The Inquisitor

                                                                                   I




           In 1820 the catholic church dissolved the office of Grand Inquisitor. Gerónimo Castillón y Salas owned the last office position and his inquisitors earned archbishop status. Others faded into obscure churches or left for distant lands. Only one inquisitor kept the crusade against witchcraft alive. The pope excommunicated him, and Dukes of Europe warned their knaves to beware services offered by the rogue Inquisitor, Horatio Del Castile.

            A Prince from high mountain castle marched his retainers into Basque Country. They found him in the cliffsides overlooking the wild horses in the grasses below. No clouds protected them from the sun. Hawks cried and lifted from their nests, and circled around the sun. Heat waves dried the grass the inquisitor’s Lipizzan chewed. The horse lapped flies eating cuts over its nose. Horatio heard other horses, Sweat dripped his palms. The tools melted in his hands. Probes tickered with the crossbow in his lap. Gears and pins tipped. Screws dropped to the grass. Horatio took his hat off and let the sun light flood the project.

The shadow of the prince and his retainers blocked the sun. Horatio put his crossbow down and faced them.

         “Is this it?” The Prince asked him.

          “Now isn’t the time, my liege. Repairs-”

          The retainers in armor carrying live muskets rode to his weapon and carried it over. The            Prince asked for an arrow to fire.

         “Repairs are needed-”

         The prince whispered to the other retainer, so he rode over and grabbed the holster of bolts from Horatio’s belt. The hawk fly rings around the sun. Even the retainers when close by gasped with each breath. Horatio buttoned his coat up. His collar tightened as the prince molested his crossbow.

          “I want to fire it.” He spun the loose wheels on the end of the limbs. The free wires dangled down the prince’s coat. He loaded a bolt into the shaft, rose the stock to his shoulder and fire the bolt four feet forward. It grounded on the rear fletching. The Prince sighed and gave the crossbow and the arrows to the retainer and whispered for him to return them.

Horatio put his hat back on and let shade obscure the sunlight from his leathered lips. He took his weapon and arrows back. “’It’s broken. I’m fixing it.”

           The retainers rifled his clothes and bags, threw every out, then went back.

           The prince and his horses left, scoffing “it's not him”. Horatio waited for them to vanish over the mountains, then made a few more adjustments. The hawk still circled the sky. He screwed the wheels back on and ran the wires through. He rose it to his shoulder, steadied his eye until it felt like glass, and fired an arrow over the cliff towards the sun. The hawk cry stopped and its feathers fell down to the wild stallions fighting below. The arrow struck a rock at the far side. The hawk glided unhinderd.




                                                                             II




               Far across the ocean, years later, a pyre of hey and timber erected apart from an isle of buildings constructing the village of Vigilance- where the town preacher, and the owners of the land and their sons gathered.

              Someone watched from the steeple of the church. Two strong sons carried the saloon maid to the post. As they watched silently mobbed among the pyre. Four burned stakes still simmered from the previous few nights. The something caught his attention. A gust coming down the road. A racing horse galloped in a cloud of dust. Its Its back legs kicked blown engines, its front hooves kicked up blades of trampled trail. Riderless, yet weighed down with a saddle and bags. With irrepressible determination it dowsed past the still windmills, disentombed wagons sat wheelless out by a massive barn with wide open doors filled with white, rock hard corn kernels that not even the scouring birds tried eating.

            The town came close, so did the smell of its ashy roads and bubbling wells. The noxious air ensnared the horse by the nostrils, and it stood up by its back legs and capsized. It rolled into the sleet washed ditch.

             The inquisitor reached into the ditch and took the reigns back, and wrenched the horse back to the road. It resisted his grasp, and pulled him back the way they came. His ribs spread apart with each horse force, and blood spilled into his mouth from some pain deep between his internal organs. The horse lifted again on back legs. Horatio rose from the ground. His head rocked with lingering pain. Under his skull stars shined and rang out his ears. A fog covered his vision, and the reigns slipped from him when he wondered if he held the right horse. It sped six steps then sprinted to his squire safe past the magic mark painted on the barn door.

