Enter, Night (62 page)

I crossed myself and gave her absolution, speaking the words “
Ego te
absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen
.”
Then I stepped back, for the air around her suddenly shimmered and
began to burn. And in the next instant, her body exploded into flame.
Boiling blood poured from her nose and throat, thick steam rising from
it, the stench beyond foul.

The heat of fire that consumed the Savage woman’s earthly flesh
was not of this earth. In less than a minute, the flames had reduced the
woman’s body to ash, leaving no fragment of bone unconsumed, and the
charnel house stink was everywhere.

This gruesome exercise I repeated twenty times or more, dragging each of
these creatures to meet their second death, the final death, in the waning
sunlight outside the cave. I blessed each one in its final moments as a
soul to be saved and sent to its eternal rest in the arms of God. I absolved
each one, for whatever their sins in life, this terrible end to which they
came was not of their own choosing.

The two children, the brother and sister, I took last.

I carried them into the sunlight together, and they died together
there. In their last moments, they seemed to again become children,
innocent and trusting and terrified, and something in my soul died as
they lay screaming in agony as the sun reduced their small, frail bodies
to dust. It was children I saw being burned alive before my eyes, not
monsters. The memory of it seared itself into my soul forever. Was I now
a murderer of children? Was this the final curse that had been laid upon
my head by the monster still inside the caves? Would God forgive me for
this, even if I could never forgive myself?

All around me were smoking heaps of ash. My clothing was nearly
white with it, and I knew it was in my hair and it burned in my eyes
as well. I was grateful not to be able to see myself in a mirror at that
moment, for I fear I would have seen a monster in my shape staring back
at me through the glass.

The sun was dangerously low in the sky, and a cold wind had sprung
up, scattering the smoking ash across the rock face and into the forest
in spiralling whirlwinds. Around me, the shadows were beginning to
lengthen in the forest, and I still had not found the author of all this
grief. Resolutely, I turned back towards the cave, praying it would be for
the last time.

I found the monster much farther back from the place where I’d found
his flock, in a natural anteroom of sorts formed where the walls of the
cave split off from the main section of the cavern. He lay upon a natural
rising of rock, his arms folded across his chest in an aspect not unlike
that of a stone-carved knight atop a sepulchre. His own noble ancestors
in France, centuries dead, might have been buried inside a sarcophagus
of that exact kind.

His face, by the light of the guttering candle, was beautiful. I cannot
claim otherwise. It was the face of a handsome man in the latter prime
of his life, with high cheekbones and well-formed features: a proud brow,
and strong nose. It was the face of an aristocrat. Pale as death, he was,
save for the redness of his lips. His mouth was half open and I shuddered
at the length and sharpness of his terrible teeth.

But whereas the eyes of the others had been closed, his were open,
fixed and staring into the darkness above his head.

I started in shock, but realized in an instant that he was no less
immobilized by the sunlight than the others had been. I passed my hand
in front of his eyes. He neither blinked nor gave any other sign that he
was aware of my presence. Like the others, his chest neither rose nor fell,
nor did breath issue from his mouth.

I yearned to drag him by his white hair along the cruel rocks of the
cavern floor, but I feared, doubtless irrationally, that it might somehow
wake him. Instead, I wedged the candle in a crevice, then placed my hands
under him as I had the others, and half pulled, half carried him. Like the
others, he was very nearly weightless.

The cave mouth was darker than it had been even a few minutes
before. With a sinking heart, I realized the reason: the sun was setting. If
it had not already set, it would set within minutes. I cried out to God and
pulled harder, moving even more quickly through the gloom.

And then I felt a bony hand grasp my ankle, and sharp nails digging
into the soft flesh there. It was too late, I thought. The sun had set, and
the creature was awake.

I screamed and dropped Father de Céligny’s body, backing away from
it until my back was parallel with the cave wall next to the entrance. As I
watched, he rose to his feet with a dreadful, majestic, malefic grace. For
a moment, he stared at me, his eyes full of hate, then he lunged towards
me, arms outstretched, his teeth bared like an animal. I ducked through
the opening of the cave into the dark red setting sunlight.

