by Aaron French
“Tell me,” Baldemar said as they neared the conclusion of their hike, “do the brothers often use these trails?”
“Oh, yes,” Jerome replied. “A picturesque area, is it not?”
“Indeed. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking it might be nice to hike through here after dark. To hear the crickets and see the moon on the trees.”
“I must advise against that,” replied Jerome. “There have been several coyote attacks in recent months. Those beasts tend to hunt at night. We’ve had to dispose of more than a few rabbit carcasses on the grounds. You’d be running an unnecessary risk venturing into these woods after sunset.”
The leisurely tone of the morning did not stretch into the afternoon, for Baldemar was busy with chores and study. Though he felt duplicitous for doing so, he ventured once more to his cloistered spying space and waited and watched until the Vespers bell rang.
This time when one of his brothers appeared from the woods Baldemar rushed forward to meet them.
The approaching monk did not appear startled. In fact, he nodded and bade Baldemar a good evening as he dipped his stained hands into the basin of rainwater.
“You’ve cut yourself!” Baldemar declared.
The brother gave him a nonplussed look.
“Aren’t you taking a rather sizeable risk by hiking with the coyotes about?” Baldemar continued.
The monk peered intently at Baldemar. “Are you the new arrival by any chance, the brother who has joined us from across the Atlantic?”
Baldemar nodded.
The brother slowly pointed his finger heavenward, where the bells resounded. “We shall be late for Vespers if we don’t hurry.”
“One moment, please,” Baldemar pleaded. “Earlier today Brother Jerome informed me that hiking the trails is dangerous after dark because there have been a number of coyote attacks. Yet for the past three evenings I have seen with my own eyes brothers rushing out of the woods at dusk and each of them pause here at this bath to do as you’ve just done; cleanse their bloodied hands, then genuflect and cross themselves before rushing off to Vespers. Why? What is it that you’re all doing in those woods?”
“I suggest you speak to the Abbot, brother,” he said. “I’m afraid I would be speaking out of turn.”
***
The knock on his door roused Baldemar. He noted that the sun had yet to fully rise. He hurriedly donned his robe and answered it. Jerome was standing in the corridor.
“I have been given a charge by the Abbot himself,” he stated. “I’m to accompany you to the cleft. Please meet me in the courtyard immediately.”
“The cleft? Whatever do you—”
But Baldemar’s inquiries were ignored. Jerome was already rushing down the corridor toward the abbey’s main doors. Baldemar prepared himself quickly and raced outside.
There was a chill in the air. His breath appeared in plumes of frost as he approached Brother Jerome. “Won’t we miss Lauds?”
“We have the Abbot’s permission to forego Lauds today. Come.”
Jerome began to walk. Baldemar had to rush to keep pace.
They entered the woods. Baldemar spouted many questions but received no responses. When they came to the crossroads, Jerome marched purposefully down the left-hand path. Baldemar reminded him about the trail’s unsuitability, but Jerome was impervious. The path coiled further into the woods until at last opening into a small glade.
Baldemar found its atmosphere disheartening: the carpeting of half-mulched leaves from prior autumns, the scattering of whitish boughs, the rather ominous-looking crevasse that cut wide and deep into the granite floor.
He noticed something resting by the edge of the deep cleft; a tiny bowl that sat next to a small and less identifiable object. Together these two gave the stone slab the appearance of a great rustic table set for a solitary meal.
His advancement toward the stone was halted by Jerome. Baldemar opened his mouth to question when he saw Brother Jerome press a finger to his mouth. There was a low, hushing breeze.
He lowered his hand and used it to silently beckon Baldemar, who followed down to the bowl and the slender, jagged implement lying beside it. Jerome once more signaled for silence, then, with visible caution, or possibly reverence, he lifted the bowl.
That the bowl was not carved of wood became apparent by the color of its outer side. Its hollow was wine-dark. A thin pool of the staining fluid sat shimmering at the bottom. There appeared to be carvings on the inner bowl; a dancing woman, a smirking mask in angled clouds, an alphabet both crude and queer.
