He Who Walks in Shadow (25 page)

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Journal of Henry Armitage, July 26, 1933

Long we sat, listening to the inspector’s words, and the sudden hunger that struck me as he finished spoke to the hours that had passed. But in that time, Villard had become one of us.

“They found me the next morning, of course. Delirious, gibbering about things that walked in the mist and devoured the dead and the dying. No one ever believed me, but I know what I saw. I spent a few weeks in a field hospital and then was promoted, for gallantry. I bided the rest of the war at headquarters, away from the front, away from the fighting.

“So I can tell you one thing for certain, gentlemen. I do not know if what you say is madness or prophecy. But I do know this. Evil is real, and it is horrible, and it must be confronted and defeated. So if you go forth on this crusade, then I will march with you, even if it is to our own destruction. It is a march I have made before.”

Carter stood and clapped him on the shoulder. “Then we go together to Normandy, and we go now. Once more into the breach, and we will either return with the staff, or we will not return at all. On those shores, the fate of mankind will be decided.”

As we stood to leave for the grand station in the heart of Paris, I turned back to the inspector, for I had one last question.

“You said that the creature spoke to you, before it took your friend.”

“Yes.”

“What did it say?”

The inspector glanced at his hands, and I suppose I was surprised that they were not shaking. Then he looked back at me.

“I can’t be sure, of course, for I only heard the barest whisper. But I thought it said three words…

“‘Not…yet…ripe.’”

Excerpt from
A History of the Mont Saint-Michel
by Dr. Alan Ulfman, New York: Columbia Press, 1875

…The Mont was, in fact, uninhabited for much of prehistory. When the Romans arrived on the coast of what they called
Gallia Lugdunensis Secunda
in the century before Christ, they found nothing but a rocky outcropping, some kilometers from shore, surrounded by water at high tide and great, barren salt flats in the eventide. Roman engineers quickly recognized its strategic value. In addition to the island’s formidable natural ramparts, the churning seas provided a deep and impassable moat during daylight hours.

When Julius Caesar consulted with the local tribes as to why the island remained void of human dwellings, he was met with stories of superstition and dark lore that matched anything he had encountered during his conquest of the known world. In his
Commentarii de Bello Gallico
, Caesar wrote the following
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—

The elders of the tribe would not dare venture to the island, nor would they send guides to accompany us. In fact, they would barely speak of the place. Bribes of gold were utterly ineffective, and even threats did not suffice to move them, not until we swore an oath that we would burn their village to the ground—with them in it—if they did not unveil the mystery to us.

The tale they told was one of black magic and dark artistry that even the great god Pan would have found debaucherous and unholy.

The island was sacred to the tribe, as it was the place where they believed their god, Nyarlatorix, would one day descend from the heavens to reclaim lordship over the earth. This would occur on the festival night that their holy men called Belenos, which came every year at the midpoint between spring and summer. The villagers, however, apparently feared their god far more than they loved him. In fact, they had made it their custom to build huge bonfires on the night in question, as it was their belief that the god could not abide the light.

But once every nineteen years, when Belenos fell on the death of the moon, the greatest fears of this primitive people were realized. For on that darkest of nights, the black ships would arrive.

The villagers were intolerably vague on this point, and even the mention of the black ships seemed to drive them into a frenzy that bordered on madness.

The ships were manned by a crew unlike any that dared ply the wild waters of the northern sea. The strangers came clad in strange raiment, faces hooded and cloaked. They spoke no language, at least no language that the tribesmen could discern or ever heard uttered. But words were not needed. It was simply understood on some primal level what must be done, what was required.

