What Manner of Man: Chapter 24 🦇

Victor Ardelian has a super normal and regular day.

• Darling patrons, you grow only more radiant with each passing day. In fact I am a little worried that some of you might be radioactive.

• There is nothing more pleasing to the eye than your ghostly green glow, nor more pleasing to the ear than the crackling you set off in my Geiger counter.

• This week, patrons of the Accomplice tier and up will get to read a deleted scene from this chapter between Victor and Silas.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Once again I must inform the reader that this particular entry of Victor Ardelian’s journal includes sexually explicit events.

JOURNAL ENTRY

Undated.

I must take a moment to collect my thoughts, though I fight to keep my pen steady against the motion of the choppy sea. Sylvia seems to have informed Silas of my desire to visit those Roman ruins west of Whithern Hall. I must admit I was surprised; I didn’t think that Sylvia had paid me much mind when I’d mentioned the idea to her. Nevertheless it was kind of her to seek out the favour. I am grateful to her and to Silas, who has volunteered to convey me there and back.

It’s odd — though Silas asked again whether I was making plans to finally return home, he hardly seemed surprised when I said no.

How strange is this feeling I carry in my breast. There seems a fog of unreality about the world today. Silas asked me how I have been doing and I nearly forgot to avoid mention of certain things — of my feelings for Alistair.

Having ceased to wear it, I carried my cross in my pocket with me today. Without so much as a moment’s thought, as I leaned over the side of the boat, I let it slip from my hand and disappear into the sea. I do not regret the loss.

JOURNAL ENTRY

Undated.

I must get this down while it remains fresh in my mind — I cannot afford to forget so much as the smallest detail. As we came ashore, Silas requested that I conclude my business in this place with as little delay as possible, since he wished to return before nightfall. 

The valley which held the ruins of the Roman settlement was guarded on either side by rocky slopes. It seems so long ago when I was last here, when the few trees and shrubs that clung to the limestone cliffs were sparingly adorned with the first buds of spring. It had been much transformed in my absence; summer had run riot and the clearing lay smothered by a mass of vivid, impenetrable green.

I pressed into it, spurred by a desire I do not fully understand. Brambles and stinging nettle caught and tore at me but I persisted until I came into a more open space. It was dark and cool within. The shore and Silas waiting for me seemed to recede like the tide and become impossibly remote. The sound of the waves was muted and of no significance. That frightening power which I had glimpsed before — it was here. I felt it. A change of seasons was taking place, one which followed in obedience to natural laws utterly outside those earthly cycles known to men. These were its early flurries; what was to come as inevitable as winter.

I kept a hand on my ring as if it were the last thing tethering me to this world as I passed the altar where I had — well, I needn’t dwell on that now. I knew I must go further than Alistair had taken me, deep into the heart of this place. The scent of moss and damp earth filled my senses; dizzying, familiar. I leaned against a tree and felt the hard stone of a column. 

My sense of unreality grew as I felt the stone whole and unbroken beneath my hand. Disoriented, I found myself surrounded by pale columns of jade-green and white marble, illuminated by flickering torchlight. My muscles tenses in preparation to flee, but I held myself firm. This was only confirmation that I had been right to return here.

Almost since rising this morning a sensation had been growing within me; almost imperceptible, at first, but which seemed to increase with every step nearer I came to my goal. My whole perception of the world seemed subtly altered. Everything took on a dreamlike quality of misty unreality and, as I entered further into the ruins, I seemed to step into a waking dream.

Presently I began to notice strange scenes elaborate carved into the stone — it reminded me of nothing more than the tapestry that had adorned the chamber in which I’d stayed at Whithern Hall. Ambiguous, half-human figures, in low relief, danced and cavorted over every surface. The figures were contorted, animalistic; bodies twined together with sinuous, snake-like appendages. In the centre they converged with raised knives around block or table of some kind — bearing down on something hidden from view.

I should have been horrified, but I could only stare in rapt fascination. Here it was, at last — the ancient violence hinted at all around me. At last I could see it with unclouded eyes. 

It was as if I had never glimpsed the world before, for I now saw it in minute detail: the insects burrowing in the soil, the rich scent of moist earth, the lustrous sheen of mushroom caps. They were not beautiful, no; but I found in them a terrible seductive power. All of these things appeared to me with such immediacy that they seemed at once both familiar and vividly inhuman. There was a lurid quality to it all, the glistening damp wherein decay and rebirth mingle, combine; what insects do in the dark; those who, after mating, devour one another. All this is constantly happening under our very feet, invisible to us.

It is a terrifyingly beautiful thing to witness, that transformation of death into life; for that is all decay is. The burrowing head of the worm peeking out from under moss ingenerates the richness of the soil. The worm’s form is indeterminate; it is neither male nor female — it resembles the worst parts of us; those which we hide. It feels no shame; it feels nothing except to recoil from pain and pursue pleasure. The mushroom is less still; featureless, a bulbous protrusion that erupts from the dead to consume and, in that consummation, to convert death back into the raw materials of life.