            Horatio glanced at the anti-hex. Bells and shouting rang from the village. The month of June baked hotter than in basque country, but the closer he came to this place the more vapor froze as it rose from the mud, and even flakes of snow swept over the barren rows of toiled earth.

          The squire tried to pull the horse back to its master, but Horatio called on him to let the Lippizan go. “Just as the exiles told of- There is witchcraft here...”

           Horatio held the back of his head and pressed his mouth shut.

         “Are you okay?” The squire rushed over to him.

         “No. But it won’t take long, either way.”




                                                                                III

            The sheriff and the one deputy that stayed used the ropes to bound her arms and legs to rubar in the stake. She kicked and bit, to the silent, white terror of the gaunt bystanders. One of the eldest sons broke into tears but conspirators placed hands on his back and shushed his emotions. The saloon maid’s elbows struck the jaw of the sheriff but with flacid force. He slowed because he ate no less nor more than she, but carried her up the pyre, convinced that they starved one burning away from bounty.

              The preacher condemned her to god’s forgiveness- hell for all eternity- and sheriff took the torch from the paling deputy and hurled it onto the dry hey. Smoke rose and crackled. It smelled like roosters in spring. The maid looked among the shrinking bystanders. The farmers stood stern, empty of thought and feeling like the silos they labored around. Their wives shook, and their sons and daughters watched in curious amusement as the preacher affirmed to them: “We voted on this. All of us!” His finger pointed out those in the small mass who contributed the idea. They voted on everything since the mayor and his family died. Their corpses floated in the well.

            The saloon maid struggled to undo their petty knots, but the smoke choked her. Heat needles tickled under her feet. The smoke only now took color. Small flames spread. Strength pulse abound in one limb at a time. She dreamt in jail that the day would be like falling asleep after a long fight but her stomach hurt worse than ever, and her sickly skin and famished marrows tingled for safe ground. Never did she feel more alone, never did she forecast the suitors she served alcohol for and sang to baring testimony to her immolation. She looked among their faces, each she knew from childhood, but one stranger stood behind them all.

             The Inquisitor pushed through them, with his squire keeping the locals from grabbing him from behind. The farmers saw military insignia on the Squires jacket, and left him move freely.

              Horatio took the torch and stomped out the flames. He told the squire to set her free, and take her to a cell. The preacher, the sheriff and half the farmers protested. Horatio did not waste much time counting. Eleven people remained in the village. He looked over them, and introduced himself.

           “I am Head Inquisitor of the Order of Jacque de Molai, Horario Del Castile. I came to Cuba in 1824. In 1830, I sailed to Mexico and hunted the remaining Aztec sorcerers, and stayed there until I met Kalister, my squire. With his help I was able to find the blood necromancers, and deduce that they were no magicians- but mere pagans practicing pseudo-sciences.  I’ve come to find your witch.”

          “Our witch is under penalty-.” the priest said.

          “Did this woman build her own home?” Horatio asked them. “Can she do arithmetic?”

          “No, no-” everyone murmured in consensus.

           “Then disclose how she mastered the arcane?”

           “Satan gave her those powers.”

           “If Satan is responsible, then she is absolved.”

            “She invited Satan”

            “Which only confirms Satan’s responsibility in the matter, but make no mistake holy man- this the work of no devil. I will find your witch. Send her back to a cell, Kalister.”

             “Wait, wait- no!” the maid protested.

            “The Ser knows that you are innocent, but they don’t. Stay in confinement- if the witch’s curse weakens, they will have to free you.” The squire took her to the cattle car sitting alone in the weeds and left her inside with food and water he carried with him. She  found inside fresh apples, deer jerky, salted taffy, and much more. She devoured with her hands in her mouth, chewing her tongue to ribbons, her stomach applauded her and electricity powered through her muscles. He chewed something hard, and reached in to pick out a fingernail. She held her hands to the light through the vent overhead, and saw her fingers riddled with bite marks.




