What Manner of Man: Chapter 20 🦇

For God’s sake won’t somebody show this guy a calendar.

• Thank you, as ever, to my beloved patrons, for whom I would fall off hundreds of sea-cliffs and spend thousands of nights in the boathouse.

• This week’s vignette is a brief glimpse of what happened between Father Ardelian and Lord Vane while our poor hero was unconscious.

• /|\(^._.^)/|\ /|\(^._.^)/|\ /|\(^._.^)/|\

JOURNAL ENTRY

Undated.

When I rose next I was full of renewed purpose and determination to act.

I felt considerably restored — only the dull, persistent ache about the area of my throat remaining. When I found a mirror, however, I was surprised to discover the place in question bore no trace of injury; nothing to corroborate my confused memory of fangs in the dark.

Some clothes of Danny’s had been laid out for me. (My hosts had been tactfully uninquisitive about the state of my garments; both shirt and cassock torn across the left breast clear from collar to shoulder.) I felt strange and faintly ridiculous dressed in these layman’s clothes. Though as sober and masculine as could be desired, they were quite two sizes too large for me and had to be pinned up considerably.

When I found Sylvia, she was seated in an open space, peering into the ashes of a recently-extinguished fire, her brow furrowed with concentration. Lying open around her were several peculiarly ancient-looking books. At a short distance, Danny looked on with a distant, unreadable expression.

Danny started slightly as Sylvia began speaking to me before I had a chance to make my presence known. “These days grow very dark, Victor. A shadow has fallen across all our lives.”

After so many years of being addressed by title, my true name felt dusty with disuse. I seemed to wear it as unnaturally as the borrowed clothes.

Sylvia went on in this prophetic vein. “The crisis I have always hoped would never come is at hand. An ancient evil is awake, and it is hungry. I feared something like this ever since I first learned of Lord Vane’s intention to summon an outsider.”

This rattled me. I had been given the impression that my arrival had been completely unexpected! Had she known about it all along? I shivered as a chill passed through me.

“If you knew something of —” I gestured vainly, “— all this, why didn’t you warn me about Whithern Hall when I first came to the island?”

“I had suspicions, but there is so much of my information that has come to me through veiled allusion and half-surmise. That’s why I took steps to ensure you would arrive some weeks earlier than Lord Vane intended: so that I might have time to learn anything you might know that would shed light on what was, then, only a theory. I didn’t feel certain enough to act. It’s possible I made the wrong choice.”

She stood to face me and I caught her eye for the first time, or perhaps she caught mine. The sincerity I saw there was unmistakable. I felt I must repay her honesty in kind. “I was not completely frank with you either, at that time.”

“No?” There was something in her tone and manner that reminded me of nothing more than a priest hearing confession.

“At the outset of this assignment, I was primed not to trust anyone I encountered here. I believed there were demons at work among the inhabitants of this place. I know how that sounds, but given everything that has happened I hope you can understand how it seemed at the time. I am — I was here in the capacity of an exorcist. Now, at last, I have — I’ve fulfilled that role. Oh, God —” I put my face in my hands.

I hadn’t meant to say this. Even mentioning what had happened filled me with overpowering sense-memories, annihilating thought — the howling fury of wind and sea, the apocalyptic night-darkness at midday, the press of his lips and teeth.

Sylvia tactfully ignored my break in composure. “Lord Vane submitted to an exorcism?” she asked with surprise.

My answer came in a ragged whisper. “It did nothing, Sylvia. Nothing. I have never seen such clear evidence of the material existence of evil as I did in Whithern Hall, but none of the instruments of God affected him in the smallest degree. Manifestations of the diabolic are real, Sylvia; so terribly real — and yet, what is there of God? How can the darkness exist but not the light?”

“Spoken like a true Manichaeist. But I’m sorry Victor, we’ve no time for theology — I need to know everything that happened up there at the Hall.”

