I turned my eyes towards the sky. Though it was still morning, there
was a silver-grey quality to the light that hinted of shortening days and
early dusk. I struck out across the village towards the cliffs with the bow
and my faith. My fate was now entirely in God’s hands. If I were to fail in
my mission this time, it would be into His hands that I would consign my
martyrdom.
By the position of the sun, I reckoned that I had spent three hours,
perhaps four, exploring the cliffs that ringed St. Barthélemy. The upward
climb had been difficult, but the rock face was dry enough that my feet
could find purchase.
It seems strange to think of it tonight, but as I remember the early
hours of that bloody day so many years ago, the immediate recollection
I have of that long walk to the caves is not only a memory of terror, but
also of great beauty.
They say that in the hours before his execution, a condemned man
experiences a fatal sort of calmness, one that allows for deep meditation,
prayer, and reflection. Since my arrival in New France, I had not allowed
myself to see anything but the perilous danger of the unknown, be it the
inclemency of the seasons, the barbarous inhospitality of the Savages,
and the dangers that seemed to lurk behind every distant, jutting island
in every impossible lake. While I had grown accustomed to the foul
smells and the casual barbarism that infected even the most mundane
interaction in New France, from the crudeness of the filthy voyageurs
who came to resemble the Indians in appearance and bearing, to the
awful customs of the Savages themselves, I had never been able to see
any beauty anywhere, except in my memories of home.
Today, facing certain death, I saw beauty. Wild, cruel, implacable
beauty, to be sure, but beauty nonetheless. The world was gold and blue,
the trees aflame with fiery colours the likes of which I had never seen.
Against them, the sky was an indescribably exquisite lapis. All around
me was a sense of silent vastness, as though this land was its own world,
a world whose borders were so distant as to be irrelevant. I could easily
picture the sun rising on one end of this country whilst simultaneously
setting on the other.
And then, I felt yet another chill, this one coming from my soul. For I
remembered that to all this beauty had come Father de Céligny, carrying
his secret like a plague bacillus from the old world into the new. Did the
monster wonder at his good fortune at finding such an exquisite expanse
of unspoiled innocence upon which to stake his claim? Had this been his
plan, perhaps? Had he intuited that, in France and elsewhere in Europe,
there would be those who knew what he was, and, ignorant peasants
though they would most likely be, they would also know the means of
dispatching him?
Here in New France, the creature would find only innocence upon
which to prey. He would only find the childlike, trusting Savages whose
own superstitions did not encompass European superstitions that might
correctly show him for what he was.
Did de Céligny dream of outwardly spiralling concentric circles of
cannibalistic creation—of feeding on these people and making them
like him, then sending them to prey on other Savages, first ten, then
a hundred, then a thousand, then a million, until the entirety of New
France was his personal Tartarus, with de Céligny crowned its Lord of
Chaos?
Did this demon delight in mocking by his very existence our sworn
mission, as Jesuits sworn to bring the light of Christ to the Savages by
bringing them darkness? By taking from these poor people their lives
and eternal souls instead of saving them? By disguising himself as one of
us, turning our priest’s robes into the cerements of the grave, wreaking
fiendish machinations while calling himself a holy Father?
The very thought filled me with revulsion and outrage.
Ahead, through the trees, loomed the cliffs. I was awed yet again at
the uncanny silence all around me, as I had on the first day I’d arrived at
St. Barthélemy. No birds sang, nor even wind in the treetops. The only
noise was the sound of my feet on the leaves and the fallen twigs on the
ground.
The wolf attacked without warning. There was no stalking, nor growling,
no herding this time. It was almost as though they had read my mind and
understood that my intentions this time were not exploratory, but rather
carried a purpose that was deadly to their master. Into the silence came a
sudden sound, like thunder or galloping horses. I felt it before I heard it,
and then the daylight was momentarily blotted out by a massive, hurtling
form that appeared to spring at me from everywhere and nowhere all at
once. I was knocked into the air. I fell backwards, my body smashing to
the earth.
