It was a rare night when the air was clear across the moor. There was no mist to blanket the hills, no gathering rainclouds on the horizon. Only the cold air of the early hours, crisp and fresh. The kind of air that made lungs ache with every icy intake, that conjured goosebumps across skin in shivers only the nocturnal could bear.
A mound shifted. The Gol had been carefully curled against the daylight, motionless and seemingly inanimate. The moonbeams had awoken it, and now it stood slowly, straightening every limb and staring straight up at the moon. Around it, several other shapes stared upwards. Short, round, long, tall, jagged and confusing. Together, they stood silently in ceremonial rapture as the light of the waning moon kissed their faces and blessed them with life.
As one, they began to walk in various directions. Tall ones walked with seemingly delicate steps but left the earth shuddering behind them. Stubby cadavers with bulbous eyes, pushing through the oversize sockets as though about to burst, shambled as though they were intoxicated with the moon reflected in their eyes. There was no uniformity in their appearances, each was a unique experiment of a warped and grotesque nature. No scientist would find a link between these beings, no single thread that tied them to an idea of ‘species’ beyond their obvious inclination to act as one under special circumstances.
The mound Gol stood motionless for a moment, before unfurling its arms to the ground. For unfurl was what it did, unrolling it’s flat and rubbery limbs from it’s shoulders like the sails of a cursed ship. As the wind stirred the lifeless arms, they began to fill slowly with some unknown and dreadful form. Perhaps gas, perhaps liquid, but before long the translucent flatness had given way to a stretched turbidity of internal pressure. Otherwise it’s body was unremarkable for a Gol. Humanoid legs, if you could call them that merely because it was bipedal. A squat, barely existent lump of a head that perched eyeless above a pale and limpid torso. It was fleshier than most, with no notable exposed bone or cartilage. Only a type of hard beak where one would expect a mouth.
It was an infant. Created only recently, for a purpose no mortal mind could surmise. An enigma swaddled in blankets.
It turned it’s eyeless gaze towards a point on the horizon. In the gloom, an observer would be forgiven for thinking there was nothing there, but the darkness was more intense there. More certain.
It took off at a run, arms trailing behind. It did not heed the terrain. Rocks and streams were nothing to it, and it sprinted as fast as the owl could fly towards the darkness. As they drew closer, the faint outlines of spires and steeples became clearer. It was a monastery, though one which was so wreathed in darkness that no light, not even a stray candle or reading lamp, was visible.
They had no eyes but they could see the ground unfold beneath their feet, as though from some distant point above them. Closer now, the creature could see the walls, the gate, the intricate wooden gatehouse.
And the figure standing outside.
It was smaller than the Gol, and most definitely human. She stood with her arms deeply folded, no doubt feeling that cold night air. As the beast came up upon her she turned, and her face was clearly visible for a moment, frozen into a grimace of pure fear, the outline of the racing Gol reflected in her deep brown eyes.
It was Harriet.
Wille woke up panting, a cold sweat pouring off her brow. This wasn’t the first time she had dreamed about this Gol, but it was the first time it had reached its goal.
She wondered if it was revelationary. Was this the same Gol that had killed her? Or was her mind only filling the gaps, painting pictures where none could be found. She pulled off her bedclothes, soaked with sweat, and began to dress.
As she left for breakfast however, she remembered a detail she hadn’t noticed before.
In the dream, the gate was closed.
---
“It’s a slug.”
The straw-haired nun nodded her head sagely at her companion’s words, and remained silent.
It was a slug.
“Do we kill it?”
She shook her head, and after a moment’s pause brought forth a bundle from her bag. She held it out gingerly to her assistant, a short-haired woman wearing large, oversized walking boots. The bag tinkled in her hand as she took it
“Nutshells.”
“Nutshells?” Wille was getting tired of the other nun’s reticence. When she needed help, she barely said a word, but when she needed to concentrate she just wouldn’t stop talking. Wille had signed up to help Rosie in the gardens indefinitely, which delighted the young madrigal immensely. She could see why. Not many people wanted to be the target of Rosie’s incessant chattering about mushrooms, or her moments of strange, quiet intensity. Thus the rota was usually empty, leaving Sister Rosemary to her own devices in the garden, pottering through the herbs with her curly bunches (filled with twigs) like a giant mushroom herself.
