Monk Punk and Shadow of the Unknown Omnibus

by Aaron French

  Still I hoped, still I believed, that Mother Mary would forgive and grant a reprieve through Her healing grace. I was cursed to have the plague. Surely that was cause enough for Her to preserve my place in Heaven.

  How could I have known that Satan’s own soldiers had fought alongside us on the battlefields of France? How could I – a simple man – understand what dangers had posed themselves to me on those lands soaked with blood, or of the minions sent to ensnare my soul?

  Even with these thoughts, even with this knowledge, it was a surprise to find that a child would be the one sent to turn me over to the men of the court. He collided against me in the early hours of that fateful morning as I moved through the fog towards the Cathedral of Venice in order to plead my case once more before the Virgin. The skin on my arms had begun to rot, attaching itself to the sleeves of my undershirt with each movement I made, and thus I was more desperate than ever for Her healing grace. I was still young enough, and arrogant enough, to believe that She would intercede on my behalf. Yet the Devil was quicker; as he always seemed to be.

  When the boy slammed against me, I grabbed him out of instinct, unaware of the lamps still lit in the darkness of the fog. I let the rage that had saved my life more than once strengthen my bones while I pushed him away. I raised my hand to strike the shocked look off his face as I had done a million times in the past to those soldiers beneath me before I allowed myself to speak.

  “Impertinent boy! You shall learn to watch where you are going or so help me...”

  His only response was a scream so shattering, it froze my arm into place. Yet, when I realized what had made him so afraid, the horror was solely my own as he began to cry out in earnest.

  “La Nesta Morte! La Nesta Morte!”

  Even a child of these times would recognize the markings of the damned. I shoved my deformed hands back inside the cloak just as two sentinels – no doubt receiving their daily bribes from the whores living in the adjoining alleys – rushed forward before I could step away.

  They were too fast, and the aching of my joints made my steps too slow. Within moments, I was being examined for the signs of the plague as the young boy stammered out his story to the other man. When the soldier took sight of my hands, he stepped away with an audible gasp, his own healed ones moving to cover his mouth and nose.

  I knew then that it was over.

  For those suspected of having the plague in these dark times, there was no trial. No quick death sentenced by a judge who decried your guilt whether evidence had been presented or not. By the time the initial streaks of dawn had emerged to brighten the canals, I was bound and thrown upon the first boat that would take me on my final voyage. My home, and all of my belongings, were slated to be burned for fear of contamination.

  I knew where they were taking me. Any man, woman, or child would know it well enough to fear the name given to that island of the damned...

  Poveglia.

  My destination had become infamous between the years of our Lord 1630 and 1631 as the isle where all plague victims – man, woman, or child – met their demise.

  As we pushed away from the pier, I remembered how thick the smoke had been as the poor inhabitants tried to burn the bodies of their patrons, and how it would clog the nose with the smell of rotting meat. It had been a memory I had long since tried to forget, but one that served well now to distract me from the Bird Man rowing me across the bay.

  He spoke... his words muffled against the weight of the white porcelain mask that covered his face with an elongated beak filled with the precious herbs used to ward away the evils of my illness – “With God’s help, you are the last.”

  My eyes tried in vain to find his own beneath the beady circles which allowed him sight. I thought that, perhaps, I could reason with him. Plead with him to jump into the waters and let me have the boat as my own so that I could leave Venice.

  Yet it was to no avail. The smoke now rising from the herbs burning in the small cauldron to his left blurred my vision of him, save for the white nose of his mask.

  Though I could only assume that the Bird Man, my own personal escort into Hell, was all too familiar with the path our small craft cut through the water, I was still surprised by how quickly we got there. The peace of the scene felt wrong somehow. While the paintings that had lined the walls and books in seminary had been filled with depictions of Satan’s domain, there were no screaming spirits here. No beasts clamoring for my soul with jagged claws, nor any screeching hellhounds, save for the seagulls that circled lazily overhead.

  I knew, had been taught, that the damned were not supposed to be able to speak with the saved. They were not allowed, under any circumstances, to acknowledge men filled with God’s grace. But for all I knew, this man hidden beneath the mask would be the last person I would ever see. Thus, as I choked back a mouthful of smoke drifting in my direction, I found my words easily enough.

  “Have you taken many to this isle?”

  I could not – and would not – speak the name of a place so evil. Where so many had been condemned to die based on a contracted illness. The resounding snort echoed against the stillness of the ocean, and as silence embraced me once more, I felt the sudden fear of isolation. Never again would I raise my sword against another. Never again would I hear the cries of the street merchants peddling their goods to those riding through the watery streets. There would be no more nights filled with the teachings of the Trinity, nor hours spent in the company of my brothers in arms. It was the end of the world for me – my own personal Apocalypse – coming to pass without any of the fanfare described in the texts I had studied.

  I had been banished.

  To the city I had once loved, once professed my allegiance to, I was no more. My name would be stricken from the records for fear of once again associating them with the Black Death. Yet this was Europe, and word traveled fast along the merchant routes.

