Lasher

“Don’t mock me with that foolish folklore, that nonsense. Do you think I was ever one of you? You are mad to suppose it. When I come again, I…” and he broke off, clearly on the verge of threats. Then he said with childish quickness, “Julien, I need you. The child in Mary Beth’s womb, it is no witch, but a feebleminded girl, suffering the same defect as Katherine, your sister, and even Marguerite, your mother. You must make the witch with your daughter.”

“So I have that to bargain with,” I said with a sigh, “and you want me to couple with my own daughter.”

But he had exhausted himself. He was fading. Mary Beth lay sleeping, lush and quiet on the couch, covered in blankets, her dark hair sleek and glowing in the light of the little fire.

“Will she give birth to this child?”

“Yes, bide your time, and wait. You shall make a great witch with her.”

“And she herself?”

“The greatest of all,” he said with an audible voice and sigh. “Unless one counts Julien.”

Michael, that was my greatest triumph. I learnt what I have told you now, its name, its history, that it was of our blood, but more than that I never discovered!

Ashlar, it was all connected with that name. But was the daemon Ashlar, and if so which of the Ashlars in the pages of the old man’s books? The first or one who came after?

The following morning, I left Edinburgh, leaving only a note for Mary Beth, and I traveled north to Donnelaith, going from Darkirk again on horseback. I was too old to make this journey on my own, but I was crazed with my discoveries.

Once again I searched the Cathedral, under the cool Highlands sun coming down in beautiful rays through the clouds, and then I walked out to the circle of stones, and stood there.

I called upon it. I cursed it. I said, “I want you to go back to hell, St. Ashlar! That is your name, that is who you are, a two-legged man, who would have been worshiped, and in pride you have survived, an evil daemon to torment us.”

My voice rang out in the glen. But I was alone. It had not even deigned to answer me. But then as I stood in the circle, I suddenly felt that awful woozy feeling, as if I’d been dealt a blow, which meant the thing was coming into me.

“No, back into hell!” I screamed, but I was falling to the grass. The world had become the wind itself, roaring in my ears, and carrying all distinct shapes and points of reference away with it.

It was night when I awoke. I was bruised. My clothes were torn. The thing had run rampant in me, and here of all places.

I was for a moment in fear for my life, sitting there in the dark, not knowing what had become of my horse, or which way to walk to leave this awful haunted glen. Finally I staggered to my feet, and realized a man held me by the shoulders.

It was he, strong again, material again, guiding me, his face very near to mine, in the dark. We were walking towards the castle. He was so real I could smell the leather of his jerkin, and I could smell the grass clinging to him, and the fragrance of the woods hanging about him. He vanished and I staggered on alone, only to have him reappear again and help me.

At last we entered a broken doorway to the floor of the great hall, and there I fell down to sleep, too exhausted to go further. He was sitting there in the dark, a vapor, and now and then solid, and sometimes merely there, wrapped around me.

In my sheer exhaustion and despair, I said, “Lasher, what do I do? What is it you will do finally?”

“To live, Julien, that is all I want. To live, to come back out into the light. I am not what you think. I am not what you imagine. Look at your memories. The saint is in the glass, is he not? How could I be the saint if I could see him in the window? I never knew the saint; the saint was my downfall!”

I had never seen the saint in the window. I had seen only the colors, but now as I lay on the ground I remembered the church again, I was there, in a former time, and I was intimately recalling how I had, in that time, gone into the transept and entered the chapel of the saint, and yes, there he was emblazoned in the gorgeous glass, with the sun pouring through his image, the warrior priest, long-haired, bearded. St. Ashlar, crushing the monsters beneath his foot: St. Ashlar.

I found myself saying, in this former time, desperately from my soul: St. Ashlar, how can I be this thing? Help me. God help me. They were taking me away. What choice had I been given?

Such longing, such pain!

I blacked out. All consciousness left me. I was never to know the fiend again so vividly as I had in that moment, when I stood in its flesh in the Cathedral. St. Ashlar! I even heard his voice, my voice, echoing beneath the lofty stone roof. How can I be this thing, St. Ashlar! And the brittle shining glass gave no reply. It did what pictures always do-remain constant, remain dominant.

Blackness.

When I awoke that morning, in the ruins of the castle, guides from Darkirk had come to find me. They brought food and drink and blankets and a fresh horse. They had feared for me. My mount had gone all the way home without me.

In the splendor of the morning, the valley looked innocent, lovely. I wanted to lie down and sleep, but alas, I could not until

I was in the inn at Darkirk, and there I slept on and off for two days, suffering a bit of fever, but in general merely resting.

When I returned to Edinburgh Mary Beth was in a panic. She had thought me gone forever. She had accused Lasher of doing me harm. He had wept.

I told her to come and sit by the fire, and I told her everything. I told her the history and what it meant. I told her again the memories.

“You must be stronger than this thing to the last of your days,” I said. “You must never let it get the better of you. It can kill; it can dominate! It can destroy; it wants to be alive, yes, and it is a bitter thing, a thing not of transcendent wisdom but under God, you see, something of blackness and utter despair, something that has been defeated!”

“Aye, suffered,” she said, “that’s the word. But Julien, you are past all patience. You cannot go on with this opposition to it. You must from now on leave this thing entirely to me.”

She rose to her feet and began to declaim in her calm voice, with few gestures, as was her manner.

“I shall use this thing to make our family richer than your wildest imaginings. I shall build a clan so great that no revolution, no war, no uprising could ever destroy it. I shall unite our cousins when I can, encourage marriage within the clan, and see to it that the family name is borne by all who would be part of us. I shall triumph in the family, Julien, and this it understands. This it knows. This is what it wants. There is no battle between us.”

“Is that so?” I asked. “Has it told you what I would do for it next? That I should father a witch by you?” I was trembling with apprehension and rage.

She smiled at me in a soft appeasing and calm way, and then, stroking my face, said: “Now, really, when the time comes, will that be so very hard, my darling?”

That night I dreamed of witches in the glen. I dreamed of orgies. I dreamed of all manner of things I would forget but never did. From Edinburgh we went to London. There we remained until Mary Beth gave birth to Belle in 1888, and from the beginning we knew the radiant child was not normal only because Lasher had told us.

In London, I procured a large book with a leather cover and fine-quality parchment paper, and I wrote down everything I knew of Lasher in it. I wrote down everything I knew of our family. I had much such writing at home, other books started, stopped, forgotten. But now, from memory I collected everything.

I recorded any and all details about Riverbend, Donnelaith, the legends, the saint. All of it. I wrote fast and in a fury. For I didn’t know but that, at any moment, the monster might stop me.

But the monster did nothing.

Letters came to me daily from the old scholar, but mostly they were stories of St. Ashlar, that St. Ashlar would grant a miracle to a young girl, for he was their special protector. And the rest was repetitive of what we had