When the black ships came, a sacrifice was due, a girl chosen. The cruelty of what was described to me that night curdled my blood—and I am a man who has seen and dealt my share of cruelty. The villagers believed that the power of the sacrifice was directly proportional to its depth. It was not enough that one should die. The girls of the village were gathered, all those who had never known a man. This group was gradually reduced. First, to those who were already betrothed. Then, to those who were the only children of their parents. Then to those who were born of a mother too old to produce another child. The greater the sacrifice—the greater and more irreplaceable the loss—the greater the power.
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Once the girl was selected and night had fallen completely, she would be taken across the narrow reach to the rocky prominence, while the villagers huddled in fear behind the flimsy walls of their hovels, lest they look upon a sight not meant for human eyes. But the walls of their huts would not, could not, hide them from the shadows that danced in some unnatural violet light that seemed to roll in waves from the island, could not close their ears to the tenebrous beating of drums and maniacal piping that floated on the wind, could not shield them from the all-seeing, unblinking eye of Polaris as it shone down hatefully above it all.

Their description of the sounds in particular troubled me, for they were not at all what I expected. I inquired as to whether they were ever buffeted by the screams of the girls they had so willingly given up to sacrifice. On this point—unlike so many others—there was complete agreement. They had never heard a scream, nor a moan, nor so much as a word from the poor girl, whatever her fate may have been. Such a mystery gave me pause.

When the sun rose on the day that followed the sacrifice, only smoke and dust remained. I asked the elders if the god Nyarlatorix ever returned, if they had ever looked upon him. Wide eyed and haunted they shook their heads. “The stars were never right,” they said. “But if they were, the seas would boil, the rock would melt, the great city of old would rise from the depths, and mankind would be extinguished…or worse.”

During this discourse, there was a boy standing at the edge of the firelight. In my previous travels, I had often seen the look of a man who knew more than he was letting on, and his was clearly such a case. When the elders had finished I allowed them to disperse before I slipped away to meet the boy in a more private location. I found him standing at the water’s edge, as if he had been waiting for me. He spoke freely and without coercion. He divulged a story, the horror of which I could not have imagined.

He had snuck out the last time the black ships had come, when he was but a child, his curiosity overriding his good sense. Upon the island in the distance he observed a great and strange light, one unlike any he had ever seen. A raging fire was the only comparison he could make, but one of purple flames that undulated and pulsated instead of flickering. One that gave a cold, harsh light that sucked the heat from his body, even at that distance. It illuminated the night, and he could make out shadowed figures, dancing and throbbing wildly about the circle of flame. The stars turned to blood, and the sky changed. The boy had no knowledge of the heavens, no names for the constellations that wheeled above. But from his words, I had little difficulty divining what he saw, and such was the power of his story, I saw it, too.

Gone were the familiar, the comforting, the shimmering diamonds that I had come to know and love, that had guided me in my many conquests in the north. But there were stars. Oh yes, there were stars. Just not the pin-points of light I had come to expect. No, these were great orbs of fire.

The boy’s words painted a picture of the impossible. According to him, some stars shone clear and bright as the sun, and yet their light gave no illumination. Others seemed to pulse, to beat like the heart of some great beast. Still others seemed to dance together, twirling in great pinwheels as he watched. And yet more would fade in and out, disappearing completely, only to return a few seconds later. Of one thing he was certain—there was nowhere on earth with that sky. Nowhere.

Somehow, he told me, it was not the sight of such things that was the worst. For while he stared upon them, above him came the sound of massive beating wings, and the wind ripped at his body as a great shadow passed over him. I wish he could have told more, but in that moment, as whatever foul beast soared above the boy, he recounted that he had slipped into oblivion. He had fallen into a stupor. When he awoke, the sun had risen, and only lingering smoke remained on the island to confirm the presence of the visitors.

The black ships were gone.

The bravest of my men scoffed at these tales, as we had all scoffed at a thousand lesser myths in days gone by. Two of them set off across the salt marshes at low tide, determined to uncover whatever treasures the frightful tales might be meant to hide. One moment, they were laughing and singing. In the next, they had vanished beneath the shifting sands. Despite our best efforts, we could not save them. They were taken, unintended gifts to whatever dark power ruled that accursed island.

