Enter, Night (63 page)

Inside the Jesuit house, I found a torch of cedar and pitch. I lit the
torch, then put a second torch in my bag. There was a shovel leaning
against one wall. The heft of it gave me comfort, for I believed I could
make a decent weapon of it if it came to that.

The path back to the caves through the trees was easier this time
because of the light of the torch. Easier in one sense, for the path was
well-lit and I made good progress. Harder in another, for I now knew,
beyond any measure of a doubt, what monsters, earthly and unearthly,
could hide outside that ring of torch-light.

Upon arriving at the caves, I saw that the two piles of bones were
as I had left them. The first pile, the remains of my poor Askuwheteau, I
would bury. Though it was against the customs of his people to lay them
beneath the earth, Askuwheteau had fought and died as bravely as any
Christian, and it was only natural that he be buried as one. I lamented
the fact that I had not had the chance to baptize him before he died so
horribly. After I had completed my most pressing task, I swore to him
that I would attend to his burial with due reverence.

The second pile of bones, the bones of de Céligny, I approached with
dread. I pushed the torch close to the charred skeleton. At first I doubted
the proof of my own eyes, for it surely seemed as though the creature
whose body I had watched crumble and dissolve once pierced by the
arrow would have found some way to render itself vivid once again.

And yet, as I said, it was where I’d left it, and as I left it. I wedged
the base of the torch between two boulders and, by its guttering light, I
surveyed the grotesque thing.

I raised the shovel over my head and brought it down squarely across
the neck, severing the skull from the body with a single blow.

In my hubris and vanity, I half-expected to hear a sound, perhaps a
scream from beyond the shadow of the Valley, or the trumpets of angels
and the beating of their wings as they celebrated my triumph over the
forces of Darkness. But there was nothing save the sound of the wind high in the trees that danced in the moonlight.

Using the shovel, I scooped the dreadful mix of bones and ash into
my bag. I lit the second torch by the fire of the one wedged between
the boulders and by its light I made my way to the mouth of that
abhorrent place, carrying my ghastly burden in my other hand. To say
that the blackness of the cave was forbidding by daylight is to render the
description of it at night, by torchlight, almost beyond possibility.

Deeper and deeper into the cavern’s depths I went, the aureole of
torchlight illuminating only the area immediately around it. The silence
was the silence of the grave. No sound broke that silence; no sounds save
for that of my feet on the rock and, from far away in its recesses, the
steady drip of water on stone. The weight of the bag seemed to grow
heavier with every step I took into that obsidian blackness.

And then, suddenly, there was a sound. I stopped in my tracks,
straining to identify what I heard, or what I only thought I’d heard. My
torch sputtered and for one terrible moment, the fire burned low as
though some wind had blown it out.

In that moment, as the darkness swam towards me, I heard the
sound again. It was the sound of breathing—not my own, but coming
from somewhere in the lightless recesses of the cave. And then I felt the
horrible dead heft of the bag twitch against my leg as though there were
something inside it, trapped, but still alive.

I screamed and dropped the bag on the floor of the cavern. Wildly
I swung the dying torch in front of me. The low-burning flame revealed
only the walls of the cave, appearing and vanishing like a chimera with
every sweep of the torch. And the sound of breathing was no more, if
indeed it had ever been.

I brought the torch, which again blazed to life, close to the bag
containing the bones of Father de Céligny and bent down to examine it.
The sweat soaked my hair and ran down into my eyes, but when I wiped
it away with the back of my hand, and squinted to see, the bag was where
I had dropped it, and it was still, unmoving.

Had I imagined it? Had the nightmare sensation of carrying a
trapped animal that had been merely stunned, but was waking, been
nothing more than a phantasm born of my terror? I had no answer but
this: that the bag was not moving and my torch would not burn forever.
I had to do what I had to do; I had to hide the remains of this monster
where they would never be found, where no human hands would soil themselves with the contagion it represented. I crossed myself and
pushed farther into the cave.

