It was a small thing. Slithering, like a tongue across the floor. Licking up the dust and tasting the cool slabs of bitter rock. Two figures curled around each other in the dark, a swirl of white nightskirts and entwined limbs. They huddled together beside the sink, motionless in the corner like a pair of startled deer.
“What is it?” A small whisper in the darkness that echoed back to them from the various drains and metal pipes that ran along the walls of the room. She held the lamp high over her head, the only source of light and something that gave them a small circle of safety against the midnight gloom.
It flopped closer, just outside the halo of the dim, orange lamplight.
“Ah! Wille, what is it?”
As it came closer it was undeniable that this strange and loathsome organism wasn’t completely made of flesh. Inside the meaty body came a faint but persistent buzzing, like the sound of a droning fly in the distance. The whirr of membrane hitting membrane at a frequency only insects could master, the internal workings of a tiny clockwork god.
“Wille please!”
“I-it’s fine. This is fine. It’s just a bug, see?” Wille raised the lantern out towards it, and the movement stopped. It lay on the floor of the latrine in a trail of its own sticky fluids, rusty and damp. It was very much like a tongue, although of misshapen size and inconsistent texture. It might have had legs but if it did then they were small and huddled beneath the main body, invisible to the outside except for a faint tapping of chitin on stone when it moved. It had no visible eyes or face, just the smooth swell of pink-tinged tissue. It pulsated, slowly and rhythmically, to the tune of some silent song that neither of them knew.
Wille wrinkled her nose in disgust and reached down to pull off her boot. The other woman had buried her face into her chest, eyes now tightly shut, and so bunches of light blonde curls cascaded around her face. Errant strands got into her eyes as she bent down to unlace her work boots, hastily slipped on over bare feet for night-time wanderings. She gripped the heel tightly and, after a pause, flung it at the creature.
Both of them started slightly at the sudden loudness of boot hitting flesh, hitting stone. It had struck the target and tumbled out of sight into the darkness, and at the same moment the pulsating rhythm stopped. Instead, the fleshy bug began vibrating. There was a visible cut on the top of its body. Before her eyes the skin peeled back from each side, as though the creature beneath was too large for such a tight membrane. Specks of rusty fluid hit the floor, along with a greasy and more viscous ichor that Wille assumed was some kind of inner coagulation brought into the outside by trauma. She was wrong, and she could only watch in frozen silence as the discarded epidermis was the scene of an exodus of slithering bodies. Not one, but a multitude of maggots, bloody imitations of the mature former tongue, streaming out from the place of impact and heading to the drains. One by one she could hear them plopping into the water, the same water that she had been pissing in only a few minutes before. The same water that ran under the refectory for waste disposal.
She shook her head in an attempt to chase these images from her mind.
"It's fine. You can look now."
The older nun lifted her head and stared blearily at the empty bug skin.
"Is it gone? Did you get it?"
"I'm not sure, but we should probably head back." Will responded, lifting them both up to their feet. She was not keen on putting her bare foot down upon the stone, not with the possibility of getting that malignant drool on her toes in the dark. Besides, what if she stood on one of those baby flesh-grubs? She decided it was best not to mention that part to the other nun and hopped into the corner to retrieve her boot. With the handle clamped firmly between her teeth, the light swayed to and fro as she laced it back up, painting the room with amber.
This was one of the better bathrooms of the convent, being as it was situated next to the guest house entrance. There were no open pits, instead grooves in the stone drew any excess water down through metal grating into the underground river below. It was the only place to get a hot bath, and brass pipes groaned and shook when tasked with bringing the sulphur-smelling water up from the hot springs below. Now, they were only silent and cold as the great stone bath, cut into the floor, stood empty. Along the west wall were wooden cubicles for the latrines, and it was here that the women clasped hands before walking in tight-lipped silence back out into the night-time air.
The orphan moon sat high over the main cloister. A giant, cratered face wreathed in clouds and spirits that took up most of the visible night sky. The lantern was not needed out here, moonbeams drowned out this smaller source of light, and so it was blown out and left behind in a slot by the bathroom door. Reality became a washed-out grayscale, a moving picture of long shadows and subtle stillness, which was a welcome contrast to the stifling darkness of the bathhouse. They moved slowly, hands still tightly entwined, so as not to make too much of a noise on the gravel path. In the air above them was the occasional fluttering of tiny wings as the resident bats made good use of the well-lit night.
