Anathemas by Various Authors

Author:Various Authors
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2020-01-31T10:36:15+00:00

THE THING IN THE WOODS

Paul Kearney

It is the drums that wake me, in the dark moments before the dawn – the confessor used to tell me that the hour just before morning is as black as a heretic soul.

But on rising from my pallet in the cell, it seems that they were no more than a shadow of the night, a memory. The darkness is silent. The forests beyond the Retreat keep their secrets. And the drums are in my mind alone – a nightmare, no more. I have imagined them yet again.

My old bones creak when I kneel, the joints ache and my back protests. But I pray always, on waking. I have prayed every morning on Carcanis for sixty years, and I’m damned if I will stop now. The words are a comfort to me – the Catechism of the Creed Temporal. I need no slate or book to remind me how to utter them. They are a part of me, inscribed upon my very soul.

I am the last of my kind on this world, and I will give witness to the Truth every morning, as I swore to the others I would – all those who came here with me and who are buried now in the graveyard beyond the walls of the vegetable garden. I remember them, every one. Sometimes it seems to me that I recall their faces better than I do those of the living who still surround me.

Bruni comes in when I am done – she puts her ear to the door to make sure she gets the timing right, I am sure – and she bears a jug of hot water, a clean towel and a mug of scalding tea, double-strength.

She is a good girl – not overly pious – but then the confessor once described me in exactly the same terms. She is almost nineteen now – or thereabouts – and she stands tall and dark and silent as I perform my ablutions naked before her. I have no modesty – I was taught to abjure it in my own youth.

I stand at last barefoot on the flagged floor with a leather belt cinched around the faded blue habit I have worn for days beyond count, and I sip the tea while she raises a thick eyebrow, and I nod to tell her that it is acceptable, as it always is. Bruni has been my maidservant for seven years, and is well used to my ways now. And she also knows that I am a finicky old bitch when it comes to my tea.

The morning comes at last, with the first sun over the mountains. We both stand and watch it, Bruni and I. It is not religion, not quite faith, to do such a thing, but it is a moment of grace, all the same.

Then the moment passes, and it is all about the day to come.

Well, I am old, there’s no getting past that. I come from common labouring

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