some other way due to my own
carelessness or clumsiness.

Likewise, I could not force them to stay with me. I had no leverage.
We were not united in Faith, or by loyalty to our fellow man. We did not
even have the same sense of “fellow man.” And the Indians would do
as they wished, or rather, in this instance, as their terror of this place
demanded. I did not count them as evil for abandoning me. I forgave
them, even in the midst of my horror at the abandonment itself. I literally
saw myself in the jaws of Hell, at the mercy of its Infernal ambassadors,
two of which I had already met.

In the end, there was no choice, of course, though I wished there
were.

My duty as a Christian and as a priest was clear: I was to find
Father de Céligny and come to his aid, in whatever forms that might
take. Perhaps this was to be my own particular martyrdom—not death
under torture at the hands of the Hiroquois, but rather a slow death by
starvation and freezing, looking for the Light of Christ in a dark forest
on the very edge of the world.
Ad majorem Dei gloriam
.

Askuwheteau pointed me in the direction of St. Barthélemy and said
he hoped my God would save me. I told him I prayed my God would save
us both, but he and I knew that we were not saying the same thing to one
another.

When the Indians abandoned me, I forced myself not to run after them,
just as I’d forced myself not to weep in their presence. Now, I did weep. I
knelt down in the dirt of the forest that had become my personal Garden
of Gethsemane and wept from the deepest possible pit of my soul. I wept.
I cursed God. I begged forgiveness, but cursed Him again, and asked for
forgiveness again, and felt myself granted absolution. I did not weep blood
as Our Lord is said to have done, but I have never felt closer to Christ’s
Passion than I did at that moment, for I felt truly alone. Throughout it
all, I held tight to my crucifix, lest those two infernal devils return from
the forest to taunt me.