A small scraping of a door latch, and a thunk as the heavy wooden door closed behind them. It took their eyes a while to adjust to the darkness of the great hall. Even with the long stained glass windows casting pale rainbows on the floor the light was still not enough to reach them in the corner. They felt their way to the staircase in the dark, an easy feat after years of practise following the call of nature in the wee hours of the night. They got only a few steps up, however, before a whisper, tinged with undeniable fury, stopped them short.
"Why. Why in the name of God are you out of bed?"
An angry shadow loomed over them from the top of the stairs, any identifying characteristics obscured in the darkness. That voice however, disdainful and assertive, could only belong to one person in this convent.
“Sister Lydia, I-”
“Willow? Is that you?”
“It’s Wille, and yes, I can explain.” But Lydia shushed her before she could say another word.
“It’s an orphan moon, for God’s sake get back to the dorter at once. And take those ridiculous boots off, they make much too much noise!” She hissed under her breath.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“Yes sister.”
“But Lydia, it’s my fault really, I asked her to come with me.” A new voice chimed in.
“Claudia.” Sister Lydia’s tone softened slightly. “I didn’t see you in the dark.”
“I really am sorry Lydia, really I am. I was just too scared to go alone.” She whispered.
“You shouldn’t have been going at all! Really, you need to get over yourself and use a chamber pot.” Lydia shook her head in the dark. “We have to go now. The Gol are outside. The one from the forest is already here.”
“Already? But-” Will began to ask, but this time was shushed by both of the other sisters.
The three of them made their way back up the stairs, past the laysister’s dorm and up to the single cells on the top floor of the brethren’s dorterhouse. Not a word was said. Just three pale silhouettes in the dark, trailing their nightskirts in the gloaming, one holding a pair of oversize boots. When they reached a window they ducked beneath it. Even if it was shuttered, as if by ingrained habit the three nuns would avoid any apertures, preventing even the slightest possibility of being seen.
Lydia left them wordlessly at her cell door and as they reached Wille’s cell Claudia stopped in the doorway.
“Can I sleep with you tonight?” She whispered, breaking the silence.
Wille nodded, and the two of them entered the small chamber. A single, plain feathered bed took up most of one wall. The rest of the room contained a small fireplace, a bedside table, a dresser, a rickety wooden chair and one well-shuttered and heavily curtained window. It was pitch black, but the women knew the layout by memory. It was the same in all the cells.
The two of them said their bedtime prayers, and afterwards Wille placed her boots under the bed and clambered into the feathery quilt, holding it up as Claudia slipped in beside her. They lay with their arms around each other for some time before Claudia gained to courage to whisper.
“It wasn’t a bug, was it?”
A small chink of light escaping from behind the curtain illuminated a slither of her face. Pale yellow curls brushed her forehead, contrasting with Wille’s darker brown, and creating meandering rivers of hair on the pillow.
“Maybe. I’ve never seen a bug like it.”
“Is it still out there?”
Wille thought about the myriad of small tongues slithering down the drain hole, licking their way up through the pipes and finding their way into the chimney flues, dispersing themselves around the abbey.
“No. It’s gone. I squashed it.” She lied.
“You promise it’s gone?”
Just then a shadow came between them and the moon, and the beam of light disappeared into darkness for a few seconds. It could have merely been a cloud, Wille thought, but it was awfully sudden. At the very least, she hoped it was a cloud.
“I promise.” She whispered, barely breathing, into Claudia’s ear. Huddled under the goose down, the two of them drifted into a long-awaited sleep.
Meanwhile, Lydia sat awake on the chair in her cell, removing hairpins and letting her dark locks fall loose around her shoulders. Unlike the others, she had been awake all this time, waiting, when she had heard Wille’s boots on the stair. She had rearranged her cell so that the bed ran alongside the window with the chair facing it. A few books and trinkets were neatly stacked on her dresser. It was easy to see them, because the room was bathed in moonlight. Her curtains were open, her shutters loosed, and the bevelled glass windows thrown open to their maximum breadth.
