I found the monster much farther back from the place where I’d found his flock, in a natural anteroom of sorts formed where the walls of the cave split off from the main section of the cavern. He lay upon a natural rising of rock, his arms folded across his chest in an aspect not unlike that of a stone-carved knight atop a sepulchre. His own noble ancestors in France, centuries dead, might have been buried inside a sarcophagus of that exact kind.
His face, by the light of the guttering candle, was beautiful. I cannot claim otherwise. It was the face of a handsome man in the latter prime of his life, with high cheekbones and well-formed features: a proud brow, and strong nose. It was the face of an aristocrat. Pale as death, he was, save for the redness of his lips. His mouth was half open and I shuddered at the length and sharpness of his terrible teeth.
But whereas the eyes of the others had been closed, his were open, fixed and staring into the darkness above his head.
I started in shock, but realized in an instant that he was no less immobilized by the sunlight than the others had been. I passed my hand in front of his eyes. He neither blinked nor gave any other sign that he was aware of my presence. Like the others, his chest neither rose nor fell, nor did breath issue from his mouth.
I yearned to drag him by his white hair along the cruel rocks of the cavern floor, but I feared, doubtless irrationally, that it might somehow wake him. Instead, I wedged the candle in a crevice, then placed my hands under him as I had the others, and half pulled, half carried him. Like the others, he was very nearly weightless.
The cave mouth was darker than it had been even a few minutes before. With a sinking heart, I realized the reason: the sun was setting. If it had not already set, it would set within minutes. I cried out to God and pulled harder, moving even more quickly through the gloom.
And then I felt a bony hand grasp my ankle, and sharp nails digging into the soft flesh there. It was too late, I thought. The sun had set, and the creature was awake.
I screamed and dropped Father de Celigny’s body, backing away from it until my back was parallel with the cave wall next to the entrance. As I watched, he rose to his feet with a dreadful, majestic, malefic grace. For a moment, he stared at me, his eyes full of hate, then he lunged towards me, arms outstretched, his teeth bared like an animal. I ducked through the opening of the cave into the dark red setting sunlight.
“Come and get me, demon!” I shouted, looking into the cave. “I have killed your congregation and undone your work here. Look at the ashes of your children! If it is your plan to punish me for killing them, I am here, you coward! Do not hide in your hole like a snake! If you were once a man, show it now! Night has fallen; come fight me on your own terms!” It was a gamble, for there were still some streaks of redness in the sky, but I counted on the fact that traces of the monster’s human vanity might have survived into its current state of existence.
De Celigny stepped through the entrance of the cave, into what was left of the sunset. There was a flash of light and the familiar abattoir smell of seared flesh. He shrieked and covered his face with his hands, stumbling backwards into the cave. When he removed his hands from his face, I could see that the skin was charred and blackened and smoking, as though he had fallen into an open fire. I held up my cross and stepped towards him. “Tonight you die, monster!” I cried out. “Tonight, one way or another, you will die! And if not tonight, then I will find you tomorrow wherever you hide and burn you in the sunlight like the beast you are!”
As I watched, from inside the shadows of the cave mouth, de Celigny lowered his head and closed his eyes. I saw his lips move, as though he recited a prayer, or an incantation of some sort. The sound of his voice carried across the space between us, though the words he whispered were unclear.
He opened his hands in the aspect of an invocation, extending his arms towards me, encompassing me, the forest behind me, even the night itself in his blessing.
Then he raised his head and began to laugh, a foul, cruel laugh entirely bereft of warmth, or joy, or indeed any human emotion, and stepped out of the cave into the new-fallen night. His eyes shone like rubies in the charred skull of his face, his teeth even longer and sharper than they had seemed mere moments before.
“We are coming for you, little priest,” the creature said. “We are coming for you
Before I could reply, I heard the familiar hiss of an arrow in flight and felt the wind of it pass by my ear. The arrow struck Father de Celigny full in the chest. His eyes flew open in shock and pain. De Celigny grasped the arrow in his hands at the base in a vain attempt to pull it out of his body. He roared in fresh agony as a second arrow sang through the air, striking him just above the place where the first arrow had found purchase. Black blood streamed from the wound, drenching the front of his robe. His screams had risen in pitch to the point where he sounded more like an animal than something that had once been human.
Behind me I beheld a miracle the likes of which I had never dreamed I would see. It was an angel, or so it seemed, for Askuwheteau stood there in the darkness with his bow and arrow, taking a third from his quiver and aiming it at the monster who writhed in its death throes in front of the cave that had lately been its living grave.
“Askuwheteau!” I cried, running to him. “You came back! My friend, you came back to me! How can I thank you? Praise God!”
I fell into his arms and embraced him, holding more tightly to him than I had ever held to my father, or my brother, or indeed any friend. In that moment, the love I felt for my friend was even more encompassing, I confess, than any other love, including my love of God.
My noble Savage friend gazed at me with something I dared to imagine was pride, and put his arm around my shoulders. He guided me to the place where the creature that had called itself Father de Celigny lay dying. Its body was crumbling before my eyes, passing into some sort of malodorous, smoking foulness.
Askuwheteau drew back his head and spit. The spittle landed on the creature’s face. Askuwheteau said something in Algonquian that sounded like a curse, then averted his face.
But as I stared at the dying creature, a curious thought came to me. Its last words had been,
And then, all around me, I saw the glimmer of what seemed like hundreds of yellow eyes, and I heard the sound of panting. The wolves were perched on the rocks above us; they circled us at the base of the rock face, and even more of them lay in wait beyond the tree line.
I felt, rather than saw, Father de Celigny die. His-or
In the face of my Savage friend I saw bafflement, and then, wonder of wonders, I saw terror. At that, my heart sank, for I knew that if brave Askuwheteau was in terror of his life, we were doomed. He backed away slowly from the deadly advance of the wolves.
He reached out with his arm as though to touch me, but I realized he was not seeking out my camaraderie. He was not seeking to die with me. He was seeking, even then, to save my worthless life.
Wordlessly, lest he hasten the inevitable coming assault from the wolves, he was frantically trying to communicate to me that I should run, that I should save myself.
And to my eternal shame, run I did, back to the mouth of the cave where I crouched behind the stinking, smouldering ashes of the monster whose power to ordain our bloody murder seemed to survive even its own apparent death. I knew somehow that the wolves would not dare approach the remains of their master.
My saviour Askuwheteau stood proud before the advancing horde of wolves. Even as he recognized the inevitability of his own horrible, coming death, his face was impassive.
And then he began to sing.
After a short time, the only sound was the ripping of flesh and gristle, and the terrible crunching of Askuwheteau’s bones in the gore-clotted maws of the wolves. They peeled the skin off his face with their teeth and tore his limbs from their sockets the way kitchen dogs might fight over a soup bone. When they had finished their awful work, there was nothing identifiably human in Askuwheteau’s remains.
They licked the bits of flesh still clinging to his bones with a horrible delicateness, as though it were a special treat being passed to them under the table by an indulgent master.
By then, night had fallen to such a degree that Askuwheteau’s blood soaking the ground was black in the rising moonlight, and the wolves themselves looked like ghouls squatting over an open grave devouring a freshly dead corpse.
They raised their heads then, and looked at me, growling low in their throats.
