What Manner of Man: Chapter 18 🦇

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains

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JOURNAL ENTRY

Undated.

Strange to think all this has occurred in the short time since last I was able to find a quiet moment sufficient to enter any of it in this journal. In its absence, I have found, I urgently miss the spiritual relief and clarity of mind that the familiar process of keeping this record provides.

So much has happened that now, when it comes to setting it all down, I begin to mistrust my memories of how it all began. I know that it was mid-afternoon, on the twenty-first of this month — at the highest, most golden hour of the day. Can it have been as bright and cloudless a noon as I seem to remember?

When Lord Vane found me, I was kneeling by the altar on the cliff’s edge. Those sanctuary ruins — broken and desolate as they were — seemed, to me, the nearest thing to consecrated ground on Swallow’s Rest. In the final stages of my preparations, I had betaken myself to the most sacred place available in order to perform one final act of contrition which might — what? Save what remained of my holy vocation? How foolish it all seems now.

Between the whistling of the wind on the clifftop and the crashing of the waves far below, I knew nothing of Lord Vane’s approach until I flinched sharply at the touch of his hand on my shoulder. I could tell at once that he wasn’t himself — that wild, bestial spirit pervaded him.

“On your knees again, Father?”

I resisted the urge to turn and face him, though his electrically-charged presence made all the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. (What feelings it stirred in me to see the beast in him consume his nobler spirit so!)

I bowed my head, touching it to my hands. “In humility, yes,” I said. “In service to that which is greater than either of us.”

“The hour grows late. Surely you must have completed all necessary preparations by now.” His voice was rough and uneven from the evident effort of restraint.

“It is not for you to dictate the time or the place. The exorcism will occur when the circumstances are right, and no sooner.” I refrained from saying ‘when I am ready’ — even then I was uncertain whether I would ever be truly ready.

“There is very little time left — surely you must know that. What makes you stay your hand?”

I could not imagine how even to begin explain to him my fallen spiritual state if he did not already understand. I rose slowly, conscious of maintaining my dignity before him. “I am doing everything within my capacity to prepare.”

He held me in a fixed, searching gaze. “It seems plain to me that some force beyond my own mere weakness was responsible when I failed to kill you on the altar. Several times I have felt it — and, through dim, unknown channels of the spirit, the knowledge has been borne in upon me that both I and this creeping annihilation would be powerless against it. Why, then, have you left me at the mercy of nature for so long, when you could take me for your own?”

“For my own? I am only Christ’s humble servant.”

I was met with the cold laughter of derision. “In the name of — you don’t even know yourself! You truly have no concept whatsoever, do you? This is absurd. What possessed me to imagine that you might be able to move something as immense as this when your vision is so very narrow?”

In his agitation, he paced towards me, trapping me with the backs of my legs against the broken altar. I could see the red light of hunger in his eyes; his knuckles white with the strain of some barely-suppressed animal instinct. A new and dangerous passion had overtaken him, provoked by whatever he was moved by; a passion which he could only barely keep at bay. A shiver passed through me; he was so very close, and so very much my superior in strength.

Just prior to these events, I had been contemplating the Lord’s promise to believers, that, “In my name shall they cast out devils,” where, also, it is said that, “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.” A wild, reckless thought came to me, then: if the strength of my faith were sufficient, then I should be protected from harm. By this, it occurred to me, I might judge whether I was sufficiently worthy to perform the rite of exorcism.

All this passed through my mind in the space of a moment as, impulsively, I opened my arms to receive him as he made for my throat with a savage gesture; those serpent’s fangs gleaming.

What happened next I cannot entirely account for — that, as his hand fell on my breast, just by where my crucifix lay, he drew violently back, falling to the ground with a look of wounded terror. 

A thrill of success ran through me — it had worked! Emboldened by this sure proof that I was acting in obedience to God’s Will, I thought only of my training; of how one is to treat such a demon. Taking up the only implement I had — my violet stole — I set to work and bound him, so that it was he on his knees before the altar. I’m not certain even this precaution was necessary; so weakened was he by that miraculous rebuff. 

What a triumph it was; to have him like that before me! He was quiet, then — reduced to passive submission through the power of the divine. This was what I had sought all along, was it not? To have the servants of evil under my power? In a moment, I had found the words; the questions which one must ask a fiend.

“The spirits which command you — they come from without, do they not?”

The creature, in his stupor, answered, “Yes.”

“What are their number? Their names?”

