Legion

Legion - Chapter 4

"Where is this hostility coming from?" Roma asked, her calm composure in marked contrast to the uncharacteristic agitation radiating from the priest.
         "I'm not being hostile," Roland shot back defensively, his hands raised in a gesture of surrender. His body language betrayed the friction of his delivery, "But I need you to take a moment to stop what you're doing and listen to me," he urged, his irritation barely suppressed.
         Roma looked up from the multitude of papers she perused as she shuffled around the immense study desk. Taking a deep breath, she gave him her full attention.
         "I'm listening," she prompted him gently. He paced back and forth in the parchment strewn office, the effort of collecting his thoughts palpably laborious for the usually cordial young priest.
         "I received a letter of repudiation from the Bishop today," he began, "It would appear it has come to his attention that you frequent the company of the town whores and have caused such a sensation in my congregation that he is uncertain whether I am fit to minister to my flock," he glanced up just in time to greet her indignant,  incensed gaze, "His words, not mine," he added quickly.
         "And?" she prompted, her cheeks flush with righteous fury.
         Roland's shoulders sagged and all of the pent up conflict in his expression seemed to drain, leaving his complexion pallid and dull.
         "Roma, my parish has halved since you arrived," he replied, visibly pained by the admission, as though he felt that in vocalizing the assertion, he was laying blame squarely upon her.
         "You mean your wealthy parishioners have removed themselves from the Sunday service rather than share a simple plank of wood with a fellow Christian of lesser means," she corrected, her hands resting upon her hips. He sighed.
         "The bishop feels you have scandalized and demolished my leadership with your..." he searched for the appropriately sensitive description he knew would fall short, "...initiative."
         "Go on, I am simply dying to hear what else our pure and pious bishop has to say," Roma seethed, her anger fully roused.
         "He is horrified at the numerous reports he has received regarding your association with the bordello," he continued, running splayed fingers ruthlessly through his hair, visibly stressed, "He is recommending my official censure by way of papal bull and requesting an investigation into your activities within the parish."
         "Oh really?" Roma replied with feigned curiosity, "Well, let's just see how far he gets. He knows nothing of the enormity of our work and how high up it is sanctioned. Imagine his surprise if he instead finds himself the object of papal reproach for his petty interference in matters of which he is completely ignorant," she retorted irately.
         The priest ceased his pacing to face the harangued scribe, his face graven.
         "It's not you I'm worried about," he confessed, "Your protection stems from the highest possible pinnacle within the Church, mine is less sound and merely an extension of my long association with you. Regardless of the outcome, your immunity from prosecution is all but assured. Roma, I can lose my parish and face excommunication over this perceived muddying of my reputation," he rejoined swiftly, his expression instantly regretful; his voice softened, "The bishop perceives your connection to the bordello to be a failure on my part to curb your more rebellious inclinations."
         "Excuse me?" Roma replied, eyes wide with riled astonishment.
         "It will bode better for my case if he thinks I have exercised my authority over you by prohibiting your further involvement with the brothel and its inhabitants," he stated with deflated opposition.
         Roma shifted her weight onto one hip, unable to believe what she was hearing.
         "That is what this is about? Our pharisaic bishop, who would not deign to sup with persons of lesser opulence than his precious estate district parasites, has the hubris to threaten your anointed vocation because I have befriended whores?" she exclaimed, "And you are buckling under this sanctimonious outrage?" The quietly spoken priest quailed. In a heated debate, Roma was by far the superior combatant. Where he found himself flailing to explain his thoughts, inarticulate and club mouthed, Roma was unfailingly lucid and cogent, her oratorical eloquence and alacrity demoralizing in its ability to dismantle his every argument.
         "Roma, the Church forbids me to associate with prostitutes in any way, shape or form. I am not even allowed to administer the Sacrament of Communion to them," he declared, exasperated. Deep lines furrowed Roma's brow and Roland cringed inwardly at the evident disappointment he met in her gaze. He could almost see his esteem visibly plummeting in her estimation.
         "Here is something to think on when you consider your reprimand," Roma answered, her anger having cooled to undisguised disgust, "You are worried about the consequences this presents to your vocation? Instead, why don't you think of the consequences to your eternal soul. Jesus himself consorted with whores, sinners, tariff collectors. Are you telling me that the Church sets its standards above those of the Risen Christ? Why don't you read your Bible for a change instead of burying your head in, and committing to memory, Church policy! You might be surprised how much the two differ!" she concluded acerbically, storming past the speechless priest and out of the rectory.
         Once again a sinking feeling hollowed the priest's lurching stomach. It had become a more disturbingly frequent occurrence. He felt his grip on his faith slipping ever further from him. The stinging truth of Roma's rebuke cut him almost as deeply as his guilt. He was weak - weak of spirit, weak of conviction, weak of substance. Worst of all, everything she had accused him of had been right, he was more afraid of being reproved by the Church than carrying out his Christian ministry even though he knew that elements of it conflicted with the miasma of doctrinal policy. He felt the gorge between his soul and his Savior widen cataclysmically and the cold, clambering hands of the demon hordes of doubt claw at all that he had once held so certain, so incontestable. How had it come to this? he wailed inwardly. At what stage of the journey had the impregnable weave of his faith slackened and freyed to become a thing so porous and compromised that doubt, fear and irresolution had poured through in unrelenting waves?
         Roma had left the Order three years earlier and yet her faith had only strengthened and emboldened her over the passage of time. She had always been more alone than he, for she worked outside the comforting structure and security of the Church, a clandestine shadow singularly and silently waging spiritual warfare against the foulest abominations in all existence. Her protection was a mere semantic - she was in fact protected only from interference by any who would potentially hinder her progress. This did not extend to protection of her person or her soul. For that, she had only herself upon which to rely. Somehow, her incontrovertible faith in Jesus Christ, her total trust in His love for her and her devotion to His teachings alone sustained and nourished her. And yet here he was, set to trembling by a mere piece of paper informing him of a disapproval from within his own ranks.
         Roma had spoken of her intention to enter a period of fasting and prayer before she addressed that which she suspected to be the source of the calamitous horrors crippling the busy port town. She was yet to share her thoughts on the nature and identity of this source with another living soul, even as she prepared to confront it, which could only mean that it was a foe of the worst portent. The ritual of deprivation and meditation, she had disclosed, would afford her spiritual focus and fortitude before she endeavored to face her unknowable adversary.
         Roland considered a similar line of action, however he suspected that his efforts would lend themselves to a distinctly more destabilizing realization - for he had begun to doubt not only that he wanted to remain a priest but also that he even believed in the precepts of the Catholic faith at all.









Roma and Roland infrequently crossed paths over the following days and on each occasion they happened to be in the company of others; thus their argument was neither concluded nor resolved. With the passing of their heated altercation, each had experienced a deep remorse. Roma's regret stemmed not from the scathing rebuke she had hurtled at the priest, but rather from the hostility of its delivery. Roland was very nearly the closest thing to family she possessed in all the world and it pained her to be distanced from him so. Roland, on the other hand, experienced an acute guilt due to the weakness of his convictions. He knew in his deepest heart that everything Roma had said was right and true and that his responsibilities lay with those he knew Christ would help were he on earth delivering His ministry today - the outcast, the dejected, the poor, the dispossessed, the sick and the needy. No other professional caste could lay claim to as many of these deplorable conditions as the bordello whores. And he had turned his back on them, quivering in fear beneath the thundering wrath of the Church instead of living and practicing his faith according to the Word, governed by the example set by a compassionate, gentle man of profound and crucial genesis.
The news of the body in the valley spread throughout the bustling port town like a wind swept brush fire and both Roma and Roland, along with the local mayor, the marshal and several long standing deputies who monitored dock activities, investigated the find. Roma had only to look upon the excavated bone cage that had once been a man to know that the source of the town's disturbing occurrences was also the architect of the atrocious dismemberment before her. The victim was identified as local dock worker Obediah Josephson by a severed finger discovered nearby bearing an engraved signet ring. His residence was a mere half mile from the site of the attack.
Whatever had come to the thriving port town to exact a loathsome campaign of terror against its gentle citizens had now ventured out to feed. This troubled Roma. She had begun formulating a hypothesis as to the nature and form of her adversary. The violently rent carcass conflicted with her postulations and nothing in her biblical research even remotely mentioned a malevolence of this ilk. It was something new and it was abjectly deadly in more than a spiritual capacity.
         A town meeting was held, one Roma did not attend in order to perpetuate the fiction that Roland was indeed in control of the town's spiritual affairs. In spite of the sheer volume of reported incidents of a metaphysical character, the villagers instead opted to throw the weight of popular opinion behind the first suggestion of a wild animal attack. Some put forth that it was perhaps an exotic predator from abroad kept as a prized pet by a wealthy estate district resident as a curious attraction and conversation piece, as was the fashionable trend amongst the rich, only to be discarded upon proving too costly or unmanageable. The notion of a large cat or even a wolf released into the woods surrounding the borough sent fearful valley residents scuttling back to their homes to arm themselves with picks and axes behind shuttered windows and bolted doors. Several scores of town residents, notably hardy seamen, burly dock workers and a fistful of young men eager to test their mettle against a worthy foe, volunteered to form a search party to sweep the valley countryside for the ‘beast'.
         Ichabod Hannan and Tom Borland remained conspicuously silent throughout the proceedings, their grim expressions imparting upon the priest their awareness that they too knew this act had been accomplished by no mere animal. Roland was helpless to redress the widely embraced misconception of the townsfolk, for to set aright their assumptions would be to most notably incite hysteria and send countless others out to meet the same grisly fate as the victim. In his gut, Roland felt certain that whatever had dispatched the local dock worker would prove itself as efficiently lethal against a hundred men as one. He had no desire to send any of his parishioners to their deaths. Better they sweep a pocket of countryside in which the menace had fed but most likely did not territorially prowl than to enlighten them of their misunderstanding and virtually serve them up as the predator's next meal.
         Upon discussing the find with Roma, following the conclusion of the town meeting, Roland had found her to be resolutely tight lipped about her postulations upon the nature of the marauder. He knew this to be an indication that her research was incomplete and that the profile she was collating based upon events and attacks thus far was partial and problematic. Only when she was almost certain of the nature of their adversary would she advise both counsel and confidant of her hypothesis. In her expression and reticence he read a troubling vexation, unlike any he had ever witnessed before. That was his first indication of the true depth of peril he knew she believed them all to be threatened by. This particular evil was of a fouler constituent than she had ever battled and her growing unrest betrayed a greater sense of dread. Her suppositions following this most recent horror had given birth to a new torment, one she would share with no one. It seemed to perceptibly dim the previously imperturbable hope and surety of triumph with which she had always faced supernatural warfare.
         Overwhelmingly, the most disquieting aspect of her disposition since the grisly discovery was the hollow, haunted look that now ghosted her eyes. It was the look of one almost certain their next battle would also be their last.








