by Roger Elwood
Constabulary by today on another routine visit, they told me deferentially. Pressure from the capital now to solve the mystery; panicky reports from the provinces are upsetting the balance of the country. Any further ideas? No. Any strangers in the neighborhood? No. Have I lived in this castle for all of my life alone as is rumored? No; not for all of my life but it has indeed been for a very long time. Any living relatives? Gentlemen, not even any dead, relatives. Thank you, thank you. Fools; fools. If all that my quest has accomplished is to bring officials like these to stumbling, apologetic search, then I have accomplished nothing. Nothing.
Too depressed to go on. Everything changing. Tomorrow, a new purpose I feel.
June 22
That business on the moors, feeling his body break and open under mine, the blood leaping at me, choking, drowning in it, an aggressive dying that, and his whimpers not horrified but somehow placative. Realized then, still realizing, that this cannot continue; that the taking of their blood was never the answer. But I said, I said I will not write or think of this any more and I will not. I will not. A closed incident Still spiritless, but a feeling of gathered energy. Large events in the offing; a sensation of having passed the last barriers. In dreams my fate was never so stricken, my consequences so large: I sat at my mother’s bosom and drank and drank of her, the infant’s thoughts as aimless as a fly buzzing on paper, locked to her uncomprehending of destiny but all of that, all of that is now and eternally departed.
June 23
Young, another young girl, coming to consciousness terrified now, looking frantically for escape, still trying to measure the situation, the bright bruise on her forehead where I had struck her to unconsciousness exploding with blood, looking, looking, then trying to move and screaming as she saw that she was bound. Hands bound, feet bound, trussed together, loop within loop, lying in the cellar like a fowl. Kyrie eleison she said but liturgy means nothing to me. I showed her the knife. Not thirty minutes ago wandering free as an idiot on the fields but now mine, mine. I bounced the light from the knife into her eyes and she gasped with strain; I saw that she might faint and yanked her chin around to face me, putting the knife against her cheek so that she would stay in the valley of the sane. “Listen to me,” I said, “now listen to me,” and once again opened my cloak so that she would confront. “This is me,” I said, “do you understand that? it’s me! don’t turn away!”
“Oh my God. My God—”
“God will not save you now, neither will he take you. Only the antichrist will have your soul when I am done, but not yet, not yet. Do you know why you are here?”
“Help me. Please help me—”
“No help,” I said, “no help!” She would not listen. None of them ever listened. This is the horror of it: even at this moment, when all is done, none of them are listening. “I’m going to torture and kill you,” I said, “but I want to tell you why.” She inhaled and seemed about to faint again; I had to use the knife. It opened up a small wedge in her cheek. “I want to tell you why.”
“Help me,” she said again, mindlessly, “help me.” Stupidity, fear, loss, the savage waste of it all. Yet one must go on. Whatever one makes of it: one must go on, there being no alternative to any of this but the grave. Her head rolled to the side, her eyes staring like a corpse, tongue protruding from the panic but I knew then that she was listening.
“Hear me,” I said, “hear why I am doing this; one of you, somehow, must listen.” Perhaps I was somewhat out of control. My mental state throughout these recent months and, now accelerating in some unknown way, has been precarious. “I wanted to know love. I wanted to change the face of the time. I wanted to carry a message and burn that message deep into the heart of this continent: that we must truly know one another and whether that knowledge is known through pain or lust, connection or fury it must be known, we must break through to a level of feeling we have never had before because it is this and only this which separates us from the beasts and if we do not have it, well, then we shall surely die.” She squawked in place, held by the bonds. “And death,” I said, “death is as nothing to the pain of ignorance; to know our humanity is to cherish eternity,” and saying this, saying no more, brought the knife down upon and through her, spreading her like a rack of meat and then…
And then enough. I cannot bear to continue; these notes shriek to me, the pen itself feels like a knife in the hands and cannot continue. Her blood, when I was finished, tasted stale and weak against my lips, no longer the ingestion of vitality but a drinking in of death; and illness overcame me; in revulsion I vomited and then dropped the knife, staggered from the basement and came up here to this high turret where with the laughter of all ancestors around me, mad and rising laughter, I went to these notes but I simply cannot continue, I cannot continue, gentlemen, for I know now that I have failed.
And will somehow have to dispose of her now.
June 24
Odors wafting up from the basement and something must be done but I cannot do it. I cannot summon the energy to move her although if I do not move her I will not be able to save myself. Have sat at this desk all day, watching the light and the dark, moving in slow convulsions of moods but can do nothing: not eat, not drink, not even relieve myself. A feeling that all is ending.
June 25
The house stinks, the boards rot, I should put her in a sack and drag her upon the moors and yet, yet I still cannot. Search parties in the fields; I can see them from the distance and the temptation is awful, it is absolute, to go outside and beckon them into the castle. “Here she is,” I would say, “I killed her, just take her out of the basement and do with me what you will,” and it would be over but what then? what then? I cannot even find the energy now to contemplate my own outcome.
