Chapter Three: The Rectory

Keeper of the Shade

The horses that had been stabled beside the homes were mummified as the rabbit had been, with no sign of consumption from bird or beast. Only flies swarmed them, and they climbed in and out of their mouths and nostrils as if they were caves of rock instead of flesh.

The beasts laid dead with their heads cocked up against their food troughs, the stables so small that each could only fit one horse, and that horse could not turn around. Derian turned his necklace and looked at one draft, clasping a bead as he ran a hand over the corrupted skin. It peeled away from his touch as paper peels away from flame. Inside the body was black, but swarmed with white maggots.

Darien drew his hand back and stood. If he accidentally saw into the short life of a maggot, he’d see naught but himself.

The village seemed as if it had not been lived in for years. Many of the houses were collapsed, piles of wood and thatching jutting out at sharp angles. Between the rectory and the temple there was a small cemetery. In contrast to when he had been in the house and in the streets, the field of headstones felt quiet and calm. He read the names from a few chiseled stones, and listened to the wind fill the space. It had a flavor to it much like a choir, and he wondered if that was what the scout had heard. A fresh grave sight was covered in young green grass, and dried bouquets were piled around it.

He was surprised. Lord Montgomery’s problem had been a neglected gravesite, as most of the hauntings he had encountered were. Troubled spirits that cursed the living for forgetting them and disgracing their memories. For throwing rumpuses on their burial mounds. Yet this place had no malice, no sign of a wronged dead.

The wind changed directions and what had been a low singing-like whistle became a chanting of many voices. They were singing in cannon, the words crossing over one another in such a way that their meaning was lost. But the tone was clear as the freshly carved name. Victory, the tone called, conquest achieved and home at last.

Darien looked over his shoulder where the wind had come from. A window was open on the rectory’s side wall, and he crept over to it and looked inside.

The velcary, a small temple inside the rectory, was lit by the midday sun. There were rough stone carvings of the chief gods lined up behind the altar, and the blackened wooden figures of the devils lined up and around the back of the room. There were so many figures that Damish and Shamath of the gods stood right beside Farhide and Glaboch of the devils. The close quarters reminded him of the velcary in New Sea Province where he had been reared, though their statues were made from driftwood and not placed so close together. The altar was flat and plain, and the roof was adorned with blessed constellations. A diamond was set in the center, on the star of the great Brodah. Derian leaned in through a window. Where the light struck the stone floor there was nothing to be seen. But in the shadows along the far walls, a darkness moved within.

“Know where a monk might find a meal?” he asked, loudly. The singing stopped. “That’s a fine rendition of Gerald’s Commupance, brothers and sisters. Are you practicing for the Feast of the Forgotten?”

He could tell that the shadow forms were still there. They swayed slightly, and his trained eyes caught the moving edges of their forms.

“I’d like to talk to the gracious leader of the temple. It’s a matter of great importance.”

A babbling came from the shadows, like that of a brook. Outlines of hands pointed in every direction, even down and up. Derian watched as the shadows stirred, turning and looking at the others who surrounded them. After a few moments the shadows were gone.

“Just regular, fourth level, ghosts,” Derian whispered. Places like rectories were filled with the spirits of monks, deacons, and deaconesses. It was one negative to the rigorous life of the clergy. Even in death many spirits still got up in the morning, washed their hands and faces in blessed water, and set about cleaning the halls before breaking their death fast. These haunts were docile, unable to give direct answers or hold their form for long. He’d cleanse the souls.

Still, he had hoped for more than confusion.

He let himself in through the rectory’s front door. He felt the fine chip carving in the threshold- May Those Who Enter Be Gracious as the Gods. Yet the final word was corrupted, the final ‘s’ missing. He could not tell whether it was from the decay that had putrefied the remains of the village or whether someone had scratched it off.

He entered the foyer, clad in dark wood and devoid of furniture. The velcary was to the right. The kitchen was to the left. The door in the center led to the clergy’s cells. He took the center door.

The hallway was windowless and dark. A door on the far end of the hall lead out to the yard and the latrines. A little light came through the bottom crack, enough to show the dust that had piled in the corners. Derian walked, and felt the wood crack beneath his feet. He stepped closer to the wall, where the boards were supported from below. It was a trick he had learned when sneaking out of his cell, to move without the creaking the wood.

He came to the first door and passed it. He had occupied the second room on the left when he joined the clergy in New Sea Province. He went right to it. He reached out and pressed the panel open. It swung, then the hinges popped and broke, sending the heavy door down into the cellar. Derian peaked in.

The room was the same as his had been, two paces wide and five paces deep. A bed took up the back half of the room. A small desk was placed beside the bed, in the dark corner. A well-melted candle sat on the desk, its wax dripping off onto desktop and rolling off onto the floor. A book was open, but it pages were green and white with stripes of mold.

A cassock and a cloak hung from the foot posts of the bed. A mushroom grew out of the cassock’s pocket.

Derian tested the boards with his foot, and found a beam that ran beneath them. He walked along it, placing one foot directly in front of the other. He came to the bed and straightened the wool sheet. The blanket shredded where it had been bunched up. Beneath the torn sheet, a back cloth was folded. Derian touched the cloth, and when it did not fray, he removed it from below the blanket. It was simple, black and deeply hooded. Silver chain was worked into the hood’s hem and down the center of the clothing. He set it on top of the bed and lifted his next bead.