It was perhaps this very sense of imminent and inescapable jeopardy that Roma experienced which galvanized her resolve to enjoy her time with Michael to its fullest. With seasoned discipline, she pushed the oppressive yoke of dread from her thoughts and poured all of her joy, excitement and thrilled anticipation into preparing for the village dance.
         A warm, breezy dusk had settled upon the port town and already she could hear the distant clang of kettle drums, the plucking of fiddles and the woody timbre of reed whistles. Banquet tables were heavily laden with generously donated baked goods. Barrels of ale were rolled along cobbles, pavements and roads from taverns all across the town. An enormous section of the dock was cleared to make way for several pockets of musicians and numerous dancing decks.
         Mother fussed over Roma as she pulled on the elegant white linen dress the madam had tailored for her. The neckline was low, not plunging, although it was substantially more exposing than any garment Roma had ever worn. Thin shoestring straps clung delicately to her svelte shoulders. The fabric was gathered beneath her bust line to flatter but not blatantly advertise her breasts. Cinched at the waist to conform to her slender frame, the light fabric dropped from her narrow hips to her to her ankles in a gossamer soft waterfall of filmy weave. Characteristically modest, she refrained from accessorizing her person with jewelry of any description and it made her loveliness all the more stark, for it seemed only to prove that no precious metal or faceted gem could compete with the ethereal allure of her exquisite beauty.
         "Child, you look a vision," the older woman admired her handiwork. Not only had she fashioned Roma's delicate dress, she had also woven a garland of tiny white flowers through her hair and around both wrists. Roma appraised herself shyly in the mirror. She had not worn a dress since she had left the cloister and her habit could hardly have been called a dress; and certainly not one that revealed her in all her womanly splendor. She shook her head at Mother's unique ability to make her appear at once enthralling and chaste.
         Turning to her dear friend, she threw her arms around her neck and hugged her tight. It was a hug the likes of which she had not imparted on another since infancy, of a trusting child to a parent.
         "Thank you, Mother," she whispered as she planted a kiss upon her cheek. The large, African woman took her face in her hands and beamed a tearful grin.
         "No, child, thank you," she replied, her eyes aglow with pride, brimming with tears, "I've never told anyone this but when I was just about your age, I lost a child. If she had lived, she would be your age today. You have brought such joy to my life, to all our lives, and I like to imagine when I daydream about her that a goodly portion of her spirit made its way through what lies beyond this life to shine on through you," she could say no more lest she blubbered.
         A fathomless, familial love stirred within Roma; it affected her beyond any reckoning.
         "My mother died so that I might live. The doctors told her that they could save her life if she forfeited mine and she would not. Perhaps when she died, something of her made its way through the great beyond to you," she swallowed, fighting back choked tears, "Perhaps that is why looking at you makes me feel like I'm looking at my mother. In a more profound way than the mere sharing of a bloodline, you are my mother," she concluded as the older woman grasped her in a crushing embrace and sobbed for the first time in over twenty five years. Several minutes later, their loving moment was interrupted.
         "Roma, your escort has arrived," Sascha called upstairs.
         "You'd better get down here," Polly added roguishly, "Damn, if he doesn't look good enough to eat. I just may have to sample some of his wares," she teased and both women smiled.
         "Go ahead, child," Mother encouraged tenderly, her tears long dried, her composure regained, "Don't keep the man waiting," she winked, her irascible playfulness reemerging, "Be gentle, now. That poor boy has no idea how sweet life is about to taste. Try not to break him." Roma laughed, in spite of the color rising to her cheeks, before planting a quick kiss on the bordello madam's cheek and dashing to the stairwell.
         "See you there?" she asked hopefully.
         "This establishment closes but three times a year - Christmas Day, Easter Sunday and the night of the village dance," she replied staunchly, "This caboose hasn't been shook since last year's dance. Holy Noah and his Deluge couldn't keep me from that dock tonight," she answered, her diacritic African tone heavily accented with spunk.
         Roma shot her one last smile of gratitude before lithely slipping down the broad stairwell. At the foot of the stairs Michael stood comfortably in the bordello foyer as five of Mother's girls chattered excitedly in a flurry around him. All had donned their most tasteful summer dresses, garments that flattered but did not expose them. Gone were the heavy cosmetics and bosom-hoisting corsets. Simplicity and understated grace earmarked their collective ensemble. Roma smiled inwardly. They were not whores tonight. Tonight they were ladies and they would dance the night away as equals amongst their fellow townsfolk. Nobody held to status or rank on the night of the village dance. The irony that the town embraced these women, even for just one night, as peers whilst the Church rejected them utterly did not escape Roma.
         Her heart skipped a beat when her eyes fell upon Michael. His attire, chestnut chinos and a loosely fitting white linen shirt without cuff or collar, gave her the inexorable impression of a knight artfully disguised as a common man. His clothing spoke of humility and anonymity but his demeanor betrayed nobility and spirit. For the second time since they had met she felt moved, shaken to her core, once again contemplating that to look upon him was to look upon greatness, to gaze upon the face of a Ramesid or a Ptolemy. Something greater than the man radiated forth, something that both overwhelmed and captivated her.
         Michael's body language changed subtly when he looked up towards the movement that caught his eye upon the staircase. Previously relaxed and at ease, he fell completely still, as though frozen in his enchantment. His expression was one of fixed reverence and open admiration. Everyone and everything in existence slowly melted away from his field of vision. As Roma reached the landing, he stepped forward and offered his hand.
         "Are you ready?" he asked softly, his question loaded with more portent and promise than the mere inquiry of her preparedness for the festivities.
         "Nevermore so," she replied, lost in his piercing pale blue eyes, her reply similarly charged with any number of possible interpretations. Michael turned back to the whores who breathlessly lingered in the foyer, thrilled witnesses to the boundless love so evident before them.
         "Ladies," he stated courteously, dipping his head to them, "I do sincerely hope you enjoy your evening." Roma slipped her hand through the crook of Michael's arm and they departed the lavish bordello to the distant hum of a lively tune in full swing.
         Several buildings from the bordello, with dusk tinting the star speckled sky a tangerine pink and the breeze electric with whisperings of sensual delight, Michael leant down to his beautiful consort.
         "I wish I could tell you that you are beautiful but I cannot," he whispered and she peered at him quizzically, "What I once considered beautiful is grotesque when compared to you," he clarified, "You look like an angel." Every pore of Roma's skin leapt to alertness, as though an invisible, warm wash poured through her.
         Michael and Roma went unnoticed as they made their way to the dock, merely two among hundreds of love struck couples converging on the festival in a steady stream from every direction through the town. In the distance dancers already kicked up their heels in spinning whorls of swirling fabric and polished heels. Musicians stomped their feet to keep time to the dynamic melodies ringing from their instruments. Children squealed and darted amidst the roisterers, their fists filled with boiled sweets and candied fruits. The young were lost to the throbbing pulse and rhythmic harmony of pipe, fiddle, whistle and drum. The elderly enjoyed the music and merriment from the relative peace of the banquet tables.
         Roma's heart raced as they entered the crowd and Michael drew her to an area cleared for dancing and thrumming with enthusiastic revelers. She stopped dead in her tracks. Michael turned to her. A terrible realization struck her.
         "I don't know how to dance," she confessed, struggling to be heard above the merry din. Michael grinned, taking her hand in his and slipping his arm about her waist to draw her close.
         "It is a thing less thought than felt," was all he said as he swept her into the crowd. They were soon dipping and swirling in the current of movement that swished around them, a tiny cog working in perfect accord within the greater machinery of gaiety that lit of the dock with laughter and delight.
         For hours they danced amongst the villagers, the sounds of jubilant mirth and elated release washing over them until they felt themselves a single, united thread in the weave of neighborly goodwill and joy that poured over the wind kissed dock.
Never in her life had Roma felt so involved in community life, so entrenched in kinship with a people as she did that night. Melding into the miasma of good cheer and easy camaraderie granted her the very first sense of home that she had known in all her life. They visited the banquet table infrequently and then only to replenish spent energies, for to disembark the dance decks was to disengage from one another and neither had a desire for separation that evening.
         Finally they were forced to own their mortality and sit out several pulsating dances to catch their breath and cool down. They found a quiet bench on the far side of the banquet tables, the culinary blockade deflecting enough of the penetrating music to allow for conversation.
         "This is wonderful," Roma effused, "If I die tonight, this night with you will be enough to sustain me for an eternity." Her eyes returned to the crowd and she drank in the charged atmosphere of the event.
         Something in the way Roma had expressed this sentiment disturbed Michael. There was an oppressive sense of finality to it.
         Her eyes roamed the bustling docks. Groups of dancers punctuated banquets tables lined with merrymakers. Cotton candy stalls swarmed with children. Trinket vendors were swamped by lovers purchasing and exchanging commitment rings. Benches were occupied by paired youngsters gazing adoringly into the eyes of their heart's desire.
         "What's that over there?" Roma asked, pointing to a cluster of benches in a dimly lit sector of the dock on the outer perimeter of the designated festival boundary.
         "If you're young and in love and want to escape the glaring gaze of your parents to enjoy a passionate encounter with your beau - that's where you go," he replied, grinning as he recalled several clumsy, sweaty palmed fumblings from his youth.
         "Let's go there," Roma pressed, mischief and augur glinting in her coal dark eyes. Michael laughed.
         "The average age of the occupants of those benches is fifteen!" he exclaimed in amusement.
         "Then let's find some place else," Roma persisted, her gaze filled with promise. Michael looked around. Beyond the tables, stalls and dance decks on the far side of the dock lay a secluded pocket of tranquility in which several scattered benches, crates and empty barrels served as seats for the weary who sought respite from the festivities to catch their breath. The boxes and crates had been used to transport food and wares to the dock and were erratically piled on the outer perimeter along with surplus seating, creating cozy nooks and discrete niches into which several couples were already enjoying relative privacy.
         Taking her hand, Michael led his beautiful consort through the milling crowd and they disappeared into the seclusion of the darkened rest area.