  News of my isolation would reach the ears of men who mattered, and those who did not; and the fear of a plague that would not be forgotten by the simple stroke of a quill would live on, as man could not, to strike fear into untold generations.

  As it was striking fear into me now.

  I arrived on the sandy shores of Poveglia much too soon to suit me. The boat had stopped within fifty feet of its boundary, and the Bird Man was kind enough to slice away the bindings that had become caked with my flesh.

  “Take those with you when you go.” He gestured with his knife at the slices of leather that had fallen into my lap. All the instincts I had earned in battle failed me now save one. As he ordered my departure, I rushed to obey. It wasn’t until the salt began to seep into my wounds that I realized what I had done. Instead of overtaking the man, or allowing him to thrust that dagger into my heart, I had done nothing aside from complying with his commands.

  A black hatred for myself became overwhelming as I recognized my own stupidity. When I turned to rectify my mistake, I realized that he had already escaped. The Bird Man, and his boat, was already disappearing among the waves.

  For the first time in my life, I was truly – and utterly – alone.

  It was those same waves, so eager to expose the horrors of Poveglia to my eyes, that carried me towards the isle. I was able to resist them for a moment, struggling against the tide, until the winds increased the force of the waters at my back. I sunk down to my knees in my fight against the sea, relishing the fiery pain of my hands that announced I was still, in fact, alive.

  The glint of the sun blinded me as it struck against my new captor, that offending ocean, and I began to stand just as something heavy and smooth brushed against my thigh. I was able to bat it away until the waves showed the object for what it truly was: a large bone.

  This was a day of reminiscence, it seemed. For just as this was the first time I could remember being alone, it was also the first time I could ever recall screaming. That scream, along with those hateful waves, carried me to shore and into the arms of Hell.

&n
bsp; ***

  I awoke from my nightmares to find the daylight giving way to night, and a chill clamoring in my bones, so thick that it made my teeth chatter. Thin grains of sand clung to my damaged skin, my nose, and even my mouth as I sat up and got my first good look at the island.

  Before me, there was nothing but sea. A thick and evil mass churning beneath the winds that declared a storm was approaching. There were trees here, and even small huts set back against the forest border, where the damned had tried to live out their last days in relative peace.

  The most curious and startling thing was the sand itself. It was a peculiar shade of gray, matted with objects too hard to be shells, that dulled the landscape around me. I struggled to my feet, rushing forward to the water once more.

  The truth of the place resonated within my thoughts. The fires of bodies burning. The futile attempt by the living to purify the island. And that offending material that had clung to me wasn’t sand.

  It was ash. Human ash.

  It wasn’t until I was convinced that all of it had been washed from my body that I turned back to Poveglia. The entire shoreline was covered in the cremated remains of the dead. For a moment, I considered trying my hand at swimming through the waters to get back to Venice. Yet, my fear of Purgatory was too strong. To do so would be the same as committing suicide, and I had offended the Virgin quite enough already.

  A weight within the waters brushed by my leg, and the horrifying image of that single human bone slipped into my mind. However when I looked down, I realized it wasn’t a bone. It was the knife the Bird Man had used to sever my bindings on the boat.

  No matter how prized that possession had been, how great a tool, he had thrown it overboard for fear that it would pass to him – and his loved ones – the plague. There was no harm, no contamination, that it could do to me now, so I snagged the handle with care. It was balanced, a good size, and would serve me well in the coming days.

  My last ones here on Earth.

  Despite my isolation, I found these days to be filled with a sense of peace I had not known in Venice. As the chills and fever came, I would stretch out onto the sands, covering myself with the ashes of those who had suffered as I was suffering. It was a mad thing to do. I knew this, but when I crawled back to the hut I had claimed as my own, the loneliness would once again take over. Down upon the shore, with the waters at my feet and the sun on my skin, I felt content that their spirits were with me. Still suffering, still haunting this place, just as I was.

  The bruising so prevalent to my illness continued to spread until I grew weak from its pressure upon my bones. I knew my final days were approaching.

  One night, with the full rich moon casting shadows around me, I took hold of the knife and grasped it between my teeth. Walking had become a battle much harsher than any I had lived through before, but I made it to the treeline. For that, I praised God and all His Glory, still hoping my prayers would lead me up to Heaven.

  My heart knew better; my mind knew the truth. There was no heavenly procession slated for me. No mansion of gold gracing my family’s name.

  Just Poveglia.

  I felt my hands shake as the blade of the knife sunk into the thin bark of the tree now supporting my weight. The process was a slow one – as they all were these days – worsened by the trembling from the fever. Yet I was successful in my workings. My message was carved for all generations to see, to read, if they were ever cast upon this hateful place.

  When I finished, the spirits that had kept me company surrounded my weakened body, whispering their approval in the winds.

  Antonio Begleria. Fifth Son of the Begleria line. Died of the Plague. 1633. This isle is Sanctuary for the Damned. Be fearful, all who read these words, for they shall be the last you ever see.

  With those words written, the knife fell for a final time from my hand as I sank down into the grasses that butted against the coast. The voices of those who had passed before me grew louder in the winds, caressing my ears with promises of peace and contentment, despite all that had occurred.

