Greetings all,
So at the end of the month I am releasing a short anthology of seven stories. Dark Fantasy, they follow the decline of a bloodline to the Sins; monsters and spirits that lurk in the night, in the woods, and always in Man himself. England is in a state of upheaval as the Sins run rife across the land, their deadly Courts in tow, and none are exempt their monstrous attentions.
Given the genre I thought it might be worth mentioning the anthology here, but I've decided to go a step further and actually post one of the seven stories. It should help anyone interested to get a feel for the world, the themes and the monsters I'm exploring here. Anyway, enough of the small talk - onto the story itself. I hope people enjoy...
THE ABBEY
Wreathed in malice and shadows, Envy is a harsh, horrible little sprite. Her Court is a cold and misty one, in which dreams take form and crows perpetually darken the skies, hovering like nightmares to haunt the mind. Trees rise like claws from the ground, snatching for a sky they will never reach, adding to the shadow-ridden earth below.
When not abroad, Envy can be found lurking in the darkness, fingering her bedraggled hair and staring with gleaming slits for eyes, picturing a world in which she rules supreme over all of her brothers and sisters. Yet she is too weak and insubstantial to take it by force alone, and so she spies instead, often in the guise of a crow, and mutters secret plans to herself, lips twisted permanently by jealousy into something cruel, with only the whispers of her ghostly Court to accompany her.
From The Book of Sin
It was a dark night, full of clouds and shadows with just a hint of moonlight. Whispers carried on the rushing winds, racing through the forest and brushing the trees with their tremulous tones. Over and over, the monotonous chanting of a hundred voices lingered on the air:
‘A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood...’
The trees creaked, the leaves rustled and somewhere, not so far away, a figure hurried along the winding forest path. Its feet scuffed the earth as it ran, the scrape of leather and the crunch of crisp leaves adding to the chorus of sound. The ragged gasp of its breath tore from between pale lips.
‘A heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief...’
Overhead, the clouds shifted, slipping noiselessly away so that the moon emerged just as the figure did from the tree line. The forest was illuminated by the jade light of the moon, a picture of viridian mist and emerald boughs. Even the lake glittered pale and swamp-like under its glare. The figure ran on, its hands slipping from beneath its sleeves and revealed for a moment in the moonlight. They were slick with wetness, and black as the figure’s habit, which fluttered furiously as it ran. The wind moaned again:
‘A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren...’
Blood had been spilled that night and it dripped like honeydew from shaking hands.
A long, thin shadow stretched across the lake into the forest, as vast and murky as the glittering, swamp-like lake itself. Offset by the moon, a towering abbey rose into the night, its crooked bell-tower responsible for the swathe of darkness through which the figure fled.
‘I must not tell lies,’ he muttered, his voice drowned beneath the murmured chanting on the wind. ‘I must not tell lies. I must not tell lies.’
Reaching the lakeside, he started across a walkway. The mossy wood looked rotten beneath the moonlight, as though it was not wood at all, but plants of turf, or merely mould, impersonating wood by the dark of night.
Halfway across, the figure glanced up, took in the towering heights of the abbey; the ancient stone brickwork, the mottled stained-glass windows, the rising bell-tower, twisted and battered by the elements, and he shuddered inside his habit.
‘I must not tell lies.’
The slow, sonorous raps of the knocker, when he finally reached the mighty doors, rang leaden into the night. It was several minutes before they groaned steadily open and then only a crack. The wind howled, rushing instantly inside.
‘Yes?’
‘Please, let me in.’
‘We do not take to strangers in these parts.’
‘Please, some charity, I will catch my death of cold.’ The words seemed to have a strange effect on the doorman. He froze, the sliver of his pale, ghostly face illuminated in a flash of lightning. ‘I am a man of God, like you,’ added the stranger.
‘There are no men of God. Not here, not anywhere.’
The door widened nevertheless and the tiny, sodden figure slipped inside.
The dining hall was empty. An air of reverence hung about the room, thick like incense or a guilty conscience. Dust coated the armaments and windows alike, visible as tiny motes under the erratic flashes of lightning. Sin burst into unholy life with every jagged crack, their monstrous forms depicted in the stained glass of the windows.