         None was more surprised than Roland to see Camilla Rhys-Huntington attending the village dance. Not only that, she had come on the arm of Tom Borland, whom it was widely known had unsuccessfully pursued the glacial woman for years. Camilla appeared rigid and ill at ease, especially in the company of the convivial revelers, and the priest noted that it was not an entirely unpleasant experience for the burly smithy to have the apprehensive country woman all but clinging to his arm in the face of so raucous a scene.
         "Good evening, Camilla," Roland joined them briefly as they surveyed the festivities before them, "Tom," he acknowledged and they exchanged a knowing look. Tom Borland winked emphatically at the priest, barely able to contain his delight at escorting his ladylove to the liveliest night of the calendar year.
         "And to you, Father," Camilla replied graciously, her eyes flicking over the thronging crowds in a futile attempt to make sense of the seemingly erratic and directionless melee of singing, dancing, eating and carousing before her.
         "Do you know if young Michael and his lovely lass have arrived yet?" Tom Borland queried, making small talk even as his toe tapped to the rhythm of a brutally but deftly pounded skin drum that undercut and supported a brisk tune.
         "They've been here some time now," he replied, "I'm sure you'll bump into them on one of the dance decks shortly."
         "I beg your pardon?" Camilla blurted out, dread raking cold fingers down her back at the suggestion she and Tom would go anywhere near a dance floor, much less ‘bump' into her son and his consort. Tom hooted with exhilaration.
         "You heard the man, Camilla, the only way we're likely to see them is to dance with them!" he exclaimed, enlivened by the thudding vigour of the dance music as he swept her towards the nearest deck.
         Roland smiled to himself as Camilla's shrill, unheeded protests faded into the general hubbub of the melodious racket.

         Mother stood on the outskirts of the crowd, studying the swaying mechanics of the dancers. Something in the dimmest recesses of distant memory flashed scenes before her eyes of great, towering fires in the desert around which her village elders and the adults, painted, masked and bedecked like gods, twirled and stomped hypnotically long into the night to the colossal elk hide drums. This was not the land of her home but as she watched the dancers swing this way and that, she mused that peoples of different culture and belief were not all that dissimilar after all. Human beings of every color, lending and purpose recognized several uniform truths - laughter, community, dance, song, and celebration.
         She was reflecting on this comforting supposition when a movement beside her caught her eye. When she turned, her eyes flared wide in astonishment.
         "If I may, I'd like to say that amongst this sea of sickly pale white faces, you must be just about the most beautiful woman in this entire town," avowed a thickly accented, deeply resonant baritone voice, as though reciting Scripture.
         Mother had been taken entirely off guard for the simple fact that the man's skin was the mirror of her own - a rich, carbon brown. His broad face, flat nose and stocky build betrayed his origins. She had not heard her own accent spoken back to her since childhood, before the raiders had ripped her from her village and sold her into slavery.
         "I'm sorry, I've offended you," he apologized, bowing his head politely and retreating. Mother's arm snaked out and grabbed her countryman's wrist, her eyes filled with desperate hope.
         "Honey, I've seen all things offensive in this life and your words are by no means even remotely impertinent," she replied, unblinking, still unable to reconcile the vision of her homeland before her.
         Her companion, his tightly curled but neatly cut hair shot with grey, was only fractionally taller than her, well dressed and unobtrusive of countenance. His eyes were crushingly kind and radiated an empathy and sodality that transcended all barriers of unfamiliarity.
         "May I have the pleasure of your name?" he inquired politely, "My name is Zachary Mutumba." Mother remained silent a moment, words eluding her.
         "Moth-," she cut herself short, corrected her slackened posture and presented herself with more deportment and grace than a queen, "I am Druscilla," she replied with dignified poise, "I'm afraid I can't tell you my last name. I don't remember it. I was young when I was first sold and had no family around me to remind me of my ancestry." He smiled with disarming sympathy.
         "I don't remember my first name," Zachary confessed, "I too was young when the raiders came. Zachary is the name my first master gave me and it remained on my papers with every transfer of ownership thereafter," he paused, a smile of sweet sincerity illuminating his gentle charms as he took her hand in his, "It is an honor and a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Druscilla," he declared softly, the deep timbre of his voice striking a chord of homesickness in the bordello madam she had not experienced in almost forty years.
         Over the course of the following hours, Mother learned that Zachary had earned his freedom in an act of courage rewarded by his last master when he had saved the crippled plantation owner from the fire that had destroyed his lavish estate. He had since earned a decent living as a deck hand on a merchant vessel that frequented the shores of the British mainland and the Indies where trade in spices, exotic fabrics, cured leather and salt thrived. The ship upon which he worked had docked in Lymington several days earlier.
         Sitting in the cool breeze slaking off the calm seas beyond the dock, Mother felt for the first time a deeply abiding affiliation with another human being, one that exceeded even the deepest of emotional ties she had forged since arriving in the port town twenty years earlier. Zachary, who was several years older than the bordello madam, reminisced about their homeland - the searing summers, the expansive plains, the spectacular wildlife, and the earthen people who lived in complete harmony with the land. Though countless slave raids had laid waste to untold tribes and villages, this seemed not to embitter his recollection of life on the Continent. Mother was swept away in a waking dream of remembered sensations - hot sand beneath her bare feet, the musty smell of oryx skins fashioned into clothing, the splitting cry of the eagle and the crisp taste of rare, glistening desert waters.
         Their meeting was the first sliding pebble in the coming landslide of change that would revolutionize the brothel proprietor's life in a surprisingly short period of time.

         Roma and Michael sat close to one another, close enough to feel the body heat they generated. Secluded from curious eyes in a small bay between stacked crates, they remained suspended in a lingering moment of skin prickling scintillation and unbearable anticipation. Even now the din had abated considerably. The hour was late and most of the older revelers, even those that had arrived late, had departed with the wistful sentiment that only the young had the stamina and endurance to dance their way into the following dawn.
Roma, seized fiercely by heightened sensory sensitivity, found herself to be surprisingly purposeful and focused. She moved closer to whisper into Michael's ear.
         "Don't move," she murmured. He made as if to speak but she placed her finger to his mouth to silence him. Slowly, and with inconceivable delicacy, Roma pressed her lips to his neck and felt a quiver ripple through him. His breathing grew rapid and shallow and the pressure of her kisses grew more urgent even as she ran her hand up his inner thigh. He shifted closer to her, veritably faint with desire, and fought with every wilting fibre of his self control to wrest an overwhelmingly powerful need to abandon his resolve and pull her to him. Moments passed like millennia and when her fingers sank into his hair at the back of his head he lost his battle to resist reciprocation.
         "I'm sorry," he whispered breathlessly as he took her face in his hands, searching her eyes, "I tried." Passion engulfed him as he kissed her. Gone was the control and the regulated manner of his advances. He surrendered to unrequited desire and in his touch Roma felt the blistering smoulder of raw need, a need she desperately wanted to satisfy.
         All that Mother had told Michael dissipated like smoke snatched in the breeze. He discarded all thoughts of a carefully executed seduction and instead relinquished control of his actions to instinct and passion. Roma's acquiescence and responsiveness more than confirmed their mutual intentions. Abruptly, he felt the need for them to be alone. The conflict this presented meant breaking their enamoured embrace for long enough to depart the festival for the privacy and solitude of a suitable retreat. He did not think he could bear to shatter the potency of their ardour to make for a more discrete location in which their every inhibition could be cast off and their deepest yearnings finally gratified.
         "Let's go," he stood as he spoke, fearful that speech without action would buckle his resolve and delay their departure further. Roma did not appear at all taken aback by the abruptness of his actions. She stood, took his hand and led him from the seclusion of their romantic nest.
         They skirted the perimeter of the festivities, stopping periodically to indulge in a fierce and impassioned kiss that would suffer no suspension. When they had escaped the thronging celebrations they made directly for the rectory. They were but another of a multitude of huddled couples trailing off in the direction of their respective homes.
         When they reached the rectory, Michael turned to Roma.
         "I left the coach outside the forge. It will take me some time to get there on foot. I'll be back in half an hour," he explained, kissing her deeply one last time before departing.
         Roma felt so light of body and spirit that she wondered if the reduction to spiritual essence in life after death felt in any way analogous to the weightlessness of her present ecstasy. She slipped into the darkened rectory, her heart skipping several beats. Michael's absence, she deliberated, would grant her enough time to bathe away the perspiration of countless dances and freshen her appearance.
         But though her protector had disappeared into the night, the beautiful scribe was not alone. Distracted by expectation and anticipation, she did not sense the sinister intruder within her sanctuary that had slithered in from a darkness blacker and more blinding than even the deepest night.









Roma quickly searched her belongings for freshly laundered garments before making her way to the rectory bath chamber. When she had entered the building she had not detected the movement above her, safely ensconced in the shadows, furtively and silently slipping from one pocket of darkness to the next, artfully avoiding the light thrown from several oil lamps permeating a dim light that did not reach the rafters.
         It crawled along the ceiling with the erratic agility of a spider, its ability to defy the natural law directing mass and force towards the ground both astonishing and appalling in its perversity. Its tongue raked over brittle lips and pointed teeth in an effort to prevent the fall of saliva that would betray its presence. Its eyes never once veered from its victim, nor did they blink. It snaked from shadow to shadow, ever conscientious to remain in its quarry's visual blind spot.
         Cautious and assiduous in pursuit, it disappeared into a pocket of darkness outside the bath chamber and reappeared from the depths of another within the large room. It hunkered closer to the ceiling, surveying its prey as she swiftly doffed her clothing and prepared to bathe.
         Patient to the last, it waited until she had boiled several iron pots of water on the kettle stove in the bath chamber and tipped them into the copper hued tub. She tempered this with several buckets of cold water. A moan that seemed to rise up from the very pit of her stomach escaped her lips as she eased herself into the steaming water. She enjoyed the bone penetrating warmth for just a few minutes before scrubbing her body and washing her hair. Stepping from the tub, she took up a thick towel and held it to her face to wipe the water away.
Then she heard it...









Michael was but a few streets from the forge, his thoughts immersed in the memory of their sensual flirtation and the anticipation of a decidedly more erotic assignation, when a sight most startling greeted him.
The darkness fled, banished by a light so luminous that he squinted momentarily. All shape and form dissolved in the presence of so brilliant a glow, until only several objects within a few feet of where he stood remained visible but opaque in the face of the radiant haze.
         Several feet beyond him, a figure moved into the light with an ease and grace possessed only by the enlightened and the angelic. The cord about his tunic, knotted thrice, swung like the pendulum of time. His face embraced the wisdom of the ages, the knowledge of Heaven and supreme contentment of peace. His expression, however, was grave.
         Michael dropped to one knee and bowed his head.
         "Holy Father, may the peace of Christ be ever in your heart," he addressed his old friend with both familiarity and reverence. A hand touched his shoulder and he looked up.
         "Now is not the time for tuition or counsel, my son," the sobriety of the saint's voice filled Michael with a dread he had never known, "Move swiftly, for the lion is about to devour the lamb," he warned.
         Michael was swallowed by darkness once more as both his patron and the light diminished to nothing in a single heartbeat.
         A flying brick to the back of the head could not have leveled him with more velocity. A sickening lurch turned his stomach and for a moment he thought he might retch. He felt the blood drain from his face as realization deluged his mind. For just a moment he stood rooted to the spot, conflicted. Instinctively he wanted to bolt back to the rectory as fast as his legs would carry him. Clarity swiftly forced its way through the quagmire of dread that had confused his reasoning in a landslide of fear and desperation. It would be quicker to reach the forge and return to the rectory at full speed by horsepower.
         It came back to him.
         If I die tonight, this night with you will be enough to sustain me for an eternity.
         Did she know? Why had she not told him? Why was he sensing it only now? Was he already too late?
         In that moment he was again en route, alarm stabbing at him with every stride. He knew then that if but one prayer from his heart ever reached the ears of God, it would be that he would find her alive when he got there.









