The Big Reap

12.

“You wanna tell me what that was all about?” I asked the priest once we were both inside the church, and the heavy wooden door had clapped shut behind us. “The folks I’ve met since I arrived don’t speak a lick of English. Can’t imagine they’d have picked up much of our conversation. And anyways, I’m just a tourist passing through.”

“Like hell you are,” Yefi replied. “You, like they, understand a great deal more than you’re letting on.”

My hand crept once more to the gun in its concealment holster beneath my jacket. “I’m not sure I take your meaning, Padre.”

“You take my meaning fine,” he told me, “and I assure you, I intend you no harm. This is a place of worship, after all. Too long ignored, alas, both structurally and in intent, but a place of worship nonetheless.”

I eyed him for a second, and saw no malice in his features, no threat implicit in his posture, so I relaxed. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? All the sudden, I get the feeling like you’re here for something other than quiet meditation, or fixing up a dilapidated old church.”

“To your first point, you’re quite right. As for your second, though, you’ve missed the mark. I am, in fact, here to fix up this dilapidated old church, as you so callously called her; however, my reasons for doing so are far from contemplative. For you see, while Nevazut — quite by design, though whose or what’s exactly I could not say — does not appear on any maps, it’s long been at the fore of my Church Patriarch’s mind. The locals are not wrong to refer to the ruins that lord over them as a shadow, for a great darkness resides in Nevazut, and taints every aspect of its inhabitants’ lives. Yet for whatever reason, they welcome this darkness, into their homes, into their hearts. It fuels them. Guides them. Provides them strength and solace, when instead they should be seeking both in the love of one another, and in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That is why I was sent here. To drive the wickedness from these Godless people, and turn them once more toward the light of God’s grace. That is why I’ve dedicated myself to restoring His house; I consider it the first step toward restoring His flock. Or, at least, I did. Now I fear they’re too far gone for my humble ministrations to save.”

“Save the sermon, Padre, and skip ahead to the specifics.”

“Certainly,” he said, “although for that, I think perhaps we’ll need a drink.”

He retreated into the church’s gloomy interior, sparking a camp lantern as he did. The interior of the building was suddenly awash in amber light, which reflected off the lacquered surfaces within and suffused the church with warmth and numinous beauty. What little watery light trickled through the tiny panes of leaded glass that graced the church’s only windows had not done any justice to the stunning craftsmanship contained therein. Even in its work-in-progress state, it was really something to see. The steep pitch of the roof was two planes of honey-colored tongue-and-groove fading upward into darkness. Rough-hewn beams, each carved from a single tree trunk and affixed to one another with iron brackets and nails the size of railroad ties, propped the structure up. A few of these beams were splintered and met in a shallow V where they had weakened; replacements still golden-fresh were stacked along one wall, together with replicas of the original brackets and hardware to match. A roped-off spiral staircase missing half its steps led upward to the organist’s balcony, and then up further to the bell tower. Pews of oak, some unfinished, others stained matte brown, still others stained and varnished both, rested above floorboards so old and age-desiccated their dishwater-gray surfaces bowed upward at the edges, showing black beneath, basement or earth I wasn’t sure.

At the front of the room was an unfinished wooden altar scattered with tools. Larger items — a radial saw, a couple sawhorses, a stack of two-by-fours, another of plywood, and a couple dozen paint cans full of stain and polyurethane — were scattered haphazardly beside it. Above the mess hung a utility light, a bare bulb in a hook-hatted metal cage whose cord connected to an orange extension below, which in turn snaked away into the darkness to the rear of the church, beyond the altar. A faint engine thrum from outside suggested it was plugged into a generator.

I watched as Father Yefi set the lantern down atop the altar and clicked on the hanging light. Under its harsh glare, the magic in the room receded. Now it was just an old and dusty church once more.

It was then I realized this was more than just a church to Yefi, because behind the altar I saw a military cot upon which rested a tousle of blankets and a well-worn Bible; a mini-fridge; and a hot plate, beside which sat a stack of canned goods, a single saucepan, and a wooden spoon. “You live here?” I asked him.

“I do,” he said. “It may sound foolish, but there are times I do not feel safe out there, among the villagers. Here, I am safe, if perhaps less comfortable.”

“I didn’t see a lock on the church door.”

“The safety of which I speak is not merely corporeal,” he replied, “although that which I fear is barred entry from this place just as surely as if it were locked.”