Memories of Baldemar’s pilgrimage to the friar’s ossuary at Cimitero dei Cappuccini bubbled to the fore of his mind. They were vivid enough to convince him that the bowl Jerome was now returning to its stone table was in fact the cap of a human skull.
The smaller object was a splint of keen stone. Strands of bleached grass had been wound and rewound along one end; a cord-wrapped dagger handle.
The architected silence of the two monks was suddenly broken by a susurrus that echoed up from the cleft.
Baldemar thought little of this, until he saw Brother Jerome’s expression.
With sacramental care Jerome replaced the ugly stone next to the even uglier bowl. He then rose, grabbed Baldemar by the wrist, and began a mad dash back to the main path.
Within seconds the hushing noise from the cleft had ceased, but Jerome’s pace did not slacken until he emerged from the edge of the wood and was back on the monastery’s manicured lawns.
Baldemar, still lagging several paces behind, stumbled out onto the grounds just as Jerome was making his way to a bench by the cloisters.
“Perhaps you’d be good enough to explain yourself,” Baldemar said breathlessly. He sat down next to Jerome.
“I’m sorry, brother, truly. I could not risk your curiosity impelling you to investigate those woods too late in the day. As you can see, it’s perilous, even in the morning light.”
“I saw no danger, brother,” replied Baldemar. “I saw some unpleasant objects and you running for your very life, but I don’t understand what any of this means.”
Jerome wiped his mouth. “The brothers,” he began, “the ones you’ve noticed coming out of the woods at eventide, they’re engaged in holy work. But it is holy work that is… unique to this monastery.”
Brother Jerome tugged back the sleeve of his robe, revealing numerous slashes along his forearm. Many were still scabbing, while others were whitish scar tissue.
“It’s our charge, Baldemar. Know that. Under ordinary circumstances the Abbot would have explained it all to you and walked you through the rite the way he did with myself and many others, but when he learned that you’d already spotted the brothers out here instead of being in the hall for Vespers… well, he couldn’t risk you going off to investigate at the wrong time.”
“What are you saying?”
“Years ago… many years, long before our time or even the Abbot’s, there was a woman who lived in the village nearby. She was, I’ve been told, a very kindly and righteous person, a spinster who used to say she only had room in her heart for God. Rather late in this woman’s life she announced, much to everyone’s shock, that she was with child. Because she had the reputation of being somewhat eccentric, naturally the townsfolk didn’t put much stock in her admission, until she began to show signs of impending motherhood. This led to her becoming something of a pariah in the village.
“This situation was unpleasant enough, but it was her insistence that her pregnancy was an immaculate one and that the child growing in her womb was the Second Coming of Our Lord that led to the woman being persecuted by the villagers. They accused her of blasphemy and hounded her tirelessly to leave the village. But she refused to go. She assured her neighbors that they would all be falling to their knees when her child was born.”
Jerome shook his head. “Poor soul. She was so clearly troubled. The Abbot at the time tried to counsel her, but she refused to let go of her delusions.
“One day she collapsed while washing her clothes in the creek. A physician came and examined her and told her that he could find no heartbeat in her womb. There were several tests, I gather, and the doctor concluded that the woman’s child would be stillborn. Worse than this was the fact that she would have to carry the child in her womb until it was ready to… pass. So tragic… What was in her womb was what’s now known as a Lithopedion, a stone baby. Her child actually calcified while in her womb. What she eventually gave birth to was a lifeless stone.”
“God have mercy,” Baldemar whispered.
“When the woman learned that her child was not the Messiah reborn but in fact something as lifeless as a stone, she went mad. She burned her hovel to the ground and fled into those woods there. Some of the brothers formed a search party, fearing that she would commit suicide. They found her alive.”