‘I was caught unawares, travelling from Glastonbury with others of my order. The weather fell foul, but we thought we could endure it. We took shelter, set up camp... We were wrong.’
‘You were caught abroad?’
‘By more than God’s rain. It was no ordinary storm but Sin, come to claim us. Wrath, in all her vitriolic glory. We died. I ran. And now I am here.’
A startled gasp, tired but terrified. ‘They chase your heels? You brought them here?’
‘I lost them. I slipped away, fled into the woods while they stayed to tear at the corpses... The blood, my God, the blood! I have never seen such hate as they ripped the heads, still screaming, from my brothers’ necks...’
The monk began to shake again, his hands rattling against the sturdy wooden tabletop. Cutlery clattered, the quiet sound reverberating within the heights of the dining hall. He clenched his dirtied fists, to steady their tremors, and glanced skyward, muttering for deliverance under his breath.
White, storm-crazed eyes found ornate, painted ceiling and his prayer died on his lips.
‘You are...’
‘Robin. Brother Robin.’
‘You will be safe here, brother. I am Brother William and, for tonight, all that we have is yours to share.’
The room was magnificent, or at least it might have been, once. Figures decorated the ceiling with beautiful intricacy; depictions from The Book of Sin brought to life in vivid brush-stroke. Mighty men, broad of shoulder and stern of face, smote the Sinful Courts to the corner of the masterpiece, where they cowered in darkness and shadow beneath the radiant righteousness of the Holy. Above the flickering candlelight, the painting seemed almost to move, a trick of light and Robin’s own heightened imagination, as if the Sin were in the very act of being banished from the world by God and his children. Except, of course, no such thing had ever happened, nor ever would, not so long as men were men and women worse.
More lightning. Blue, silent. He glanced back at the warped figures painted into the windows, his eyes reflecting the glare of the elements.
‘To paint such a ceiling must have taken a lifetime.’
‘Oh it did, although there are few nobler ways to spend one’s life than in God’s service, whether prayer-book or paintbrush. Especially in times such as these.’
‘Especially.’ Robin lingered over the word. ‘I would have liked to say our own chapel displayed some similar celebration of his holiness, although I cannot claim to such a truth.’
‘You are a monk and that is celebration enough for God, do not dismay.’ A pause, as both men tucked into some food. It was scarce about their plates; some stale bread and salted meat, from the cellars that ran beneath their feet. Neither was enjoyable, but Robin ate voraciously, as though afraid his plate might be taken unfinished from before him. The chanting continued, a hallowed, reverential hymn hanging like the dust in the air, and something else. The patter of claws, or tiny feet, skittering through the walls.
‘Rats,’ muttered William. ‘Just rats.’
‘You said earlier that there are no men of God? These do not sound like the words of a man in His service.’ Robin peered across at the monk, who twitched but made no move to reply, raising instead a skewered sliver of meat to his mouth. It glistened, pink and bloody, reminding Robin of his own tainted hands. He lowered them self-consciously beneath the table but continued to stare out the brother as he chewed deliberately on the fatty piece of pork.
‘Come,’ said William suddenly. Spittle and ham flew from his lips.
‘Where are we going?’
‘You may be alone, but here we are many. You must meet my brothers, before you retire. The abbot is leading them in prayer.’
The two figures slipped noiselessly through the dark, dank passages of the abbey. All about them, the hymn hung heavy on the air. They passed through great halls, their footsteps echoing on the cracked flagstone floors. Archways towered over them, engraved with signs of the cross, and every corridor was dimly lit with tiny candles. They wavered and danced, like the dying light in a man’s eyes, as the two monks ghosted past. Everywhere else, Robin noted, was shadow.
‘I... I have never seen so much architecture, so much craftsmanship. I must admit, I am somewhat in awe.’ The two passed a statue as he spoke, the crumbling edifice staring down at them righteously from its pedestal. An engraving beneath said St. George, who Robin remembered well as being the military saint responsible for casting back one of the Seven.