“And what is it that you fear?” I asked him.

“Before I tell you that,” he said, fetching two chipped, age-clouded juice glasses and a bottle of ?uica from beneath the altar and pouring us each a belt, “let me ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“Why did you come to Nevazut?”

I thought long and hard before I answered. Then I figured fuck it, thinking long and hard ain’t what I do, so instead I dove right in. “You mentioned a great darkness resides here,” I said. “If that’s true, then I aim to kill it.”

The priest laughed, full-throated and full of delight. It echoed through the dusty church, growing hollow as it rose, like a chorus of sycophants trying desperately to let the boss know they were in on the joke. Then he pressed a glass into my hand and clinked his to mine so hard both sloshed. “Well then, fair stranger, you and I are well-met, even if I fear you’re as batty as this old girl’s belfry.”

He tossed back his glass. I did the same. The drink was hard and sharp, but with an undercurrent of fruit. Distilled from plums, if I recalled, ?uica was Romania’s preferred form of moonshine, more rocket-fuel than wine. I set my glass down and wiped the sting of it off my lips with the back of one hand. Father Yefi poured a second for us both.

“So you wanna tell me what’s really going on here?”

“When you arrived in town,” he said, “did you notice anything peculiar?”

“You mean the no-women thing, or the business with the windows?”

He raised his glass in a toast of mock-salute. “Both, in fact, for the two are closely tied. Nice to see you do not miss a trick.”

“Yeah,” I said, tossing back my drink and feeling my eyeballs roll around loose in my sockets. This shit was strong. “Bully for me. So where’d they all go?”

“Oh, they’re all here,” he replied. “They’re simply disinclined toward socializing in the daytime.”

“Come again?”

“I confess, when I first arrived in town on this assignment, it took me a while to notice the women’s absence. Blame a cloistered existence. A life spent among men and men alone. And at risk of committing the sin of pride, it took me longer still to inquire as to where they might be, for I was raised to be polite above all else. When I did, I was assured the women of the town had not fled en masse on my arrival. In fact, they were, and are, right here. It would seem the women of Nevazut all suffer from a rare affliction — a blood disorder, to hear their husbands tell it — which leaves them pale and wan, and quite light sensitive as well. Some it seems are only mildly afflicted; others are wild, delusional, bed-ridden. Again, by day, you understand. At night they are as well as you or I. They dance, they drink, they cook, they sing. I’d not encountered them because I’d set my own internal clock to accord the day’s light. My access to power is limited by my ability to keep my generator fueled, and my work here leaves me so exhausted at night, I’ve scarcely enough time to read a verse or two after dinner before sleep takes me. And my Lord, the dreams I’ve had.”

“What kind of dreams?”

The priest took a long swallow of the spirit, like he was buying time, or maybe avoiding the question altogether. Given the color that rose in his cheeks as he did, I was betting on the latter. Then again, that coulda been the booze.

“Let me simply say they’ve been far from pious.”

“You mean far from chaste.”

“In part, yes. In fact, I’m ashamed to say there’s not a woman in this town who hasn’t featured in my subconscious’ nocturnal meanderings, and never in fewer than groups of three or more. But there’s another aspect to the dreams beyond merely addressing my own repressed desires of the flesh, for of course that’s what I at first assumed them to be. Occupational hazard, you could say.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

Another pause. Another shot. “They always end with me tearing the throats out of the women with whom I find myself entangled, and bathing in the hot, wet, sticky-sweet nectar that is their blood. The light of life guttering and dying in their eyes. Their last breath begging me to drink them dry. A request with which I’m always happy to comply. And invariably, they expire at the, ah, height of their enjoyment, if you take my meaning.”

I downed my drink and wished hard I could unhear what he’d just told me. In life, I went to Sunday school, for God’s sake. There’s some shit you should never be forced to picture a member of the clergy do. “Trust me, Padre, your meaning’s hard to miss.”

“There is one fact that serves to blunt my shame, and cast doubt on the origins of those dreams.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Many of the women who appeared in them I didn’t meet until afterward. And by the glint in their eyes when they first saw me, I’m willing to wager they knew me just as well as I knew them.”

“You mean to say–”

“That someone, or more likely something, filled my head with these vile, blasphemous fantasies? That the women of this Godforsaken town are in the thrall of that selfsame something? Now that I say it all aloud, I’m forced to admit it sounds ridiculous. And yet here you stand, the first stranger to arrive in town since I was sent here so very long ago, asking questions about the castle on the hill and claiming you’re here to fell some ancient evil. So you tell me, is it ridiculous? Or am I right to make my bed beneath a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice so that it, and He, may watch over me?”