Jerome closed his eyes and swallowed before he finally continued. “She was sitting on the ledge of the cleft. There was a great deal of blood on her clothes. She held something in her cupped hands; her stone baby. Seeing her in such a condition naturally one of the brothers ran to fetch the local physician. She was rocking back and forth, humming a lullaby, as if the poor creature in her hands was a living baby. One of the brothers approached to offer her comfort, only to discover that the Lithopedion was suckling at the woman’s hand.”
“It was alive?”
“Not alive, not truly. But not stillborn either. It was… an in-between thing.”
“You say it was suckling her hand. You don’t mean…?”
“The creature was weaned on blood. The brothers tried to reason with the poor woman, but her mind was beyond reach. When the physician returned she attacked him and some of the brothers. She claimed that the hatred of the locals had poisoned the Christ child she was carrying, and that now the village was cursed to suffer under this abomination she’d been punished with. The brothers tried to stop her, but she dove headlong into the cleft.”
Baldemar rubbed the back of his neck. “An awful and tragic legend, but I still don’t see what this has to do—”
“The brothers assumed she had died from the fall,” Jerome said, speaking over him. “But the following day the physician went missing, and later three other villagers. The woman’s hatred and her affinity with that monster of stone had mutated her into something that could no longer be called human. She was a jaundiced, twisted thing, with flaming eyes and long claw-like fingernails. She dwelt in the cleft. The Abbot hid in the area to study her movements. He discovered she had kept the bodies of the missing villagers, and every night she emerged from the cleft with her baby and allowed it to drink by the light of the moon. She had pried the skullcap from the body of the physician, the first to die, and she carried it with her to collect the nightly meal of blood from the cadavers. She’d pour it over the stone child in her hand, singing songs in her strangled voice, cooing as the thing supposedly drank.
“The Abbot made a last drastic effort to end the violence against the village. One evening he confronted the woman. Before she could attack him, he took a sharp stone and nicked his own wrist and offered his blood. She collected it into her skull bowl and used it to feed her child, then crept back into the cleft, singing her lullaby.
“The killings stopped that very night. But the Abbot knew that if the woman were ever in need of blood she would think nothing of taking another innocent villager. So he returned for the next few evenings. At each eventide he cut himself. And each night after moonrise the woman slithered up from the cleft and fed her child. In time other brothers took over the task. Now the woman leaves the stone dagger and the bowl at the top of the cleft. And every evening each of us in turn gives some of our blood.”
Baldemar was at a loss for words.
Jerome’s face took on an air of disappointment. “Recall Job 39, Verses 28 and 30,” he advised. “ ‘She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong place… Her young ones also suck up blood: and where the slain are, there is she.’ ”
He rose and walked way; a blunt gesture that informed Baldemar that their discussion was over.
***
For many hours Baldemar struggled to come to grips with what he had been told. Should he accept this? Could he accept this? Surely the authors of the Book of Job knew a thing or two about metaphor and fable. Not everything in the Bible was to be digested as reportage on a physical reality. This reasoning did little to temper Baldemar’s unease.
At dusk it took every ounce of his resolve to resist spying from the cloisters, but he was successful.
There was no sign of Jerome at Vespers, a fact that troubled Baldemar until he finally caught sight of Jerome on his way to his quarters for the night.
Baldemar looked down and noticed the fresh linen dressing that was wound around Jerome’s wrist. Jerome opened his mouth as if to speak, but said nothing. The two men went their separate ways to retire for the night.
***
It was still dark when the idea struck Baldemar with all the force of an unbridled charger.
He sat up in his humble bed, his brain reeling. It would require deception, this freshly-hatching plan of his; not a great amount, just a tincture. And the end result would surely justify the means.
At breakfast he marched up to Jerome and announced that he wished to make payment at the cleft that evening.
Jerome appeared stunned. “Well… I… I certainly admire your enthusiasm, brother.” He spoke sotto voce. “But novitiates to this custom are required to first attend the offering solely as a witness. We believe the creature in the cleft needs to feel that she can trust each brother before she will accept his offering.”