‘Remind me,’ muttered Robin, his eyes slipping to the back of William’s neck, ‘St. George...’
The faltering of footsteps, barely perceptible, yet Robin noticed. ‘St. George cast back Greed himself from the city of Lydda, in the Holy Land, when the Sin and his army laid claim to it. The Sin would not be deterred, such is his foul nature, unless an innocent of the city was delivered to him each morning. When the day came that he claimed the princess herself, St. George appeared and cast him back.’
‘That is quite a feat...’
‘Even today, nobody knows how he managed it. Such accomplishments are as rare as they are venerated.’ His back still turned to the monk, William drew a long, deep breath. It echoed strangely down the corridor. ‘St. George is the patron saint of this abbey, holding a place above all others – bar Him – in my heart. But that is a tragic tale and not one fit for such nights as this.’
The two continued through the abbey but Robin could not shake the feeling that St. George was watching him as they left, his narrow, stony eyes following them the length of the corridor.
With a last, lingering glance back at the righteous relic, he followed after William into the next hall.
Thick, black clouds amassed through the night sky. Robin could see them as William and he strode through the cloisters towards the church, the religious, monastic heart of the abbey. Even the moon was concealed behind their ominous bulk, and was it not for William and his practised steps, he would have been blind, reliant wholly on the forks of lightning, which stabbed no less blindly at the earth.
‘You walk confidently through the night.’
‘I have been here long enough to know my way about, should the Lord see fit to remove my sight. A lifetime, almost.’
‘You were born into service?’
‘No, but I found solace here. I was never one for reading. That was always my brother’s forte. But here, the word of God found me and I have not looked back since. Besides, He guides my steps.’
A lick of lightning, at the abbey’s crumbling walls this time.
‘Of course.’
The church reared up before them, a foreboding building in the black of night. Windows watched their approach, more stained glass, more Sin staring monstrously at their approach. For a place of God, there was certainly a wealth of Sin depicted within their walls.
Robin chose not to voice his concerns, and then it was too late for they were passing through the church’s stubborn doors and into the building proper and the full force of the abbey’s hymn washed over them.
Reverent song prickled at the back of Robin’s neck. It was holy, sanctimonious, resonating within his bones as if he’d been struck by one of the very bolts that danced through the night sky outside. Goosebumps ran the length of his robed arms.
‘The hymn...’
From beside him, William nodded. ‘I know. I know.’
The church was beautiful; humbler than the rest of the abbey, rows of benches characterised its floor, leading up to a dais at the front, atop which three small altars could be found. The place was old, as old as anything of the abbey Robin had already seen, but lacked the dust and aura of decay that he had so far grown accustomed to. The church looked attended to. Cared for. Perfect, in every way.
At each row of benches stood a dozen monks, their backs turned, hoods covering their heads so that only their voices could be heard. More stood at the front, on the raised platform, their faces similarly hidden, and at the pulpit a lonely figure. The Abbot himself, leading his congregation of monks in solemn song.
‘I recognise the hymn...’ whispered Robin. It seemed wrong to speak, to undo the sanctity of the song. He spoke behind his hand.
‘They sing for God and to ward off evil. To ward off Sin, in all its guises.’
‘Such a thing is not possible, you realise.’
‘We do our best, given the times.’
Robin’s eyes flashed with the lightning. ‘There are no men of God. Not here, not anywhere.’
William hung his head. He looked tired, suddenly. A hundred years old. ‘Perhaps I spoke rashly, before. Certainly I regret those sentiments. There are many on God’s earth who would...well, who would kill to be so close to Him, if you will excuse the expression.’
‘You would say they envy you?’
‘I would.’
‘And in doing so, they would sin.’
‘I... Well, yes, but...’ William glanced back at Robin, a stranger, at the heart of their abbey. His hair was still drenched, plastered wet and slick against his scalp, although it had been well over an hour since he’d been admitted past their walls. The blood of his comrades was no less slick about his hands. Surely it should have dried by now? Surely he should have wanted to wash?
‘Forgive me, Brother, I forget; to which order did you say you belonged?’
‘I did not, merely that I was travelling from Glastonbury.’
