Author’s note:
1. This story will contain many and various religious aspects as well as, most likely, pagan elements. I realize that some people might get offended by this, and therefore, please, if you are sensitive about such things, do not read my story. This is a work of fiction, it is meant to be taken as such – a product of an overly active imagination.
2. Individual warnings will be posted at the beginning of every chapter, when required.
3. I am not English, so expect the occasional mistake, lack of sense or complete butchering of the language. I apologize in advance, but if you are kind enough to point it out, I will correct it and not get offended.
Prologue
“Wake up …” He was running as fast as he could, ignoring the cramps in his legs, the pain in his chest, the shortness of his breath. He had to get away, he had to escape … something was getting closer; he could feel it circling in on him from the shadows, stalking him, hunting him …
He knew nothing – not where he was nor how he ended up in this place, not what sort of creature was restlessly pursuing him or why and when he started running – he knew ... nothing.
Nothing but the sense of dread and terror enfolding him, nothing but the blind panic and the deep, desperate need to run, to get away, to survive.
”Wake up.” Another step, another and then another … the light was fading, his limbs were failing, tired with the strain, his eyes could no longer distinguish tree from bush from rock and open space. His leg caught and he fell – for a moment it seemed like forever, an eternity had passed before his body hit the ground, and then it was over. And then he was caught. His left shoulder throbbed violently, his ankle twisted at an unnatural angle, he wanted to scream in terror, frustration and fear but found that no matter how hard he tried, no sound came out.
“Wake up!” He was mute, blind, wounded and it was almost upon him now. He was so cold …
”WAKE UP !!!”
Chapter I:
In the absence of sleep ...
Jonathan opened his eyes, wildly taking in the surroundings, a layer of cold sweat making him shiver almost uncontrollably – a bed, a nightstand, a chair and a table … in the distance, a few more things that he could not yet distinguish, partially due to the obscure lighting and partially to his still troubled and confused state.
He was in a room, and just as he was about to reach the same conclusion, a flash of lightning decided to illuminate the dark chamber and further prove that he was, indeed, in his room. A thunder followed close behind and he closed his eyes for a moment, willing them to adjust to the lack of light just as he silently willed his heart to stop hammering and return to it’s normal pace.
The young man felt a deep sight escape him as he lifted his torso, fighting the clinging sheet and reshaping his body into what was a half laying, half sitting position.
He had not had a nightmare in years, not since he was a small boy, living at home, in his parents’ house. A shy smile grazed his lips just as the image of him with dirty hands, a running nose and scrapped knees crying his soul out for his mother grazed his mind. He breathed in deeply.
Jonathan was about to close his eyes yet again, only this time not in order to calm his nerves, but to actually return to what he hoped would be a decent night’s rest, despite the troublesome beginning, when he heard the sound – a distant, deaf “thudding”, almost like someone knocking.
He sat unmoving and strained his hearing for a few moments and … there it was again – “ Thud! Thud! Thud!”. For a moment he considered going back to bed, pretending he never heard it and leaving father Moriarty to deal with whoever it was, but, unfortunately, he was forced to dismiss the thought just as quickly as it had touched his mind. Father Moriarty was an old man, where he was not, father Moriarty had been sick with the influenza for the past 3 days, where he was healthy and fine and, lastly, father Moriarty was a very deep sleeper, where he was sadly not … the dreadfully sounding storm outside furthermore nagged at his sense of morale … No one should be forced to spend a night in such a weather.
With a deject and slightly defeated sight Jonathan got out of bed, searched for his previously discarded socks, wrapped an old woolen robe around himself and lit a small lamp, carefully making his way through the dark, cold passageway that separated the main living area from the church’s body.
“ Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!”, he heard again, just as he reached the middle aisle, the sound troubling, powerful and somehow ominous from such a short distance. “ Thud! Thud! Thud!” again, and he was just a breath away from taking his tightly clutched lamp back the way he came, leaving whoever it was in the Maker’s hands.
As he got closer to the door, the sound got louder, gradually replacing the noise of the raging storm, and he saw delicate, white puffs of air rising from his mouth and dissipating into the dark unknown that was surrounding him. Somehow, it hadn’t seemed so cold back when he was nearing the first row of benches.
Jonathan shivered, a deep sense of dread clawing at his heart, enveloping him whole, making it hard to breath and move. He stopped for a moment, shook his head and harshly scolded himself – he was a priest, he was a grown man, he had almost 200 parishioners in his care, he could no longer afford to play the part of a child, he could not let his foolish fear of the dark or a silly dream shake him so that he was unable to open a door and help someone who most likely desperately needed it.
With that in mind, the young man hurried his pace, ignoring all the alarms going off in his brain and the ever increasingly chilly air and opened the heavy wooden doors.