There, in the middle of it all, were two tree roots twisted together in a twinned spiral shape, coiling infinitely back upon itself. Their gnarls and knots somehow roughly evoked the image of my long-dead childhood companion. It seemed, at once, to me, no accident of mental projection, but a message from that mystery which is beyond me. For a moment it appeared the bulging knot of root that was Monty’s head began to turn toward me. From a black pit where his tear-filled eye should have been crawled a shining beetle. He looked as if he were about to speak and I recoiled, fearing the voice that might issue forth.

But, then, green shoots burst from it. These too are generated from that same place; that hungry soil; dark, wet, and teeming. The green and verdant trees high above would not exist without it. I began to see something new within it all; something far stranger.

Then, from behind and below, there came the sound of distant drums and the babble of voices. There — figures! They were a blur of noise, chanting and singing, crying out to another god — the hidden god. They came from what should have been the shore, but there was only darkness; the lolling tongues of roots and the dense, twisted bodies of trees.

They seemed a whirl of impossible colour and beauty; at once bestial and horrifying. Neither men nor women, just as they were not fully human or animal — they came carrying torches, live snakes, and knives. I saw among them creatures with bare breasts and cocks and horns like the devil; yet I did not turn away, even as one went on its knees before the other. They murmured to me in a tongue I could not understand, beckoning.

What was this ecstatic procession of spectres; this cavalcade of metamorphoses? For from one moment to the next they seemed to shift; breaking free of any understanding of them I had begun to form.

It was dark, now — darker than the most moonless of nights — yet illuminated by sparks like fireflies all around us. I could hear them calling to me to partake of their dark joy; to taste of their delights. What was there to be gained from hiding myself away? Letting myself be tempted, I followed.

They led me up a tumulus, where, at the top, was a circle of stones much like the one concealed below Whithern Hall. I found myself in the centre of an aisle; a path through the crowding bodies; looking up towards the crown of the hill. Now it was their turn to watch me, and I ascended.

Above me, at the apex of the mound, a pair of great, pale wings spread outward. The crowd howled and cried aloud as their god showed himself — this earthen god, a thing I would once have called satanic but was, in truth, something else entirely. He looked somehow familiar, this lord of the island, a creature of tremendous size and majesty.

I approached him, and I felt no fear. He loomed over me, the heat and scent of him everywhere, overwhelming my senses. His wings enveloped me as I knelt before him, and I could hear my breath coming in quick gasps. I was prepared for him to do to me as he would.

I thought that I had at last come face-to-face with the beast — but no. He seemed somehow lost, uncertain. I looked up, and could see something pained in him, as if he were afraid to proceed. I found that I was not. I wanted this — wanted to give myself over to him. It all made sense to me, then; this dark underbelly of life. If he was holding back, then it must be I who gave forth.

I am not certain, now, what came over me. I found myself again on the altar. Take me, I thought. Show me what lays hidden by the light — I am not afraid.

Therefore I bared myself to him; allowed him to see my body in all its physical frailty and imperfection. He traced a claw down the midline of my chest. If he cut me, I did not feel it, and if he had destroyed me then, it would only have taken me further. I turned to face the altar and, with feet on the ground, I lay my upper body over the table of stone; legs parted and bare before him.

He made a low sound and I felt hot breath across the back of my legs. I expected to be taken, then, with urgent violence, and I flinched as I felt the prick of sharp teeth so near that vulnerable part of my body. In a gesture of surprising tenderness, however, he knelt behind me and blessed that which he looked upon with soft kisses.

It is familiar to me, of course — the rite which I have taken part in. I have read too far in books both dark and obscure to not recognize the osculum infame, the kiss of infamy. It is generally said to be bestowed by a prospective with upon Satan. What did it mean that my demon lover bestowed it upon me?

I could do little but tremble and moan as he proceeded to prepare me. I was his to do with as he pleased — his to delight in. When he rose again to stand behind me, he lifted me so that I was seated on the flat stone. On the altar, then, we embraced in our dark becoming.

These events sit in some uneasy space between reality and madness. There are powers at work here beyond the furthest scope of my understanding of the world, powers beyond names like God and Satan. 

I cannot say whether it was an instant or an hour, but the vision faded and I found myself standing behind the temple, in among the trees. The gay sound of birdsong met my ears and sunlight dappled the earth at my feet. Gone was the heavy, perfumed air. I inhaled a breath of cool breeze from the sea. Reemerging into the present world; I was back among the temple ruins — as I remembered them to have been. Broken, ancient, overgrown. Whatever it was that had possessed this place, and me, no trace remained.

Message from 2024: Hello! 👋 What you’re reading is a draft version of What Manner of Man. You can get the complete, edited and expanded novel DRM-free on Itch.io or at the retailer of your choice.

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