I sighed and set down my glass, then poured myself another belt. “I don’t know shit from Jesus, Padre, but I can tell you you ain’t crazy to be scared.”

“But you’re not scared.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “You kidding me? I’m nothing but scared. Been that way near as long as I can remember. But that don’t change what I have to do.”

He nodded, his face screwed up all drunk-serious. “Something’s changed of late,” he told me. “The dreams are more sporadic now, and less vivid than they used to be.”

His words and tone didn’t seem to synch. “That sounds like a good thing to me,” I said, “only you’re throwing off a vibe that says it’s anything but. Why?”

“At first, I was pleased with the development as well,” said Yefi. “I even told myself perhaps the light of my presence had dispelled the pall that hung over this poor, afflicted village. After all, I reasoned, I’d seen no overt sign of malignant intent from any of the women I’d encountered here in my conscious life, at least. Perhaps they were as much victims of these visions as was I, and once those visions abated entirely, everything here would return to normal. I even toyed with the idea of posting flyers advertising Sunday mass, the first such public Christian mass this village would have seen in centuries. But then I began to hear the night sounds, and shortly thereafter the children started disappearing. That’s when I realized the evil in this town had not moved on after all. It had simply changed its tactics.”

“What kind of night sounds? And what do you mean, the children started disappearing?”

“They’re hard to describe,” he told me. “Somewhere between a click and a low growl, and a sound like fine-grain sandpaper, or snake-scales dragging past dry leaves. Down by the river, mostly, and only ever at night. And as far as the children are concerned, I mean exactly what I say. Used to be, a day like this, we’d have fifteen, twenty children frolicking about the square. How many did we have today?”

I thought back. “Seven, maybe eight. But that hardly proves they’re disappearing.”

“Doesn’t it? This village has no school. No daycare. Nothing whatsoever for the children to do but entertain themselves while their parents do as parents do to provide for them. So you tell me, where have the others gone?”

“You ask their parents?”

“Of course I asked their parents.”

“And what did they say?”

“They told me to mind my own business. In fact, they veritably begged me to.”

“And what did they say about where the missing children went?”

“That’s just it,” he told me. “They wouldn’t admit there were any missing children.”

“So their kids were all accounted for,” I said.

“No,” he said. “You misunderstand me. They didn’t claim their missing children were safe and sound. What they claimed was that they’d never had those children to begin with.”

We drank long into the night, the priest and I. Like drunks the world over, we spoke of heaven and hell, of good and evil, of life’s plans sadly scuttled, of love lost or unrequited. We laughed and cried and sang tunelessly the only hymn I knew that was worth a damn the Stones’ “Shine a Light,” off of side four of Exile. And I’ll be damned if this here man of the cloth didn’t know every bloody word.

That song always brought a tear to my eye. Jagger originally penned it for Brian Jones, whose mood swings and struggles with substance abuse had, by ’68, estranged him from the band. Never mind they were on account of the fact that Jones had hell breathing down his neck and damn well knew it. I felt like shit when Jones’ deal came due, but by then, the band he’d sold his soul to found had already left him in the dust — all by the ripe old age of twenty-seven. Lord knows why that’s when rock stars’ deals always come due. Some say it has to do with the number of books in the New Testament, or some Kabbalah nonsense about the twenty-seven names of God. You ask me, that’s just how long it takes for a working class kid with real talent to build himself a set of wings from feather and wax and then fly close enough to the sun to come tumbling back down. I left Jones’ body face-down in his pool, but not before we two shared a drink. Figured what’s the harm? I owed him that much. It seemed like he’d made peace with his fate. Guess it was fitting from the guy whose last recording with the band was “Sympathy for the Devil.”

When I told that poor bastard it was nothing personal, you’d best believe I meant it.

Point is, me and the priest hit it off just fine. I never asked him what drove him to the cloth, and he never asked me just who — or what — I really am. But for one night by the suffuse, drunken glow of ?uica and golden lamplight reflected off of honey-lacquered walls, I remembered what it was like to be in Danny and Ana’s company — to speak freely, without care.

To have a friend.

It wasn’t until dawn broke I broached the topic of my attack.