“Very well,” said Baldemar. “I submit myself to be witness to tonight’s offering.”
Jerome’s gaze was one of deep assessment. “So be it,” he said at last, though his words were heavy with misgiving. “This evening’s offering is to be given by Brother Anthony. I’ll inform him that you will be joining as witness. Meet him on the front steps right after supper. You must obey his every command and only speak when spoken to. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
***
The day crawled past. Baldemar spent much time in prayer and contemplation. His soul oscillated between fiery certainty of his plan’s virtue to a cold and stony dread about the dangers he was placing himself in.
The chapel was not fully vacated until the late afternoon, at which time Baldemar slipped in and completed his task as quickly as his trembling hands would allow.
By suppertime he couldn’t bear the idea of eating anything. He sipped a cup of water then hastened to the front steps.
Brother Anthony arrived after what seemed an interminable wait. He nodded his longish head at Baldemar, mutely acknowledging him and the task ahead.
They set out to the forest.
The cleft appeared much larger and deeper and blacker to Baldemar. The skullcap and dagger were at their customary stations. Anthony raised his hand for Baldemar to stay. He scurried with impressive stealth and silence to the granite feeding ground. The fibrous sleeve of his robe was peeled back.
Baldemar winced when he saw Anthony boring the crude dagger tip into the haired meat of his forearm.
Libation for the child of stone seeped out in a seductive rivulet. One by one the dark fluid fell like red-black pearls from a snapped necklace, like the eager water of spring squeezing through the rift in a winter-long encasement of ice.
Anthony set the skullcap down with care. He tugged a white swatch from his pocket and lashed it around his wound, pulling the tourniquet tight with his teeth.
The pair of them moved from the woods.
The sun was still struggling to stay afloat when they reached the basin of water. Anthony went through the final gestures, nodded again to Baldemar, and hurried off for the last of evening prayers.
Baldemar did not follow. Once he was reasonably sure that all eyes were on God and not him,
he tore across the lawn and back into the woods. The gloaming was beginning to deepen, light perishing about him as embers in a hearth.
Before he actually reached the cleft, Baldemar concealed himself behind an oak and listened. There were no sounds of movement. He peered out and saw that Anthony’s offering had yet to be poured from the skullcap.
He tugged the cord around his neck and drew up the wineskin he had hidden under his robe. His pulse was manic and deafening in his head. His legs and hands were almost useless. He rushed over to the cleft, snatched the skullcap, and flung its contents onto a nearby thicket. The splashing sound sickened him. He wrestled with the wineskin’s cork until it popped free.
The sacramental wine sloshed down his robes and over his sandaled feet. Too frightened to care, Baldemar poured the wine into the skullcap and whispered, “Hic est enim calix sanguinis mei, novi et aeterni testament: mysterium fidei, qui pro vobis…”
He set the skullcap down and tore up the path, hiding once more behind the oak tree.
The orange and purple glimmer of twilight gave way to night-blue. Baldemar waited and silently prayed. No matter what the outcome of this endeavor, he hoped that his brothers and God Himself could see that his intentions were pure.
If no one arose from the cleft, he could prove to Jerome and the others that they needn’t maintain this barbarous ritual. If there was some poor lost wretch down there, the priority should not be sustenance but salvation. Tonight the stone baby and its mother would partake not of mortal blood, but the blood of the Messiah.
***
When the noise began Baldemar craned back his head, assuming (or wishing) that it was simply the oak leaves fluttering under the press of the wind. When he discovered that the boughs were still, his mind clambered for a new explanation, no matter how outlandish. But it soon became woefully clear that the sound was a rasping, dry, shallow breathing. It seemed to bleed from every inch of the forest, surfacing like dewfall on the foliage and the stones. It spilled out from the depths of Baldemar’s own soul, breaching the levee that had been so scrupulously maintained by his conscience, his faith. It was deafening him, drowning him.