                                                                                  IV

            The Inquisitor asked the sheriff to disclose who accused the first witch. The sheriff told him the priest did. The Inquisitor pressed his hand under his ribs to suppress the gulping pain from dropping his posture. He showed his crossbow to the farmers.

           “I built this myself. The wires spin these wheels, launching the arrow with power to rival a firearm, but unlike musket balls, I can aim this to shoot precisely what I aim for.

          “I used this in Monterey where Kalister and I met, and in the siege I helped him infiltrate the city. I shook hands with Zachary Taylor, and was awarded honorary Americanship, and I’ve since hunted every great American beast - The indeferable Grizzly! See its fur is my coat-  and even the Bald Eagle I’ve slain by my crossbow, its feathers flesh my arrows. And from you, ploughmen, I will need service to capture this witch.”

         He turned to the sheriff. “This your town -Correct?”

        “Sure is.”

       “I brought enough food and water. But be slow, it needs to be distributed to everybody.” He dropped his saddle bags. “You know every man, woman, child in this town?”

       “That’s my job.”

       “You see them all outside here today? There is no single absent person?”

       “Hard to tell, once the crops didn’t come in, more and more started moving.”

       “I’m well aware of the exiles. One referred to a school teacher that came here periodically. Do you know of any person like that?”

       The sheriff put his fingers in his vest. “Yeah, a teaching lady comes through once a month for four months.”

        “I see no schoolhouse.”

        “They use the-”

        “I know this man-” the priest jumped between them. “The pope excommunicated you. You came across the ocean to hide in shame, not hunt witches.”

           Horatio rested his chin, but looked back to everyone.“I am no slave to any pope, and I refused to abandon my order of inquisition. Despite my dedication, not because of it, they desanctified my honorable name.  Yet all lords of Europe know it and call on me to dispatch deceitful conjurers in their countries. I tell you all the same as the highest king and statesman, and by my confession, I am far from a heavenly being. All I know of witchcraft comes from my own practice. I sacrificed my everlasting soul to for the crusade.”

         “Who do you think the witch is?” the priest asked him.

          Horatio cast his arm to the expansive leagues of flat mud fields. “There aren’t many places to hide here. I need all of you to stay in one place, and remain visible.”

         The squire came back, and the inquisitor told him to tie them all to fence posts. Immediate uproar revolted from the farmer’s sons who pointed guns at the squire and demanded he drop the rope. Horatio looked to their frightened parents, and told them, “No one here is guilty yet. But since there is no jail, I can find this witch, but I will need to keep everyone detained. For the love of god, have them lower their weapons.”

          The farmers told their sons to disarm. The deputy and the sheriff kept their guns, and the squire did not ask for them. “You want us to get tied up too?”

         “I trust you two will tie yourselves up. I’ll start with you two so we can scour the countryside for hutches or holes for rituals before nightfall.”

          “No damn way-” The sheriff barked. “I’m no witch. Anyone can tell you that.”

          “I can’t.”

         The sheriff tried to gesture to his deputy but he deputy held his arm and tighten a shackle around his wrist, and reached around to take his gun.

          The Inquisitor scanned the row of people squatting against wooden posts, then looked to the steeple of the church where he thought he saw a hanging leg before the platinum flashes descended and blinded his eye. He looked to the ground, and reached into his coat to put on a pair of glasses. He pretended to read something in his journal, squinting and pinching the pages to hard that the paper peeled from the binding. He put his glasses back. The squire noticed he stood dazed, quietly staring past them to the asunder beyond. One eye drifted towards the squire the other stayed on the villagers and slowly drifted over.

           The squire drilled into him with concern. The Inquisitor held out his crossbow and arrows. The squire took it as the Inquisitor rested on a stack of straw and wound back the wheels, tightened the wires, wound the crank, and loaded an arrow into the shaft.

