Later, in the hour before the dawn, the abbot returned and stood with his hands clasped by the door of the cell. Eyes lowered, his lips were moving as a hundred soft soled feet moved through the vaulted passageways. The brothers, roused by the milky veil of predawn light, were heading to the chapel for first prayers, and the rhythmic movement of their footfalls echoed dully against the monastery walls.
Murmuring his own prayers, the abbot pushed back his cowl, and opened the latch to the cell window. He peered in, and the abbot’s breath caught in awe. Sprawled beneath his blanket, the boy slept a sleep as deep as any innocent child. His body lay pressed against the wall, arms clasped across his chest as though in an embrace, but what was astounding was the boy’s face. It was upturned and it appeared alight, illuminating the darkness of the simple cell with a glow like the halo of an exalted angel.
A miracle made flesh. A Holy Child who drew the very angels to his side. Truly, he would be an Instrument for the Lord.
The abbot bowed his head. ‘Thank you,’ he prayed, ‘thank you for bringing one such as this to our humble lives. He shall be cleansed. We shall sprinkle his brow with holy water, and he shall be baptised, and be given a new name… a blessed new name.’
Nodding, the abbot turned the key and with the barest scrape of sound, the cell door swung open across the stone floor. At once the brightness illuminating the boy’s face flared hotter, before vanishing with an almost imperceptible pop of outrage.
The abbot was too intent to notice the abruptly dimmed light and, reaching into his robe, he pulled out a stone, black and about the size of a man’s thumb.
A priceless treasure. He bowed his head. This stone was the last tear ever shed by the Saviour made solid. A holy relic brought with much suffering back from the Holy Lands, and here he held it, in his own unworthy hands. Brushing his lips reverently against its cool obsidian surface, the abbot dropped to his knees and placed the treasure in a small cleft in the floor at the foot of the narrow bed.
‘This shall keep you safe, child,’ he whispered. ‘It will protect you from the sight of those…demons, harpies…’ The word was hissed out in sharp vehemence. ‘It will shield your dreams and neither your mother, nor any of her kind will ever find you.’
The abbot made the sign of the Cross. ‘Keep it close, and as you grow, my child, as you enter fully into this life of Servitude to the Lord, you will be forever free of them, and be blessed.’
Closing the cell door behind, the abbot clasped his hands and walked reverently through the vaulted passageways as a high, sweet voice rose from the chapel, singing praise to the rising light of the new day.
TWENTY
Blue Mountains, Australia, present day
The black stone was a comfort and, gripping it tight, Matthew fled back up to the second floor. Perhaps it was untrue - perhaps he had only been dreaming and this nightmare he had been trying to avert, ever since his daughter first drew breath, was not really happening, and she would be sleeping in her own bed at peace beneath the soft covers of down.
But the thing was still there, crouched in the middle of the room, facing the window and staring out at the night sky. As he entered it turned, its wings lifting higher off the floor, its gaze pinning him to the spot, fierce and glowing with an increasing fiery strength. Shuddering, Matthew pulled his eyes away and dropping to his knees, he flung the black stone across the floor. It rolled on its side, wobbling for a couple of metres, before toppling beneath his daughter’s dressing table.
Muttering a prayer, Matthew rose to his feet and left, closing the door tight behind. It was done, she was in the Lord’s hands now and the hallowed stone of protection was no longer his.
‘I do not need it.’ Clenching his fist, he rushed on through the cavernous house, darting into each room, making sure each window was locked securely until finally he was on the porch outside. Matthew pulled the front doors closed and locked them fast.
Whatever she was, whatever she had become, his Rosalind wouldn't be able to escape.
Stepping back to the top of the wide marble stairs, he looked up to the second floor. The sky glittered, studded with distant stars while darkness hung below, shadowing the window of his daughter’s room. Matthew waited, but not a sound could be heard.
He clenched his fists tight, and cried out as the sharp claw of the eagle amulet bit, unexpectedly, into the palm of his hand. The pain was intense, spiked and red hot.
‘No!’ Matthew roared, lifting his head to the sky. He swept his gaze over the horizon to the dark outline of the forest. ‘No. You will not have her. She is mine!’