June 26
The castle stinks, these rooms stink, I stink myself, my own flesh oozing corruption. It is impossible that the stain of implication does not waft through the air for a square of ten miles, so awful is it here. In the distance I see the two officials at last, they are moving toward this castle at a good speed and behind them is a party of men, ten or twenty in number it must be, hard to tell, do not know, deference is no longer their gait, detachment no longer their duty, but instead they seem impelled by urgency and in only a minute or so they will be at the door and this time I know they will not knock.
I could still flee. There is time yet; hurl myself into my robes and scuttle the back way, make haste across the fields and by dawn bribe my way by carriage to the capital and into anonymity. I could blend for fifty years into the capital and no one ever the wiser and. it is tempting, quite tempting: after all I do not want to bum any more, alas, than any of my victims.
But I will not do it. I know this. I do not have the energy to flee. I will remain at this desk until the shouts have coursed their way from ground level to the stairs and then like blood in an artery run their way up here. I will sit at this desk completing these pitiful notes (which can never be completed), which have attempted to explain so much and have, I know, explained so little. I will sit and sit, the pool of odors coming over me and at last they will open the door and seize me in a grasp like iron, my presence the implication and as I bare my neck to them, waiting for that bite of salvation which will free me at last of these wretched and timeless burdens, I know that I will hang frozen in the air for a long long time, the knowledge at last pulsing through me that for me, at least, that bite will never come… and that I will have to face the consequences of my mortality.
The Horseman from Hel
Gail Kimberly
Monastery life is supposed to be quiet and uneventful.
But what happens if demons move in …
Silence swirled around him like snow…the blessed silence in which he lived and loved God. Brother Bernard let it fall over him and through him, breathing it deeply along with the scent of the thawing earth and the melting slush that wet his sandaled feet, and the tangy smell of the bare-branched maples. Silence, only dee
pened by the gentle birdcalls and the faint stirring of the river that lay beyond the maple bush. He did not know that he shivered under his white robes and that his fingers were numb as they unhooked the little pail from the wooden tap he had hammered into the trunk of the tree and emptied the sap it contained into the bigger pail he carried. Silence cushioned him, comforted him. He moved to the next tree and to the next, and at the last row of trees he put his full pail down and leaned against a maple trunk, and looked up the snow-patched hillside to the top, where the monastery was a silhouette against the pink, early morning sky, dark stone guardian of the placid countryside. It had been built in 1851, nearly fifty years ago, by the loving labor of the first Trappist monks to make their home here, in Ontario. Brother Bernard smiled and praised God who had created such peace and beauty, and then he picked up his pailful of the sap of the sugar maples and turned toward the shed where it would be emptied into the big vat and boiled until it thickened into maple syrup. God had provided the monks of Our Lady of Tears Abbey with this means of raising money to supply their meager needs.
The sudden wind that rose nearly knocked Brother Bernard against a tree, and he clutched at his swinging pail. A gale swept down on him, howling as it tore his cowl from his head. He struggled against the whirling, freezing force, but the sap pail was whipped from his hands to roll clattering against a tree, its contents wasted. Brother Bernard looked up then, into the wind, and saw another silhouette on the hill…a dark figure seated upon a dark horse. The monk moved back against the tree trunk and strained his eyes to see. The figure looked huge, menacing. It seemed to be watching him. The morning dimmed around him and his gaze reached the gaze of the stranger, and he felt the force of evil grasping at him so that the wind became a screaming fury, tearing at his soul. He closed his eyes and clutched at the tree trunk, and when he could open them again, the figure was turning, waving an arm at him, vanishing against the shimmer of sunlight at the top of the hill.
And then the wind died.
Brother Bernard stood for a long time before he was able to pick up the empty pail and trudge on toward the sugaring shed. He shivered and knew that his feet were cold and wet. He had never before seen anyone riding on the monastery hill. That was extraordinary enough, but why had that rider watched him and waved to him, and why did the wind rise and die so suddenly, as though obeying a command? Could it be that he was to see visions, like some of the mystics, and that Satan had appeared to him that morning? Because the figure had been evil, there was no doubt of that, although now he could not remember how he knew this. A feeling …an aura. He knew.
Three other monks were working in the sugaring shed when he arrived with his empty pail. He set it down and moved wordlessly among them, helping Brother Joachim ladle the boiling syrup from the big vat into the trough that ran over boxes of hard-packed snow, to cool. His spirits lifted in the warmth of the shed and the presence of the other monks. The clopping of sandals on the wooden floor and the sweet maple syrup smell were familiar. Of course he knew the very real presence of evil that could take any shape or form, but to think of it here, in the sugaring shed, was a different thing from standing in an icy wind as it stared at you. Brother Bernard spread his now-warmed fingers close to the fire and yearned to tell the others what he had seen, but instead he recited a silent prayer for the first time since the incident.
For the first time! But he should have prayed right there, in the presence of that thing. He should have asked for the help of God automatically…without thinking. And so he must add another omission to his list of sins. Could he never regain the simple faith he had once had, as a sixteen-year-old novice, when the love of God and the yearning for the contemplative life had driven everything else from his mind? Only seven years had passed, but so many doubts…so many wanton thoughts came to him these days. He sighed and went out of the shed.