We’d stopped drinking some hours before. As drunk slid inexorably toward hung over, we both fell silent for long stretches. Not sleeping, but no longer fully conscious, either. After one such stretch, I said to him, “I’ve got to go up there, you know.”

His chin rested lightly on his breastbone. When I spoke, his head jerked upward, and his eyes opened. They swam a moment, as if bobbing atop a choppy surface of ?uica and exhaustion, and then focused. “Go up where?”

“To the castle,” I said.

He shook his head. “You can’t.”

“I have to. That’s where I’ll find the who or what that’s causing all of this. I’m sure of it.”

“You misunderstand,” he said. “I don’t disagree with you on that count. I simply mean you can’t. The castle is… protected.”

“Protected? Protected how?”

“It’s difficult to describe,” he said. “But as one approaches the castle — which none but me have dared since first came to town, so far as I’m aware — there’s this point at which the forest changes. Well below the treeline, some three hundred meters from the castle, is a perimeter encircling the peak whose border is as sharp and well defined as a snow-globe’s sphere. The barrier itself it tinted ever so slightly, as if what lies beyond is being viewed through a pane of dirty glass. The trees outside the sphere are hale and hearty, but those above are withered and gray, as if the sun scarcely reaches them. And yet the barrier itself is not solid. In fact, apart from the pervading sense of dread that envelops you when you approach the place, the unobservant could scarcely be blamed for wandering right through it, although I would hardly recommend it.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, but I was pretty sure I knew the answer. Least if this spell was anything like the barrier Magnusson had employed at Pemberton Baths.

“When first I stumbled upon it, my curiosity got the better of me,” he said, “so I conducted an experiment of sorts. First, I threw a pebble at the barrier. It passed through without incident, neither slowing nor deflecting in the slightest. Then, a pinecone. The result was the same. I’d nearly screwed up the courage to step through myself when I heard a rustle in the underbrush some ten meters to my left. A rabbit, startled from its hiding place by some predator unseen, or, perhaps, by me. It darted toward the barrier by sheer flight instinct, and in the instant before it passed through I swear I saw the animal tense, as if knowing better — as if suddenly realizing its mistake. And when it passed through…”

“Lemme guess, it turned to ash.”

Father Yefi started in surprise. “It did,” he said. “Ash as white as driven snow. And its eyes–”

“Were burned out of its head,” I said, remembering the ill-fated crow outside of Magnusson’s lair. “As if whatever lay inside the barrier didn’t want anyone or anything outside to see what lay beyond.”

“How could you know that? How could you, when I scarcely have the words to describe it myself? In the years that passed since that day, I’ve doubted countless times the veracity of my own memory — wondered if perhaps I had simply imagined it. I assumed I’d fallen victim to the ancient superstitions that plague the simple country folk of my blessed homeland, people too far removed from society to understand the monsters of lore hold no sway in the modern world. But deep down, I never stopped believing what I’d seen. And since that day, I’ve never returned to that Godforsaken place.”

“I know, because I’ve seen magic of this kind before. I wish to hell I hadn’t, but I have.”

The priest grinned mirthlessly. “I’d prefer you direct your wishes toward a higher power than that, my newfound friend.”

“Believe me, Padre, your higher power’s got fuck all to do with what’s up that mountain, and He sure as shit didn’t send me.”

“Don’t be so sure,” he said. “The Lord–”

“Works in mysterious ways?” I ventured.

“Has a plan for all of us, I was going to say.”

“Not for me. Not anymore.”

“So I’m to believe you’re some servant of darkness, then? Because if I may be so bold, you come across as anything but.”

I sighed. “You want the truth? Half the time I don’t know what I am, or who I serve. I’d like to think I try to do what’s right. But sometimes, what’s right is hard to figure. Sometimes, I’m too damned tired to even think about it, so instead I do what’s easy, and then convince myself it’s right.”

This time, the priest’s smile was better humored. “Your words aside,” he said, “you’re not a man who gives an impression of ever doing what’s easy.”

“Maybe not,” I said, “but it ain’t for lack of trying. Turns out, I’m just not smart enough to figure out what easy looks like. Which I suppose is just as well, since if I plan on breaching the castle, it don’t sound like there’s much easy to be had. Last one of these barriers I saw I only passed through alive on account of I was invited; I got no goddamn idea how I’m gonna get through this one.”

“Perhaps you put too little faith in the Lord,” he said, eyes twinkling with sudden mischief, “or, at the very least, in His humble servants.”

