Nocturnal Emissions (3 page)

III: The Remains

In the year 1092, only five days after being consecrated, St. Osmund’s cathedral at Old Sarum was destroyed during a thunderstorm, the roof ruined and the entire structure damaged, as if somehow God had not been satisfied with the endeavor. Or, as if Old Shock had come to visit.

Still, standing before the ruins of his own church again, Father Venn couldn’t imagine that even that ancient catastrophe could equal the one evidenced here.

The roof had crushed most of the structure beneath it, and even the bell tower had fallen, leaving only the broad stump of its base propped up by mounds of stone blocks. Gorse and other bushes were growing up between the piles, green life working at burying these gray remnants. Perhaps, unless it was all eventually carted away, this place would ultimately resemble a humped barrow like those of the pagans.

Two ragged walls met in a corner, all that really remained erect, and this with the help of lumber propped against the sagging outsides. Children had been warned not to play near the ruins lest they be crushed, but no one seemed much inclined to venture near the spot in any case. Even the priests who had lived through the fire and collapse had seemed disinclined to ever return.

Himself included.

And yet, here he was again.

Standing at the periphery of the ruins, not far from the road, Venn stared into the shadows formed by those meeting walls. He did not wear his spectacles. He did not want to don them. But he knew that he would. He knew that his feet would carry him closer, into that chill blue shade. And as he approached, a rising breeze whistled through the empty arched sockets of windows in the blasted walls.

Now in the shadows himself, Venn fitted the red-lensed specs to his face and squinted through them warily.

Father Dewy stood in the very corner, hunched somewhat behind a pile of broken masonry as if he meant to duck out of sight. But he did not see Venn, his eyes elsewhere, flicking madly like those of a startled horse. Blood had run down his face from an awful V-shaped wound gashed into the front of his skull as if an axe had bashed him there. The blood still glistened wetly, a year after it had been drawn. A year after the blood had turned to black sludge in the veins of the actual Father Dewy, buried back in
Ireland
.

Venn edged a little closer. Still the young priest did not notice him, his eyes bulging, his fingers whitely gripping a block of stone. The side of his face was charred black, his ear a crisp, his clothing having been badly scorched.

His red hair was white with the dust of centuries: the pulverized stone of the cathedral’s body.

“My friend,” Venn said to him softly, afraid that those eyes might lock on his yet. But at the same time, wishing that they would.

They did not. The man was sobbing desperately but Venn couldn’t hear him. His spectacles, despite their mysterious properties, could not relate that sound to him.

It agonized Venn to see him this way. Dewy had been the youngest, the most vibrant of the priests. Always laughing, always buoyant. Of the three who had died that day—of all the priests, in fact—Dewy had been the one most loved by the townspeople. And though living here in
England
, his beloved
Ireland
had been his true home. Almost more than it pained Venn to see Dewy trapped in this limbo, it pained him that the young man haunted this country rather than his own.

“I wish I could bring you peace,” Venn said to him. Rising to his forgotten duties as a comforter of his fellow creatures, Venn stepped over and between the rubble, reached out to touch Father Dewy’s shoulder. He felt nothing there but a more concentrated chill in the air. Dewy was a ghost even to this ghost.

Venn did not understand why one ghost could act upon its surroundings when another couldn’t, why some were mute and mindless while others spoke and sought to communicate some message to the living. Why some realized they were dead and others, Dewy perhaps, did not. Being dead had not solved such mysteries for Venn but only heightened them, made them more maddening.

Venn withdrew his hand. Stared at his friend a few moments longer. Then, as a mercy to himself, he removed his spectacles. The true colors of the church’s ruins revealed no such being lurking in its shadows. It was a poor excuse for an exorcism.

Venn turned and picked his way out of the rubble, so as to continue on his way toward the farm of this fearsome-eyed Mr. Brook.

««—»»

There was another place that Father Venn had not wanted to revisit upon his return to Candleton, and that was the crossroads appropriately named the Cross, a short distance beyond the remains of his church. But again, he knew it was inevitable. It blocked his path. It was his path.

More in times past than recently, so-called witches and those who had died by their own hand had been buried at crossroads such as this. Even the

“conjurer” named Baptista Stockdale had been interred here. Years before his death, and resurrection, Father Venn had been summoned by Baptista’s cousin to the bedside of the dying woman. The cousin explained that Reverend Trendle had refused to come.

Venn administered last rites to the dying woman, who hadn’t protested despite her reputation as a witch—though she had, to be fair, been wildly delirious through his vigil. Regardless of her lofty name, she was not considered worthy of interment in consecrated ground, and despite the young priest’s misgivings, she had been buried at the crossroads. The last such addition, to his knowledge, to this sad little graveyard of sorts.

Since his death—and before he ultimately left Candleton in a mostly random search for answers as to why he still roamed this material world—

Venn had come here a number of times to say prayers, in the hopes of blessing and freeing the souls of those damned to be buried here.

As he entered into the crossing of the two roads, however, he knew his prayers had not been entirely successful, for he heard a soft voice behind him say, “So…you have not yet found your peace either, Alec.”

Venn turned about and through his red spectacles saw a man standing just at the side of the road. It was a priest, older than himself. He had recognized already, by the voice, that it was his old friend Father Lodge.

