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hy do we hide your face, Michael?” Head Vatican Plague Saint Jonas Alexander Dekloon asked without acknowledging the child fighting to stay awake.
“Because my face is a face of sin.”
“And what is your sin?”
“My sin is the sin of my mother, God rest her soul, cast upon me from the moment of ungodly conception; born from the sin of an unwed mother, born from the loins of a soul corrupt without church, corrupt without salvation, corrupt without the Lord’s good grace.”
“And where is your mother now?”
“My mother, God rest her soul, burns everlasting in the eternal torment of fire and brimstone.”
“And where, Michael, will you find your eternity?”
“I will find my eternity by my mother’s side, burning in the eternal fires of damnation and hell for my sin.”
“And what is that sin, child?”
“The sin of my mother’s sin. The sin of unholy birth.”
Saint Dekloon offered the child a wide sympathetic grin. “Very good, Michael.”
The sunrise outside of Grimsthorne Castle, neighbor to the northern lords, painted the Blencathra Mountains purple, illuminating their jagged fight for dominance of the sky.
The grass was wet, the air smelled of orchids and an unnatural heat embraced the three priests within who looked upon the child named Michael; the burlap sack which stank of straw and age, tight over his small head.
The priests’ litany continued. “I did not witness the birth of The Plague Saints. We have always been. We will always be.”
“I did not witness the birth of The Grimwalkers. They have always been. They will always be.”
“I did not witness the birth of The Church. It has always been. It will always be.”
Silence . . .
“Michael?” It was a fourth priest who spoke this time, barely visible and standing on the edge of firelight. “It is your turn child.”
“I did not . . .” the little boy folded his hands upon one another and searched the shadows through pinhole eyes.
“Go on, Michael.”
The three priests chanted in unison; a collective voice of deep gruff and guidance.
“Go on now,” the fourth said.
“I did not witness the birth of evil,” little Michael whispered. “I have always been . . . and I will always be.”
A subtle chanting, a song of peace and wisdom reached out from the labyrinthine wings of the sanctuary of stone and torchlight, music carried by the echoing lull of breeze filtering down from the highlands of England’s rolling hills.
“When your mother, Michael, came to us—you still in her womb, she sought sanctuary from the true monsters of these lands,” Saint Dekloon said as he gazed down upon the boy. “Creatures so dark and violent they feed upon other creatures of darkness and shadow, feed upon a nightmare nation of inhuman deceit and chaos. These creatures, these things, these animals are what we keep at bay, child. These creatures, these . . . Grimwalkers, are a plague and are what we, The Plague Saints protect you from. They live in shadow, child, and cannot walk in light unless given promise by a pure soul: an innocent.” The priest shivered. “Their skin is a liquid sheen of black oil, dripping with each movement made. These demons are naked, bestial; they are titans of hell, boy. They are what we sacrificed your mother to in order to insure your protection.”
One of the priests set aside his crimson robe to lay a hand upon the little boy’s shoulder. “What do you say to Saint Dekloon, Michael?”
“Thank you, Saint Dekloon,” Michael replied, his English accent muffled but heavy in the stone dungeon. “Thank you for protecting me.”
“You are welcome child.” Saint Dekloon turned away before his spoken words were finished, his face swallowed by the dancing shadows cast out from the stone mounted torches. “Now come, it is time for confession. To be charged before God’s eyes.”
The three priests peered down at the small boy, their rosaries clutched tight in leather-bound fingers as they massaged the reliquaries of their faith and devotion. “It is time,” they spoke in monotone unison.
Little Michael uncrossed his legs, then quickly scurried between tombs in pursuit of the three priests and the Plague Saint whose massive strides drove them forward through winding halls of torchlight and ancient history.
Dark silhouettes peered down from above at the three priests led by Saint Dekloon. They had entered the Burdening Chamber; a place of confession, of rebirth. It was here that The Plague Saints were given life. Born from fear and desire. Born from bloodshed and hope. It was here that Saint Jonas Alexander Dekloon, like his brotherhood before him, was given the mark of the holy order in which he served: a mark seared into his flesh from the glowing embers of flame and ash which lined a pit of fetid darkness. The stench of that seared flesh still lingered thick in the chamber, it choked the air from their lungs and stung at their eyes. It was here, in these dark wet chambers of stone and flame that he was born into a quest, a holy crusade against creatures born of the black.
And it was here, as dust fell from the chamber's crisscrossing beams and monuments of holy tribute, that little Michael would be indoctrinated into the order of The Plague Saints. It would be here where little Michael would confess his sins and be reborn.
“Confess.” Voices intoned as one, as the oppressing din of church bells rang.
Little Michael rested upon his knees at the edge of the pit; its dark depths reaching, clawing for him with the haunting wails of creatures cast into its darkness below. The creatures' sounds assaulted little Michael’s senses, clamping his mind in chains of relentless fear with their putrid stench of meat and bile.
