Tranquility of Midnight

Wet leaves rustled under his boots. Mud and pieces of grass stuck to the fibers of his black cloak. The wind caught under it and chilled his bones. With the gate standing before him, he paused and looked around for a way into the cemetery. Concealed by the purest dark cast by the night, he enjoyed a comfort that brought a spring to his to sneaking steps. To wait until the new moon, what a novel touch to his plan. He touched the iron bars, squeezing them like a hilt of a sword. He needed a hole or a gutter, something he could crawl under. Even if he had the strength to pull himself up the thirteen foot high bars, each one was tipped with a razor sharp spear head. Birds landing on them lost feathers. Twice already the night watchmen found stalkers caught on them trying to wriggle free. Why pilgrims would try to sneak into the cemetery was a mystery to the Seminarian. Until that night it didn’t concern him, but even so he had no intention of getting caught or impaling himself so he felt around in the frosting dark, his ghostly breathes escaping from his mouth as he hiked through the mud and leaves, tall grass, up inclines, until at last his hand was tickled by a faint stream of icy water. The bars around the drain opened up a foot from the ground, and the Seminarian crawled through, dipping his head in first, then his knees, and by taking hold of the grassy edge of the surface he pulled himself upward. Just that easy, he had snuck into the cemetery. The canvas sack around his neck almost slipped but he caught it and doubled knotted it around his neck. The contents didn’t bother him until he kneeled in the grass. The metal inside kept swinging and began to slice into his back. He scratched at where it pressed into his skin but it only itched more despite his efforts. He stood up, squinting into the dark. The trees covered the stars. He thought he could see dust floating in the dark, but it vanished as soon as he noticed it. He dared not move. A shudder shot up his spine. A branch broke from a tree and fell somewhere ahead of him, crashing down and filling the area with the smell of rotten wood, honey, and pollens. Doubt crept from the back of his mind to the forefront. He wanted to return, but when he saw the distant glimmer every doubt retreated back. The smell of burning oil became prominent as the dancing light came from the Seminarian’s left and crossed by him. The flame inside twirled and danced as the lamp swung on its chain. Held at midpoint, the bottom half of the chain dragged across the earth. The Seminarian sighed in relief, and containing his excitement he began to follow the lamp.

It guided him along a narrow path between crooked headstones, twisting and turning, never going in a straight line longer than ten feet. The seminarian remained patient. He sucked on his lips to relieve  the burning of chapped sores. The wine he had drank kept his stomach warm, and the thrill of the night alive. A beetle flew into his mouth and he spat it out. His entire body writhed in disgust. The sensations of wine paused so he could revolt. Gagging until he threw up a modest amount of bile, asked his savior why the almighty would create such terrible creatures such as beetles. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. The lantern wasn’t stopping.

He followed it until wet grass soaked his boots. His feet ached and his toes felt slimy and chaffed. Once he felt his callouses split, the lantern stopped and rested on top of a lone headstone. Under the halo of light, the Seminarian saw no special features to make the stone stand out from the others. Certainly, it wasn’t one he would’ve picked out. Plain, smooth, a coat of orange corrosion around the right half of its face, and a jagged crack running down the middle, it was a featureless white tablet. The name and date that had been inscribed had been worn away, but he knew at once he had the right stone when the lantern began to shake. The flame grew brighter and larger until the lantern popped and the flame died away to a faint ember dieing into the darkness.

The seminarian knelt down, leaned forward with his arms out until he could feel the tablet. He felt the warm glass of the lantern, and the rough patches of the stone marker. He asked for the family’s forgiveness at the heresy he committed to execute. He undid the knots and took the sack from his back and placed into his lap. He undid the drawstring, and reached inside. He produced a small frame with a hand drawn etching inside.  The name on the back, he knew when he stole it, read Jeb Brown.

The Seminarian had stolen for the first time when he visited the old widow, Everett Brown, as he did every monday morning. He brought her the weekly flowers, and provided the lonely woman some company for the duration of  a pot of earl grey tea. The drawing had been hung in a forgotten corner of her parlor. When he inquired about the drawing she admitted to failing to recognize it. He asked her who drew it, and she told him that her late husband used to draw whenever he wasn’t bullwhacking across the west. She gestured to the cane on the wall. Everret told him that she feared that the only thing left of Jeb was the item used to strike slacking cattle  Jeb would return after six or seven months with money and a stack of drawings, and a new cane. In her old age, the canes became useful, but a time came in her life when she couldn’t give the drawings away fast enough. One survived. So the Seminarian took the drawing before he left and hid it beneath his cloak. He wondered whatever happened to her husband, but thought it impolite to ask such things.