I have only a blind man’s reckoning of how much farther and deeper
into the cave, and then underground, I went before I found what I was
looking for—a natural recession in the rock, oblong and shaped like an
sarcophagus, surely carved by centuries of natural erosion, a natural
coffin for my most unnatural and unwholesome freight. Surely here, in
the wildest, darkest part of this wild, dark wilderness, the bones of this
monster would remain unmolested till the end of time.

I placed the bag into the recession and covered it with the weight
of some of the large stones and boulders I found scattered about. The
work was arduous and the rocks were heavy, and by the time I placed the
last one on top of the makeshift grave, my hands were bleeding with my
exertion. I wiped my hands on the robe, leaving the traces of my stigmata
on the coarse fabric.

Then, taking up the torch again, I turned and began to retrace my
steps through the blackness. After an eternity, I came to the mouth of
the cave. I wept joy when I saw the glimmer of the first torch, the one I’d
left outside the cave, wedged between the rocks.

From the position of the moon in the sky, I ascertained that I had
been about my mission for the better part of the night, though dawn was
still a few hours away. I took up the shovel and began to dig. By the time
I had dug a grave deep enough to bury Askuwheteau, the sky had begun
to lighten in the distance, pale violet streaks, and dark blue lifting from
the blackness like celestial foam on a wave.

I laid his body reverently into the grave. I was surprised to find that
I still had tears in me left to shed, but I did, and I shed them there as I
covered his body with the dark, flinty soil upon which he had so bravely
died. I bowed my head and prayed for the progression of his immortal
soul on its journey towards the Light of God.

And then, from overhead, came a sound like the flapping of giant
sails in a strong wind.

In the light of the torch, the creature dropped from some unknown
height. As it landed, crouching like an animal about to spring, I had a
brief, vivid impression of giant, unfolded wings, but the wings seemed to
melt away, leaving in their place a pair of thick, muscled arms. Its head
was bowed, and long dark hair streamed from its scalp like a black halo.

When it stood, I saw that it was of vast height, taller than any Savage
I had encountered, but Savage it was—or, rather, Savage it had been in
its original, God-ordained life. Now, reborn, its eyes burned with that
familiar crimson fire and its teeth were deadly and terrible. From that
mouth issued a high, shrill whistle that was human in neither pitch nor
form, but somehow communicated a fierce, inhuman hunger that would,
I realized, brook no denial.

Instinctively, I lifted my torch in my own defence as it leaped. The
effect upon the creature was instantaneous. To my wonder, the thing
retreated, as though terrified by the fire. Emboldened, I advanced on it
with the torch. It screamed in rage and continued to recoil. I expected any
moment for it to shift its shape, as I had seen these things do. I knew that
if it did transform itself, it would effect an escape.

The thought filled me with terrible, righteous rage. In that moment,
I saw it as the incarnation of all the pain and fear I had encountered since
arriving in that Godforsaken spot. Now, worse still, it had even profaned
the site of Askuwheteau’s grave. With an oath, I shoved my torch in the
creature’s face.

Its hair exploded into flame. Shrieking in agony, the thing clawed at
its face and hair attempting to put out the fire. Alas, for the creature, the
fire only burned brighter and hotter, spreading to its face and arms by
some supernatural providence.

The demon flung out its arms in an aspect of crucifixion, and before
my eyes its body appeared to shimmer, dwindling and yet appearing to
stretch, but becoming smaller. The arms elongated, becoming as the
wings of a bird, or an enormous bat, beating furiously as it rose into the
night, still burning, still transforming as it took flight into the darkness
like a fireball streaking towards the village of St. Barthélemy. My eyes
followed its upward trajectory for a few seconds, and then watched in
awe as it crashed to the earth. Its screams as it fell to its death—or what I
prayed was its death—were the pitiable lamentations of a damned thing.

But by then, my only emotion was joy, and I delighted in the foul
creature’s death, a death I prayed had been agonizing beyond endurance.