Pain sang through every joint and fibre of my being, and the bow
secured around my shoulder cut into my back like a knife blade.
I barely had time to raise myself on one elbow when the beast
launched itself at me again. But I was ready for it this time. I raised my
leg at the same moment it leaped and kicked the filthy animal as hard as
I could. I heard the sickening sound of the wolf’s ribs cracking against my
boot and its own scream of agony. It landed in a heap a short distance
away and lay there, writhing in pain.
Scrambling to my feet, I ran for a thick pine tree with low-hanging
branches and began to climb it. Like a madman, I strove crazily to
remember if a wolf could climb a tree or not. Normal wolves could do no
such thing, of course, but in that moment, my imagination was flooded
with images of werewolves and sorcery, unsure as I was of the limits of
the powers of the creatures that commanded the wolves. Or even whether
what had attacked me was a wolf, or merely something in the shape of a
wolf.
From the vantage point of the higher branches of the trees, I
watched the wolf struggle to raise itself to its feet and limp over to the
trunk of the tree. In any other circumstance, I would have felt pity, for
it has always distressed me to see an animal in pain. But this creature
wanted—nay,
needed
—my death. It glared upwards balefully, then threw
back its head and howled.
The cry was clearly a summons, for another of its kind soon joined
the beast. The second wolf was larger and obviously older, though no less
powerful for its age. Its muzzle was white, and its coat was flecked with
the same. But if anything, its age had merely added layers of strength and
cunning and malignity, for it circled the tree with a hellish determination,
its jaws snapping when it looked up to where I was perched.
I reached around for the bow tied to my back. It was not broken,
thank God. I could only guess my distance in relation to the creature on
the ground, no longer pacing, but standing stock-still, waiting for me to
fall out of the tree.
Carefully I fitted an arrow into the bow and took aim, remembering
Askuwheteau’s lessons from what seemed like an eternity ago. I squinted
my eyes and willed the death of my prey. Then I pulled the string back as
steadily as I could, and let the arrow fly.
The arrow struck the second wolf in the flank. It fell, lurching to the
ground in stunned shock, yelped once, and kicked its legs as though it
were running. Then there was silence as the wolf lay on its side, tongue
lolling out of its maw.
The first wolf, the injured one, whined pitifully and licked its fellow
as though trying to wake it. Ruthlessly, I forced down my pity. Climbing
partway down, I took aim at the first wolf with my bow and the one
remaining arrow. Snarling defiantly in spite of its broken ribs, it began
to back away from the body of the second wolf as though to take shelter,
its hate-filled yellow eyes not leaving mine for an instant. In the same
moment it turned to run, I pulled back on the string and sent the arrow
home.
The arrow transfixed the wolf through the thick of its neck. Its body
went rigid and from its throat came a wet, choking sound, as though
it were trying to bark, or scream, but could not. Blood gushed from its
mouth. Its eyes rolled to one side and it collapsed on the ground near the
body of the second wolf.
I exhaled audibly, surprising myself with the sound. I did not even
realize I had been holding my breath. What I felt in that moment was
more than the sin of pride or vanity, though it encompassed both of
those things. I felt as though God Himself was guiding my hand, moving
me ever closer to my goal. My robe was soaked with sweat, and it felt cold
and damp against my back and chest in the chilling afternoon light.
I cast one last glance at the bodies of the two dead wolves, as though
to assure myself that they were truly dead. There was no time to tarry.
Squinting, my eyes explored the rock face, searching desperately for
some clue.
And then, my heart suddenly felt as though it had ceased beating,
and my breath caught again. My eye had been drawn to a patch of recessed
shadow between two jutting promontories of rock a short distance above
where I now stood. It appeared, even from the distance at which I stood,
to be a sort of opening, or cave mouth.
Upon reaching it, I used the tinderbox to light the candle I had
brought with me. Shielding the flame with my hand I squeezed myself
through the portal of natural rock outcropping and found myself inside
a space tall enough for me to stand without encumbrance.