‘Ah, I assumed...’
‘You should not have. You know, it really is an abbey above all others that you have here. Beautiful. God would be proud.’
‘Pride, Brother, is a sin like all others.’
‘Envious of you, then, to live in such luxury.’
Something was happening to Robin. His drenched hair was growing, lengthening horribly before William’s eyes, waterlogged ropes of it plastered to his neck. A terrible pallor overcame his flesh, such that he looked more like a statue or – God forbid – a corpse, than a living, breathing man, and the blood that coated his hands began running like dirty water onto the floor. Two glistening black puddles sprang up around the monk’s habit.
‘What...is happening? What trickery is this?’
‘I have enjoyed your company, brother, so much so in fact that I’ve decided I would quite like to be you.’
Time slowed, everything happening slowly, illuminated in a single flash of lightning. Robin span on his heel, habit fluttering like the wings of a bat as he descended on William. Wickedly-clawed hands closed around the monk’s neck, even as William plunged a knife into Robin’s shoulder. The iron blade slid smoothly and without resistance into skin and bone alike, and Robin shrieked obscenely. Bladeless, his weapon buried to the hilt, William dropped to the floor. Bloody handprints circled his bruised throat.
‘Sin!’ he screamed, hysteria high in his voice. ‘Brothers, Sin! See how the iron burns its flesh!’
The assembled monks did not rise to his aid. They did not fly in defence of their abbey. They did not even move, but continued to sing, their melodic, monotonous moans carrying far into the night.
‘It is always dark, where I come from. There is no light. No warmth. We have no birdsong, save the raucous screams of the crows as they circle overhead. The screaming. They do not stop screaming. ’
Scrabbling away, William backed against a statue. He felt alone. Trapped. But the statue brought him comfort. It was another of St. George; tall, defiant, emboldening, and it clutched an ancient sword in its stony hands.
‘You will always find screaming. This abbey is no different. Can you not hear the wind, Beast, as it races through the woods? It screams to feel, to touch. The dying, they scream as their lives are extinguished. The living scream when theirs are not. God’s earth is a chorus of cries.’
‘Poetic,’ hissed Robin, haggard, the knife still steaming in his shoulder. ‘I like you even more.’
William wrenched the sword from the statue. It came free with a lurch, sent him spinning, the blade careering towards Robin’s twisted face. He swung it with all his might, a prayer to the Lord on his trembling lips.
A stony, statuesque hand grabbed his chest from behind. It held him still even as another punched into his back. His vision failing to darkness, William had just enough time to look down, to see it burst through his robes, beating, bloody heart clutched tight in its delicate fingers, before he slumped forward, dead, to the church floor.
Giggling obscenely, St. George sprang into the air. Two glassy wings burst from its back as it took flight, twitching and euphoric into the rafters. Its skin rippled like liquid shadow.
Robin watched his child as it flew. ‘Silly monk,’ he shrieked, casting off his own glamour, revealing the horrid harridan that was Envy beneath. Slick, black hair poured down from her head, drowning the frail, infantile body beneath. Pale, leech-like flesh glinted soft and wet in the candlelight and two shards of broken emerald existed where there should have been eyes. ‘St. George this, St. George that... He was a man, weak like any other. Certainly, he would have died by Greed’s hands, had I not secreted him that cursed blade...’
Envy plucked the steaming dagger from her shoulder, relishing the sensation of the knife as it slid from out of her. Blood spat, black and poisonous, to join that of the congregation’s, murdered earlier by her hands. Not that it had stopped them singing, of course. She did so enjoy their singing.
‘Silly, silly monk.’
Movement, in the shadows. Shapes ghosted in and out of the darkness, flitting between this world and another, faint shrieks and triumphant barks joining the unending hymn. Envy watched the unholy procession with a wicked grin; the flutter of crow wings, the clicking of bones, screams of malediction and joy alike filling the despoiled church. Scuttling down the aisle like a spidery spinster, she sprang atop the central altar.
‘And now, Lesson One,’ she crooned, her voice cracked, sing-song. ‘Lesson One. Lesson One... We must not tell lies.’
