Nocturnal Emissions (5 page)

Venn noted in his host’s expression of dread a measure of recognition.

And in fact, she muttered, “
That…
”

“So your husband showed this to you, then, before he sold it to the man I acquired it from, at Woodbury Fair?”

“Yes, Father.” The widow averted her eyes from it, sipped from her tea a bit tremulously. “I saw the poor blighted thing when it was still alive. It was only one of the badly formed creatures that were born this past Spring.”

“There were others, then?” Venn found himself leaning forward more intensely. “How many? And did your husband sell those, as well?”

“The rest were mercifully born dead. Even more horrid were they than that one, I dare say. One of them didn’t die straight away, in fact, but was mewling so horribly and so…so terribly, unthinkably malformed that my husband slit its throat.”

“I am sincerely sorry for reminding you of these things, Mrs. Brook.”

“Our workers thought we were cursed. Several of them even left our employ.” She still wouldn’t look at the head again, lying in its jar like some perverse holy relic. Therefore, she wouldn’t face Father Venn, as well. He was sorry for this, and bundled the object away so that she could once again look in his direction. As soon as she did, he almost regretted it. Regretted having her lovely eyes meet his own. They unnerved him, and he felt a flush of dismay that he should find her so attractive. A recent widow, and he a priest with a vow of celibacy.

Not that he was certain, any more, about the legitimacy or value of the profession he had owned in life. In life. Venn had to remind himself that, even if his days of being a priest were not truly over, his days of being a mortal man were. This fact shook him out of his moment of uneasy desire.

“That beast was the cause of some distress to my husband in another way,” the widow disclosed. “One evening he found it in the arms of the Reverend Trendle, just as he was carrying it inside his church. My husband was a brash man.” She lowered her eyes. “And not a God-fearing man, if I may speak so of him. He accused the vicar of stealing the lamb, but the vicar insisted that it had strayed upon the church property. My husband said that the animal was not yet strong enough on its legs to have wandered so far alone, and asked the vicar why he was bringing it into the church, in that case, instead of returning it to him.”

Venn’s eyebrows drew in toward each other. He nodded very slowly, found himself clasping his hands together in his lap almost painfully. “How did the vicar respond to that?”

“He said that when he saw the animal’s condition, he had decided to put the thing out of its misery. But my husband, and if I dare say quite rightly, replied that it was not for the vicar to take upon himself, however kind his intentions. So my husband went to the vicar and tore the poor beast straight out of his arms, as he was proud to relate to me later.” Ashamed, in a subdued voice the widow said to Venn, as if he were her confessor, “My husband was overly fond of his drink, Father.”

“So there was much conflict between your husband and the vicar, then?

Were there more incidents between them?”

“My husband was an atheist, Father, and forbade me from attending church myself—though I assure you I am a Christian.” She added this with emphasis in her wide, onyx eyes. “He and the vicar did indeed exchange unfriendly words on a number of occasions. It was unfortunate that two men of such opposing views should be neighbors.”

“That was unfortunate, indeed,” Venn said in a low, grave voice. “Would it be too much to ask you about your husband’s death, Mrs. Brook?”

She set down her tea cup, which chattered a little in its saucer and spilled a dribble down its side. “It was…” She trailed off, wagging her head.

He touched her arm. “You need not tell me. The vicar himself informed me, when I chanced upon him a short while ago.”

“I suppose…I suppose he must have been drinking. And dropped his pipe.

Some have told me that perhaps the alcohol in him, or even the fat of his body, might have caused him to…to burn so…”

Venn moved his eyes to a window beside him, which looked out across the pastures dotted with sheep like white gravestones, the slope of the vale growing misted blue with the shadows of the late afternoon. Silhouetted against the platinum glow of the sky was the Anglican church in its cage of scaffolding and ladders, like a gibbet under construction.

V: The Storm

Though he did not require nourishment Venn could take it, and he stayed for dinner that evening. In fact, his host shyly offered to house him for the duration of his stay in Candleton, knowing that he had no church to go to. He accepted, and told her, “I could perhaps do some work here on your farm, to repay you for your kindness.”

The widow looked rather horrified at the suggestion. “I could not have you do that, Father! You are my guest, and I expect nothing from you in return.”

She made up a small room for him on the second floor, explaining that her husband’s mother had stayed here until her own demise a year and a half ago.

While Venn stood watching the young woman bustle nervously about the room, he asked her softly, “That scar, on your jaw…I don’t mean to make you embarrassed of it. It does not subtract from your loveliness.” He found he had to swallow before he spoke again. “But I was wondering if it were some mishap from childhood.”

Despite his reassurance, he saw that her fingers flew up to half cover it, reflexively. She met his gaze for only a moment. “I told you that my husband imbibed too freely. One evening, in a fury, he threw at me his pottery mug.

It…struck me here, and shattered.”

“I am very sorry that I asked you. It was rude of me. I only meant to show concern.”

Mrs. Brook smiled at the handsome young priest wanly but sincerely. “Your concern is appreciated, Father.” She backed toward the small room’s door. “I hope you will be comfortable here. Why don’t I…” she looked his black-garbed body up and down, seemed to catch herself, and stammered, “Why don’t I bring you my husband’s gown to sleep in? And some other of his things that I still possess, as it appears you have brought no change of clothing?”

“I would greatly appreciate that, Mrs. Brook.” He smiled. “Would it be too forward to call you by your Christian name?”

“Susan,” she said. Then quickly amended, “Sue.”

He smiled again. “Thank you, Sue.”

She nodded, and whisked herself out of the room, but not before he saw the flush of blood suffusing her skin.