“How do you count infinity? By what number do you find the roaring furnace of the sun and the swallowing waves? It speaks with a voice like thunder, the echoes of the ancient dead.”

“Where do they come from? The manor? The island?”

“Everywhere. You are a part of it too, we all are, only I am set apart from the world by my failure to my duty — bound by blood to something which was never a god. It is beyond worship, the way I am ruled. This land, once sculpted into a living monument, now merely an overgrown tomb, bears me its sole witness. To die and be reborn is a terrible burden; as your own Christ must know.”

This speech was disturbing to me; I could not allow him to continue. One is to prevent the words of devils from swaying one’s heart. Crossing first myself, then him, I touched Lord Vane with some drops of holy water. He did not shriek, nor did he writhe, as I expected — but only looked up at me with dark, beseeching eyes. Something still held him, though; some power beyond me. With decision, I placed my hand on the crown of his head and took up my crucifix. 

In a forceful voice, I began, “I command you, defiler, foul one, servant of the Enemy, every power of Hell, begone from this creature of God. I, unworthy as I am, stand before you a minister of God, and you are commanded obey me to the letter. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, I cast you out!”

He hardly stirred, only kneeling breathlessly before me. With one hand I gripped his hair, in obedience to some primal instinct, and his eyes fluttered closed. I had never been able to exert so much power over him before — and yet something about it felt wrong. It shouldn’t be like this, I felt — not now, not in these circumstances.

Where was the demon’s anger? His agony? His mocking laughter; his taunting? In this supreme moment, all of the signs I have been trained to expect from one possessed were absent. He merely knelt there; expectant and unresisting.

Yet, all the while, something was developing.

My concentration was so complete that I didn’t immediately notice when the brightness of the day began to dim. A veil was drawn across the sun as a change in the wind ushered in a host of threatening, storm-laden clouds. One of those mercurial summer storms, I must suppose, was blowing in off the sea. 

Increasingly, I became aware that I was giving voice to what was little more than a rote memorization. “Therefore, Father of Lies, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, release this man — cease your poisonous whispers, For it is He who commands you. He who hurled you down from on high and cast you into Hell. He who rebuked you on the Mountain and followed not temptation into sin. He who calmed the sea and stilled the storm. Begone, accursed serpent!”

With every word I grew more desperate, the commanding edge in my voice slipping away and becoming desperate, even frantic. I gestured wildly with the crucifix, careful to avoid holding it over him, lest he taint it. That is what the Church says, after all, but it was difficult to imagine that the noble, beautiful creature before me could do such a thing.

A clap of thunder anticipated my next words. “Hark! Cower before the might of God, you Prince of Darkness; vile seducer of men, persecutor of the faithful, traitor to all who serve God! Font of all evil, begetter of death, who delights in corruption! Why do you resist when He has already stripped you of your powers and plundered your every weapon?”

As I spoke, the rain began. I could not take my eyes off Lord Vane beneath me, every moment feeling more absurd; more of a fraud. Into my heart entered a wicked suggestion that, somehow, things had gotten terribly reversed — that I ought to be worshipping this man instead of trying to bring him under the dominion of the Church. In that moment, brightly illuminated in the glare from a bolt of lightning, he seemed imbued with an almost saintlike quality of translucent perfection. Who was I to try to subjugate such a being?

Yet still I traced the sign of the cross on his brow, fiercely whispering the Trinitarian formula. He responded evenly, but with a voice charged with despair, “Is this all you have to offer me, Victor?”

In desperation, I pressed the crucifix to his face. He should have howled, flinched away — perhaps with a visible impression or burn left on the skin. It had affected him so profoundly, it had seemed, just minutes before — yet here, he didn’t react at all. Even were I not sufficiently pious and worthy to perform the rite of exorcism, the Holy Cross is immutable; sacred and potent against evil in all forms. 

“Why does it not burn you?” I hissed.

“It never has before,” he spoke softly, so that I could hardly hear him over the tempest of the rising storm, “Never with any of the others.”

I tried again, and again, and still nothing came of it. Then it was I who broke, and with a cry I succumbed to despair. Nothing had come of any of it — not of a single word I had spoken, nor had any of the sacred objects made the slightest impact on him. It could not be that I was so corrupt as to taint even the prayers with my tongue; the crucifix with my hand. No, these things simply had no power over Lord Vane. I might as well have used an oak branch or ordinary stone for all the difference these things had made.

The storm was at its height, now; the wind seemed almost to sing. The air felt laden with something I cannot name. I collapsed against Lord Vane’s side and he caught me — I suppose I had not even managed to bind him properly. 