The midnight air was bracing against her skin, and she let the breeze blow her normally neat hair into disordered ringlets. Her nightgown did little to protect her from the chill and the moonbeams made the fabric appear translucent against her body. The goosebumps on her arms were clearly visible under her sleeves. The sky was clear and cloudless and she could see out over the abbey grounds, out over the western wall and into the moor beyond.
She placed the last golden hairpin onto the dresser and crawled on top of the covers. She lay patient and silent for what felt like an age, until the light in her room became fragmented by a long, loping shadow.
The Gol stood just on the other side of the wall, barely one hundred metres away, its bulbous head drooping on hunched and twisted shoulders. She felt a surge of adrenaline as she watched it, lying still on her bed and holding her breath as it circled the abbey slowly, deliberately, looking for a way in.
It was a skeleton. Or, rather, it was the imitation of what a skeleton should look like. Like the drawing of a skeleton by a child who only knew bones from the leftovers on their plate. The joints were wrong. Too big or too small, out of place or missing entirely. The humanoid skull was grossly inflated, a pendulous sphere of knobbled, brittle bone and calcified sinew. It creaked like an old tree, joints popping and snapping as though they were about to break. The arms were too long, she thought, as she watched the oversize hands feel their way along the perimeter. But then, as she watched, the beast stood up. What she had thought were outcrops of bone peeking over the wall became knees, extending to their full height. It must have been shuffling along the ground before, perhaps still waking up from daytime slumber.
It stood tall and swaying against the wind, it’s mouth agape in a silent scream. With a mounting dread she wondered if it was tall enough to simply step over the wall. Her heart pounded in her chest so hard she thought that the beast must hear it even from so far away, the drumming in her breast must be waking the whole convent! But it couldn’t get in, or at least it didn’t try, and instead it kept up its restless pace around the edge of the abbey sanctuary.
Maybe it was repelled, she thought. This is hallowed ground after all. God protects us, our Lord keeps us safe. This thought thrilled her. It was out there and she was in here, secure. She did not need to close her window, she did not need to hide in the dark. As long as she was sensible, she could watch it as much as she wanted. It’s not like she was running around the abbey in great clomping work boots during an orphan moon just because she was scared of the dark. But no. She wouldn’t think about those two now. This was her time, just for her and the Gol.
As she returned to the present she jolted, stifling a scream. The Gol was watching her. The gaping dark sockets were trained in her direction, from a skull that was lilting sideways ever so slowly. At some point while she was distracted, it must have walked back to this part of the fence. Had she made a sound? Had she moved? No, she was sure she hadn’t. It was just a coincidence. She lay motionless and silent, doing her best to ignore the cold which was becoming almost too much to bear. Her bare legs were being stabbed with every breath of icy wind, and she could hardly feel her feet anymore. They hung at her ankles like lead, anchoring her to the bed as though in this heady mix of adrenaline and emotions she was in danger of floating away, to be plucked out of the sky by skeletal hands and devoured whole. Raw meat in the breeze.
At some point as she stared back into the darkened eyes, she drifted off to sleep. She dreamed that it climbed over the wall and pressed its face into her window. In her dream she touched it, felt the teeth and the jawbone as the mouth screamed breathlessly at her.
God protects us.
It felt soft like putty, and as though under a spell she soon found herself pulling it apart. She poked holes in the teeth and watched with glee as it brought its face down in slow motion to bite her, but succeeded only in denting itself. Its incisors folded onto each other like wet clay, bending themselves in half.
Our Lord keeps us safe.
She had made uniform cavities across the mushy enamel, and she wondered if tiny Gol would crawl out of them in some kind of unholy birth. If they did, she would squash them, watch them writhe beneath her fingers as she popped them open. She had the power of God here and nothing could touch her. She ripped and tore and thrust her hands deep into the bone, pushing and moulding and remaking, until all that remained were the eyes, dark and unyielding. Two dark orbs that stared at her unblinking, reflecting the manic grin and the disordered hair, the nightdress half falling off one shoulder. How dare they judge me so, she thought, how dare they remain in this hallowed and sacred space. But try as she might her hands could only grasp empty air, the darkness melting out of reach, and it was now her turn to open her mouth in a silent, frustrated scream.
Lydia [https://66.media.tumblr.com/1281e128c2f75ac0bd51ea71fddda834/tumblr_inline_psfa493o6H1qemso0_500.png]