Swinging open the door of the black 4WD, he leapt into the driving seat. Gunning the engine, he roared along the winding, forest-edged road towards the highest cliffs, his eyes wide glaring in hatred at the spectral forms of the trees guarding each side. The car bounced and lunged until at last Matthew wrenched the car to a stop. Jumping out, he ran straight towards the ledge overhanging the highest point.
The forest spread out before him, dark and sinuous, lit only by the thin light of the crescent moon. It was a mass of writhing, twisted life, each branch, each stem, each root, a horror conspiring to draw him closer, to trap him, to bring him to his knees.
But tonight he wasn't here to berate the forest. Matthew climbed over the safety rail bolted to the rock and stood balanced at the edge of the cliff; silence and darkness engulfed him. Matthew flung his arms up towards the sky, the necklace dangling from his fingers. Thunder cracked.
‘Lord! Let us not be too late! We need to Ascend as You promised. Those that are worthy will Ascend, full in body. Let me be worthy, Lord. Let my daughter be worthy for she is just an innocent.’ As his cries rang out across the valley, a flare of white-hot light forked overhead.
‘Take us. Take us. Now! Help us escape this earth. Help us escape this damned curse of our blood. Take us!’
With each agonised plea, power crackled through the night. At first it was tiny, white-hot sparks and spits. And then with each entreaty he poured to the sky, it swept closer, a gathering force. Unaware, Matthew stood crying out into the night. In one hand he gripped the amulet. ‘Curse her!’ He screamed. ‘Curse my mother and all her kind!’ With a bitter cry, he flung the necklace from his hand.
At once a wind tore over the valley, snatching at his robes, twisting them around his body as the amulet arced high, before falling, looping and spinning down into the darkness.
‘It’s yours, witch! Damn you to hell!’
His voice was lost as a ferocious roar ripped towards him from all directions. It swooped over the trees, pulling out from the rocks, crackling though the air, gathering in strength, booming with thunder across the sky.
Matthew opened his eyes and scrambled back, his hand clutching the rail in shock. Above him, a huge storm front was massing overhead, and within the blackening clouds loomed columns of luminous beings, translucent and towering with majesty. They spiralled, swirling though the darkness.
What are they? Angels… Faeries…. Or worse…?
For a heartbeat, he stared in horror. But suddenly, Matthew didn’t care what they were - if they were angels or fiends from the darkest pit of hell.
‘Help me!’ For what he didn't know, for what action he couldn’t fathom. All Matthew was aware of was the rage surging through his being, and the river of bitterness and grief that he had kept damned his whole life long.
‘Help me!’
Surging on a rising wave of wind and fury, the spirits coiled upwards. Incandescent with power, and riven with great sparks of light and dark, they swept up into the clouds, lending them their energy. The moon hid, as vast fingers of white snapped across the night.
‘I hate her!’ Matthew, his eyes wild, abandoned all restraint. ‘I hate her! Help me!’ His need was now a command. It lashed out into the sky, a wild defiant call to arms. ‘Help me!’
The thunderheads turned from white to black, then to the deepest, darkest red.
Energy crackled a
nd exploded.
Lightning crashed, forking over the forest.
The temperature plummeted as ice, as hard and as bitter as nails, began to fall, lashed from the sky by angry, driving winds. The force hit the valley below, the canopy writhed and buckled, unable to resist the violent onslaught of freezing air.
With a great tearing roar, a tree fell, a forest giant, its heavy limbs torn clear from its trunk.
‘Yes.’ Cried Matthew as lightning slashed the sky above. ‘Yes. Come to me, obey me. Destroy them all!’
✽✽✽
Ellie’s eyes flew open. Her room was shaking, a great howling wail ripped through the night, hollow and tormented with anguish.
‘Brian, Brian!’ Through the tempest, Ellie could hear her mother’s voice echoing shrilly through the house. A moment later, the front door opened and closed again with a crash. Silence.