By candlelight, the cavern seemed enormous, though that might
have merely been an illusion caused by the twisting shadows. I felt along
the cave walls, walking carefully in the near-darkness, for I knew that if
I fell here, or was otherwise injured, one of two things would happen: I
would either die of some combination of hunger, thirst, or my wounds, or
worse still, I would become helpless to defend myself against the devils’
depredations.
And then I made the discovery that has haunted both my nightmares and
my waking hours for nearly twenty years. Even writing it now, tonight, I
am overcome with the horror of my memory of it.
I cannot have gone any great distance into the cave, though it
seemed like I must have, so smothering was the blackness, when I felt
something move in the darkness. I say felt rather than heard, for there
was no sound, but rather some displacement of the air above me. I raised
the candle and looked up.
Hanging upside down, toes bent slightly for impossible purchase on
the rock ledge, were the brother and sister I had met in the forest on the
last night before my arrival at St. Barthélemy. Their arms folded against
their bodies like wings.
The little boy was still naked. His legs wrapped around his sister’s
middle-section in a grotesque parody of vile, incestuous carnality.
Hers were likewise entwined around his middle-section. Her dress had
fallen downwards, and her maidenhead was plainly visible through her
brother’s spindly bronze legs.
And then I lowered the candle and looked down.
Strewn all around me lay the bodies of the Indians of St. Barthélemy
in similar positions of repose, or death. Their eyes were closed, their
arms crossed against their bodies as though for warmth, or comfort.
Their chests neither rose nor fell, nor did any sound of breathing issue
from their mouths. I put the candle very near the face of one, a woman.
Her face was calm, and oddly beautiful. The candle’s light sculpted her
high cheekbones with shadow. Her lips were full and voluptuous, and
yet there protruded from those lips the sharp points of two white teeth,
human in shape but somehow resembling the fangs of an animal.
I counted five, ten, fifteen of them in the immediate vicinity where
I stood. There were doubtless more of them beyond the circle of my
candlelight.
Holding my crucifix tightly in my hand, I nudged the woman’s body
with the tip of my boot. I braced for her to awaken, but again there
was nothing. No sound, no movement, nothing to indicate that I was
anywhere other than an ordinary tomb, surrounded by the natural dead.
Without thinking, I placed my hands under the woman’s armpits,
and tugged. Her body seemed very nearly weightless, certainly unlike
any human body I had ever touched. It was as though, along with their
souls, the curse that had been visited upon them had taken their physical
heft. I glanced upwards at the two obscene children hanging by their toes
from the ledge and wondered if this condition was what enabled them to
suspend themselves in that manner.
The woman did not stir as I dragged her towards the opening of
the cave. I was not sure what I would do with her once I brought her
outside, but I had some vague memory of stories about these monsters’
abomination of sunlight and was hoping that there might be some truth
to it.
As I approached the entrance with my burden, the darkness of
the cavern brightened until I could see the actual rock opening. I felt
a shudder move through the woman’s body, though she retained her
sleeping posture and made no sound.
And then, as I stepped through the entrance to the cave, into the
light, she awoke.
Her eyes flew open and she shrieked as though prodded with redhot iron tongs. Her mouth yawned open, exposing her full arsenal of
sharp white teeth. The woman pulled away from me and began clawing at
the ground as though to bury herself in the stone. Her screams rent the
afternoon air, recalling to me the stories of the terrible witch burnings,
and how the condemned women shrieked in the flames to which they
had been sentenced.
For indeed, this Savage woman appeared to be burning alive in the
sunlight.
In one second, her skin was clear and unblemished; in the next, it
was festooned with enormous blisters that blossomed all over her body,
seemingly all at once. The air was suddenly full of the smell of burning
meat and something darker and fouler. White smoke poured from her
body, rising from her limbs, her face, her hair, from any part of her that
was exposed to the light. Still screaming, she looked at me with pleading,
tortured eyes, and reached for me as though to beg my help, or at least
my pity. In the instant our eyes met, I believe I saw her human soul,
trapped in that terrible state between life and death and I knew that
these creatures were not beyond the grace of God after all.