A branch … ripped from a tree, caught in the stone flourish that framed the doors. He pulled at the troublesome piece of wood, threw it a few feet away and watched as the angry, biting wind picked it up only to carry it towards a new, unknown destination.
Jonathan closed the door and backed away relieved, to his everlasting shame. He was smiling at himself in the dark, just as he was sure father Moriarty would smile, even laugh at him in the morning when he would recount his dangerous midnight encounter with the evil branch.
He only managed to take a few more steps, however, before his smile faded just as swiftly as it had appeared – the sickly sense of dread was returning, along with the strange cold, both stronger and more vicious than before. He looked around the cavernous room, trying to distinguish the different shapes and objects, but to no avail. His little lamp only allowed him to see so much … which in fact was very little.
He wanted to scream, to run, to open those doors and rush into the storm outside, to flee for as fast and as long as he would manage, anything just to escape the diseased pressure and fear. He was being irrational, and he knew it. He tried to calm down.
“Hello…”, he called, “is someone there?”, feeling silly and stupid as soon as the words left his mouth. Jonathan turned in a slow circle around himself, inspecting every corner of the church as best as his lamp allowed it.
“Hello?”, he called again. “Anyone?”
“Hello father…”, a deep voice answered.
Jonathan felt his teeth clench, his body jump and a muffled sound of surprise leave his lips without any accord. He panicked, turned around franticly, trying to pinpoint the voice, the source, the speaker, failing miserably to do so. A million questions swam through his mind – where and when and how and why? He had no answers.
“Ummmn….”, he continued stupidly, trying to get a hold of himself and fight off the crippling anxiety while still searching for a position in which to face.
A low, wicked chuckle reverberated on the stone walls in answer, a sound that could easily put the thunder outside to shame, and Jonathan couldn’t help the icy shiver that went up his spine.
“You know father, when you call out into the darkness you should always be prepared for the darkness to … answer back.”, the voice continued in a slow, deliberate, mocking manner. It was strange, seemingly coming from every direction at once and nowhere in particular, powerful enough to fill in the entire area and somehow compact, compressed and deep enough to manage and not to sound shrill or loud.
Jonathan shivered once more. He could not match that, not the words and not the tone, he had no smart answer ready for him, no intelligent reply. His brain was confused and foggy, still mourning after the loss of peace, quiet and the warmth of his bed.
“I … ummmn, I am sorry, but I can’t see you. Where are you?”, he managed, eventually.
“Here.”, the voice answered, just as a dark silhouette rouse from one of the benches, on the left side, near the door, and took a step closer, out of the deeper shadows and into the faint light.
He could not see a face, could not distinguish features, but he could make out that it was a man – probably a head taller than he was, broad shouldered and lean muscled, or at least that is what he assumed.
“I ... ah… umm… Hello, I am sorry for my earlier …” -
silly and inappropriate behavior- is want he wanted to say, but instead left his words suspended in mid-air for a moment, before hurriedly continuing talking, a faint blush of embarrassment already covering his pale cheeks.
“I am Jonathan Bromwell. Hello. Umm… Sorry for earlier, you just startled me is all …”, he finished pathetically, angry at himself for his persistent lack of coherency. On one hand, he had been glad someone had answered, proving that he was indeed not insane and talking to himself; on the other, he would have rather no one had …
“I know.”, was all that the man answered, taking a step forward, just as Jonathan took one back.
-’I know?... I know?’- What sort of answer was that? What sort of explanation? The young man’s mind reeled franticly, confused and ever more frightened with each passing moment. Something was wrong.
“Why did you lose the term ‘father’ from your introduction, father?” the voice returned before he had time to think about much of anything. Deep, low and mocking, just like before. It sounded wrong in his ears and it sounded wrong in the high, stony room. The words were perfect in every sense, but the accent was foreign, strange, unnerving and it made Jonathan’s stomach clench painfully.
“I … I have just recently taken my vows and am not still used to using the term so freely. Apologies. And besides, you caught me in my ‘off duty’ hours, so to say.”, he finished with a nervous chuckle, wanting to smack himself over the head in annoyance.
What was wrong with him, apologizing and explaining himself to a total stranger like this, embarrassing himself. He was not the one standing alone, in the dark, in the middle of the night, in a church with no explanation as to how he got there or as to why. A deep shiver wracked through the man’s body, just as realization dawned on him – how did he get here? The door was locked from the inside, he was certain – he had locked it before everyone went to bed that evening and it had been locked right until the moment he had opened it to pull the branch away. A cold sweat broke on his skin, making his arms rich with goosebumps and the small hairs on the back of his neck stand alert.
He was just about to voice his thoughts when the voice decided to break the silence.