Ellie scrunched further down and pulled the covers over her head, desperate to escape the terrible shrieking of the wind. But it was no use. Through the walls she could hear a moaning tearing sound, as though the wood was tensing and flexing, and the house itself was battling the storm’s relentless fury.
It was hard to breathe; opening a gap, Ellie poked her nose out.
‘Brian!’
A sound of rushing feet and a beam of torchlight shot through the window, before vanishing into sudden silence.
Alarmed, Ellie pushed the covers back and climbed out of bed. Her head felt fuzzy, and she looked around trying to work out what was going on. The wind had eased, and for a moment the house was still. Then the curtains snapped and a blast of air sliced across her bare skin.
Ellie stared in shock. Her window was open as usual to catch any hint of breeze and ease the night-time heat, but now the curtains were jerking and a bolt of icy cold wind whipped through the room. For a moment she stood, unable to register what was going on, then a shiver wrenched her spine and Ellie sneezed, her throat aching in the frigid air.
Hauling her duvet off her bed, Ellie staggered out into the hallway.
‘Mum?’ she called. ‘Dad?’ In the answering silence, Ellie anxiously flicked the wall switch on and off, and on again. Nothing. Shivering, she pulled the duvet tighter around her body, and inched her way through the gloom. In the twin’s room she could see their closets were open, and a trail of clothes lay discarded on the floor. Where was everyone? Biting back a cry of fear, Ellie careened through the empty house like a demented mummy, her bulk knocking against the walls as she struggled to the front door. Pulling hard on the handle, it flew open and Ellie was hit by a blast of freezing wind.
It hurt. As she breathed, Ellie’s throat felt pricked as though the air was hiding a thousand tiny shards of ice.
‘Hey! Where are you?’ she rasped, though her voice felt too weak and thin to be heard.
‘Ellie! Ellie!’
From out of the darkness, a small running body threw itself onto her, knocking her back into the wall.
‘Wait, wait...’ She croaked, pushing the figure away with one hand.
‘Where have you been?’ Tom’s face shone in the darkness, his eyes bright with excitement. A heavy, adult-sized woollen sweater enveloped his small frame, its sleeves knotted snugly over his hands.
‘Ellie!’ A small hug seized her, and Annie - her blond ringlets hidden beneath a knitted tea cosy, buried her face deep into the duvet.
‘Oh, thank God you’re still here.’ Ellie closed her eyes in relief, and drew both the twins in close, hauling the thick covering around them all.
‘What took you so long?’ whispered Annie, her voice muffled in the warmth. ‘We’ve been out here for ages.’
‘Why are you by yourselves? Where’s Mum and Dad?’
‘Come and see.’ Tom pulled impatiently at Ellie’s hand.
‘It’s awful,’ muttered Annie.
The two children, united for once by a common purpose, pushed Ellie across the flat expanse of front lawn as the wind rose and shrieked around them.
Above them, the starless sky hung low, bruised and sore, with a twist of white cloud falling sharply away to the horizon. Ellie stopped abruptly, and the twins, close behind, lurched hard into her back.
It was way too dark, she realised. Pushing the covers off her head, Ellie searched for the familiar orange glow of the streetlamps, and saw nothing. A bank of thick freezing cloud had settled over the land and not even the shape of the neighbour’s house, just metres away, could be seen through the gloom.
‘It’s not natural,’ muttered a reedy voice.
Torchlight arced out of the night. ‘It’s dropped another ten degrees. It’s got to be twenty below by now.’
‘That can’t be right,’ answered another, deeper and slower further away. ‘The thermometer must be broken.’
‘Hey,’ called out Ellie, anxiety leaping out of her throat. ‘Please, who’s there?’ The light paused and then sliced upwards, dazzling her eyes.
A face emerged, soft and older, its small dark eyes squinting. ‘Oh it’s you, my dear,’ wheezed the family’s neighbour, her small voice puffing out warm and visible in the icy air. ‘We were just heading back indoors.’
‘Don’t know what’s going on.’ She was joined her husband. The two of them were huddled together, wrapped in faded terry towelling dressing gowns, with their feet clad deep in sheep skin slippers.