So at the end of the month I am releasing a short anthology of seven stories. Dark Fantasy, they follow the decline of a bloodline to the Sins; monsters and spirits that lurk in the night, in the woods, and always in Man himself. England is in a state of upheaval as the Sins run rife across the land, their deadly Courts in tow, and none are exempt their monstrous attentions.
Given the genre I thought it might be worth mentioning the anthology here, but I've decided to go a step further and actually post one of the seven stories. It should help anyone interested to get a feel for the world, the themes and the monsters I'm exploring here. Anyway, enough of the small talk - onto the story itself. I hope people enjoy...
THE ABBEY
Wreathed in malice and shadows, Envy is a harsh, horrible little sprite. Her Court is a cold and misty one, in which dreams take form and crows perpetually darken the skies, hovering like nightmares to haunt the mind. Trees rise like claws from the ground, snatching for a sky they will never reach, adding to the shadow-ridden earth below.
When not abroad, Envy can be found lurking in the darkness, fingering her bedraggled hair and staring with gleaming slits for eyes, picturing a world in which she rules supreme over all of her brothers and sisters. Yet she is too weak and insubstantial to take it by force alone, and so she spies instead, often in the guise of a crow, and mutters secret plans to herself, lips twisted permanently by jealousy into something cruel, with only the whispers of her ghostly Court to accompany her.
From The Book of Sin
It was a dark night, full of clouds and shadows with just a hint of moonlight. Whispers carried on the rushing winds, racing through the forest and brushing the trees with their tremulous tones. Over and over, the monotonous chanting of a hundred voices lingered on the air:
‘A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood...’
The trees creaked, the leaves rustled and somewhere, not so far away, a figure hurried along the winding forest path. Its feet scuffed the earth as it ran, the scrape of leather and the crunch of crisp leaves adding to the chorus of sound. The ragged gasp of its breath tore from between pale lips.
‘A heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief...’
Overhead, the clouds shifted, slipping noiselessly away so that the moon emerged just as the figure did from the tree line. The forest was illuminated by the jade light of the moon, a picture of viridian mist and emerald boughs. Even the lake glittered pale and swamp-like under its glare. The figure ran on, its hands slipping from beneath its sleeves and revealed for a moment in the moonlight. They were slick with wetness, and black as the figure’s habit, which fluttered furiously as it ran. The wind moaned again:
‘A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren...’
Blood had been spilled that night and it dripped like honeydew from shaking hands.
A long, thin shadow stretched across the lake into the forest, as vast and murky as the glittering, swamp-like lake itself. Offset by the moon, a towering abbey rose into the night, its crooked bell-tower responsible for the swathe of darkness through which the figure fled.
‘I must not tell lies,’ he muttered, his voice drowned beneath the murmured chanting on the wind. ‘I must not tell lies. I must not tell lies.’
Reaching the lakeside, he started across a walkway. The mossy wood looked rotten beneath the moonlight, as though it was not wood at all, but plants of turf, or merely mould, impersonating wood by the dark of night.
Halfway across, the figure glanced up, took in the towering heights of the abbey; the ancient stone brickwork, the mottled stained-glass windows, the rising bell-tower, twisted and battered by the elements, and he shuddered inside his habit.
‘I must not tell lies.’
The slow, sonorous raps of the knocker, when he finally reached the mighty doors, rang leaden into the night. It was several minutes before they groaned steadily open and then only a crack. The wind howled, rushing instantly inside.
‘Yes?’
‘Please, let me in.’
‘We do not take to strangers in these parts.’
‘Please, some charity, I will catch my death of cold.’ The words seemed to have a strange effect on the doorman. He froze, the sliver of his pale, ghostly face illuminated in a flash of lightning. ‘I am a man of God, like you,’ added the stranger.
‘There are no men of God. Not here, not anywhere.’
The door widened nevertheless and the tiny, sodden figure slipped inside.
*
The dining hall was empty. An air of reverence hung about the room, thick like incense or a guilty conscience. Dust coated the armaments and windows alike, visible as tiny motes under the erratic flashes of lightning. Sin burst into unholy life with every jagged crack, their monstrous forms depicted in the stained glass of the windows.