Saint Dekloon motioned with a nonchalant gesture toward the pit as his voice grew firm. “Closer to the pit’s edge, Michael.”
The boy hesitated. With his throat clogged with fear, he swallowed thickly.
“Michael,” Dekloon said sternly with head held high, “Prepare, child, for confession. Prepare, for rebirth.”
We have been waiting an eternity for you.
A bright light shone throughout the chamber, blinding little Michael through the burlap sack as he threw up his hands to shield himself.
The Sun’s light poured out from high above, carrying with it a chilled breeze; casting out the darkness and the stench of sickness and death, forcing its way through the wooden hatches held open by priests upon every level of the Burdening Chamber.
Large metal gates slammed shut all around; they were rusted all the way to their hinges but held strong, tightly encased in their mortar and stone frames.
Little Michael glanced around.
And when that blinding light met the darkness of the far-reaching pit below, little Michael could have sworn there were men down there.
He could have sworn . . . they were smiling at him.
“Saint Dekloon!” Michael yelled, hugging the robe of the priest who was tying off a rope around the child's waist. “T-There . . . there are men down there, my Lord!”
“No child, not men.” And with it, Saint Dekloon kicked the child into the pit, his screams trailing far behind until the rope went taught as little Michael hung wild.
“Help me! Help me, my Lord!” Michael screamed.
“When the sands of time reach their end you shall be retrieved child,” Saint Dekloon’s voice bit with a harsh efficiency. “Until then, this is your confession!”
The little boy cried out for his mother. Desperately pulling at the rope which burned at his waist, he pleaded with the Saints above to protect him from the demons below, but his crying wails went unheard as Saint Dekloon’s voice roared out.
“This land has seen the fall of kings and stone!”
Michael’s throat went raw with a choking gasp as the hatches of the Burdening Chamber slammed shut and the Sun’s radiance was lost to the deep black.
“This land is old, it screams of horror and reeks of blood and death!”
Little Michael was alone when the black came, screaming in terror, his throat already hoarse and demanding, hearing only the chanting high above and the sudden whispering madness deep below.
“And since those first roots of life sprang up, it has been plagued by evil and nightmare!” Saint Dekloon slapped his hands together in prayer; those hands were rough and raw, like parchment covered in veins. “But I pray to you oh Lord! I pray to you with everything that I am and everything I shall ever be! I pray to you my Lord with this promise of my soul!”
The priests stood firm as little Michael hysterically cried out harder for his mother, for salvation, as the dust of time danced off the rope's woven thickness.
“I promise you oh Lord!”
The rope pulled hard from one side to another, the pulley it was tied off to cracking from the weight as an inhuman roar of laughter seeped out from the black, quaking the heavens and trembling the earth.
“I promise to thee!”
More and more rope unraveled from the pulley. Little Michael was being taken deeper into the black.
“Hear me! HEAR ME!”
Grain-by-grain the sands of time fell as the whispers of the pit grew; a conversation not of treaty, of understanding, nor kindness, neither of friendship nor solace.
“I promise to you, my Lord, that this land will be plagued no more! For this—is—war!”
And then, there was silence.
“Amen!”
The pulley turned, the clicks and snaps of the wooden cogwheels echoing throughout The Burdening Chamber as all of its hatches drew open and light once again flooded the stone world built below the earth.
The Priests’ eyes gazed upward into the blinding light with arms spread wide as little Michael was drawn from the pit.
Little Michael had survived confession; anointed in blood and covered in filth, cheeks the color of rose on a face pale and stricken with the coldness of fear. Mucus crusted his upper lip as fresh tears and drool formed snaking trails through his filth-stained face. His blood-shot eyes bulged from their sockets, lost to the crushing solitude of his mind.
Little Michael had survived. Little Michael was now a Plague Saint.
“Michael,” Saint Dekloon said, as he placed a withered web of fingers under the child’s chin. “Congratulations, my boy, for your sins are of the past. You are forgiven for the trespasses of previous life and soul. For you are saved, child. For you are blessed.”
Saved, the boy thought, blessed? Those words echoed within his tortured mind, they rustled like dead leaves taken by the bitter November chill. No, not blessed. Something else.
Little Michael tried to move, to stand, tried to search for that elusive safety, but it was as if he were being held down by some invisible specter. His throat was dry, raw from his screams. His little body trembled; a quake that only a mother’s embrace could calm. Only his mother wasn’t there, and she certainly wasn’t coming. She was sacrificed by The Plague Saints seven years ago after the unholy birth of her child, of little Michael, cast into the same dark pit he’d survived only moments ago.