         A familiar cold robbed Roma of both her breath and her drowsiness; she could not have been more vulnerable. She was naked and alone. The erratic clicking and deathly wheezing came from the ceiling behind her, to her left. An involuntary shiver rippled through her. Her eyes flashed to the window several feet ahead of her. She would never make it. And if she did, what then? Where would she go? There was no place on earth it could not reach her.
         As though the mental mechanics of preparing for flight somehow reached its consciousness and triggered it into motion, it moved with appalling speed. Still ‘crawling' along the ceiling, it was above her in a heartbeat, its putrid breath hot on her neck, opaque taupe droplets of rancid saliva dripping onto her exposed shoulder.
         Panic slowly swelled from a place of fear buried in the deepest part of her, rising steadily like bubbling magma, propelled by dread and terror. She fought it. Still it rose. Michael was too far away, Roland was still supervising the village dance. All other allies - Mother, Ichabod Hannan, Tom Borland - were oblivious to the existence of the Smiling Man. Better they remained so. She could not risk them falling victim to the heinous malignancy of her monstrous tormentor.
         She was utterly alone. And she was afraid. This constituted the only two elements it required to breach her - physically and spiritually.
         "Our Father," she began, her voice pitted with barely stemmed hysteria, hollow and choked," who art in Heaven."
         The creature hissed viciously, its head cocking to one side, its mouth barely a hairs width from her cheek. Its lips curled back to reveal gleaming, pointed fangs. A guttural growl rumbled from deep within its cavernous chest. Its leathery, slime coated tongue lashed out to slake languidly along her face. She whimpered involuntarily, her frame rigid with fright.
         "Hallowed be thy name," she continued, her constricted voice barely a whisper. It laid an alarmingly cold hand on her shoulder and she felt its unnaturally long, claw-like nails press into her skin. They did not break the skin but the pressure was sufficient to communicate its message - cease the prayer. A shudder caused her to tremor slightly at its touch. Every fiber of her flesh begged her to flee its odious caress of death.
         "Thy kingdom come," she whispered in a quaking tone, and another hand snaked around her neck, its cadaverous clench slowly pinching her windpipe. Soon the prayer would not be voiced, merely thought. She wondered if she would already be dead by the time she had finished reciting the Lord's Prayer, standing before her Creator as she uttered the concluding lines.
         "Thy will be done," she gasped as the pressure increased. It contorted itself to view her face fully, twisting and craning to force her to look upon it in all its grotesque splendor. A demoralizing thought came to her. It was going to kill her slowly. It wanted to languorously protract the enjoyment. Fear was as fleshly to its hunger as bone and blood. The greater - the longer - the terror it extracted, the more augmented its final satisfaction.
It was but a myrmidon, and of the lowliest caste at that, but that did not mean it could not relish the final, terrified moments of its quarry's life in the discharge of its commission. Her fear was little more than an insignificant blot on her otherwise enriched and fulfilled life. Complete and pure fear was the creature's motivation and only recollection of existence - the architect of that fear was a malevolence of truly unparalleled horror, one the human consciousness had not, and perhaps could not, either endure or comprehend. And this architect was not even the most powerful of the caste. Alongside the Prince of Lies, it too was but a lowly and worthless minion.
         On earth as it is in Heav-," Roma gagged as the last word to leave her mouth was chocked from her. Her lungs reflexively spasmed to draw in the air robbed of it by the pinched larynx. As her thoughts fogged and her vision blurred, she resolved to complete one last thing in life. On earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
         As the word Amen whispered somewhere in the dim recesses of her fading awareness, she experienced a brief shifting about her person and without visual or audible confirmation, she knew that the creature had opened its mouth wide and was preparing to feast.
         Suddenly she slumped to the floor. She felt no pain, as though her body, already numb, had been wrapped in several carpets which had cushioned the fall. Her head struck the boards. The impact felt distant, blunt.
         As sensation and awareness slowly seeped back into her disoriented mind through a soup of anesthetized inertia, she recognized a voice other than her own.









         Michael crept through the rectory with the stealth of a wolf - silent and fixed of purpose. As he had urged the terrified horse towards the rectory, his dread had grown palpably stronger until real panic had begun to beset him. Not for himself, but for what he might find. He was unsure he could face what remained of her if all that was left echoed the terrible end that had visited Obediah Josephson. Even less sure was he that he could face a life beyond her death. His every hope, his every dream, lay in a life with her.
         He followed the intensity of his fear rather than his tactile senses for nothing but silence and stillness reverberated through the dimly lit rectory. He came to the bath chamber door and slowly pushed it open.
         Crouched on the low ceiling above her, the abomination held her by the throat, tilting her head away from its open maw to expose her neck to its rapacious attack.
         Rage threatened to engulf the coachman. As dangerous an emotion as fear, he pushed it away and slowed his breathing. He entered the room. He spoke only to Roma.
         "I realized when I left that of all the things I said to you tonight, I never told you how much I love you. I never told you that before you, I had been ignorant of love," his voice was strikingly calm, suffused with tenderness.
         The creature's head spun towards the man standing only a few feet from it. The assault by selfless declaration of love blazed from him like a blast wave of heat - searing but not incinerating.
         It dropped its victim like a stone-filled sack and she sagged to the floor beside the tub. It had first to vanquish this latest threat before it could complete its kill. It attempted to scuttle across the ceiling towards its unarmed, unafraid adversary but recoiled, hissing with rage. From him radiated a plume of adoration for the woman that was as a shield of acid to it. It could not close the distance without sustaining injury. It could not breach it without risking a physical disintegration and its host had already suffered terrible wounds in attempting to penetrate this impregnable wall of faith and love once before.
         Michael began to advance slowly.
         "I was waiting until we were alone together tonight to tell you that you are as brilliant a light to my soul as the rising sun. I know now that I should never have suspended this admission. We none of us know when we will be called home to our Lord," he continued unheeded in spite of the creature's best, failed, efforts to threaten him. It flung itself into one shadow, reappearing from another closer to him before screaming and retreating into darkness, only to reemerge from another pocket of gloom across the room.
         He reached her as she moaned and propped herself onto her elbow. Taking the towel, he gently draped it over her shoulders. She flinched but slackened as her body recognized his touch, though she remained dazed and stupefied.
         The Smiling Man again thrashed towards the composed coachman, only to veer away, hissing with rage as it scrambled over the ceiling in a wide circle to avoid his impermeable armor of unselfish devotion to the woman and his trust in the all-eclipsing power of the Risen One who resided within him. Of all the beings of might and potency the creature had ever encountered, only the Risen One - the One no wicked entity could name who had walked the earth as a man and ascended on high as the Last Sacrifice - overwhelmed even the near absolute, dark power of the Fallen One. It knew that one day even the Fallen One was destined to be forced to its knees in defeat before the incontestable Christ Who Is To Come.
         The presence of the One True Lamb within the man repelled the frantic creature time and again until it released a final scream of frustrated fury and hurled itself into a shadow in the corner of the room and was gone.









         Roma became aware of Michael's touch as though her body lay some considerable distance from her mind. Even then her reactions were torpid and ungainly. Oxygen once again flooded her blood, slowly pulling back the smothering curtain of desensitized sluggishness.
         She gasped as she remembered how she had gotten that way.
         "It's alright now," Michael's soothing tenor broke through the cobwebs of bewilderment, "It's gone."
         She realized the clicking and wheezing had stopped. She looked around, unable to remember how she came to be on the floor.
         "Let me help you up," Michael instructed gently, "We're leaving this place."
         Roland burst through the back door of the rectory, his breathing labored. He had run all the way from the docks. A profoundly distressing, powerful sense of dread had overwhelmed him suddenly at the village dance and on instinct alone he perceived Roma to be in great and immediate danger.
He found her, now dressed in travel garb, methodically packing her belongings as Michael loaded them into his open air coach.
         "What's going on?" he asked in stunned disbelief.
         "It was here. Tonight," Michael replied, his jaw set with delayed anger, his gaze brokering no protest. He did not disclose the warning he had received either to the priest or to Roma. The priest turned to Roma.
         "I don't remember much," she confessed, "Only that it had me, that it..." she struggled to articulate the horror of the violation, "...tasted me. I prayed and it began to choke me. I blacked out." All perceivable color drained from the priest's perspiration beaded face. He felt as though everything he touched was spiraling out of control - his parish, his ability to protect Roma, his faith, his direction in life. All of it was tumbling away from him like objects falling from the stubby fingers of an infant unable to grasp.
         "We're leaving together. She's coming with me," Michael asserted with controlled authority.
         "Wait just a moment," Roland pleaded, unable to reconcile himself to the altered circumstances, "We should discuss this," he stammered, unable to present a more lucid refute.
         "I came in when it was about to tear her throat from her neck!" Michael roared in a rare outburst of hostility. Roland flinched. The coachman was both livid and determined. He had never seen him thus. Again he was reminded of how little he knew those closest to him.
         Roma packed the last of her research and Michael tossed it into the coach.
         "Where are you going?" the rattled priest asked, helpless to forestall much less discontinue their undertaking.
         "There's a cottage in the woods," Roma explained, elaborating quickly when she saw the priest's expression become waxen, "Not the forest we suspect our otherworld menace to inhabit. The woods beyond the valley country on the outskirts of the shire," she clarified and he relaxed, if but only fractionally, "We'll be there."
         "Where is this cottage?" Roland persisted, perplexed.
         Roma approached him, her papers snuggly tucked into a water tight oil skin duffel bag. She placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder and smiled warmly. It bespoke a deep and loyal kinship that superseded their every argument and disagreement over the previous week. In her eyes was the affection of one who cradled him in her heart with unbreakable fealty and commitment. No relation by blood had ever regarded him with such fidelity of love or faith in him and the recognition of it filled him with the first hope he had experienced in many years.
         "I'll be by in the morning," she replied, "I'll give you the location then."
         He was baffled. Why not just tell him now? He did not understand her logic but she had narrowly survived yet another attack by the Smiling Man. And Michael was a barely contained windstorm of dogged determination, one that Roland had as much chance of tethering as of roping a tornado.
         "What do you want me to do?" he asked, finally resigned to the imminence of their departure.
         "Pray," Roma replied with direct simplicity, as though it were the only and obvious recourse for their situation. The response struck the priest cold, brutally beleaguered as he was by a querulous crisis of faith, like icy water flung in his face. In that single utterance was perhaps the one thing he did not feel he could do. For himself. For any of them. It was such a small word and yet so inestimably colossal a task.
         Even before the enormity of his flagging spiritual buoyancy had returned to taunt him, the priest found himself alone. Michael and Roma swept past him and into the night like two elusive specters. The silence began to crush him.