And then, like a benediction, the air was full of snow, falling in heavy
flakes as pure white as the wings of any angel, and in the red light of
dawn’s advance in the east, winter was upon me with a hunter’s killing
stealth.

On the edge of the village, the spectral shapes formed themselves out
of the falling snow, moving wraithlike towards me. Exhausted, starving,
blind with sweat, drenched in dried blood, I fell to my knees and accepted
my death, for I was beyond fighting further, beyond the ability to endure
any more of these horrors. When they reached for me, I closed my eyes
and commended my spirit into the hands of Almighty God, and waited
for the end.

And then I heard the sound of human voices speaking in a language
I did not understand. Warm hands touched my face and my own hands.
Strong arms lifted me and bore me aloft, carrying me through the
deserted village. The snow continued to fall in a heavy sheet of cold,
cleansing white. My eyelids fluttered and the light swam.

Before I lost consciousness and yielded to the tide of new darkness
rushing towards me, I smelled the awful stink of burning flesh, and
something worse. I looked down and saw the smouldering remains of
the monster I had burned with my torch.

It had not survived the fire. Perhaps it had died attempting to cast
off its shape, attempting to return to its human aspect. Its body was
manlike in shape, but where its arms would have been were the webbed
wings of a giant bat, ending in human hands with nails that were like the
claws of a great Oriental tiger. Its face was a half-human, half-basilisk
nightmare.

I turned my head away from the abomination lying on the ground,
already beginning to be covered by the falling snow. Around me, I saw
that some of the men were setting fire to the village. I heard the crackle
of wood and smelled new smoke.

A wave of heat came to me, and my first thought was to stretch
towards it. I cannot tell with any certainty as I write this if my impulse
was to throw myself on the growing pyre, or merely to warm myself
by it. And then, my eyes closed and I yielded to the mercy of complete
insensibility.

When I awoke, though I had no bearings, I sensed that I was very far
from that haunted place. I was on a sort of sledge, wrapped in furs. Above
me the trees were heavy with snow, and we were moving silently through
the endless, damnable forest that binds this Godforsaken country like a
slave’s chain.

The Indians cared for me with a mercy and a tenderness that put
Christian charity to shame. I travelled with them to their winter hunting
grounds and lived as their guest and under their protection for the long
months of ice and snow. In time, I came to understand that they regarded
me as some sort of deliverer, and in exchange for that delivery, they were
prepared to extend to me an acceptance that I would, as a Black Robe,
never otherwise experience.

I heard the word “Weetigo” many times. It was a word I knew well,
though I knew none of the others they spoke. It was the word I had first
heard in Trois-Rivières from the drunkard Dumont, and then later from
my saviour Askuwheteau, who died that I might live. I understand the
word now, as an old man who has spent his life among these people, in a
way I could not have understood it as a young man.

To my shame, I believe that the Savages who rescued me believed
I had defeated just such a monster in St. Barthélemy, for they saw the
remains of the demon creature that had fallen from the sky wreathed in
fire. In it, they had seen the incarnation of their most terrifying legend;
in a sense, I had made their word flesh.

At that time, I had not the words to explain to them that what they
had seen was not what they called a “Weetigo,” but rather something
that we ourselves had brought from the Old World to the New. I suspect
that the scarcity of those words likely saved my life, for I could not have
answered for their rage if they had known the truth of what Father de
Céligny, or whatever the monster’s real name was, had wrought there.

That they saw me as a saviour instead of merely an extension of the
same corruption that destroyed an entire village of souls—a village of
innocent men, women, and children, who died without the blessing of
baptism and God’s mercy, suited my cowardly purposes, though I wept
with shame and grief and guilt that winter when I was alone.

In my nightmares that winter, I revisited that terrible day when I
dragged the sleeping bodies of those poor creatures into the sunlight and
listened to their agonized screaming as the sunlight turned them to ash,
especially the children. It haunts me that I never discovered if they could
have been saved, or returned to their natural state, and if my actions had
been a mercy, or merely an extension of the blasphemy.