All she needed was for Rosie to somehow talk herself into leaving. She practically lived outside, she even had a small cot at the back of the shed that she used as a base. But so far, she was still insistently teaching her how to prevent a slug infestation in her own, halting way.
Wille recalled Harriet’s diary entry.
The gardener Madrigal, Rosie, led me to the entrance. The Nocturne oubliette is well-hidden among the laurels that mark the edge between garden and farmland...
If she could help it, she didn’t want to ask Rosie outright about the location of the entrance. She didn’t want anyone to know she was still investigating what was now considered to be a simple case of murder by monster.
“Wille!”
She startled, dropping her trowel. She looked up to see Claudia leaning over her, eyes bright.
“Can we talk?”
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The two of them clambered under the branches of the weeping willow tree at the edge of the farmland. The canopy covered them completely, only letting in a small amount of the leaf-filtered greenish sunlight. It was shadowy and almost a little too cool, but a good spot for private conversations as there was just enough room for two people to crouch. It had not been easy to convince Rosie to let her take a break, or more precisely, it had not been easy to convince her that she was not invited.
“Claudia, is everything okay? I’ve been worried about you.” Wille had been one of the first to notice her friend’s strange behaviour. At first she had been delighted to see her come out of her shell, but as time went by it became clearer that there was something else behind the changed behaviour. Something that was a complete mystery to her.
“Oh everything’s just fine, really, I just came to say a few things before I left.”
“Left? What do you mean, left?”
“Oh Wille, I’m going on an adventure! A real adventure, I’m going to bring you back so many new tales!” Claudia gestured expansively with her fingers wide, her eyes looking beyond the horizon at seemingly endless possibilities.
“Wait, you’re going on this excursion with Lydia?” Wille couldn’t believe her ears. Claudia nodded.
“I know, isn’t it exciting?”
“Claudia, you… What’s gotten into you? I don’t know how to talk to you anymore. This isn’t like you.” Wille bit her lip and looked down at the grass.
“If you want to go then fine, I support you, but… why didn’t you talk to me about it?”
“Oh, like you haven’t been sneaking around yourself these last few weeks! Like you didn’t just get caught up investigating Harriet’s death like it was some kind of murder.” Her tone wasn’t angry, but it was still a shock to Wille’s system to hear her talk this way.
“Wille, I looked for you. When I needed someone to turn to, you were nowhere to be found. I just sat in the kitchens and cried. You got so caught up in… in this mess,” She waved her arm dismissively, “that you didn’t have time for me anymore. On nights I got scared, I knocked, but you were never there.”
Wille thought about her nighttime wanderings with a new tinge of guilt.
“I… I didn’t know! I didn’t want to get you into trouble. I didn’t want to drag you down with me into this mad quest, because… because all this time it feels like I’ve just been chasing shadows.” She lent back against the rough bark of the tree and tried hard not to cry.
“I tried so hard to follow where I was being led. For so long I thought I was crying wolf. I wanted to be sure of things before I got you involved.”
Claudia tilted her head to one side in sympathy, sending golden tresses tumbling over her face.
“Wille… You know, even if it had been all some flight of fancy… that I would have liked to have come with you. Let us fight these shadows together.”
The two of them smiled at each other, and for the first time in forever Wille saw Claudia’s face become serious. Claudia grasped at her stomach with her hand, wincing.
“Claudia? What’s wrong?”
“I want to talk, and I just want you to listen. Just listen.”
Wille nodded.
“I love you, Wille. More than that, more than anything. I love you. I want to kiss you, your arms and your cheeks and your hair. I want to breathe with you, caress you, talk with you long until the wee hours of the night, and maybe even make love to you.”
Wille couldn’t help it, she began to cry and wrapped her arms around Claudia in a giant hug.
“You fool, you silly fool. How can you say these things now, when we’re more far apart than we’ve ever been?”
Someone in the distance called for Claudia.
