The Caretaker

 

The church and the shadow of the church upon him. 

A landgrown mass of cobbled stone, it rose up in crooked angles from the ground. Fragments of the colour-stained windows were still intact, but most of the glass had fallen inwards along with the roof. Wisteria vines ran along the stone slabs and upwards along the tower as great snakes, squeezing and constricting the stone into hideous shapes. 

 

A weakness had spread across the boy’s body. His arms and legs were no longer his own, and the hollow growl of his stomach had turned into a deep ache.

 He continued up the grassy incline towards the ruins.

The sun was sinking in the sky and hung low behind the great stone skeleton, its carmine rays pooling through the fragmented windows.

The church itself was bleeding upon the hill. 

 

As he got closer, he heard something from within the walls. A metallic clattering of chains shifting along wooden floorboards, and a pungent, copper smell of dirty coins. 

He approached the eastern wall and traced along the stone, careful of his bare feet on the glass shards. When he rounded the corner, the smell again - stronger now. A zingy, warm odour that caught in his throat. His eyes watered as he approached the towering wooden doors which, to his surprise, remained almost perfectly intact. To lift his arm and knock felt like wielding an axe, heavy and foreign. He rapped on the door.

 

The shuffling and sifting and scraping sounds from inside stopped. 

He waited. Footsteps approaching, slow. Deliberate. And then the yawning of the rusted hinges as the door was dragged inwards.

A tall, frail man stood in the doorway. His face, chalk-pale, was covered mostly by the hood of a black, tattered gown that reached down along his wasting body to his ankles. 

The boy looked at the man from head-to-toe, craning his neck. Never in his short life had he seen a man nor woman tower at this height. He could not see the man’s eyes but could see his cheeks, drawn tight to his skull, and the lips all white and cracked. 

 

What brings ye, the tall man said.

Food. I need food. 

The man’s nose, which protruded from the folds of the hood like a billhook, twitched. The cavernous nostrils opening and closing and opening again.

They’re coming tonight, the tall man said. 

The boy looked around him. Who’s coming?

Those nostrils again, expanding and contracting. Come, he said. 

The tall man turned and pushed open the door further, before ambling into the church. 

A strange feeling in the boy’s stomach. A kind of acidic churning.

He stepped across the threshold and into the church.

The air was so full of that sour smell. The boy was breathing through a pinhole, wheezing. He turned and hauled the door closed behind him and, when he turned back to face the church' s interior, his breath stopped altogether.  

The church space spread up into the falling darkness. What remained of the structure was a rib-like row of rotten beams. Iron chains hanging from the rafters made a gentle clanging as the breeze pushed through the gaping lacerations in the building. And on the end of those chains, bodies. 

Two dozen at least. 

The colour of the blood-starved feet as they swung.

They were impaled with cattle hooks, which protruded from their chest with blood-soaked iron tips. A swarm of flies gathered around them like a black cloud. Men and women alike. From above, their eyes seemed to meet the boy 

and plead for release. 

He hadn’t noticed himself falling back against the great wooden door, until the tall man looked back and told him to get up. 

The boy’s breath was fleeting, unable to be controlled. His eyes were wild and scouring the scene before him. Every sensation heightened; the buzz of the fleshflies, the drips of blood onto the wooden aisle, the chains grating as the bodies swayed gently. And now the thundering of those footsteps again. The tall man coming down the aisle toward him, veering left and right, stepping over severed arms and legs and the reddened hide of a deceased goat.

The tall man stopped before him. Get up, he said. 

The boy looked up at him. The frayed black gown hid beneath it some pale, spectral being that, in that moment, the boy decided must have been death itself.

 

On deadened legs, the boy walked along the aisle. On either side of him, the once-polished oak pews were sticky and spotted with specks of blood. He stepped carefully over the fallen fragments of human parts. Up ahead, the tall man was sitting on the altar steps. On the ground between his legs, a metal pail filled with water and the tall man submerging his hands and scrubbing between the fingers and brushing his hands dry on that black gown. The boy stopped a few steps before him. Food, he said. Please. Anything.

The man's head beneath the hood shook left and right slowly and he said, There is no food here. 

Then water. Please.

No water, he said. The deep voice lingered under the towering roof as if it was something concrete that could be felt between his fingers. 

Hesitation. A long silence. 

What brings ye this far out of your home? The tall man said. 

I’m sick, the boy said.

What ails ye?

I don’t know. My brother says I’m sick so I must be sick.

Where is your brother?

Somewhere out yonder. I got lost. 

The hooded man shook his head again. You ain’t from here or nowhere close. I can hear your voice and say I don’t know where you’re from. 

I’m from way up north.

They ain’t got no medicine up north?

My brother says I need some medicine from someone far away. 

Who?

I don’t know. 

The tall man leaning over on the altar step, his head drooped between his knees as he dipped his hands into the pail of water again. The water had since turned into a rustic red. Once he shook his hands dry, he stood up and started towards the boy and the boy took a step back. This towering figure before him.

Stopping a few steps from the boy, the tall man spoke. They’re coming tonight. 

Who is coming? 

You’re too far south. I should kill you now so they don’t. 

The boy's heart lurched in his chest. 

They’ll be here before long. The sun is gone.

Please don’t, the boy said. 

The tall man craned his neck upwards and looked along the rows of hanging bodies. The wooden beams cracking and wheezing under the weight. 

What has your brother said about this doctor? he asked.

The boy’s voice was shaky. My brother said she's way south on the coast. He said she lives in the hills and he said she can help me.

You’re off to see the witch, the man said.

I don’t know.

You’re off to the witch. 

Maybe. 

The tall man nodded, stepping forward within touching distance of the boy. Looking down at him along that cavernous, angled snout. I can smell it on you, he said. It is almost awake. 

Can I stay here until the morning? The boy asked.

If you must. But you haven’t got long. I can smell it in you. It is almost ready.

Are you staying here tonight?

No-one stays here, the man said, before turning back towards the altar. The traced and faint outline of Christ on the wall behind him. Hanging in the gloom.

I’ll be going, the tall man said. If you stay here, they will get you. If you leave, they will get you. Too far south, you are. I fear you’ve met your end.

Where are you going? Can I come with you? 

I am going nowhere. 

But you said you were going.

I am going nowhere. You can not follow me to nowhere, child. I wish you well. Perhaps you are too young, but I suggest you die with dignity. Embrace it. Die not like a child, although you are one. You would have come to learn this yourself.

I don’t want to die, the boy said.

Then you should not be here.

I can leave.

The tall man looked out through the shattered window and across the fields. The sun or the ghost of the sun reduced to a faint pink bonfire on the horizon. The darkness standing heavy on the sun’s embered hue. 

You can’t. I must go. 

Please, the boy said. Tell me what is happening. 

I have no time. Die well. It is all you can do now. 

The tall man reached for a set of chains that had been strewn on the planks of the altar and lifted them across his shoulders and pushed past the boy, shambling along the aisle and opening the great oak door. Die well, the tall man said once more, before the echoing drag of the wood and the booming slam. 

Alone now with the skewered bodies. A gust of wind through the gallows and the sound of the bodies swinging amidst each other. The boy looked at Christ on the wall behind the altar but the lord had long since left