The three other monks were already outside, loading the small wagon with jugs of maple syrup. Brother Bernard hitched their one horse and got into the driver’s seat. He had been chosen to sell the maple syrup and maple sugar to the general store in Doville, just a mile away. He clucked to the horse and started down the muddy, narrow road, going slowly, and every now and then he glanced toward the hill until his view was blocked by the trees and the road had turned into the main street of the town.
Parsons’ General Store had a large, redbrick front and two plate-glass windows filled with bags of tea and coffee and spices, a metal coffee grinder with a large red handle, imported cookies in tin boxes with pictures on them, and imported candies wrapped separately in tinfoil. Brother Bernard drove the wagon around to the back door that opened onto a narrow alley. He got off the wagon and knocked on the open door and then, when nobody came, he went cautiously through the dim storeroom and into the store.
A girl in a dark-green dress stood with her back to him, alone in the store, putting packages on a shelf. She was slender and graceful; her long hair was so fair that it shimmered like a fall of ice down her back. He could only stand silently watching her until she half turned and caught sight of him, and then she turned all the way, her blue eyes widening just for a second with surprise and then narrowing into a laugh. “Priests aren’t supposed to stare at girls like that, are they Father?” Brother Bernard felt his face getting hot, but he couldn’t look away from her. She was silver and white …snow and ice…with a red mouth and breasts that swelled over the low neck of her dress. She laughed again as she came toward him. “Well, Father?”
“Brother. Brother Bernard.”
“I must learn to get it right,” she said. “You are from the monastery on the hill, aren’t you?”
Brother Bernard nodded, looking past her now at the paper bags and boxes and barrels that filled the shelves. Why could he not control his thoughts? He prayed silently for strength and the wisdom to deal with the evil that plagued him today, and with deliberation he said, “You may call me Father, for I am a priest, but in my Order I am known as Brother Bernard. I took the name of Saint Bernard who was the guiding light of the church in the—”
The girl moved in front of him and closer to him. “I thought none of you were supposed to talk,” she said, interrupting.
Brother Bernard moved his gaze away from her again. “I am allowed to speak while I transact business. I’m here to sell our maple syrup and maple sugar.”
“Oh?” The girl moved into his line of vision, smiling. “I wondered why you were here.” Then she laughed, and Brother Bernard found the courage to look full at her, at last. The spell that had gripped him seemed to be passing as suddenly as the wind had died, earlier that morning. He must sell his syrup and get back to his prayers and to the silence of the cloisters, and later he would examine his conscience and make his confession.
The girl seemed to sense his change of mood, and she turned back to the counter. “How many jugs of syrup do you have?” She opened the till and began to gather money in her hand. “Mr. Parsons told me someone would be here from the abbey to bring syrup, and said to buy all you had.”
“There are fifteen jugs,” Brother Bernard said, “and twenty-five cakes of sugar.”
“Will you put them in the storage room?”
The priest turned wordlessly and started to leave, but the girl called after him. “My name is Freda. Freda Lyngvi. You didn’t even ask.”
Brother Bernard nodded, and turned to go again, but the girl’s laughter stopped him once more. “Don’t forget your money, Father,” she said.
The horse ambled its own way back down the road to the abbey while Brother Bernard stared into the April morning. Glittering ice…soft cool snow…laughter that was sweeter than silence…these hung in his thoughts even when he tried to force them away. Prayers started and died. He had never seen such beauty. Was that a sinful thought? Lust for women was a sin, but love for one’s fellows was not a sin, and he felt no lust, only this happy intensity. Still…he was wasting his time and laying himself open to the temptations of the devil. But he ha
d not really seen a woman for many years, not to really see her. Such beauty, and she had smiled at him! Here now! The horse was stopped…nibbling grass at the roadside. A tug at the reins, and up the hill to the abbey. Brother Bernard coaxed the horse to a trot and the wagon bounced over the rutted road, darkened now by the overhanging evergreens.
And watching him out of the shadows was a figure in a black cloak, on a huge dark horse, that he passed without seeing; a figure that threw back its head and raised its arms, and laughed silent laughter to the trees.
Dom Theophilus, the abbot of Our Lady of Tears, smoothed the wood of his crucifix with the ball of his thumb absentmindedly and watched Brother Bernard lay the money on the desk in his office. “You were gone so long we thought you would be bargaining endlessly, Brother Bernard. Yet there is not much money here.” The abbot’s voice was sharp, as always, to encourage humility. Brother Bernard felt Worthless indeed… and guilty. Here before Dom Theophilus his excited thoughts of this morning seemed frivolous. “I will take more syrup and sugar in two days, Father.”
“Examine your conscience. Do penance. You were late to Nones.” Dom Theophilus was studying him so closely, Brother Bernard hung his head, fearing that guilt might be written across his face. Should he tell the abbot about Freda and how she had affected him? His mouth started to open, but then it closed again as Dom Theophilus picked up the bills and the change and opened a desk drawer. “Pray that there will be enough this summer for our needs and for charity too. There were so many sick and needy to care for this winter. We will need God’s bounteous grace more than ever for next winter.”