“Congratulations, Michael, for you are now . . . a Plague Saint.” Saint Dekloon removed the burlap sack that had imprisoned little Michael in a world of haze and uncertainty. Pinpricks of light stabbed at his unclouded eyes as he looked upon his new family for what seemed like the first time, as he looked upon a new nightmare life.
“So rise,” Saint Dekloon continued, “rise to the order you now serve.”
The heavy wooden hatches were once again pulled shut, torchlight and candle turning the large chamber into a dim blanket of shadow as the suns light was extinguished.
“Rise, Michael! Rise to your rebirth!” Saint Dekloon looked almost like a father offering his child a glance of satisfaction for an act done true. But this look came with bared teeth and a horrific roar of laughter; it was worse than the things that lived within shadow.
“Rise Saint Michael,” priests all around the Burdening Chamber sang in tribute and praise, “we welcome you, brother, to the order of The Plague Saints!”
Michael swallowed hard. A choked back whisper escaped his lips and he stammered in dread, “I—I . . . I have yet one more sin to confess, my Lord . . .”
The air smelled suddenly rank as rotting flesh, as if mocking the boy.
“What is that, child?”
“T-Those . . . those demons, my Lord, the Grimwalkers . . .”
“What about them, child?” Saint Dekloon said with a kindly smile, dismissing the subject of demons with an uncaring wave of his age-spotted hand as if they meant little or nothing.
“They made me—”
“Made you what, child?”
“They made me a promise, my Lord.”
Eyes drew wild and wide from one priest to another. Questions of fear and uncertainty surfaced like oil on water as Saint Dekloon leaned in close, so close the child could smell the fogging haze of booze and rot in his mouth as he spoke. “What?”
“Your lives, my Lord . . . for mine.”
Saint Dekloon suddenly stood erect, mouth agape, eyes wild daggers stabbing into Michael’s own. He had become a moving mountain to the child, a mammoth being.
“What have you done?” he screamed, fists clenching in rage.
“They promised me, my Lord. They promised that they would reunite me . . . with mother.”
“Open the hatches!” one priest cried out in horror.
“Light the torches! Keep them bright!” another demanded from the back of the huddled gathering.
Voices reached out as one, “They will come from the shadows! Order The Plague Saints to arms!”
“What have you done!” Saint Dekloon shouted, backhanding the child, the fear in his voice spreading from one priest to another like a virus. Like the plague.
“Now you may know, my Lord,” little Michael said with a calm serenade, “now you may know the sacrifice I have endured without my mother.”
The priests scrambled to reopen the hatches, a desperate plea to release the Sun’s light back into the dark depths of The Burdening Chamber.
But it was already too late . . .
With a rumble and a promise, the Grimwalkers came.
They tore through stone halls like a hurricane through a grass hut. They attacked the priests in their own sanctuary as they pleaded with rosaries held high to their Lord, as they begged him to spare their lives, to cast out the darkness which clawed at their door.
Those demons of nightmare and death ripped through walls as if made of paper. The shadows cast by wooden tables and candlelight came alive, the dripping bile of their black-oiled skin covering the stone floors as they sliced through the priests with sadistic enjoyment. As they butchered The Plague Saints before sword could be drawn, before scream could be uttered, before little Michael . . . could smile. “Mother!”
One of the Grimwalkers had fashioned a wig of golden hair out of straw and earth, slapped hastily upon its elongated head as it leaned upon one knee with arms outstretched wide. “My child!”
They were words spoken from the drawn-back lips of a thing, more demon than man, but a man nonetheless. Yet it wasn’t a man which spoke. What it was had no words in this age of superstition and fear. Its face was terrible and haunting, yet wise and ancient. And it hugged little Michael with everything it was.
“There, there, my lovely little boy,” the Grimwalker said, “Mother’s here now. Mother will protect you.” The Grimwalker smiled a large toothy grin, a grin torn out from the flesh of its face. “Now how’s about a smile?”
Little Michael smiled weakly, a smile that oddly resembled his mother’s.
“That’s not your mother, Michael! You’ve gone mad! That’s not—” Saint Dekloon’s head exploded against the fireworks display of carnage and gore as the Grimwalkers tore into The Plague Saints with ease, claiming lives and souls as blood splashed so high in a fogging mist of death that the sun would have shone crimson. Leaving nothing behind except the inhuman things born of shadow and death, leaving nothing, but the stone covered earth stained red . . . and lit by the love of Michael in his new mother’s arms.
“This land has seen the fall of kings and stone, mother,” little Michael said with a wry smile. “And this land has seen the fall . . . of The Plague Saints.”
Little Michael heard Saint Dekloon’s words, but words were lies, and Dekloon’s words . . . well, Dekloon’s words wouldn’t stop his mother from loving him. That was little Michael’s truth. That . . . was little Michael’s promise. “Right mother? Right? Mother? Mother?” |
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