‘I was caught unawares, travelling from Glastonbury with others of my order. The weather fell foul, but we thought we could endure it. We took shelter, set up camp... We were wrong.’
‘You were caught abroad?’
‘By more than God’s rain. It was no ordinary storm but Sin, come to claim us. Wrath, in all her vitriolic glory. We died. I ran. And now I am here.’
A startled gasp, tired but terrified. ‘They chase your heels? You brought them here?’
‘I lost them. I slipped away, fled into the woods while they stayed to tear at the corpses... The blood, my God, the blood! I have never seen such hate as they ripped the heads, still screaming, from my brothers’ necks...’
The monk began to shake again, his hands rattling against the sturdy wooden tabletop. Cutlery clattered, the quiet sound reverberating within the heights of the dining hall. He clenched his dirtied fists, to steady their tremors, and glanced skyward, muttering for deliverance under his breath.
White, storm-crazed eyes found ornate, painted ceiling and his prayer died on his lips.
‘You are...’
‘Robin. Brother Robin.’
‘You will be safe here, brother. I am Brother William and, for tonight, all that we have is yours to share.’
The room was magnificent, or at least it might have been, once. Figures decorated the ceiling with beautiful intricacy; depictions from The Book of Sin brought to life in vivid brush-stroke. Mighty men, broad of shoulder and stern of face, smote the Sinful Courts to the corner of the masterpiece, where they cowered in darkness and shadow beneath the radiant righteousness of the Holy. Above the flickering candlelight, the painting seemed almost to move, a trick of light and Robin’s own heightened imagination, as if the Sin were in the very act of being banished from the world by God and his children. Except, of course, no such thing had ever happened, nor ever would, not so long as men were men and women worse.
More lightning. Blue, silent. He glanced back at the warped figures painted into the windows, his eyes reflecting the glare of the elements.
‘To paint such a ceiling must have taken a lifetime.’
‘Oh it did, although there are few nobler ways to spend one’s life than in God’s service, whether prayer-book or paintbrush. Especially in times such as these.’
‘Especially.’ Robin lingered over the word. ‘I would have liked to say our own chapel displayed some similar celebration of his holiness, although I cannot claim to such a truth.’
‘You are a monk and that is celebration enough for God, do not dismay.’ A pause, as both men tucked into some food. It was scarce about their plates; some stale bread and salted meat, from the cellars that ran beneath their feet. Neither was enjoyable, but Robin ate voraciously, as though afraid his plate might be taken unfinished from before him. The chanting continued, a hallowed, reverential hymn hanging like the dust in the air, and something else. The patter of claws, or tiny feet, skittering through the walls.
‘Rats,’ muttered William. ‘Just rats.’
‘You said earlier that there are no men of God? These do not sound like the words of a man in His service.’ Robin peered across at the monk, who twitched but made no move to reply, raising instead a skewered sliver of meat to his mouth. It glistened, pink and bloody, reminding Robin of his own tainted hands. He lowered them self-consciously beneath the table but continued to stare out the brother as he chewed deliberately on the fatty piece of pork.
‘Come,’ said William suddenly. Spittle and ham flew from his lips.
‘Where are we going?’
‘You may be alone, but here we are many. You must meet my brothers, before you retire. The abbot is leading them in prayer.’
*
The two figures slipped noiselessly through the dark, dank passages of the abbey. All about them, the hymn hung heavy on the air. They passed through great halls, their footsteps echoing on the cracked flagstone floors. Archways towered over them, engraved with signs of the cross, and every corridor was dimly lit with tiny candles. They wavered and danced, like the dying light in a man’s eyes, as the two monks ghosted past. Everywhere else, Robin noted, was shadow.
‘I... I have never seen so much architecture, so much craftsmanship. I must admit, I am somewhat in awe.’ The two passed a statue as he spoke, the crumbling edifice staring down at them righteously from its pedestal. An engraving beneath said St. George, who Robin remembered well as being the military saint responsible for casting back one of the Seven.