««—»»

Venn lay for a while in the bed he had been provided, but spent most of the night standing by the window of the room, gazing out into the night. In this position, his mind would drift, memories would swim up like phosphorescent sea creatures from their depths then submerge again, this being the closest thing he knew to sleep. To rest.

One of the images that came to him was of a stained glass window he had seen as a boy, with his father, in the fifteenth century
Fairford
Church
, this particular window portraying the “Last Judgment”. It showed two demons conveying two naked women to Hell. One woman sat astride the shoulders of a blue, scaled demon with a pitchfork, the other woman being flailed by a red demon with a spiked mace. He recalled the mix of uncomprehending lust and all too obvious horror with which he had stared at the tinted glass. The women, disrobed, symbolized wanton humanity, but Venn had found them more of an enticement than an indictment.

Remembering the window now made him think of the shadowy winged figure he had glimpsed through the stained glass window of his own cathedral, as it exploded into flame and began to topple all around him. And atop him.

With a disturbing mix of lust and fear, like that he had experienced as a boy, Venn realized that the window—the imperiled, naked women—also called to his mind the image of Susan Brook.

He roused himself from his reverie. He had chosen another path long ago, and how could he now rediscover the flesh that was no longer even his substance? He must not give himself over to these feelings. He had denied himself them in life. The time for them was buried.

He willed himself instead to concentrate on what lay out in the night, unseen, but looming all the same.

The church of the Reverend Trendle.

It seemed unthinkable, insupportable. He remembered what Lodge had suggested, that he was acting as delusional as the dying witch, Baptista. That he might be seeing lies where he thought he was uncovering truth. And yet, no matter how he might struggle against the conclusion, he returned again and again to the vicar of Candleton. The man who had won over, through misfor-tune, the bulk of the town’s Catholic congregation to his own church.

Would a man of God be capable of what Venn suspected?

And then he thought of the Inquisition. The Jews, heretics, the alleged sor-cerers whom Popes had seen tortured with hot irons and thumbscrews, chairs of nails and molten lead. He thought of the Crusades, the Templar Crusaders, and the Templars’ own executions when the Church grew jealous of their power. He thought of the mischief of the little girls of
Salem
,
Massachusetts
who caused innocents to be hung and crushed under stones. And similarly, of Father Urbain Grandier, tortured then burned alive for supposedly bewitching the nuns at
Loudon
,
France
, when in fact his offense was speaking out against the Cardinal Richelieu.

He thought of what the Savior had told His followers. To turn one’s cheek and love one’s neighbor. And Venn wondered if perhaps he had been reading another version of the book these bloody-handed men had read. If the words had magically appeared different to his own untrustworthy eyes.

No—it was not unthinkable to suspect that his church’s old rival had brought down the roof of his own. Why should it be impossible to imagine that a man of God might as easily wield a demon against his enemies, as to wield a Torquemada?

There was a flash that Venn first mistook for a blink of his eyes, but then a rumble of thunder rolled into the vale from its far end, and Venn felt the faintest of vibrations carried through the very wall he leaned against.

Distantly, he heard a dog begin to howl. As a boy, his own dog would jump up into bed with him during thunderstorms. Perhaps this was one of the farm’s sheep dogs, though Venn decided it was too far away to be that.

Another flash made the sky silver for a moment before it again became black. In that instant, Venn had seen the
church
of
Reverend Trendle
starkly silhouetted, as it had been at sunset. In the quick glare, the leaning stones in the churchyard had looked like the fangs lining the bottom jaw of some vast behemoth, spreading wide its maw.

But no rain had begun to fall. Just another, heavier peal of thunder rolling into the gentle valley like an avalanche of boulders, rattling in its frame the window Venn stood at.

Venn turned away from the pane, looking toward the mason jar, which he had placed atop a small writing desk. He went to the jar, and for the first time opened its lid. The stink he released was like some unseen wraith in itself.

Before he lifted out the dripping, pickled lamb’s head, he first lay down his coat so as not to dribble the preservative onto the desk. Even without his specs on, Venn was careful to avoid nearing his fingers to the blank bony hollows where he knew those demonic eyes would be lolling to keep him in view. He almost expected the decapitated head to suddenly snap at his fingers, but when he had set it down on his folded coat it merely rested there dumbly with alcohol trickling down its snout and dripping off its twisted ears.

Venn crouched down before it, his voice kept low. “As I contemplate him, he stands at his window, no doubt, contemplating me. He is unnerved by my return. My questions about the farmer Brook.” Venn found a letter opener on the desk and picked it up, toyed with it, pressing its point against his thumb.

Somehow, the pressure hurt him. Somehow, what looked like a bead of mortal blood, made up of mortal cells, welled from the point of contact. But it could not be living cells. Once, a Jewish acquaintance had told him of the belief that all the world and everything in it was composed of characters in the Hebrew language, all their curved hooks and barbs interlocked like the tiny pieces of a gigantic puzzle. Perhaps it wasn’t cells that made up this drop of blood, but those millions of minute letters. The thoughts, the sounds, the vibrations those letters represented.

He whispered on to the thing he had dubbed Baphomet: “I thought it was Brook who was tampering with these forces, but he was innocent, however vile

he might have been. Trendle was using Brook’s animals to breed the likes of you. To serve him. To smite his enemies.” Venn reversed the letter opener in his fist, so that the blade pointed downward, and he tightened his grip around its handle. “But he didn’t get you. Brook did. Then that fool at the fair. And now…me.” Venn raised his fist, the knife, high above his head. “So…even with the throat cut, even with the body gone, you are still hiding there. In the furthest corner. The skull is your nest, is it? Yes, Baphomet—as it is for us all.”

Then he plunged the blade downward, as if to sacrifice this beast to his god.