“Hello,
Edmond
.”

Father Lodge did not come forward to meet the young priest, as if he were rooted to the spot like a stake in the earth. From an old choir song, he quoted,

“‘He comes the prisoners to release, in Satan’s bondage held.’”

It was Venn who stepped closer to him. “I am not here to say prayers again at this place,
Edmond
. They seem to do no good to release you.”

“That does indeed seem to be the case.” Father Lodge smiled sadly. “I am trapped here, for whatever reason our Father desires.”

“I am not so certain that it is a conscious act on His part,” Venn said, “but a callous disregard. You are more likely overlooked. Forgotten.”

“We can not know these things, Alec,” Lodge admonished him gently.

“Have you been to see Father Dewy?”

“I have. He is also still trapped on this earth.”

“That is sad,” Lodge said. “And still, you could not communicate with him, as you can with me?”

“I could not.”

Neither man understood why it was that one should be chained into one spot, while another of them could move about freely. Why Venn could converse with Lodge, but not hear or be heard by Father Dewy. Why Dewy looked as he had when he’d been killed, whereas Lodge bore not a mark upon him. Why one spirit could effect its surroundings when another could not.

Once, Venn had been called to bless a home in which dishes would fly and shatter on their own, furniture would move about and empty clothing be arranged into a strange tableau of praying scarecrow figures. Donning his red spectacles, Venn had seen a glassy-eyed, mad-looking young girl picking up and throwing a plate in the kitchen. But the strangest thing was that this apparition was the exact double of the nervous and sickly teenage daughter who dwelled in the house—a ghost of a being still alive. Another mystery of the life of spirits to confound him.

“What brings you back here, Alec?” Lodge asked him. Months ago, Venn had come to say goodbye to Lodge before leaving Candleton to expand his quest.

Venn drew nearer yet to the older priest, to show him the large container he carried with him. He explained how he had come upon it.

“Brook,” Lodge mused. “The name is familiar, but I didn’t know the man personally. Young, I believe. With a pretty wife. No children. If I recall, his farm abutted the vicar’s church.”

“Can you see the thing’s eyes?” Venn asked, holding the jar up higher. He hoped no one would come along just then, to see him conversing to empty air, and holding up a jar containing a lamb’s head though no one was there to view it.

Father Lodge wagged his head. “I can not, Alec,” he told him.

Venn knew better than to offer the older priest his specs. He had previously tried to touch Lodge, but found that he did not have anything like the sham body he himself possessed.

Behind Father Lodge, Venn caught a glimpse of an old woman peeking out furtively from behind a misshapen furze bush. Though a wide grin carved her wrinkled features, she quickly and shyly ducked behind the bush again.

“Baptista,” he said. “She has not yet been freed, either. And will she ever be? Will you be, my friend, who was a servant of our Lord and never dis-graced Him?”

“One day, we will all have our answers,” Lodge told him.

“On the day of the Apocalypse, I reckon,” Venn said bitterly. “Can you speak with Baptista? Does she know anything you yourself don’t know?”

“No, we can not converse. She seems more removed than I. But what is it you think she might be privy to, Alec? You don’t believe she truly was a conjurer?”

“It was she who told me about the invading spirit that might reside within an animal, like a parasite inside its host. Like a genie in its lamp, waiting to be released.” He lifted higher the mason jar again. “Like a demon in the body of one who is possessed.”

Lodge frowned. “She was addled, Alec, that was all.”

But Venn persisted. “On her sickbed, as I prayed over her, she babbled to me of strange things. At the time I thought she was mad with fever, but now that I have come into possession of this I have other thoughts. One of the things she told me is that demons can only smuggle themselves into an earthly existence inside the bodies of certain animals when these animals are born.

And when the animal is sacrificed, the parasitic spirit is freed and becomes beholden to whomever it was that released it.”

“Alec, if that were true, every butcher in the land would have an army of demons as his servants. Why would she tell you this, in any case?”

“Perhaps she foresaw that it would be a matter of significance to me, one day.”“Do you at all suspect Baptista as being the one who brought forth the demon you say inhabits that thing in your hands?”

“Not her. If I suspect anyone of such, it is this farmer, Brook. I need to meet him, to know what he is like. To find out what malignant practices or worship he might be taking part in.”

Lodge’s face was as mournful as any ghost’s might be. “In your zeal for answers, my friend, I’m afraid you may become as delusional as the old woman herself. How do you know that your spectacles do not in fact lie to you, rather than reveal the truth? Make you see things you only wish, or dread, to see?”

“
Edmond
, if you could see the eyes staring out of this eyeless head, you would believe the old witch’s words as I do. Why is it any madder than the fact that the two of us are here at this moment, having this conversation? Or are you yourself simply my delusion, then?”

“As you know, Alec,” Lodge sighed, “these matters are as much a mystery to me as they are to you.”

Venn’s face and voice grew more intense. “Well I will have my answers, and I will not wait for Doomsday for them. I will free you…and Dewy…and myself.” He nodded at the furze bush behind which the old woman had crouched. “And her. It isn’t right that any of us should be damned, so.”

“Your heart is good, Alec, but…”

“Yes. Better than our Lord’s, I reckon.”

“Alec!”