“Come and get me, demon!” I shouted, looking into the cave. “I have
killed your congregation and undone your work here. Look at the ashes
of your children! If it is your plan to punish me for killing them, I am
here, you coward! Do not hide in your hole like a snake! If you were once a
man, show it now! Night has fallen; come fight me on your own terms!” It
was a gamble, for there were still some streaks of redness in the sky, but
I counted on the fact that traces of the monster’s human vanity might
have survived into its current state of existence.

De Céligny stepped through the entrance of the cave, into what was
left of the sunset. There was a flash of light and the familiar abattoir
smell of seared flesh. He shrieked and covered his face with his hands,
stumbling backwards into the cave. When he removed his hands from his
face, I could see that the skin was charred and blackened and smoking, as
though he had fallen into an open fire. I held up my cross and stepped
towards him. “Tonight you die, monster!” I cried out. “Tonight, one way
or another, you will die! And if not tonight, then I will find you tomorrow
wherever you hide and burn you in the sunlight like the beast you are!”

As I watched, from inside the shadows of the cave mouth, de Céligny
lowered his head and closed his eyes. I saw his lips move, as though he recited a prayer, or an incantation of some sort. The sound of his voice
carried across the space between us, though the words he whispered
were unclear.

He opened his hands in the aspect of an invocation, extending his
arms towards me, encompassing me, the forest behind me, even the
night itself in his blessing.

Then he raised his head and began to laugh, a foul, cruel laugh
entirely bereft of warmth, or joy, or indeed any human emotion, and
stepped out of the cave into the new-fallen night. His eyes shone like
rubies in the charred skull of his face, his teeth even longer and sharper
than they had seemed mere moments before.

“We are coming for you, little priest,” the creature said. “We are
coming for you
now
.”

Before I could reply, I heard the familiar hiss of an arrow in flight
and felt the wind of it pass by my ear. The arrow struck Father de Céligny
full in the chest. His eyes flew open in shock and pain. De Céligny grasped
the arrow in his hands at the base in a vain attempt to pull it out of
his body. He roared in fresh agony as a second arrow sang through the
air, striking him just above the place where the first arrow had found
purchase. Black blood streamed from the wound, drenching the front of
his robe. His screams had risen in pitch to the point where he sounded
more like an animal than something that had once been human.

Behind me I beheld a miracle the likes of which I had never dreamed
I would see. It was an angel, or so it seemed, for Askuwheteau stood there
in the darkness with his bow and arrow, taking a third from his quiver
and aiming it at the monster who writhed in its death throes in front of
the cave that had lately been its living grave.

“Askuwheteau!” I cried, running to him. “You came back! My friend,
you came back to me! How can I thank you? Praise God!”

I fell into his arms and embraced him, holding more tightly to him
than I had ever held to my father, or my brother, or indeed any friend. In
that moment, the love I felt for my friend was even more encompassing,
I confess, than any other love, including my love of God.

My noble Savage friend gazed at me with something I dared to
imagine was pride, and put his arm around my shoulders. He guided me
to the place where the creature that had called itself Father de Céligny lay
dying. Its body was crumbling before my eyes, passing into some sort of
malodorous, smoking foulness.

Askuwheteau drew back his head and spit. The spittle landed on the
creature’s face. Askuwheteau said something in Algonquian that sounded
like a curse, then averted his face.

But as I stared at the dying creature, a curious thought came to me.
Its last words had been,
We are coming for you, little priest. We are coming.

And then, all around me, I saw the glimmer of what seemed like
hundreds of yellow eyes, and I heard the sound of panting. The wolves
were perched on the rocks above us; they circled us at the base of the rock
face, and even more of them lay in wait beyond the tree line.

I felt, rather than saw, Father de Céligny die. His—or
its
spirit surely
passed me in the blackness, leaving a trail of hate in its wake. And as if
the trail of hate were a signal to the wolves, they sprang as one, it seemed,
and surged up the hill to where Askuwheteau, the
de facto
murderer of
their master, stood.