He entered the communal shower at two past midnight. He knelt besides the drain, pressed his ear down. Hollow grunts of metal and the moan of moving air. He whispered into the drain, “I have what I need.”

“A token of the buried former life?” The voice in the drain said.

“Yes. I will set out tonight.”

“You have the chalice? You remember how I told you to perform the ritual?”

“Yes. It will work?”

“Oh, yes. It will work…”

The seminarian produced the chalice from the bag. Using a kitchen knife to cut his hand, he held the bleeding palm over the chaline and filled it to the prescribed capacity before wrapping his hand in a handkerchief, and continuing.  He placed the drawing at the base of the headstone, frame down and name facing upwards. He held the chalice up like an offering, and spoke into the night, commanding the spirits to find him and answer his plea. He tilted the chalice over the headstone, dripping bit by bit onto the face of the tablet. At once the light in the lantern lit up again. He dripped blood onto the where the name had been inscribed on the back of the frame, and at he poured the rest of it onto the grave. He stood up and stepped back. The wind stopped. He could hear nothing but the presence of autumn darkness. Where he had poured the blood, the dirt began to twitch. For ten minutes it twitched before the dirt around the spot lifted and spit open. A white egg pushed through the dirt. As it lifted, the Seminarian saw the cranium, the dirt filled eye sockets, a worm dangling from its nostrils, and chunks of clay dropping from its unhinged jaw. The skull looked up at him with out sound as its ribcage broke through the cone of dirt mounding around it. Its arms pressed against the grave, and its hips squeezed out. The seminarian dropped to his knees, his heart melting, tears streaking down his face. The skeleton made noise. A faint murmur that grew into a hum that transcended into a chant. The seminarian felt like he stood before the chorus singing in the Cathedral of Chartres.

In the distance he could hear grumbling voices. He turned to see far off lights. The nightwatch patrolled. The Seminarian turned back to the skeleton, the bones now on two feet and its heavenly song transitioning into a howl of agony. A shriek of pure terror and pain, like a horse trapped in a stable fire. Then it was that the Seminarian recognized the voice.

“Oh yes, it will work-”

Two skeletal hands took hold of his head, and squeezed like a vice as the hanging jaw lowered, delivering its beastial shriek into his ears until his eardrums burst.

The nightwatch had been passing by when they heard the howls of agony. The two of them hurried at the source of the horrid disturbance. What they found was the young man that conducted Sunday service for their children. Blood ran down from his his temples, hair line cuts crisscrossed his face. One eye bulged out farther than the other, but the Seminarian had his hood up so not one would notice. They wanted to know what had happened, and he explained that the screams came from him as he walked in the night his foot caught a root, and he fell hard against the headstone. He asked them if they would escort him out so that he might return home and get some rest. Neither one noticed the loose dirt around the grave, or the raw bones that had been placed beneath.

The Seminarian didn’t return home. He left the gates of the cemetery and walked down the brick road, almost limping, taking fractured breathes, dirt and moisture dripping from his cloak as he made his way past the small garden to the front door the widow Brown. He stroke the door louder with each knock, causing the wood to splinter and his knuckles to bleed. When the hunched backed widow opened the door in her nightie, her exhausted expression melted into confusion as the Seminarian forced his way inside. She backed up as soon as he opened his mouth. The seminarian’s voice was different. Oddly familiar, but not belong to the young holy man bringing her flowers.

“ you don't wait, Everett?” He demanded over and over with each step, both hands on the collar of his cloak, his dark eyes unblinking, guttural snarls choking with each breath he struggled to take

“Jeb?” She whimpered, stepping farther back into her own home, shaking as cold air invaded.

“You don’t wait, Everett?” The Seminarian reached to the wall and took down a hickory cane.

The Seminarian left the door open as he tracked bloody footprints out the door. The weapon in his
hand still dripped as he made his way down the brick road. A beetle flew onto his cheek, and with a
long tongue he caught the beetle, drew it into his mouth. His teeth gnashed the creature to mulch, and
a satisfied moan escaped down the street as he swallowed it.