‘What’s happening?’ Ellie meant everything. She gestured with her hands still wrapped under the duvet. What’s happening with the weather, why was everyone outside, what was going on? She felt panicked, and she fought the urge to run back inside with the twins, close the door and hide.
‘Don’t know,’ repeated the old man. ‘There was no warning on the telly, and there’s us watching it all day you know, for the cricket. The day was stinking hot, as usual. And then out of the blue the storm came you know, but different, wilder, and freezing. I’ve never seen anything like it in all the years we’ve lived up here in the mountains. It’s not right. The weather shouldn’t be doing this. Shouldn’t change so hard, so fast. Why Cheryl here was just saying -’
‘Sorry dear,’ interrupted his wife with a firm shake of her head. ‘Ellie honey, you better go to your mother.’ She gestured into the gloom. ‘She’s down there, by the road… Be quick. She’s had quite a shock. And we’ve got to get inside where it’s warm.’
Nodding her thanks, and bundling the twins close, Ellie hurried across the lawn. More shapes appeared - people moving on the road in groups of twos or threes, their presence visible within the point and glare of torchlight. Others were merely standing, their torches pooling on the road, alone, wrapped in layers of clothing, and their thoughts.
‘Mum?’ Ellie called out tentatively. ‘Where are you?’
‘She’s down there.’ Tom lifted a gloved hand and pointed.
‘Just there.’ Echoed Annie.
On the kerb, and wrapped only in a thin dressing gown as protection against the freezing air, Ellie’s mother sat with her arms hugging her knees, staring blankly out over the road.
‘What are you doing down here?’ Easing herself onto the ground, Ellie unravelled the warmth of the duvet and draped it over her mother as quickly as she could, before gathering the twins in close.
‘It was here when we were still young,’ Claire murmured sadly. ‘It was one of the reasons why we bought the place, when you were still little. It was a lovely thing.’
‘What was?’ Ellie didn’t understand, but before she could ask anything else, a shard of light shone into her eyes before slicing out over the road - illuminating carnage.
The massive red gum tree was lying with its bulk splintered, and its great height spanning the road. Chunks of debris were scattered across the opposite neighbour’s lawn, propelled by the force of the fall. But far worse, the giant’s higher branches, as sinuous and gnarled as any ancient beasts, lay cracked and torn, their great weight crushing the front porch of the weatherboard house opposite. Black and white shards of ‘For Sale’ si
gns lay shattered across the grass.
‘Oh no,’ choked Ellie. She turned in horror to her mother, ‘was anyone hurt?’
‘It’s a miracle, but your father is over there making sure,’ whispered Claire. ‘The young family moved down to the city a few weeks ago, do you remember them? They’d had enough. Their youngest child would scream whenever the storms came, he’d be terrified.’
‘This is going to happen more and more, you know, Ellie,’ Ben appeared. He flashed his torch over the wreckage. ‘It’s what the prophecies have been saying all along. Storms, chaos, all this has been foretold.’ He smiled grimly. ‘It won’t be long now.’
Appalled, Ellie could only stare. She loved the tree. For years it had graced and shaded the front of the house, its long sinuous limbs perfect for lying on, for reading, dreaming, dozing, while the leaves brushed the sky and the sound lulled her to sleep.
‘I hate it.’ Her mother’s face was set with an expression Ellie had never seen. ‘I hate it, and I don't see it getting any better soon.’
✽✽✽
Later, after helping put the kids back to sleep, Ellie reached for the hag stone lying on her table and crawled back into the warmth of her bed. Burrowing down deep under the covers, she closed her eyes, wishing only to escape into the oblivion of sleep. Yet the suppressed hiss of voices wouldn't let her.
‘How can you say that?’ Her mother’s voice, thin and trembling, snaked through the quiet of the house.
Ellie tensed, listening in the dark.
‘Brian, that could’ve been one of us. That tree could’ve landed on our house, how could that be God’s will?’
Her father’s response was softer, too distant to hear. Ellie turned her head.
‘No Brian, it’s too much, it’s too close,’ retorted her mother, her voice tightening, as though she was spitting out each syllable. ‘We should leave. What’s here for us now?’
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