‘Remind me,’ muttered Robin, his eyes slipping to the back of William’s neck, ‘St. George...’
The faltering of footsteps, barely perceptible, yet Robin noticed. ‘St. George cast back Greed himself from the city of Lydda, in the Holy Land, when the Sin and his army laid claim to it. The Sin would not be deterred, such is his foul nature, unless an innocent of the city was delivered to him each morning. When the day came that he claimed the princess herself, St. George appeared and cast him back.’
‘That is quite a feat...’
‘Even today, nobody knows how he managed it. Such accomplishments are as rare as they are venerated.’ His back still turned to the monk, William drew a long, deep breath. It echoed strangely down the corridor. ‘St. George is the patron saint of this abbey, holding a place above all others – bar Him – in my heart. But that is a tragic tale and not one fit for such nights as this.’
The two continued through the abbey but Robin could not shake the feeling that St. George was watching him as they left, his narrow, stony eyes following them the length of the corridor.
With a last, lingering glance back at the righteous relic, he followed after William into the next hall.
*
Thick, black clouds amassed through the night sky. Robin could see them as William and he strode through the cloisters towards the church, the religious, monastic heart of the abbey. Even the moon was concealed behind their ominous bulk, and was it not for William and his practised steps, he would have been blind, reliant wholly on the forks of lightning, which stabbed no less blindly at the earth.
‘You walk confidently through the night.’
‘I have been here long enough to know my way about, should the Lord see fit to remove my sight. A lifetime, almost.’
‘You were born into service?’
‘No, but I found solace here. I was never one for reading. That was always my brother’s forte. But here, the word of God found me and I have not looked back since. Besides, He guides my steps.’
A lick of lightning, at the abbey’s crumbling walls this time.
‘Of course.’
The church reared up before them, a foreboding building in the black of night. Windows watched their approach, more stained glass, more Sin staring monstrously at their approach. For a place of God, there was certainly a wealth of Sin depicted within their walls.
Robin chose not to voice his concerns, and then it was too late for they were passing through the church’s stubborn doors and into the building proper and the full force of the abbey’s hymn washed over them.
Reverent song prickled at the back of Robin’s neck. It was holy, sanctimonious, resonating within his bones as if he’d been struck by one of the very bolts that danced through the night sky outside. Goosebumps ran the length of his robed arms.
‘The hymn...’
From beside him, William nodded. ‘I know. I know.’
The church was beautiful; humbler than the rest of the abbey, rows of benches characterised its floor, leading up to a dais at the front, atop which three small altars could be found. The place was old, as old as anything of the abbey Robin had already seen, but lacked the dust and aura of decay that he had so far grown accustomed to. The church looked attended to. Cared for. Perfect, in every way.
At each row of benches stood a dozen monks, their backs turned, hoods covering their heads so that only their voices could be heard. More stood at the front, on the raised platform, their faces similarly hidden, and at the pulpit a lonely figure. The Abbot himself, leading his congregation of monks in solemn song.
‘I recognise the hymn...’ whispered Robin. It seemed wrong to speak, to undo the sanctity of the song. He spoke behind his hand.
‘They sing for God and to ward off evil. To ward off Sin, in all its guises.’
‘Such a thing is not possible, you realise.’
‘We do our best, given the times.’
Robin’s eyes flashed with the lightning. ‘There are no men of God. Not here, not anywhere.’
William hung his head. He looked tired, suddenly. A hundred years old. ‘Perhaps I spoke rashly, before. Certainly I regret those sentiments. There are many on God’s earth who would...well, who would kill to be so close to Him, if you will excuse the expression.’
‘You would say they envy you?’
‘I would.’
‘And in doing so, they would sin.’
‘I... Well, yes, but...’ William glanced back at Robin, a stranger, at the heart of their abbey. His hair was still drenched, plastered wet and slick against his scalp, although it had been well over an hour since he’d been admitted past their walls. The blood of his comrades was no less slick about his hands. Surely it should have dried by now? Surely he should have wanted to wash?
‘Forgive me, Brother, I forget; to which order did you say you belonged?’
‘I did not, merely that I was travelling from Glastonbury.’