“Come again?”

“When I said you can’t just walk up to the castle ruins, I meant it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get you inside.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Hold on,” he said. “I’ll show you.” He retreated to the blond wood box that was the half-constructed altar and rooted around beneath a while. Apparently, the side facing away from the pews was open, and perhaps shelved as well. “Not much storage in an old church like this,” said Yefi by way of explanation. “No basement, nor outbuilding, and the small rectory that once stood beside it burned down some hundred years ago. I’ve had to make do stuffing things wherever I can manage. Ah! Here it is.”

He raised his hand in triumph. In it was a large leather-bound tome that I took at first to be a Bible, its cover dyed black and tooled into an elaborate filigree. A tattered ribbon bookmark dangled from the top of its spine and fluttered behind it like a train as he set the book down atop the altar. The spine crackled as he opened it, as if the book itself was protesting the intrusion on its sleep of ages. The pages were thick, yellowed, and stiff from years. From them emanated a scent like spiced rum. It reminded me of my time spent digging through the Vatican’s archives. It was the smell of paper’s sweet decay.

“I found this under the floorboards in the church’s entryway, beneath the carved sigil of the carpenter who designed and built the place,” he said. “A monk named Father Grigori.”

My pulse quickened. The young priest now had my full attention. “What is it?” I asked.

“A sketch book,” he replied. “It’s been of no small use to me, as much of it is taken up by detailed plans of the very church in which we stand. His woodworking technique is unparalleled, and his diagrams have proved invaluable in duplicating it, even if I do fail to grasp the more esoteric aspects of what he was trying to accomplish.”

“Such as?”

“His notes indicate he was very specific about the placement of this church, about the species of timber that should be used in its construction, about the patterns of the inlays, and even the very direction of the grain for every plank. There are notes that indicate he believed his design would result in a building outside the view of the Pretender to the Throne and the Adversary both. The Adversary, clearly, represents Lucifer, the Morning Star. The Pretender to the Throne, given the assumed date of construction of the church, I take to mean the conquering Ottomans, or perhaps the Habsburg monarchy, who also occupied these lands for quite some time.”

Yefi wasn’t wrong about the Adversary, but his interpretation of the Pretender was miles off. The Pretender to the Throne was the very God to which Yefi pledged his life and swore his fealty.

How’d I know? Easy. Charon told me.

“Your God is nothing more than a seditionist,” he’d said. “A pretender to the throne. For eons before him I ruled, and my dominion was Chaos, the Great Nothing from which this filthy rock you call a home emerged.”

Not that I was about to correct Yefi’s fallacious interpretation. He was a man of faith, after all, and even faith misplaced is worth something. Far be it from me to disabuse him of it.

Or, for that matter, to inform him the very Grigori he held in such regard and the beast I’d come to slay were one and the same.

“This is all very interesting, Padre, but how’s it gonna help me get into the castle?”

“Because church plans are not all Grigori sketched. He was quite the polymath, it seems. The book is filled with notes and sketches of local life — architecture, the annual harvest celebration, flora and fauna of the surrounding area, even a number of quite striking nudes of local townswomen, each annotated by name. The latter, I would have assumed, would have caused quite a stir, but perhaps the people of his time were more enlightened than we sometimes give them credit for. After all, he had taken a vow of celibacy, and all his nudes are religious in their iconography.”

“And you think some antique nudie-pics are gonna somehow help me sneak in?”

“No,” he said, jabbing a finger at the page to which he’d just turned, and spinning the book to face me. “I think this is.”

I eyed the page in question. On it was a sketch of what appeared to be a heavy iron door set into a wall of natural rock. In the foreground were a pair of crosses maybe three feet high, rendered ghostly by the fact the artist had chosen to draw them transparent so as to not obscure the door beyond. Beside the sketch was a short block of precise script that spoke of years of practice with a quill.

“My grasp of Middle Ages Romanian is pretty nonexistent, Padre. What’s this text say?”

“It says, in part, ‘Hidden entrance to the castle keep.’ Apparently, it was intended as a covert supply line should the castle ever find itself under siege, and an escape route from the keep down to the valley floor if necessary. His notes claim it accesses a cave system that leads directly to the main residence.”

A smile bloomed across my face. “Does it now?”

Father Yefi responded in kind with a smile of his own. “It does, indeed.”

“And do you know where this door is located?”