  And thus, with their promises, I let them sweep me away into death.

  About the author: Cynthia D. Witherspoon’s awards include an Honorable Mention in The Writer’s Workshop of Asheville’s Words of Love Contest (2009) as well as second place in the Eleventh Annual Hub City Writer’s Project Fiction Contest (2009). Most recently, her short story Chorus of the Dead won second place within Whortleberry Press’ favorite story featured in It Was a Dark and Stormy Halloween contest. Her first novel collaboration with K.G. McAbee, Balefire and Moonstone, is currently available through Gypsy Shadow Publishing.

  The Festering

  James S. Dorr

  It may have been the tampon that did it. That or the rubber—or maybe both of them, their fluids an intermixed red and pus-yellow, swirling together when he flushed the toilet. He didn’t care. He had been protected.

  Or maybe it had to do with the city’s age; or, perhaps, it was just a thing of the springtime—that, and the sweltering summer that followed.

  The woman now, that was a different matter. He had warned her. He’d told her the house was old as well, and not in the best repair. Much like the part of the city he lived in, once well-kept enough, now characterized by trash-littered backyards and garbage-filled alleys, the city sanitation trucks often neglecting to come by until cans were more than overflowing. A “shit neighborhood” he had told her, a gray-and-brown region of dirt and rainwater that puddled on sparse grass during the spring, soaking bare patches, and ran in rivulets over cracked sidewalks. A region of stunted trees that once lined clean streets, now dead or dying, branch-cracked by the winter’s cold, baked in the summer’s heat. Stinking of urine.

  And so he had warned her. “Don’t flush things down there, you know?” He’d pointed at her crotch. “The plumbing’s beezy. And, God knows, the sewer...”

  He’d showed her his basement, the narrow stairs lit by a single, bare light bulb. The old coal furnace converted to gas heat, half the time not working. And in the corner, the old-fashioned floor drain where an ancient laundry tub had once drained directly, now often as not bubbling up with its own liquid during the spring rains when groundwater overflowed the storm sewers, turning the street outside into a small lake.

  “Sure, honey,” she’d told him. Then, later, the tampon. They’d had sex just before—that’s how he found it. He’d told her to hurry up when she’d been in there, and it hadn’t gone down. Not that he was about to reach in to fish it out either, but after...

  It festered. It bugged his mind the next day. Goddamn plumbing, he’d been lucky it hadn’t stopped up something. And then he thought, how many times had he not known when she’d flushed things down there?

  He asked her. He yelled. The spring had been wet and the summer was early. It was just morning and, already, the temperature outside seemed in the nineties. He itched and he sweated. And then she laughed at him.

  Just like his ex-wife did.

  “Why don’t you just get a plumber to fix it? Put in a new toilet or something, maybe, if this one’s so crappy?”

  He didn’t laugh at the pun. “You know what plumbing costs these days?” he growled at her.

  “So, if maybe you got a decent job...”

  A decent job, yeah, in this economy. He was lucky the house was his own, willed to him by his mother back when the area hadn’t been so bad. Now he couldn’t even sell it. But, on what he made on the work he could find, he couldn’t afford an apartment either.

  “Look, darling,” he started, trying to make peace. But then she laughed at him, high-pitched and jittery. Just like his ex-wife. And down in the basement he heard something gurgle.

  Goddamn plumbing!

  And so he hit her. He hit her and threw her out. Out on the sidewalk. He threw her things after her, not very much, really. Only a suitcase—she hadn’t been there that long. One or two other things.

  “Goddamn you, Charlie!” She gave him the finger. Ju
st sitting there, legs spread. She picked herself up, then spat on his front steps.

  He slammed the door, hard, and leaned against it, as if daring her to try to come back inside. He leaned against it for fifteen minutes. Maybe for twenty, until he peeped outside through its dirt-stained window and saw she was gone for good.

  ***

  Six days later, he’d gotten a part-time gig helping clean out the back room of a tavern. Temporary—but what things weren’t these days? Like marriages. Girlfriends.

  The thing was, it was late when he got off work and walked, alone, through the streets of his neighborhood. Just heading home, hoping to get some sleep despite the night’s heat.

  He walked in darkness, the streetlights long broken. Nobody fixed them.

  Then he saw the shadows.

  Three—four guys, maybe, hulked in an alley just before the turn-off to get to his house. Friends of his ex-girl.

  The first one jumped him. Then fists started pounding. He tried to defend himself, but strong hands held him while other hands punched, some on his face, but mostly his stomach. He groaned when they left him, finally, not even bothering to rob him, not that he had all that much in his wallet.

  He crawled, finally—crawled!—the remaining half block, groaning and feeling sick. Using the railing on his front steps to help pull himself back up, he keyed his door open, then staggered inside. He lurched to the bathroom.

  The blood he threw up probably didn’t help either.

  Then later, the next morning, when he woke up, having dreamed fitfully in his pain about cities of shadows, cities more ancient than even this one, some parts of it anyway, but underlying its streets and tunnels—as cruel or crueler than even this city of bullies and vengeful love—down in the basement he heard something gurgle.