‘Ah, I assumed...’
‘You should not have. You know, it really is an abbey above all others that you have here. Beautiful. God would be proud.’
‘Pride, Brother, is a sin like all others.’
‘Envious of you, then, to live in such luxury.’
Something was happening to Robin. His drenched hair was growing, lengthening horribly before William’s eyes, waterlogged ropes of it plastered to his neck. A terrible pallor overcame his flesh, such that he looked more like a statue or – God forbid – a corpse, than a living, breathing man, and the blood that coated his hands began running like dirty water onto the floor. Two glistening black puddles sprang up around the monk’s habit.
‘What...is happening? What trickery is this?’
‘I have enjoyed your company, brother, so much so in fact that I’ve decided I would quite like to be you.’
Time slowed, everything happening slowly, illuminated in a single flash of lightning. Robin span on his heel, habit fluttering like the wings of a bat as he descended on William. Wickedly-clawed hands closed around the monk’s neck, even as William plunged a knife into Robin’s shoulder. The iron blade slid smoothly and without resistance into skin and bone alike, and Robin shrieked obscenely. Bladeless, his weapon buried to the hilt, William dropped to the floor. Bloody handprints circled his bruised throat.
‘Sin!’ he screamed, hysteria high in his voice. ‘Brothers, Sin! See how the iron burns its flesh!’
The assembled monks did not rise to his aid. They did not fly in defence of their abbey. They did not even move, but continued to sing, their melodic, monotonous moans carrying far into the night.
‘It is always dark, where I come from. There is no light. No warmth. We have no birdsong, save the raucous screams of the crows as they circle overhead. The screaming. They do not stop screaming. ’
Scrabbling away, William backed against a statue. He felt alone. Trapped. But the statue brought him comfort. It was another of St. George; tall, defiant, emboldening, and it clutched an ancient sword in its stony hands.
‘You will always find screaming. This abbey is no different. Can you not hear the wind, Beast, as it races through the woods? It screams to feel, to touch. The dying, they scream as their lives are extinguished. The living scream when theirs are not. God’s earth is a chorus of cries.’
‘Poetic,’ hissed Robin, haggard, the knife still steaming in his shoulder. ‘I like you even more.’
William wrenched the sword from the statue. It came free with a lurch, sent him spinning, the blade careering towards Robin’s twisted face. He swung it with all his might, a prayer to the Lord on his trembling lips.
A stony, statuesque hand grabbed his chest from behind. It held him still even as another punched into his back. His vision failing to darkness, William had just enough time to look down, to see it burst through his robes, beating, bloody heart clutched tight in its delicate fingers, before he slumped forward, dead, to the church floor.
Giggling obscenely, St. George sprang into the air. Two glassy wings burst from its back as it took flight, twitching and euphoric into the rafters. Its skin rippled like liquid shadow.
Robin watched his child as it flew. ‘Silly monk,’ he shrieked, casting off his own glamour, revealing the horrid harridan that was Envy beneath. Slick, black hair poured down from her head, drowning the frail, infantile body beneath. Pale, leech-like flesh glinted soft and wet in the candlelight and two shards of broken emerald existed where there should have been eyes. ‘St. George this, St. George that... He was a man, weak like any other. Certainly, he would have died by Greed’s hands, had I not secreted him that cursed blade...’
Envy plucked the steaming dagger from her shoulder, relishing the sensation of the knife as it slid from out of her. Blood spat, black and poisonous, to join that of the congregation’s, murdered earlier by her hands. Not that it had stopped them singing, of course. She did so enjoy their singing.
‘Silly, silly monk.’
Movement, in the shadows. Shapes ghosted in and out of the darkness, flitting between this world and another, faint shrieks and triumphant barks joining the unending hymn. Envy watched the unholy procession with a wicked grin; the flutter of crow wings, the clicking of bones, screams of malediction and joy alike filling the despoiled church. Scuttling down the aisle like a spidery spinster, she sprang atop the central altar.
‘And now, Lesson One,’ she crooned, her voice cracked, sing-song. ‘Lesson One. Lesson One... We must not tell lies.’
