by Michael Rowe
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.
When the first streaks of dawn lightened the eastern sky, I felt safe enough to release my hold on the crucifix. I was shivering. I spoke to myself as though I were my own friend, ordering myself to rise and collect some firewood in order to build up the fire and warm myself. There would be no one else to guide, help, protect, or support me in my aims unless, by some miracle, I found life and shelter at my destination.
Askuwheteau had told me that the Mission was half a day’s walk from where we had camped. He told me to mark the trees and walk in a northerly direction until I found the inland lake that bordered the Mission. He said it would be unmistakable. He had told me to follow the perimeter of the lake until I came to the place where great cliffs rose behind it. Then, he said, I would be at St. Barthélemy. The Mission was adjacent to the lake, below the cliffs.
The Indians had left me a portion of dried meat, bread made from corn, and beans. Some of this I warmed up in the fire and ate. I wrapped the rest of it and placed it carefully in my pack on top of the blankets. Then, taking up a stout stick, which could as easily serve as a weapon as it did a staff, I began to walk north.
In spite of the general terror of my new, unkind station, I took both pleasure and comfort from the rising sun, which spoke to me not only of safety (for I felt that even in this place, the demons must likely absent themselves in the daylight, even if the Hiroquois did not) but of hope.
While I knew that it was entirely likely that I would reach St. Barthélemy and find it burned to the ground and all its inhabitants dead, there was also a possibility that I would, at the very least, find shelter there, if not companionship in my abandonment. When I did not return with news of Father de Céligny, the Indians would be interrogated and the Fathers might yet send rescue of some sort. Failing that, perhaps some passers-by, either friendly Savages or French, would find me and help.
I told myself these things over and over again, even if I did not believe most of them. At least they calmed me somewhat as I walked. I measured out the hours through the medium of an eternity of footsteps across the carpet of dead leaves on the forest floor. And yet, every sound of a tree branch cracking in the distance and every scream of a bird brought me to the very cusp of madness.
The cold hard sun followed me as I walked. By midday, the forest thinned out, and I felt the air grow cooler and damper. It was my fervent prayer that the unnamed lake was just beyond the next part of the forest, and that my prayer, unlike so many others of late, was answered.
In a very short time, there it was in the near distance, larger than I expected, the water calm and the colour of dull iron. The cliffs did indeed rise up behind it like g
reat hulking shoulders, giving the region a pagan look, as though it were once the realm of ancient gods. I realized, even as I thought these things, that I was skirting the outer edge of blasphemy. But in the face of the terror of my abandonment here by the Indians, nothing in the world looked the same to me and, likely, never would again.
While I knew God was in His Heaven looking down on His earth, I truly felt in that moment that He must be looking elsewhere, for the silence of the place was both a temporal and spiritual vacuum. The wind did not blow, and no bird sang in the trees.
I hurried along the perimeter of the lake, always in sight of the water lest I somehow lose my way, even this close to my destination. I scanned the horizon in vain for some plume of smoke that might signal human habitation, but there was none.
And then, over the crest of one of those infernal mounds of rock that seemed to burst forth out of the ground everywhere like monstrous teeth, I saw it in the distance: the village wherein lay the Mission of St. Barthélemy.
I had arrived at my destination at long last.
My first impression of the humble Jesuit house in the village (the residence building itself, containing the chapel for Mass and the refectory, situated on a small hill) was that it seemed as fresh-built as the day upon which the construction was completed by the tribe. It rose up out of a clearing in the forest like some miraculous flower of civilization in the midst of a wasteland of rock and pine.
Around it was a scattering of crude huts of bent poplar and bark where the Indians of the village themselves obviously lived. What struck me immediately was the absence of the cacophony that accompanied life in their villages, the screaming children, the barking dogs, and the general tumult. The eerie silence persisted here as it had in the forest leading to it, but there was no smell of smoke in the air, and none of the buildings looked like any flame had scorched them.