           The Inquisitor nodded and the squire distributed hoods over the heads of the villagers. He slouched over, the pain rippling across his torso and wringing his organs. He stopped swallowing the blood and spat into a white cloth. As the squire covered each person, the inquisitor explained: “I know because of the sheriff's testimony that one of you is the witch. Since there is no ransom offered, it means that this curse is placed malevolently. Once the malevolence is ended, the curse will end too.”

         The squire finished the hoods. The villagers mumbled and bit at the covers. Some of them even screamed and kicked. The priest sat still and silent.

        The squire came back over and handed Horatio the loaded crossbow.

        The Inquisitor started with the holy man, and pointed the crossbow at his heart and fired the bolt. The tip broke through the fence post it fell over onto the body. “I came here to destroy superstition- in all of its twisted forms.”

       He let Kalister load the next bolt.

        “I will admit to the witch, I’ve only met one other real witch…” Jang... “I grew up with a small family in a village not too much unlike this one…” Jang… Slump...Gargle... “My brother brings home a basket of apples that he said a nice traveler gave him. I hate apples and didn’t eat them…”  Jang... “One by one they fall sick... Worms…”  Jang... “crawled out of their bodies instead of vomit or mucus... and they died shortly after. I dug graves for them all, and buried them…” Jang...

        “I stood there and cried for days, until I noticed from the dust in the wind the presence of an old woman and a bush of red fruit, not apples, but shaped as such, but only then did I notice the smooth bottom, peachlike…” Jang... “She asked if I wanted one…” Jang... “and when I asked her what they were, she told me they used to grow on earth long before, and that primitive humans…” Jang...  used the fruit to poison their spears and arrows.” Jang, clank, spurt, spurt, spurt... “Her cackles haunt me to his day…”

Jang.




                                                                                  V

            The dead villagers kept the watcher in the steeple compelled to stay up in the cold belfry. The same force that made him watch them burn the schoolteacher. The Inquisitor took more glances towards him but the priest’s son stayed put. He saw nothing- only suspected, or he’d already be inside, yet the priest’s son did not come up with these ideas on his own. His hands bent backwards, his tongue out swole his jaw and stuck out, and a scoop dipped into the top of his cranium, leaving a soft cone shaped space in the center of brain. He drooled and waved at the inquisitor until he shot his father in the heart.

            After that he watched the Inquisitor carry out the executions, and rubbed the paper the school teacher gave him. She taught him one thing, and one thing only- this spell. He rubbed the paper until he saw the words transpire from blank pages. When he read them, he remembered why he wanted to rub the paper. His mother taught it to him so that for the brief periods he spent with her, he’d be enchanted with intelligence far beyond his own. The words on the page spelled his name. When he read it aloud, he knew exactly what the inquisitor came here to do. He peeked out again to see him staggering to his feet with the squire at his side, pointing to describe buildings and plotting.

           He only had a few moments before the spell stopped working and he’d be drooling over his feet again. He climbed down the rope, down the steeple, through the hole in the nexus. He closed the cover, and descended to the basement. Under a rug he found the trap door to the sub basement. Taking shallow stairs to soft ground, he walked among mildew and fungus until he came to a plank over a pit that opened in the earth. Shrill wind hushed from the crevasse. He crossed safely, and pulled the plank over to his side. Then unlocked all the chains on his door and entered. His bed lay in one corner, and his alter in the other. Not even his father dared to enter the chamber after seeing with what sophistication his relics and idols aligned to. Animal bones hung from the ceiling by grass roots, and ancient pages deciphering the rings and circles made by undying wizards long before human civilization irrigated its first crops.

           He brushed the pages, and felt the voice of the wizards within calling him to read the words on the parchment. He heard the school teacher’s voice and his father’s voice inside. He saw the horns and snouts of a gorgeous monster emerge from shadows and hands from all corners of his chamber ensnared him, fingernails pierced his body, and with them hooked he felt the entire town from the well water to the snow in the ditches.