The brisk ocean breeze had become a chill sheer. Roma huddled deeper into the blanket Michael had thrown about her shoulders and leant into the coachman. The town was now asleep. During the course of her nightmarish visitation from the Smiling Man and brief conversation with Roland, the lively port village had slumped into beds, armchairs and lie-lows before crackling fires. The fatigue that beset the town now bore deep into the scribe's aching bones, excavating the marrow and replacing it with lead. Her head felt heavier than stone.
         Oddly, Michael drew on the reins only several streets from the rectory.
         "Wait here," he said, kissing her forehead, "I'll only be a minute." He disappeared into the darkened alleys she knew led to the bordello. Several minutes passed. She was unafraid. The Smiling Man was far away. Far enough to be beyond her now hypersensitive perception. She could barely even detect the lingering thread she always felt, the trace that locked her to her tormenter. It was there but at its faintest.
         Some time later she perceived voices and was surprised to see that Michael had returned with Mother, who was carrying an elegant carpet bag filled with clothing. She adjusted the heavy woolen shawl about her shoulders as he assisted her into the stately carriage. Roma shot her a tired but curious smile.
         "Mm Mm!" Mother exhorted emphatically, "There's gonna be some hollerin' tonight! Boy, you must be out of your proper mind asking me to mind your mother," she avowed, shifting on the plush, studded leather seat of the open carriage compartment to make herself comfortable, "You're just lucky you aint rich anymore or she'd be disinheriting you this very night. She aint gonna want me all up in her business."
         The coach slowly moved off, the crisp clip clop of shod hooves creating a lulling rhythm to which Roma felt she could drift off to sleep.
         "What's going on?" she asked them both. Michael's eyes remained fixed to the road ahead so she turned around in the driver's seat, leaning over the rail to face Mother.
         "Your man here has asked me to move on into his mother's residence in his absence. Seems you and he are creating something of a love nest somewhere out in God only knows what backwater," she explained, her tone at once astonished and yet entirely calm. Roma cast Michael a stunned glance.
         "She's the only one who can withstand that caustic tongue of hers," he added, "She has a condition that requires almost constant care. Dr Hannan and I have our hands full at best, but you and I both know that something else is going to be taking up almost all of our time very soon. I need someone who not only has the practical skills to look after her but the fortitude to put up with her torrent of abuse."
         Roma took a deep breath, highly dubious of the proposed arrangement.
         "And you agreed to this?" she asked Mother.
         "Child, I think by the time his mother and I are through, its going to make the wrestling of old Jacob and the angel seem like two children at play in paradise," she replied with one of her characteristic biblical references.
         "After what happened tonight I'm not having you stay at the rectory," Michael asserted, "I'm not having you stay anywhere I'm not, at night, by yourself, without protection." Roma's eyes flashed to Mother.
         "It's alright, honey, he told me about the intruder," she reassured her, patting her arm with maternal affection, "If I get my hands on him, I've half a mind to wring his neck, and the rest of him for that matter, until he's skinnier that a ferret." Later, Roma was to discover that Michael had not entirely lied to Mother about her ‘intruder'; he had, however, omitted that it was a putrefying, cadaver-inhabited malevolence from a fallen realm. She had assumed, and naturally so, that the interloper had merely been a man.
         Roma nodded and said nothing more, turning back to face the road as she leant into Michael once again. Mother softly sang a beautiful song in her native tongue unlike any Roma had ever heard. Strangely, the tune evoked a great comfort deep within her heart and the last shreds of fear inspired by the Smiling Man vanished into nothing. The melody swallowed the flagging scribe's uneasiness and transformed it into confident assurance once again. She wondered what had caused her companion to hark back to her ancestry so.

         ‘Hollering' did not begin to describe the racket that Roma heard coming from within the otherwise manicured, pretty cottage. She had opted to remain within the relative safety of the coach.
         "Good luck," she had told Mother as the older woman had disembarked the carriage.
         "Child, not even sweet Jesus Himself with all the throngs of heavenly hosts can quell this tempest tonight. Don't you worry about me, you just best be hoping your man here comes back out in possession of a full deck after the brow beating he's going to take," she replied, winking, as she followed the stalwart coachman to the cottage.
Michael's bearing had about it a resolve and determination that Roma had seen on several occasions. She had never met his mother, and knew of her only by reputation. She knew only that his mother disliked her intensely and that only one woman on the planet could claim to inspire greater enmity from the former high end socialite - Mother. But Ichabod Hannan held her in the highest regard and Tom Borland was besotted by her so she knew that beyond the scathing recriminations and lacerating criticisms lay a noble and honorable woman whom she one day hoped to know in earnest.
         Raised voices broke the painful silence, to be followed swiftly by the sound of smashing crockery and shattered glass. The argument between Michael and his mother was short lived and ended with Mother ushering him out the door before Camilla could find something harder, larger and with less give in it to hurl at him. She heard the bordello madam hushing the enraged woman like a tolerant mother patiently calming an overwrought child. The closing of the cottage door muted the shrill rantings as Michael returned to the coach. Roma's arm slipped around his waist as he took up the reins. She kissed his cheek.
         "Are you sure this was the right thing to do?" she asked softly. His eyes seemed to glow in the darkness.
         "Mother is the only one who can physically take care of my mother and take the insults dished up," he sighed, "Besides, it's about time my mother learned to curb her hostility. Don't worry about Mother. Her line of work is perhaps the only line of work that could be said to be the perfect training ground for dealing with someone like my mother," he extolled confidently.
         "I thought we were only going to the cottage for tonight," Roma replied. He shook his head.
         "Not just tonight," he clarified, "You won't be going back to the rectory. And I won't be living here anymore," he stated, his quiet voice suffused with certainty, "After what happened tonight, and I'm not just talking about the attack, I don't want to be away from you anymore," he concluded, his eyes aglow, "I meant what I said to you back at the rectory. I love you. My life is with you now. Tomorrow I'm going to make arrangements to sell the coaches, both of them. They only serve to remind my mother of painful memories of my father, even if they were a gift from her parents and a treasured reminder of them. The money I receive for them will give her a comfortable life until the end of her days. You and I have a different path to follow and if we are ever to enjoy it, we have to put an end to the infection polluting this town. That doesn't leave much time for shuffling my patrons hither and yon."
         The coach lurched into motion, Michael's long suffering gelding whickering good naturedly as it trotted off into the slating fog that had begun to form in the pre-dawn hours. The heavy blanket of fatigue that had threatened to overwhelm Roma earlier had lifted and she sat beside the coachman alert and clear of thought. Conflicting emotions roiled within her - alarm from the attack, pensiveness in the face of an unknowable foe, thrilled anticipation for what awaited her when she reached the cottage, distress for Roland's increasingly evident descent into spiritual deterioration, profound joy for her deepened relationship with Mother.
         The most prevailing of these was of the man beside her. Memories of his touch and his kiss still quickened her pulse and sent a surge of expectant exhilaration coursing through her.
         The coach traversed the undulating valley country and disappeared into the woods beyond. For the first time since they had met, they were entirely alone and free to pursue and indulge their passion on a scale that would outstrip every estimation they had previously held.









Laboring through the necessities of restocking and stoking the fire in the hearth, rubbing down, tethering and feeding their weary mount and airing the musty cabin were a thorn in the side of their urgent need. Once completed, however, they were left momentarily at a loss. Everything they had experienced, everything they had been through together, everything they had given of and to one another converged into a single momentous evening - one that had not even begun yet.
         Michael bolted the cottage door and carefully placed the grate before the crackling blaze. Roma set about haphazardly setting her research atop the table and tossed the duffel containing her few clothes in the direction of a disused, ornately carved wardrobe. Neither quite knew which word, which action, which look signified their mutual readiness. After a long and torturous moment, Michael calmly approached his wind-mussed muse. The frigidity of the air beyond the warm cabin had flushed her cheeks a ruddy hue and given sparkle to her gleaming, coal dark eyes. Undeniably more experienced and confident, he took her face in his hands and kissed her softly. Leaning into him, she felt a tremor of exhilaration thrum through him.
         "Are you sure you're ready for this?" he pulled back, his pale blue gaze puncturing her corporal form to peer into her deepest heart. Her fingers brushed his cheek and she molded herself to him.
         "Absolutely," she whispered, her eyes devoid of doubt or hesitation.
The following hours completed a night unparalleled in their collective experience of human emotion. Roma had never felt so exposed to, and similarly so wrapped in, another human being. Michael's skin was like satin while his touch was like fire. With his mouth, his hands and then his body he filled her with an agony of supreme rapture that was at once unbearable and blissful. She allowed herself to be led and quickly found herself swept along a torrent of ardour, the intensity of which left her breathless over and again. Hours passed and they believed their passions to be fulfilled only to be overcome once more by an insatiable hunger for this pure intimacy beyond language that knew no satisfaction. In the end exhaustion and the need for sleep overwhelmed them and they drifted into a dreamless torpor in each other's arms. Never again would either wonder if they had known fully the glory and the majesty of love's greatest mysteries.









