The Business of Perdition

Chapter 2: St. Giles Rookery

St. Giles-in-the-fields was at one time a proud and affluent neighborhood among the many districts of London. In times of yore, it was known for the monastery and hospital which cared for unfortunate lepers. Those days were a distant past and the district now was a filthy warren of squalor and poverty. Not the likes of the crawling vagrants of Drury Lane, no, these folk were the markedly downtrodden, and despised foreigners of London's beggaring heartbeats. A stewing of distaste and distrust, all gathered, suspicious and alert along the gloomy and winding alleys of the suffocating cloisters of ramshackle, derelict buildings.

A heavy, thick haze blanketed the soiled streets, stifling what little breathing air there was with sour and stale aromas. Urine and bile blended in an acrid perfume, mixing in foul cacophony to the stewing of wet soil and dry blood. It reviled the senses, eliciting rank and wretched tremors from my stomach. Dank and thick breaths of fetid air were embers in my throat. Every sour and hot breath antagonized a ragged, abrasive choke and an itching in the back of my tongue like dry breadcrumbs stuck and clinging in the back the mouth. It was altogether unnerving.

The buildings seemed to lean inward like vultures circling and feasting on me as if I were carrion. Gloomy, eye-like windows glared down at me, unwelcoming and suspicious, all the while, the low and melancholy chimes of the church's bells drummed along, largo and somber like a funeral. It swirled about my senses, stirring with the commotions of daily hardships. Sometimes it was croaking laughter, or hearty shouts, but most often it was the petulant screams or silent sobbing. It was a rancid and jarring symphony of misery. The whole time, I felt the piercing gaze of those impoverished sods as I lurked along the dark alleys. They followed me like a cat might watch a mouse before pouncing. As disheveled and unkempt as I was, I still I felt out of place. As if through my own derelict togs, they saw me for what I was - an unwelcome aristocrat, or fat, foolhardy prey. Trespassing in their hungering nest and left skittering and afraid.

I weaved in and out of the winding labyrinth of the alleys beneath the clustered hovels, but it was cautious; each stride deliberate and guarded. I knew not for what I searched but still I persisted against intangible resistance. Each step seemed heavier than the last - each breath more labored. What little light there was backed away as a child might before being struck, distancing itself from my trudging like a timid stray. Icy, sharp fingers tickled me all the while. They pulled at my mind like a teasing sibling, taunting and belittling the uneasy resolution and determination I once wore like a mantle. A sucking muck pulled beneath my feet, not supple like sand, but of half-dried plaster. It clutched on my soles like a misstep in the mires. Though I looked down and the soiled sandstone was still the only path I trod, I could still feel myself sinking. Opaque clacking echoed against blackwashed walls as my boots made footfall, reassuring me that it was mere tricks of claustrophobic and strangling twists and turns of the derelict maze. I couldn't, however, dismiss the stern pleading of what little reasoning was there, to retreat. It burned in my thoughts like dropped embers on the floor, endlessly begging for me to leave the begrudging gloom.

The raucous commotion that the district was so well-known for seemed distant and old; an echo in a cave, called out from some bygone age, by strangers I couldn't see. Still, I felt them following me, the alert, distrustful eyes of those wayward, unwanted outcasts - judgmental and burning with scorn. Lingering cinders singed the back of my neck as I'd pass one pair of eyes after another. Peering through those dreary windows, or through the crack of a door, the penurious husks of the hideously curious and inordinately angry residents leered at me like a hot brand. It was a silent protest to each forlorn step I took further and further into the unwelcoming maw.

Light seeped away, fluid and formless, being swallowed by irreverent black. Dark and cold each step was, but yonder the dim lamplights burned away. Dancing and comforting my sheepish passing but always, they seemed, far out of reach. An ache - a tension stiffened in my arms and legs as though my muscles turned to wood. It was a constriction of those leering sods, pressing on me all about from one doorway or threshold. From unseen passages and darkened recesses, they lurked around me. Circling about, they strangled me as they drew ever closer. I couldn't bear it. The resentment, and hatred of their menacing and hungering stalking crushed what frayed ends of resolve remained, and my stiff limbs deliquesced and collapsed under the weight of my wallowing trepidations. Cold, sullen sandstone bit at my face as I collapsed in the darkness, its coarse fangs clamped tighter and tighter against my flesh. Then they were gone. My eyes clamped shut tight as a vice, but I felt them shrink away, fearful and hurried like cockroaches in candlelight.

The soft caress against my cheek roused me from the incessant descent into the mire of senses. It kissed lightly, welcoming and warming like a lover's long-awaited return. I looked to see smooth black feathers dancing on the heavy air, one after another like the turbulent wake of a bird that had taken flight, yet no birds were there. I could hear them, however, off in the distance. Far from these dark crawling fathoms below the watchful windows. Their cawing melodies carried on, soft and distant while those drumming bells kept time.

A hand reached out to me in the dark. It wasn't oppressive nor angry but comforting and loving. A man stood above me as I lay there prostrate and wide eyed, he bent low offering his hand in assistance.

"And so, your journey begins," his sharp, subtle voice sliced through the dark. It was deliberate and drawn out as the melancholy chiming of the church bells.

I took hold of his warm, soft hand and that pressing weight in my mind melted away. There was a solace, an adoration in his touch that felt familiar and exquisite.

"We've been waiting for you for a long time."

I felt myself rise, though I never felt him pull. Like my whole being was that of a single feather, I rose from that jagged, cold stone weightless and unburdened.

***

Oil lamplight brightened the door, as they waved me inside. It was calming and warm, a divine shroud against the infernal gloom of the rookery. I hadn't noticed, but I'd already started for the door, as though my body worked separate from my control. Upon either side of the threshold, strange, graven circles dug into the dry-rotted wood. Much akin to that odd scrawling that the ragged old man had made before. It lingered in the mind, just out of reach of my senses, dangling there like a carrot on a stick. These were not the same etchings, but they were remarkably similar. These too struck some incalculable nerve in my mind, so familiar, yet completely unknown and foreign. They hadn't the same lingering effect on me as the one previous, but somehow, they felt older and fiercer.

Sharp daggers of grinding metal curled my hairs as the door swung shut behind me. There in that dim, warm glow of the lamp, a strong and dapper man stood before me. Clad in silken red garments that cascaded over a gilded breastplate. Quite regal he was, but remarkably out of place. Feathery, blonde hair fell to his shoulders straight and combed. Beneath a tall golden crown, icy blue eyes stared into mine, and the winds of the northern seas howled through my limbs with shards of ice. The gaze was cold, but benevolent. He eyed me up and down, mumbling and chanting under his breath as he inspected me.

In comparison to this remarkably angelic man, I must have been a sight. Ragged, and tattered, and caked in dirt as though I'd spent a lifetime toiling in the workhouses. I'd felt I committed some great and terrible trespass, coming before this man in the sorry state that I was, but a smile stretched across his young, unblemished face and he held out his arms in welcome.