“When I come back from the village, can we, perhaps, talk more about it?”
“Wait, you’re leaving now?”
Claudia stepped lightly to her feet as there were more shouts in the distance. Wille rose with her, and arm in arm they reluctantly let go of eachother.
“Yes. Promise me Wille, that when I return we can step out together, and talk about our future?”
“I promise. I’ll be there waiting when you get back.”
She wiped the tears from her eyes as the other nun ducked under the canopy. She watched her run across the grass towards the group gathered at the gate. She also saw Rosie, who with a group of other nuns had gathered nearby to say their farewells.
This was all the opportunity she needed to enter the oubliette.
It was not so hard to find, once she knew where to look. The hedgerows were bushy and untamed, but one part in particular was bushier than the others. Beneath it was a round iron trap door, which lifted easily at her touch while making the most awful of rusty screeches. Wille looked up, scared that someone may have heard her, but everyone was too intrigued with the opening of the gate, far away across the lawn. She could see the silhouette of Claudia’s golden hair in the sun and felt a sudden surge of emotion. She shook it off.
Inside the trapdoor was a round stone drop to nowhere, looking very much like an old well. The ladder was not a ladder as such, but handhelds had been made from removing some of the bricks in the wall.
She took a deep breath, and stepped down into the dark.
---
“Claudia, really, where were you? Where’s your bag?” Lydia asked disapprovingly.
“I’m sorry Lydia, I was telling Wille I loved her.”
“You- What?” Lydia could only stand agog as the young nun took up her pack and began securing it. Lydia, Elizabeth and Lin were all in attendance. Freya arrived shortly afterwards, panting and waving as she pushed the cart. Each nun had been kitted out with a backpack of supplies; food, water, tinder, and first aid. The four-wheeled cart wasn’t very impressive, but it could be pushed easily by one or two people when empty. When full, they were hoping that the five of them together would be enough to guide it home. Claudia, being one of the weaker members of the group, had been given the tent.
“Just in case, you never know. We should be safe if there’s no light.” Freya had said, though no-one had believed her. It was a two hour walk to the village, and all things considered it should only be a six to eight hour trip altogether. They had plenty of time to make it back before sundown.
“Are we all set?”
The group nodded. There were a few tears and a handful of songs from the nuns gathered to see them off. Sophie handed them a big bundle of dried meat for the journey, while others gave blessings and prayers. Rosie was there to make sure they understood how important lime was to reduce the acidity of soil, whereas Bellemorde implored them to look for high quality quicklime because, she said, it was harder to make it here without the appropriate kilns, and it was absolutely essential in corpse preservation.
When they turned to leave there was a figure standing by the gate, their own backpack in hand.
“Isidore?”
“If I may, I’m coming with you.” A voice that spoke with a pure tenor let the words drip from their tongue like honey.
“I, well, yes of course. The more the merrier!” Lydia said, looking a little flustered around the edges at this change of plan.
Isidore was an odd one. They were the gatekeeper, and lived inside the gatehouse that sat above the main entryway in the outer walls. As such their job was rarely seen, existing as it did between the margins of the safe and the dangerous. This suited them perfectly. They were perfectly comfortable between the margins, and had forsaken the habit a few years ago once they were no longer fully comfortable committing to the idea of themselves as a woman. Rather than leave to join the itinerant friars they had stayed, somewhat, with one foot in and one foot out, a decision they had not regretted since.
They wore a man’s tailored waistcoat and trousers, white shirt buttoned right up to the top. But their hair was long and bobbed, a sheath of grey-blonde tangly strands that looked forever tousled in a charming, roguish sort of way.
Isidore threw their pack onto the cart, and in silence helped with the pushing. The first few steps beyond the boundaries of their sanctuary were the hardest, and each of the six felt the hair rise on the back of their necks, as though something were about to jump out at them. But nothing did, and each step became easier than the last until eventually the abbey was a small point behind them, growing smaller with every step. Cradled in the valley with thickets of purple heather, the abbey of Palus Somni looked for all the world like the eye of a sleeping beast, it only had but to blink to bring it all crashing down.
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