"As Saint John the Baptist is my witness, I swear, woman, I have never encountered a tongue so over-worked in the head of another human being in all my days," Mother declared, both astonished and impressed at the geyser of insults and disparagement that spewed from the bed-ridden woman.
         Her uncontrolled outrage the night before had aggravated the irregular fluttering that already vexed her weakened heart and she had been unable to rise from her bed.
         Amidst a barrage of abuse and recrimination, Mother had patiently and methodically emptied the bedpans, fixed her a cooked breakfast the ailing woman would not touch on principle, laundered her clothes, stoked the hearth, swept the eaves, folded the linens and fetched several pales of water from the well.
         Tom Borland shifted his weight back and forth from one foot to the next at Camilla's bedside as Ichabod Hannan ran several tests that involved holding a trumpet shaped metal cone to her chest from which ran a tube that fed two diverging pipes into each of his ears. The burly smithy had called upon Camilla that morning to courteously thank her for attending the previous night's festivities with him. When he had heard shouting whilst still some distance away, he guessed aright that a great storm had come.
         Mother had quickly explained the events of the night before, including her rather unexpected tenancy in the delightful cottage, which triggered another wave of enraged invective that had left Camilla wheezing and gasping for breath. He had straight away made for the Hannan estate. The doctor had attended without hesitation.
         "For the last time, Ichabod," Camilla panted, her strained respiration generating a brilliant beet in her cheeks, "If our friendship means anything at all to you, you will expel this...woman...from my home," she urged. The doctor continued to monitor her without heed to her theatrics, ever stoic and diligent in his care.
         "Hush, Camilla," he instructed, flexing a rarely exercised superiority of age to elicit her cooperation, "You've told me three times already what occurred last night and all I see before me is an exceedingly kind-hearted lady who, in the absence of your son, has graciously set aside her own commitments to ensure that you receive around the clock care," he reprimanded gently, ignoring the expression of indignation his reproach educed.
         "Do you know who that is?" she thundered with surprising force of emotion for one so choked of breath.
         "Camilla, Mother is the only woman of color for one hundred miles. Do you think me so advanced in my dotage that I've not been to town these last twenty years?" he countered with composed equanimity.
         "She's the reason Ephron wandered time and again," Camilla exploded, "She's the devil that placed the forbidden fruit before my husband and stole the very last shred of my self respect!"
         Ichabod Hannan sat back, removed the tubes from his ears and gently eased the highly agitated woman back onto the bed. He shook his head in dismayed resignation.
         "Camilla, Ephron's own inability to exercise restraint is the reason he wandered, and the last time I checked, your self respect was every bit as robust and unshakable as it ever was," he replied, his tone edged with fraternal censure honed on the whet stone of experience and maturity, "I say this because I believe our friendship lends certain liberties of frankness and honesty that attest to the strength of our amity. Neither the presence of the bordello nor any failing on your part led to his infidelity - Ephron was an enigmatic and undeniably flawed man ruled by an inexplicable longing for what he could not have. It has been twenty years. It is time to simply let it all go."
         The beleaguered woman was so taken aback by his candid observation that she simply stared at him with ineffectual incredulity. She was as a mighty ship, the greatest of her fleet, with neither rudder nor mast, resplendent to the last plank but hopelessly adrift and directionless.
         A grim thought struck her - without her blistering anger, her blazing resentment, her scorching fury, what was she? Her piercing eyes fell upon the black woman studiously tending her dusting. Did she even remember why she hated her so? And worst of all, had she invested every fiber of her effort for more than twenty years hating Ephron so that the memory of him, even the bad ones, would never ebb? Did she still love him that much? And if she did, how was it that she felt so powerful a love for Tom Borland that her union with Ephron now felt slight and insubstantial by comparison? The weight of so heavy an assault of conflicting emotions and unanswered questions rendered her mute and overcome. She turned her eyes to the ceiling.
         "Thank you, Ichabod," she said, her voice distant and colorless, "I do appreciate you coming out this morning." Her eyes remained upturned. He smiled and patted her arm, rising from the side of the bed to pack his medicine bag before crossing the room to discuss several key points relating to Camilla's care with the voluptuous bordello madam.
         Tom Borland drew up a seat beside the reclined woman and took up her hand.
         "Anything you need, Camilla, anything at all, you let me know," he avowed. Her eyes met his and for the first time in two decades he saw genuine gratitude there.
         "Thank you, Thomas," she replied softly, "I believe I will," she added, "Now, at the risk of appearing unappreciative, would you be so kind as to give us women folk some privacy? I've a few things I'd like to...discuss...regarding this arrangement."
         Initially, Tom Borland was intensely reluctant to leave, convinced that Camilla's newly found composure was a ruse. A glance at Mother eased his perturbed anxiety.
         "Go on now, honey," Mother coaxed genially, "Unless you think me so fragile a creature you need to linger for my protection," she mused, placing large fists on her broad hips in open and intended contrast to her statement, for she was as formidable a woman in both frame and character as any he had ever encountered.
         "My thanks to you, too, ma'am," he replied politely, heading towards the door.
         "Don't ‘ma'am' me, sugar, you just call me Mother like everyone else," she offered affably, "Now, don't forget to take a fist full of those honey cakes on your way out, you hear," she added, giving the handsome smithy a mischievous wink to enlighten him of her harmless joke, for she knew the gesture would rankle her patient no end.
         When the robust blacksmith and the doctor had departed, leaving the women alone together again, they regarded one another like two approaching storm fronts destined to collide with cyclonic velocity. A thundering silence filled the cottage. It was not to last, for no storm ever dissipated without lashing rain and savage lightning, the likes of which the fearful and the timid fled. But then these women were anything but fearful and timid.









It was a structure unlike any ever to have been built in human history - immense, grotesque, impossible. Impossible, because it was a construction whose composition lay outside the natural law dictating load bearing stresses and the forces that rooted all matter to the earth. Assembled from deconstructed stone sarcophagi, their contents cast thoughtlessly aside in a grisly pile of bones and ruined clothing, great stone slabs adjoined one another with no evident junction or intersection to form a hideous altar.
         It was a thing indescribable to the limited scope of human language in any form, especially mathematics, considered to be the true and only universal language, for it adhered to no logical or formulaic foundation. No strut, cross bar, girder or brace adhered one slab to the next, much less stabilized the configuration, and yet it was as rigid and secure a structure as any within the natural world.
         Its closest comparison was perhaps that of a shrine, if but a perverse and misshapen representation of one. One element was horrifyingly apparent to all who beheld it, both of flesh and of spirit - it was a place of worship. Yet no hallowed ground trod by Abraham, Moses or David had ever housed so foul an edifice and they had never venerated on bended knee the force for whom this profanity had been erected.
         In form it resembled a stone representation of an immense winged being of terrible appearance, the disassembled and broken stone slabs resembling a skeletal figure more frightening than any real or imagined beast conceived in the mind of Man. Of great bulk and weight at its highest, a colossal thirty feet from the ground, and narrow at the base, supported by only two slabs whose compositions could not possibly have supported its mass, it breached the forest canopy. As though in silent recognition of its contradiction to the laws of nature, the great boughs and branches into which it soared had bent away from the edifice; warping, twisting and distorting to lean away from the vile creation until not one leaf brushed against stone.
         At the base of the imposing construction lay an elaborate altar, ornately carved and decorated with every vulgarity and sacrilege in existence, interwoven with a script no human eye could read, for it was a creation of another world, a plane that defied and railed against the earthly laws and physical principles of the mortal realm. An inverse scripture, it adulated and revered the most abominable entity in all existence - a being whose true name was known only to its Creator and eventual conqueror.
         Before the altar the demon knelt in its stolen skin, its head raised to gaze upon the pinnacle of the structure. When it opened its mouth to speak, all life - winged, invertebrate, ground dwelling - fled the polluted pocket of forest it inhabited. The language that poured forth from its mouth was unknown to Man and unrepeatable, for the physical formation of the human throat could not accommodate the pernicious vernacular. It preceded even the One Language, the common language of the entire world, before Man had erected the ill fated tower in Babel which caused the Eternal God to confuse the language of the world and scatter the people across the earth. The sound of it was unbearable to the human ear, for not only did it assail the senses but it was many thousands of voices speaking as one, a cacophony of dissonance - some shrieking, some whispering, some hissing, some screaming, whilst others spoke with alarming clarity, almost conversationally.
         The demon spent many days in communion with its dark monarch. The locked wraith, bound to its host in death, had failed to slay the Herald. She had allied herself with the several individuals to be counted among the Elect - persons of great spiritual vigor not unlike the canonical faith of the Great Ones who had razed Jericho, who had brought the Covenant down from the Mountain, and who had built the mighty Temple to house the Ark. She herself was of goliath piety in spite of her human failings, and utterly devout in her dedication to the divinity of the Word, even unto death. She, the demon would destroy, for she would never turn aside from the Truth, but in death she could no longer cauterize the cancer of evil in the world or shepherd the leaderless towards the Light. The Other was more problematic. He had deflected the wraith with ease, he consorted with the One who had become the Cornerstone, he wore his faith like the armor of the archangels who had cast out the Fallen after the War in Heaven. He, too, could not be turned or tempted. But he could be broken and rendered benign. The priest was of no consequence. Already his pitted soul, pocked by doubt, fear and vexation, writhed almost palpably within its palm, a flaccid and feeble shadow of its former indomitability.
         It remained in communion with the Unholy Host. The Herald was coming. The demon could feel her. She was drawn to it, compelled to engage it in warfare. It was her Calling and her Curse, for she would never be rid of it. It had but to wait, to grow in strength, to amass its power, to draw on the insuperable might of the Dark Father.
         She was coming.
         And it would be there to receive her...