He twisted the bead in his hand. It felt as if he had found the contraband in his room, as adorned clothing, and clothing of pure black and white, were banned from their order. He knew it was not his own, but he felt a deep pang of shame. He looked around and called out.

“Follow the light!”

Snickering came from the desk behind him. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a handful of grave dust. Without turning from the bed, he scattered it across the back of the room, the finely sieved powder hanging in the room like a cloud.

Derian turned.

A man of middle age was cackling, bent in two, holding his stomach as he sat in the chair. His image was fuzzy, black and gray specks where the dust fluttered.

“This your room?” Derian asked.

“Death seeker, you did not knock,” the haunt said. Its eyes were pits of blackest ink.

It was a third level spirit then, Derian thought. Fully conscious. Responds to questions. He watched the hands and feet of the spirit, to see if it had effect on the physical world.

“There is nobody left in the town. There is no need to knock at every door.”

“If that is what you think then you may be as surprised as the rest of them.”

“There’s a lot of spirits trapped in this building,” Derian said, “Is it those of which you speak?”

“The goodie-go-luckies of the past four centuries? Not. If surprising people was in their daily regimen, then perhaps. But we both know it’s not them, Monk.”

“Are you holding them here?”

“Why would I do that? They are poor company. They have no desire to speak of anything but the holy words.”

“You seem smart. Why do you not follow the light?”

“There is no light, death seeker. Dost thou not see my eyes?”

“Then you must go down,” Derian said, “leave this place.”

“You speak again of what you do not know.”

“Tell me what I do not know.”

“I have no wish for that. You find that which dwells here and I’ll be ripped into the down!”

“So, there is something.”

“Is this your first summer, new blood? Of course there is something.”

“But you will not tell me what it is.”

“You are annoying, death seeker. Even in life I did not find your sect amusing. Why doodle with the strings of fate? Perhaps some souls are meant to never go up or down…”

As the spirit rambled, Derian took a bead in his right hand. He broke it over the black cloth. The dust and oil and fresh blood leaked down onto the black fabric. He looked at the spirit as he rubbed it into the cloth.

“Shala, shalook,” Derian whispered.

The seamstress cut the final thread and turned the cloak inside out. She fluffed it thoroughly, and the binding that held its threads together held well. It felt air fill its sleeves and hood, the full size of it making the fabric feel good and wanton.

It was passed from the woman to a man with long fingers. He placed the cloak beneath the seat of his carriage. It stayed there, beneath the man as he rode, for a long while. Then it was brought out of the seat, placed into a basket with many others like it, covered with loaves of bread, and passed into a house. Beneath the house was a cellar, and in the middle of the cellar was a shallow pit.

The pit was filled with hot liquid. The steam coming off of it made every fiber of the cloak cringe against itself. The basket was lowered into the pit, and the cloak felt that its death was near. It was plunged into the slurry and forced back down under with a stick when it began to float. It was dumped from the basket, and then feet tread upon it in a furious beat. The cloth around it was mashed against it. It was dark in the pit, and it felt its fibers begin to take up the poisonous liquid.

It sat beneath a rock for a while, then was pulled up. It was hung to dry the damp cellar, its arms and hood held open by pins. Its fibers began to sag. It had lost much of its size in the pit. It became so dry that it began to frizz and go brittle.

One day it was taken down, and another woman’s hands pierced its surface and attached the chains that would weigh it down forever. It traveled in a box. It was unpacked in a darker, damper basement. Something stirred in the deepest corners, in a space where the wall had been broken down and a cave went out into the beyond. There was fire, and the cloak was passed through it. The fuzz and frizz went up in short deadly bursts of heat. Then it was plunged into thick blood. It was brought up and, for the first time, the cloak felt a cold, shivering body beneath it.

“Tante Tante, Dea so holteh. Shamath, cometh, into the souls of the dear-”

The cloak rose with the man. It felt the hate seep from inside of him, mixed with fear and awe. There were others in the circle, wearing freshly bloodied cloaks, the silver chains glinting beneath the red blood in the orange fire light. The thing in the shadows came close and picked and pulled at the fabric. Where its claws touched, the cloak never was able to feel again.

“Tante, Tante, si la more! Shamath! Si la more!” the man who wore the cloak shouted. The large creature peeled off from the ground and stood in front of him.

The cloak was hidden beneath the man’s shirt as he ran back to his room. It was stashed beneath the bed covers as the waking bell tolled. It was left there, until-

Derian ripped his hand off the cloth and fell to the floor. One hand broke through a rotten plank.

The spirit at the desk laughed.

“Shamath,” Derian whispered, “you were in a cult of Shamath.”

“So very clever, Death Seeker. You and your dust. Almost fly food, huh?”

“Is it a demon of Shamath that rules this village?”

“No, it is not,” the spirit cackled. Its fist beat the desktop, but the book’s pages did not stir.

Level three then, Derian thought. Good.

He looked back towards the door. The spirit, being level three, couldn’t affect him. He watched the grave dust fall into the hole that the door had made. Then a large claw reached out of the hole, and grasped the wooden planks. It was speckled as the haunt had been, but a million times more. Its claws scratched away at the rotten plank, until it found purchase on a floor beam.

“Not a demon,” the haunt laughed. The floor shook beneath Derian as he stood and ran from the room.