What Manner of Man: Chapter 22 🦇

A warning to the curious.

• Thank you to everyone who is supporting me on Patreon!

• At this moment, a thousand new messages of profound and indelible gratitude are being graffitied in golden spray paint on the walls of my heart.

• For patrons of Henchman tier and above, this week, I’ve written a brief sketch of what it might have been like in the good old days back when Victor and his friend Monty used to roleplay human-sacrificing one another (who hasn't been there?) 🔪

All of this — the preceding, and the moment that followed — I can see with minute detail whenever I close my eyes. It fills my mind in dark places and nights when I cannot sleep. Even now I can see him: facing away, black hair like raven feathers. He seems dreadfully thin, somehow; insubstantial as a ghost. I must do right by him.

The land gave forth an ominous rumble. From deep within the mine; a sound like the distant thunder of approaching storm.

Perhaps, in opening the long-undisturbed cavern, I had unbalanced the fragile structure of the place. Perhaps, by our intrusion — by taking the ring — we had disturbed the balance of something far greater. Something beyond mere earth and stone. 

Monty seemed not to have noticed the sound, though I cried out to him. That’s when the whole structure of the mine seemed to give way, and an extraordinary inward collapse began to take place. My memory of the scene ends with the abruptness of a candle being snuffed out. He never even turned around.

When I regained consciousness, it was all over. I was being treated for cuts and bruises — Monty’s body had not yet been found. My God — is it any wonder that I felt I was to blame? In time, I found I had the ring still in my pocket.

Uncertain what to do, I brought the ring to a professor of antiquities at a local university; the only man to whom I ever confided the story of how it was found. He laughed gently, however, saying it wasn't like any known example of Celtic or Roman metalwork — and that, furthermore, there had never been any ruins found in the area I claimed to have uncovered it. He asked me to show him the tunnel, which of course I could not. I believe he must have thought I'd picked up an odd piece of modern jewelry out of the dirt and that the chamber had been pure invention.

And so I kept the ring, wearing it always next to my skin on a chain around my neck. I’ve drafted a will specifying that it be given upon my death to the Department of Archaeology at my old university, along with an explanation of its origin.

EDITOR’S NOTE: No such will is known to the family of my friend

I know you’re all too aware of the changes that were wrought in me in the aftermath of Monty’s death. I knew of nowhere I could turn for safety and absolution except the open arms of the Church. I’m sure — or, I felt sure then — that what happened was a direct act of divine retribution. In my passion for the ancient and pagan, I had strayed from the light of God. Above all, Monty and I had sinned together in our hearts; though we had not yet committed any crime according to the laws of man. I devoted myself to repentance and to God; feeling it my duty, in some way, to guard others from a similar fate. 

The time has come for me to shed this ill-fitting costume. I have accepted that I can no longer serve as a minister of Christ. Beyond that, however — I no longer consider myself among the faithful. There are great mysteries in this world beyond mortal understanding, but I am no longer certain they exist exactly as described by any Christian church. 

I sense the presence of such mysteries more than ever in this place. They are quite real, Vera, though I am no longer so confident in those of my beliefs which I had connected to it. The exorcism I performed on Alistair was a complete failure. If it were merely a personal failing that turned the exorcism disastrous, I might be able to live with that, but while I have seen considerable evidence of powerful forces at work around me, I have seen nothing of God, of Christ, of the divine.

I refuse to believe that a man like Alistair is doomed to eternal hellfire and damnation. He is afflicted by a thing I do not understand, but it is beyond God and the Devil. What I feel for him — I know it is not evil. I have made that mistake once before, I will not make it again. I have already failed Alistair in his moment of need. I have wasted the few precious hours remaining of his life with my foolhardy refusal to see what was before my very eyes.

I no longer know this world into which I have awoken, but I know Alistair. I must find a way to help him. I can only hope that it is not too late.

P.S. FROM 2024:

Hello! 👋 What you’re reading is a draft version of What Manner of Man. This and the chapter preceding it go very slightly differently, and, more importantly, they have been combined and MOVED to a secret, special new location!

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

Anyone who likes my work has to be at least moderately favorably disposed toward classic supernatural fiction, right?

If so, I’d like to recommend this YouTube channel. Richard Crowest is an actor and saint who, for years, has been quietly producing free audiobooks of absurdly high quality. His full E. F. Benson and Saki collections are on Apple Podcasts (you can find them all by searching Richard Crowest) and on his website. I particularly recommend anything he’s read by E. F. Benson, whose ghost stories are powerfully charged with queer sensibility imo.

-St John

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