In the face of my Savage friend I saw bafflement, and then, wonder
of wonders, I saw terror. At that, my heart sank, for I knew that if brave
Askuwheteau was in terror of his life, we were doomed. He backed away
slowly from the deadly advance of the wolves.

He reached out with his arm as though to touch me, but I realized he
was not seeking out my camaraderie. He was not seeking to die with me.
He was seeking, even then, to save my worthless life.

Wordlessly, lest he hasten the inevitable coming assault from the
wolves, he was frantically trying to communicate to me that I should run,
that I should save myself.

And to my eternal shame, run I did, back to the mouth of the cave
where I crouched behind the stinking, smouldering ashes of the monster
whose power to ordain our bloody murder seemed to survive even its
own apparent death. I knew somehow that the wolves would not dare
approach the remains of their master.

My saviour Askuwheteau stood proud before the advancing horde
of wolves. Even as he recognized the inevitability of his own horrible,
coming death, his face was impassive.

And then he began to sing.

After a short time, the only sound was the ripping of flesh and gristle,
and the terrible crunching of Askuwheteau’s bones in the gore-clotted
maws of the wolves. They peeled the skin off his face with their teeth and
tore his limbs from their sockets the way kitchen dogs might fight over a
soup bone. When they had finished their awful work, there was nothing identifiably human in Askuwheteau’s remains.

They licked the bits of flesh still clinging to his bones with a horrible
delicateness, as though it were a special treat being passed to them under
the table by an indulgent master.

By then, night had fallen to such a degree that Askuwheteau’s blood
soaking the ground was black in the rising moonlight, and the wolves
themselves looked like ghouls squatting over an open grave devouring a
freshly dead corpse.

They raised their heads then, and looked at me, growling low in their
throats.

I closed my eyes and fell to my knees, hands clasped in front of me.
I prayed to the Blessed Virgin that my death would be pleasing in God’s
sight, and that it would be over quickly, and with as little pain as possible.
Or, if that were not God’s will, that I be granted as much strength to
endure it as He had granted Askuwheteau.

But the wolves did not attack. Instead, they loped over to where the
arrow-pierced skeleton of Father de Céligny lay on a bed of rocky soil
and fallen leaves. They circled it, tentatively sniffing the pile of smoking
bones, but giving it a wide enough berth to suggest they feared that the
ossified remains might yet be something alive, something hellishly vivid
that could hurt them as no bullet or arrow could.

Then, as though it had burned them, they leaped back from the
pile of bones, cowering like mangy curs before a master’s whip. As one,
they threw back their heads and howled. My poor words here cannot do
justice to the effect of that unearthly, haunting sound as it rose into the
night and fell down upon the tableau in which I knelt. Then the wolves
turned and bounded into the forest without looking back, not aimlessly,
but as if they were being pursued by a hunter and were in search of safety.

Again, I was alone—truly and utterly alone. I mourned my Indian
friend Askuwheteau, this man whom I had dismissed as a Judas and a
Savage, but who had shown the courage and faithfulness to come back
to a place he feared in order to secure my safety. In all truth, he had
saved my life, and he had died in my place. The tears I wept that night for
Askuwheteau were the bitterest of my life, and none I’ve shed in the long
years since that night have been harsher or more absinthial.

I drew the sign of the cross over what remained of his poor
mauled face, and bowed my head. “Eternal rest grant unto thy servant
Askuwheteau, O Lord,” I prayed. “And let perpetual light shine upon him.
Grant him absolution, O Lord. May he rest in peace. Amen.”

Feeling my way through the darkness, I walked back to the village. I
knew that there were perhaps more of these demons hiding in the forest
watching me, but I cared little of it, so heavy was I with the weight of
grief and guilt. If the Devil and his minions had been so able to use a
priest as a vessel to serve his will as he had with Father de Céligny, then
my life, and my immortal soul, were in God’s hands, as they always had
been. But my work that night was far from over.