It defied comprehension. Nothing so shocking had occurred in the port town's history. It was beyond rationalization and justification. The crypt doors lay in broken pieces on the ground, spread in a fan formation as if having been blown outward from within the sepulcher.
         A churning in his stomach brought bile to Wally Barlen's parched mouth. This was so very different and yet it felt the same. His pursuit by the mammoth black dog in New Forest had taken place months earlier and in a different location. The desecration he had come upon at the Buckland Rings tomb was an altogether separate incident - and yet about it hung an atmosphere of intense forbidding. Indescribable and yet manifestly conspicuous, it felt as though something awesome and terrible had visited an horrific violation upon the site and, though long gone, had left behind a spectral impression so potent that it had become a part of the landscape, saturating the earth, the vegetation, the very air surrounding the crypt.
         The brawny seaman perceived only darkness beyond the entrance from whence the doors had been blasted out. He cursed under his breath. For the second time that year he had found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time for having taken a shortcut. It was something he would not repeat a third time. Presently, he edged towards the disturbed vault.
         Cut into the hillside, the site was more widely known to have been the location of early earthen defenses constructed by the Ancient Britons, a hillside fort of sorts, long since ruined. In an unremarkable setting some distance from the famed earthworks, the tomb had been cut into the hill and was believed to house the remains of five generations of a single family from the 6th Century when the bustling port town had been little more than a marshy settlement known as Lentune.
         He was disinclined to enter the sacred interior for several reasons, the most prevailing of which was that he had no way of knowing if what had caused the defilement had departed. He had no torch to illuminate the interior of the tomb and he felt that to enter the centuries old resting place was to disrespect and despoil it a second time. For a time he stood transfixed at the entrance, incapable of entering the crypt and yet unable to turn away.
         Hastily he made the sign of the cross over himself, spirited a supplication for forgiveness towards the heavens and took an uneasy step forward, eyes squinting to peer into the darkness beyond. Ears trained to detect even the faintest strain in deck planking or mast timber against a raging squall sieved through the surrounding natural sounds of bird, breeze and the distant lowing cattle. All that remained was silence, cold and crisp. Nothing moved within the tomb. Nothing so much as breathed. The burly first mate would have detected it. His hearing was prolific.
         The chamber within was situated several feet below the entrance and Wally Barlen placed a boot upon the first step leading down into the cavity. His pulse quickened and the musty smell of moisture, mould and lichen assaulted his senses. The walls felt oppressively close. His own breathing, shallow and shuddered, seemed deafeningly amplified within the chamber, deflecting repeatedly off the rock walls. Odd, he thought, for the crypt was surely so crammed with funerary caskets that the objects should have absorbed at least some of the sound.
         His eyes adjusted to the diffuse light within the dim chamber. Wally Barlen staggered backwards, his heel catching on the bottom step of the entrance. He slipped and caught himself against the roughly cut stone, panic threatening to engulf him. His pulse thundered in his ears and an excruciating stab in his chest denoted the painful acceleration of his heartbeat. Hands trembling, his feet peddled for purchase as he scrambled backwards up the stairs and veritably threw himself out into the open air beyond.
         What he had seen still had not registered. He could not reconcile it. Defilement was one thing, and a wicked thing at that, but theft - grave robbery - was of an entirely more heinous and insidious nature. Who or what could have excavated the crypt undetected? The Rings were something of a regional attraction, a curiosity to visiting foreigners and locals alike. Not a day passed that someone was not spotted investigating the site and children especially favored it as something of a playground upon which to enact fictional skirmishes and battles in an artificial Iron Age.
An excavation on the scale he had discovered would have taken weeks. Someone would have noticed it long before he had happened upon its present devastation.
         Still he could not believe what his eyes had so plainly revealed to him.
         The crypt was empty.
         Not one casket lay within. Scrapings upon the stone floor had betrayed the shifting of each heavy sarcophagus, dozens by Wally Barlen's cursory estimation. The absence of subsequent layers of dust over the abraded stone revealed that the contents of the crypt had been moved recently.
         Grave robbers defiled the remains within coffins hoping to find jewelry and other valuables. Often they left the caskets in disarray in the frenetic plunder. Never had he heard of tomb raiders absconding with the entire contents of a crypt. To remove the remains was thinkable. Not even the caskets could be resold, for funerary and internment coffin vendors tailored their caskets to customer-specified requirements, complete with the elaborately carved name of the interred and etched lists of family ancestry. To say nothing of the fate of the remains themselves, he would not allow himself to speculate as to their ill fortune.
         With his wits about him once again, Wally Barlen stood and backed slowly away from the deserted tomb. Again it struck him that only once before in his life had he experienced so abyssal a dread. Though seemingly unrelated, his scare in New Forest and now his find at the Buckland Rings smacked of the same chilling menace, a menace so compelling that he spontaneously began to recite the only psalm he knew by heart. The words tumbled from his lips even after several valleys and woodland stretches separated him from the scene of the despoiled crypt.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,
He maketh me lie down in green pastures,
He leadeth me beside the quiet waters,
He restoreth my soul.
He guideth me in paths of righteousness,
for His name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff,
They giveth me comfort...










         The following week was one of great preparation. Though Roma and Michael longed to steal just a few days together to explore and relish their newly deepened relationship, the barbs of duty and obligation snagged upon the fabric of their brief escape into paradise. Though parting in the early dawn of the day following the village dance, the ache they formerly experienced when apart had eroded entirely. A new bond had replaced the longing, one strong and constant irrespective of separation by time and distance. Even when parted, they could feel one another's presence so keenly they often glanced about them to confirm the absence of the other. It was a comfort that gladdened the heart, generating a contentment almost equal to the solace of perfect prayer.
         Michael went into town to make arrangements for the sale of his magnificent coaches. Roma's preparations were of a more inwardly introspective, reflective nature. Roma noted that Roland, to his credit, assisted her on her embarkation towards spiritual readiness in spite of his own interminable grapple with his faith. He suspended the day's usual dawn service, but to avoid unwanted scrutiny and curiosity, he excused the action by explaining that a pestilence problem required his urgent attention. He knew anything involving rats would see his parishioners fleeing in their droves without question.
With the church deserted and unlikely to be disturbed for the remainder of the day, they began the rite of cleansing at dawn. In spite of the wondrous night Roma had spent with Michael only hours earlier, she found herself surprisingly focused upon her spiritual endeavor and able to concentrate without difficulty or distraction. Roland led her through several prayers of exhortation designed to renew her faith and trust in the power and protection of the Risen Christ. He extolled upon her blessings of grace, courage and acumen in her rigorous labors to expunge evil works from the world of Man. He commended her soul unto the care of the mighty seraphim, those powerful agents who took up the armament of God during the War in Heaven to battle the dark of forces who would become the spiritual pollutants of Mankind. He accompanied her through the rite of lectio divina - divine reading, a cherished Carmelite practice in which an individual read Scripture (lectio), reflected upon it, (meditatio), prayed on it (oratio) and finally released all conscious thoughts, prayers, reflections and agendas to simply rest in the Word (contemplatio) and listen at the deepest level of being to the voice of God within. He prayed with her, meditated on the great sacrifices of the martyred saints, and conducted her towards an unhindered oneness with the Holy Spirit.
         Roland guided Roma as far as the rite would allow. All that was left for her to do was to immerse herself in quiet, contemplative prayer. Having surrendered to the rite of spiritual distillation and reunification with the Living Christ through lectio divina, Roma was so deeply entrenched in communion with the Holy Spirit that she was no longer aware of either the priest or of her surroundings. She remained on her knees before the altar, hands clasped, head bent, eyes closed, for more than ten hours. She emerged from her rumination as the sun was setting. Enlivened and visibly revitalized, she suffered neither hunger nor fatigue.
When Roland found her seated in one of the pews simply soaking in the stillness and silence of the church sanctuary, he noted immediately that her eyes seemed almost to glow in the weak light of the fading day. For the first time in many months he found himself staggered by the sight of her, for from behind those eyes he perceived another to be gazing back at him, gazing into him. The Spirit that resided within her beheld him and he could not deny that it recognized him as he did the Spirit. In doing so, he knew in that moment that in spite of his struggle to find peace with his vocation, he had never truly lost faith in the existence and truth of the Divine Trinity, only in the machinations of the Church that often manipulated and manoeuvred it to suits its own designs. Relief swelled within him so rapidly, he was forced to steady himself on a pew. Although not fully conscious of the life altering decision he had made in his heart in that singular instant of enlightenment, the spiritually beleaguered priest knew one thing as surely as he knew the sun would set and rise again. He knew he believed. Though beset with doubt, fear and indecision, he recognized that these were quandaries of vocation and not of faith.
         It had all been so clear and all it had taken was to look into the eyes of one who truly believed, who lived the Word, who relied without demur on a presence unseen but truthfully omnipotent and eternal. In those eyes he had seen his Creator and Savior staring back at him and he had witnessed his own salvation.
         He sat beside his former student in the pew and a calmness radiated from him that Roma had feared he had lost forever.
         "Are you ready?" he asked softly, his voice suffused with quiet confidence. She nodded.
         "You?" she queried. He smiled. It was one she recognized from their childhood, the one that had always made her feel as though everything would be alright simply because he had deemed it so. A strength she had thought had slipped from him entirely seemed once more to emanate from deep within him. The weariness, the resignation he had once worn with the same familiarity as his mantle of priestly vestments had been sloughed away. Vigor and authority rested in perfect balance upon his shoulders once again.
         "When do you plan to seek it?" he asked.
         "Tomorrow," she replied without apprehension.
         "You have many hours of prayer ahead of you before you will be ready to defeat it," he cautioned her gently.
         "Even if we find it on the morrow, I am already strong enough. I can feel it now. Already it awaits me. It will not hide itself from me. It wants to be found," she reassured him, offering him a small, self-satisfied smile, "But it won't be expecting you and it certainly won't be anticipating Michael." The priest shared her smile.
They themselves were a trinity of sorts - himself, Roma and Michael - but it was the reckoning of the True Trinity, the Divine Godhead, they carried within them that would subjugate and ultimately annihilate their adversary. Devoid of the arrogance of believing they themselves possessed the might and authority to rout their foe, they knew with unblinking certainty that it was the holy forces working through them that would conquer the enemy, for in and of themselves they were incapable of so colossal a feat. Only the righteous and final authority of the Risen Lamb would subdue and defeat the malevolence that awaited them, for of all things in Heaven, on earth and in the plane between, only the Christ Who Is To Come reigned over all, good and evil. Their task was merely to stand fast in faith, open their souls and allow the Holy Ghost to move through them. The victory would not be theirs, for the glory alone belonged to the power that had originated from beyond them, but they would rejoice in His triumph nonetheless and share it with all who had ears to hear so that all may know that Christ was indeed King.
         Roma noticed that Roland's hands were empty and that he was making no preparations for the following day.
         "I know you have only joined me on these endeavors once or twice before but you usually bring more...accoutrements," she observed shrewdly, however she couched her deduction more delicately, "No crucifix? No blessed water or Bible?" she queried curiously. He smiled and in it she recognized not only the wisdom of the ages but also the knowledge of the Spirit.
         " ‘The kingdom of Heaven is near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in yours belts; take no bags for the journey, or extra tunic or sandals, or a staff; for the worker is worth his keep'" he quoted.
         "Matthew, chapter ten," Roma confirmed, "Your faith has come alive again, brother," she witnessed openly and he nodded slightly, smiling. Evidently he believed, as did she, that faith alone and the authority of the blood of Christ would be all that was required to overcome their adversary. She almost did not recognize the man beside her, he was transfigured. She elected to save her questions for a later time.
         "It is a demon you believe has infested this place, isn't it," he stated more than asked. He had suspected this for some time but had kept his speculation to himself. She nodded but her expression was vexed.
         "Yes and no," she replied, "Almost every incident has not only led me to believe this, but also to suspect its identity," she finally disclosed, "But the killing up in the valley country has left me perplexed. Nowhere in recorded biblical history has any demonization of a human being been synonymous with the savagery of that killing. With violence, yes. With demonstrations of inhuman strength, yes. With rage and loathing and blasphemy, yes. But that killing falls outside biblical reference and it was not merely a spontaneous slaughter. Whatever killed that man did so to feed upon him. There was delight taken in the destruction of a life, yes, but the underlying purpose was one of physical nourishment. No demon possessed individual either of biblical profile or in Church record has ever done such a thing. So my previous certainty of a demon is problematic, shall we say. Everything suggests that is what it is - everything except the slaughter," she shook her head in bewilderment, "We will just have to wait and see what manner of thing it is we face and work from there."
         "Go home," he suggested softly, "Should all of Hell be unleashed upon us from tomorrow until eternity, you have at least one last night of Heaven awaiting you," he reminded her and she patted his hand. She rose to leave and balked.
         "What about you?" she asked. He smiled again.
         "I think I might stay here a while," he replied, "I've an old friend long neglected in this place and we've some catching up to do," his eyes glanced to the large crucifix on the altar and Roma quietly left him to his solitude.