And so we abandoned that place, leaving it and its infernal legends to the mists of time.
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DeWitt’s translation ends here, at least as regarding the Mont. No other record of Caesar’s writings, extant or partial, is known to contain this fascinating excerpt. It is believed that if such a chronicle ever truly existed, it is now lost. Most scholars have concluded, however, that DeWitt fell victim to an elaborate hoax.

In any case, the small island remained desolate and unoccupied for another five centuries, whatever tenebrous stories that hung about its shores cloaking it in a seemingly impenetrable shroud of mystery and foreboding—that is, until the arrival of the Merovingian kings heralded a new dawn for that benighted coastline.

The Merovingian were fervent devotees of the cross, but their pagan roots were not so distant that they did not still know much of black magic and its nameless antecedents. So when the great king Clovis sought to conquer the isle—and perhaps harness its power—he would do it not with armies and swords and shields, but with the emblem of his God. So Clovis built upon the Mont a holy temple, a Christian abbey that grew into a monastery, and also grew in power and influence, until finally it came to be the majestic spired mountain of God we know now.

And yet, while the monks do not speak on it, it is rumored that to this day, the men who dwell upon the rock face have never forgotten the island’s dark history…

Diary of Rachel Jones

July 27, 1933

We arrived in the tiny hamlet of Beauvoir as the sun was fading to darkness. The great orb dipped into the sea, and the outline of Mont Saint-Michel burned in the sky, its pinnacle pointed at the celestial heavens like a flaming spear driven into the waters.

I had been eager to arrive, for in a moment of naïve stupidity, I had cornered Margot in an empty cabin, desperate to ease the tension that was growing between us. How foolish could I be?

“We didn’t ask you to come into our lives,” she told me. “We were happy. I was happy. As happy as I have ever been. The day I met Guillaume was the best of my life. The day I met you, the worst.”

What does one say to that? Protestations of love, of the hole in my own heart filled, they all seemed so pointless. Insulting even.

Ugh, rereading what I’ve written so far makes me ashamed. The men out to save the world while the women bicker over a boy’s love. How clichéd.

Yet there’s no time for such emotional trivialities now, as our assault on the Mont is due to begin before the sun next rises. Inspector Villard has proven quite resourceful. We had not been in Beauvoir for more than a half hour when he led us to a small pub in the center of this quaint and picturesque town. There we were to meet a man, a sheep-herder by the name of Alain. He apparently knows the salt marshes well.

“He says he grew up here,” Villard translated, as the man spoke only the barest amount of English. “That he and his brothers would play on the flats at low tide when they were younger, much to their parents’ distress.” Both men laughed at that. “Now he herds sheep that feed on the grass that grows in the salt marshes. He says we should dine on some, that it has a unique flavor.” Alain made a gesture meant to convey the gastronomic delights we could expect to experience.

“Maybe later,” said my father. “Can he take us across?”

Inspector Villard nodded. “Yes. He says that the high tide has only just passed, two hours or so ago. The next low tide will come early tomorrow morning. At 2:30, 3:00 A.M. Perfect for us.”

“And what then? After we cross the marsh, how do we enter the fortress?”

Inspector Villard turned to the man and said a few words in French. Alain listened and then began to nod vigorously.

“He says that there is a back stairway, one that is used by the men of the village to deliver supplies. It leads to an elevator, a sledge of sorts.”

Alain smiled and began to make hand over hand motions.

“Apparently, we will board the sledge, and he will pull us to the top using a rope and pulley system.”

Henry groaned. “Sounds safe.”

“So that’s it then?” my father said.

As if in answer, Alain leaned back in his chair and took a deep pull from his pint.

“Yes,” said Villard, “that’s it.”

“Well, there’s no reason for us all to go. We’ll divide up again. Villard, you and I will go up with Guillaume. Henry, you stay behind with the girls.”