“So it is a ‘duty’ then, I had believed it was supposed to be a ‘calling’. And even so, should you not be ‘on duty’ all the time and for everyone father, is that not the point.”, the man continued, and Jonathan felt himself further flush with embarrassment just as his heart kept clenching with fear. He felt so inadequate and lost, so utterly foolish and young. He wanted to be indignant and angry, righteous and secure; he wanted to tell this strange character a piece of his mind – he was mocking him, implying that his faith was lacking, laughing at him and he had been since the first moment he opened his mouth – and yet, there he stood, tongue tied.
“It is a… a calling.”, he spoke, stumbling on his own words. “Where did you come from?”, Jonathan continued, voice weak and soft and scared. It was not what he wanted nor what he intended to ask, but he was satisfied with it nonetheless, anything that would draw attention from himself would be welcomed.
The man did not answer however, but instead choose to tilt his head just so, and silently gaze at one of the strained-glass windows. Jonathan’s gaze followed the man’s - the weather was awful and seemingly getting worse with every passing moment, the wind biting and pulling at the small church, the rain angrily hitting it at all angles, almost as if it was a living thing trying to break down the building.
“Dreadful weather.”, the young priest felt compelled to comment after a moment, for no reason other than breaking the oppressing silence.
“Indeed.” The voice answered, much closer than before, close enough that Jonathan could distinguish a slight ‘purring’ or ‘growling’ sound underneath the words. And when he did turn his face back towards the speaker, a soft, pained gasp escaped his chest.
He was staring into the face of ‘sin’, for no other word could do it justice. Dark, soft black hair that lazily shined in the lamp’s light, going well over broad shoulders, sharp features and pale skin – a tall forehead; high, strong checkbones and a straight nose that seemed carved more out of marble than living flesh. Soft, plump and slightly swollen lips, seemingly almost a little too big for the face on which they were placed but nonetheless fitting it perfectly, arched and slightly frowned eyebrows underneath which, framed by a curtain of long, thick lashes two blue eyes the color of which Jonathan had never seen, scorched and froze him at the same time.
“I …ahm. You are not wet.”, was all that he managed to get out, his voice meek and losing intensity by the moment. He knew he should not be staring, he knew it was disrespectful and, frankly, both childish and foolish - this was not the first man he ever met – and yet, it seemed like he was, and he couldn’t help it, no matter how much he tried.
“No, I am not.”, the dark haired man confirmed, moving a step closer and invading the young priest’s personal space.
“But I thought … you said… I mean, you came from outside, right?”, he foolishly and awkwardly stammered, unable to properly formulate his thoughts into words. What was wrong with him?
“Wrong.”, the man answered, moving a step closer and gazing down at Jonathan with amusement in his eyes and a wicked smile painted over his lips. “I never said anything, but simply turned my head one way. You assumed and concluded that all on your own.”, he continued, a strange delight coloring his every word.
“Oh? I …”
“Jonathan?!?! Jonathan!”, father Moriarty’s voice boomed and another light joined his own just as he turned his head to the sound behind him.
“Father.”, he replied with a small smile and a satisfied sight, secretly and shamefully very much relieved that he was no longer alone with the stranger. The familiar sight of the old man almost instantly put him at ease and the painful claw tugging at his chest finally released it’s hold. He was suddenly not so cold anymore and his breath, words and thoughts seemed to come easier and clearer.
“Good God, child.”, father Moriarty tiredly sighted. “What are you doing here alone in the middle of the night?”
“Alone?”, Jonathan frowned and swiftly turned his head towards the dark stranger only to find … empty space. He scanned the surroundings for a few moments, the second lamp adding to his light and clearing all the deep shadows from the church. There was no one here, but how?... and where?
“I was not alone father … the storm and there was this branch stuck in the door, hitting it, I thought someone was knocking and I came to see and then there was this man and he was not wet … and…”, he hurriedly tried to explain. It made no sense, nothing did, where was he? He had been here a moment ago, he couldn’t have left, there had been no time and he couldn’t have hid, the light was now enough to clearly see the entire room.
“Jonathan, you are not making any sense, boy. What storm, what branch, what knocking, what man?”, the old man spoke in a soft and slightly concerned voice. “There is no storm.”, he pointed out. “Come now, you just had a bad dream is all, let’s get back to bed. I’ll make you some tea.”
“No, but there is a storm.”, he said alarmed, and his eyes went to the windows, only to find that they were not even wet, not even a few drops grazed the glass. No proof of what had happened lingered.
“But…”, he tried, feeling defeated and more confused than ever. What was wrong with him?
“Come now, as I said, it probably was just a bad dream, nothing more. I was awake writing a letter, if there was a storm, I would have heard it. I am old Jonathan, but I am not that old, at least not yet…”, he man added with a tired chuckle, trying to put his young ‘apprentice’ at ease.
“ Come, let’s have some tea. There is no one here …”, he finished.