         It was still dark when Roland opened his door to find Roma and Michael awaiting him. Curiously, he was not attired in his priestly apparel; instead favoring the ankle length, plain, coarse brown robe of an acolyte, tied at the waist with a cord knotted thrice. It was in the earliest days of his seminary studies, in that very robe, that he had felt he could take on the world and shine the Light of the Word into the dark places to drive out evil. He had not felt like that in years - until the day before. It felt fitting to wear the robe.
He carried no crucifix save the small cross that hung about his neck, no Bible, no holy water or relics of any kind. Expunged of guilt and anguish, he felt as spiritually simplified as his plain vestments. His ceremonial garments and religious icons were symbols of significance for believers. They were of little consequence to their adversary and of themselves were not invested with power. Only his faith and the divinity of the Word could impact upon their terrible foe. Though stripped of accoutrements, he was not unarmed; he had merely chosen to clothe himself in the armor of faith, the intangible but only true weapon of might.
         "You look different," Michael observed, immediately noting the vigor and dynamism about the priest. It shone from him like a torch from within. The priest shot him a lop-sided smile.
         "I had a long discussion with an old friend I had been sorely remiss to remain in touch with lately," he explained, a new vivacity enlivening his spirited Irish lilt, "He told me to stop feeling sorry for myself, work up some damned pluck and get to work," he quipped, his morale light and lofty, sloughed of its former dross of fretfulness and angst.
         A large orange bundle in the priest's arms was gingerly placed upon the doorstep. It curled about the priest's legs as a reverberating purr erupted from deep within its throat.
         "Go on now, off to the boy," Roland coaxed the cat, who scuttled off into the night towards the Seaspray. Dairmid always left his bedroom window open a hand's width to allow the cat to slip inside. Scram had taken a liking to the boy's thick downy coverlets on cool nights. The priest returned his attention to his companions, "Come on then," he instructed, "Time - or in this case incalculable evil - waits for no man."
         The trek would take time for they brought nothing with them, not even horses for fear that the presence that awaited them in the forest would traumatise the animals. The hours before dawn gradually lightened into day as they made their way to New Forest. It was this woodland Roma felt drawn to, like a great invisible rope had been tied about her waist and was slowly pulling her into the heart of the dark domain. When they reached the forest fringe she stopped, casting off her reliance on her five tactile senses in favor of the subtler sensitivities of the heart, the mind and the spirit. She wrapped her every thought in silent prayer and with every breath quietly reverenced the Living Sacrifice. She felt at her deepest level of awareness her focus and purpose wholeheartedly rooted in spiritual communion with Holy Spirit, protecting her - protecting them all.
         She advanced into the forest. Michael and Roland followed quietly behind, reserving speech that might otherwise disrupt Roma's concentration. They had all agreed that when the time came to actively seek their adversary, Roma would lead their efforts for they had entered her world, her sphere of expertise. Her proficiency in handling the task ahead was unquestioned. She had told them that they would know when their participation was necessary, that the Spirit would compel them, and they believed this with stout conviction.
         They followed no path, for they had entered the forest from the south. Most of the main trails penetrated the forest from the east and cut through it in an L-shaped route where vegetation was neither congested nor noxious. Roma took the most direct route to the deepest part of the forest but it required diligence to avoid nettles that burned, thorny brambles whose prick delivered a deleterious toxin that confused the mind, and vines that bled a deadly milky sap if ruptured. The trees were old in the northern sector, bent in rheumatoid contortions that gave them the unerring appearance of being frozen in silent, excruciating pain. Their leaves were dark, almost black and their corrugated trunks were skirted by briars and creepers entangled in a desperate battle for water and nutrients drawn by immense root networks. Even the earth was cracked and dry as though the staff of a great titan had struck the ground, cleaving it with monumental force. No light penetrated the canopy, a perpetual twilight hung in the motionless air. The densely packed leaves of the high boughs had lashed themselves to one another in an impregnable mesh of choked vegetation.
         Their footfalls seemed to echo about them. Roma stopped. Michael and Roland drew up behind her, remaining silent as she peered around the gloom filled woodland.
         "Do you hear that?" she whispered.
         "What?" Roland queried.
         "Nothing," she replied, turning to them, "No birdsong, no cricket chirp, no chatter of ground rodents. Nothing. They're here. I've seen movement from time to time in the trees and on the ground. But nothing is making a sound. They've lapsed into silence," her expression took on a solemn tincture, "Or something has compelled them to silence."
         "Something that is listening for our approach," Michael confirmed.
         "Can't it simply sense that we are coming?" Roland inquired, recalling Roma's admission that she could feel the demon drawing her in.
         "There are two very distinct things demons cannot do. They cannot pray, and in being asked to do so are often revealed by their violent reaction, and they cannot read minds, not even the minds of those they hold captive," she replied, "On a subtle level it knows we are coming but not precisely when and from whence, and it cannot tap into our thoughts. Those are sealed by God, and whilst they can plant suggestions and even cause us to hear voices inside our minds, they cannot access our thoughts. Once in possession of a host, they are bound in part by the limitations presented by inhabiting a being limited by physical grounding in the corporal world. It relies now on the skills and senses of that host - taste, touch, sight, hearing and smell. It can neither see nor hear us until such time as we are upon it. Expect the wind to rise and change direction often. When sight and sound fail to give away our position, it will attempt to glean our location by manipulating the wind until it blows our scent downwind of it," she elaborated. Michael's astonishment was conscientiously contained. He could not begin to wonder at the experiences of her past that had afforded her an expansive knowledge of things so antediluvian in origin. He marveled at the horrors she must have witnessed in her young life.
         A breeze stirred. Roland stiffened.
         "Don't be unnerved by it," Roma reassured him, "It has no way of knowing that today is the day we are coming for it. I suspect that every day since it arrived, this devil wind has whipped about this forest in a kind of scheduled exploration to probe for the presence of interlopers such as ourselves." The priest did not relax but remained vigilant and watchful as they again proceeded forward. Both men took solace in Roma's unflappable stoicism. Thus far nothing had taken her aback. She had anticipated everything they might encounter, and more importantly had done so without apprehension. It was a testimony to both her extensive experience in warfare of this kind and the mettle of her faith.
         She observed with detached interest, however, a new development she had not encountered during previous investigations. As the wind grew stronger, it began to affect the trees. All around them they perceived the straining of timbre, the splintering and cracking of living wood laboring under tremendous tension. Looking around, she watched as the time gnarled trunks of centuries old elm, oak and fir visibly twisted in forced conformation to the will of the wind. Forms she had assumed extreme age and weathering had molded had in fact been wrenched and stressed into shape by a wind polluted by a poisoned control. The creaking of taut, stretched timber fibers filled the air like the groaning of a ship's deck in the moments before a wrathful sea rent it plank from plank. It was a disquieting sound, like the entire forest moaned in the grip of a merciless assailant.
         The wind dropped and then stopped. It went from a vigorous gust to nothing so quickly that its total disappearance caused Michael to flinch. It was as if the very wind had fallen from the air. The temperature dropped dramatically.
         "Don't be alarmed," Roma asserted confidently; this time she did not stop to address them but instead continued ahead as she softly spoke, "The presence of an entity anathema to the Living Christ by virtue of its very existence banishes most things synonymous with the Holy Spirit - light, warmth, order, harmony," she explained, "Steel yourselves. You can expect to see much worse than this," she warned and the certainty of her tone chilled her companions more than the plummeting temperature. In that moment they realized that it was one thing to prepare and brace for such an endeavor. It was another thing entirely to witness it, to be in it. A sudden elevation of respect for their already esteemed escort swelled within them for she reconciled herself to each new development with pragmatism and undiminished resolve.
         For another hour they pushed deep into the heart of the forest and almost with each passing step they witnessed incidents both awesome and unnatural. They came upon a stream whose waters had stopped. The water course was not frozen, merely immobile. Its gurgling waters would have masked their approach and had been paralyzed to decrease their chances of moving undetected. The undulations caused by the current and bubbling froth of foamy cascades hung in suspension as though time itself had stopped. They could touch the tiny droplets caught mid air and discovered that they were supported by no natural means.
         They passed through a glade in the thickly choked forest that affected their sense of balance and grounding. Roma's hair stood up as though she were hanging upside down. Any loose clothing drifted upwards. Roland's robe cord hung upside down, as did Michael's boot laces. Before they had embarked, Roma had advised them to remove all items from their pockets, explaining only that when they fell out, they would be irretrievable. A small coin from Roma's pocket slipped up through the fabric sleeve and ‘fell' high up into the canopy, disappearing from sight. The force of the upward compulsion saw Roma, the lightest of them all, fighting to walk on the flats of her feet, at times teetering upon her toes as though an invisible pair of hands under her armpits was pulling her off the ground. When they had passed through the glade, the natural law of earthward-bound propulsion saw them all stagger to prevent from crashing to the earth due to overcompensating their downward force against the upthrust.
         These and several other disorienting afflictions beset them as they progressed towards their destination.
         It was when they came upon the insects that Roma knew they had come into closer proximity to their target. They formed a living carpet beneath their feet, a writhing tapestry of camouflaged, winged, and plated invertebrates blanketing every square inch of the leaf littered earth. Every last one of them crawled backwards, even those for whom such an action constituted a physical impossibility. They crawled backwards, Roma realized, away from something that not only repelled them but adversely influenced their concord with the natural order, forcing them to act contrary to their nature. The predatory praying mantis retreated alongside the vulnerable fig grub. The foraging beetle rubbed faceted wings with the orb spider. A greater instinct than the urge to hunt, propagate and survive compelled them to withdraw from their myriad concealed habitats to safety beyond the contamination of the entity that drove them away.
         Through the trees ahead Roma caught a glimpse of an immense structure soaring into the boughs high in the canopy. She squinted to peer beyond the obscuring scrub. She could not make out its form at a distance.
         And she did not perceive the danger overhead.