I hesitated, feeling as if I stood on the extreme point of a precipice. I couldn’t trust myself; another word and I would fall into the abyss. When Sylvia spoke again her voice was gentle, and I saw in her eyes that she would do what she could for me. Then it came out, everything I had seen for the last six months. Everything — the letters, the diary I had found, Lord Vane’s deterioration, the blood on his hands. I even spoke of the aborted underground ritual (though I withheld the most intimate details.) I no longer felt that manacle of shame around my heart.

By the time I had finished, Sylvia wore an ominous expression.

“Then there can be no possible room for doubt. I had hoped against hope that I was wrong about Lord Vane. There are many old tales of unnatural deaths; a spate of them every century or so. It is upon us again, and even far in advance. Already we have lost some; if left unchecked it will pick all of us off, one by one, until there is no one left. It was my duty to prevent this, and because I refused to see what was before my eyes, I have failed.

“I have long taken it as part of my duty to watch over Lord Vane — Danny has even going so far as to take up fencing with him, to afford an opportunity to gather information — yet, despite this, neither of us saw what was before our very eyes.

“There are words for creatures like him — revenant, lemure, strix. They are born out of great betrayals, wrongs, that keep the spirit trapped in a cycle of eternal revenge. They feast on the blood of the living, the life-spirit, to fill the gnawing void within them, a need for a wrong to be righted which can never be fulfilled. He must have died under terrible circumstances — a murder, a suicide.”

I felt as if I were a boat that had become unmoored in a violent storm; about to be swallowed up by the insatiable sea.

“I understand you have come to feel something for Lord Vane, but I cannot see any way for this situation to end except with his destruction. He is immortal, and so we will have to destroy him in a way that prevents his inevitable return — to scatter his limbs to the far corners of the island, bury his skull in a lead casket beneath a sacred stone. That is the only way to end this.”

I could not suppress my reaction to this. “Surely — there must be another way!”

“I’ve been saying this for years!” interrupted Danny, “If you’d let me kill the fucking bastard — like you knew we should have — none of this would have happened!”

“Would that have been wiser? Could we have committed an act of such violence and come back from it? Murder has a way of making more victims than one. That sad hermit in his crumbling ruin, for all he styles himself a lord, has never had any power over us. It would never have been justice, Danny — you knew that yourself when we last spoke of this.”

“Roderick and Duncan are dead,” Danny whispered.

“I know. Only one choice remains,” she said, turning to me. “Don’t you see, Victor? Once he has killed us all and there is no one left upon whom he can quench his thirsts, what can he do but descend into madness and death? There is no saving him, we can only save ourselves.”

I could see, but I could not bear the thought of it. With every word it felt as if my heart was being cut from within my chest.

“There must be some way to save him,” I whispered. It sounded pathetic to my ears.

Danny slammed a fist against a wall. “I don’t think you understand, two people are dead. Two of my friends —” her voice broke.

Sylvia laid a gentle hand on Danny’s shoulder and she fell silent, though her eyes were red with unshed tears.

“There is one way which may allow Lord Vane to survive this with minimal loss of life,” Sylvia said, “I recognize the ritual which you described. It is very ancient kind of human sacrifice practised by our distant ancestors. It is, as I understand it, meant to intercede with the spirits of the land on behalf of the people; to seek their favour in the coming season. Lord Vane is a clever man; it seems that, in some way, he has devised a way to postpone the bloodlust when it sets in. If you allow him finish the ritual — to kill you — likely it will reset the cycle once more. Such a measure can only temporarily defer his curse, however; never truly end it.”

P.S. FROM 2024:

Hello! 👋 What you’re reading is a draft version of What Manner of Man. This section of the book has been completely rewritten. Not only have all the conversations involved been re-imagined from the ground up and made more dramatic, but also there’s a new scene here involving a bit of magic.

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

This is going to sound stupid but I think I have some of the sweetest, fluffiest, most wonderful-ever readers. I can’t express how much means to me every time someone goes out of their way to share What Manner of Man with others. My reach is quite small, and I can really use the help. 💜 Thank you!

(Y’know I’ll be honest I didn’t expect it to be that easy to seamlessly insert an instance of Danny saying “fuck” into the book?)

-St John

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