I gave over to weeping. Perhaps I should have held back, but it felt, in that moment, like there was nothing in the whole world that mattered anymore; no reason left to keep up any pretense. Lord Vane drew me close; his solid strength grounding me even in the depths of my grief. 

“Oh, you dear, foolish man,” he said.

“None of it worked,” I moaned.

“No, it was a silly whim to suppose your ritual might hold any true power in it. You did strike something vital, though — just for a moment, at the beginning; before you started all the gesturing and hot air. You overpowered me. What was it? What did you do?”

He asked this last with such intensity that I quailed slightly before him. 

“I thought it was the crucifix, but it — I don’t know, I don’t know!”

“There is still a chance; if only you’ll wield that power again. I am yours to conquer, if only you take up the brand. I know you can do it — please, Victor!” The beast was awakening in him; I could hear the change in his voice. A low, unnatural quality, hungry and savage, lurked behind his words. Whatever had happened — whatever hold there had been on him — it was fast fading. The affect of his words on me was like touching my skin to an open flame.

I scrambled to my feet as thunder crashed overhead. An unnatural-seeming darkness was drawing close all around us, like a velvet curtain — the fall of night under cloud cover, I told myself. I am not so certain now. It made the clifftop on which we stood a precarious field of invisible hazards, where any misstep might send me plunging headlong into the abyss.

“Please, Victor. I need you.” It was as if he struggled to get the words out, and oh what a terrible ache it set alight in my breast.

I reached for him and found his hand — which return my grasp with a grip of ferocious strength. A sudden gust of wind whipped at my clothes and, for a moment, I thought I might in another moment be simply plucked bodily from the precarious rock and thrown into the sea.

“Do it again!” he roared, “Make me yours. Bring my heart to heel. Break me!”

“I can’t!” I gave a cry of agony torn from my very soul. 

I was pulled roughly forward into a crushing embrace. He was utterly uncontrolled, now — a slave to the conflicting urges that warred within him. The darkness around us was such that I could not read the expression on his face, though it was so near to my own. Then, in obedience to some mad impulse which, even now, I hardly understand, I pulled his face down to mine and pressed my lips to his.

Perhaps, like Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane, I felt I had committed an act of unforgivable betrayal.

Lord Vane responded in kind, and somehow that press of lips against mine felt like the single point of security in my entire world; an anchor in the raging storm. The deluge beat down all around us; the world seemed to vanish in the flood — and, imperative though I knew it was that I turn from him, I could no longer bear it. The feverish intensity of my emotion, in that moment — it was like I had been out in the cold all my life and at last had found an open door.

Then he pulled back. I could hardly see him in that unnatural darkness, but I sensed at once that the man I knew was quite gone; there was only the beast now. Yet, somehow, I was not afraid — I could only welcome him. Oh, my poor Alistair. I will be with you even in this.

He swept in. I thought, for a moment, that I perceived the dim shape of wings about me, past the silver glint of fangs in the dark. Lord Vane was little more than a pale and monstrous shadow, looming before me as he bent to the crook of my neck. I gasped as my collar was brutally torn away with such unnatural strength that the fabric was rent right across to my left shoulder. Then my eyes fell closed as I felt him pierce my exposed flesh. I had expected pain — not the throb of ecstasy that emanated from the point at which he entered me.

He pressed closer to me and I found my arms coming up around his shoulders, clinging to him. Then, suddenly, he gave a terrible cry — the same as he had before. (What can have happened? What was it that affected him so?) 

Then it happened again — the very earth seemed to move, as it had done down on the beach when it had nearly precipitating the crumbling statue down on my head. Lord Vane fell away and I lost him in the enveloping night. I could not see. I knew I had to find Lord Vane, to make sure he was safe, but my senses were awhirl with the great forces loose upon us. The tempest reach a fever-pitch and the wind whipped the rain against me violently on all sides. My last memory is of feeling the stone sliding out from under my feet as I pitched forward into the darkness.

P.S. FROM 2024:

Hello! 👋 What you’re reading is a draft version of What Manner of Man. In the final edition, there is a special, secret brand new scene following this one, which represents such a significant change from the existing version of the novel that I don’t want to say anything to spoil it for anyone. Let’s just say things between Father Ardelian and Lord Vane in the aftermath of the exorcism go, uh, a little differently.

(You can get the complete, edited and expanded novel DRM-free on Itch.io or at the retailer of your choice.)

Thank you to everyone who sent well-wishes after the last entry! 🙏

-St John

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