                                                                                 VI




          The Inquisitor he coughed, and held his ribs in place with a hard fist. The sky dimmed. The squire scraped frost from the crossbow shaft. The curse remained.

         “They were hiding someone. I can’t remember. I saw someone, but now…”

           The squire took the crossbow from his arms before it fell to the ground. The Inquisitor slurred his words and repeated his orders, stepping forwards, oblivious to the deathwish written for them. He felt the back of his skull, and let it throb against his glove. He his focus on where he wanted to go until the first flash of lightning and crack of thunder shook the dust from the ground. Horatio felt his brain pulse against his ear drums. Fog and silver crystals snapped in his eyes. Another lightning flash whipped over the sky and landed a bolt into the church steeple. Sparks blasted and poured over him.

           The Inquisitor looked around for a wagon, he called for the squire to search for the wagon that hit him. He held his head up and dropped the crossbow. It hit the ground, wheels and pins bounced away. The squire rushed to pick the weapon up, and hurried to repair it. He scooped up the parts before, the squire dropped the crossbow onto the ground as he tore his clothing apart, screaming. His flesh bulged as bullet wounds opened and old slugs broke through his bones and skin. He lay there gurgling and bleeding.

          The Inquisitor looked at the church, to the saloon, to the smoking limestone  mines, to the flying barns on fire in the sky. The ground beneath him trembled and tipped over so that he rolled back over onto the back of his head. Red lightning flashed a cage over him, and when it faded he felt the wound again. A squishy bump swole through his hair tangles, and it trembled with each pulse like a second heart. Blood soaked into his glove and ran down the back of his neck.

           He heard only piercing metal shaving against razors. He bit dirt. Trampled apart by years of exposure, his face rested on rocks as he reached for the crossbow but it kept slipping away. He had to stand back up to catch it, but when he did the sky bounced, and the saloon laughed at him. He almost had it but the well bubbled, and the red water seeped from between bricks. The naked dead bodies of the mayor and family crawled out and walked into the plains. They waved at him as they crossed. Each one held a red peach.

           The Inquisitor pounced on top of the crossbow. His fingers shook and no matter how he squinted he didn’t see the small details. He glasses shattered in his pocket, he ran his fingertip through the shaft and felt the coldness and crank and shuddered. He felt around the ground for missing parts, then he set one arrow in the shaft. He cranked it, and left the tiny pieces behind. He marched towards the church, with its charms and circles, the only building that remained unwarped.

          The Inquisitor braced himself. The doors resisted him. Barely awake he found the handles. When he grabbed them his arms firmed, and he felt the high doors loom over him. Its shadow darkened and broadened. The door fell towards him, and with an angry reprisal he shoved it back with his legs and to his suspense he pressed past the doors and stood in the nexus.

         He stepped over mismatched boards into the church where he saw someone standing with outstretched arms and smoke in the shape of human body. He almost fired but then stumbled backwards. The floor moved from under him, and his feet slipped.

         A rear pew nearly caught his head, but his weight swept back around and his maintained balance. The crossbow pressed against his broken ribs. The shadow turned and he saw the features of someone young, but deformed and malnourished. With no expression but for glazed futility, the minor drooled and offered a friendly “hellow”, but it failed to warm the Inquisitor’s heart. He rose the crossbow head, he hoped it pointed somewhere frontwise. His arms shook from exerting the door. He let the weapon sink to his waist before he pulled the trigger. The minor barked and squealed, swine herds lead to knife points, he limped in circles holding the bolt piercing the back of his knee.

          The crossbow fell apart in his hands. The inquisitor staggered towards the witch. He followed him down the stairs to the basement, following the blood in the cement he found himself in the dank of the sub basement. The witch stood on a bracket between himself and a gateway where six horned shadows stood beckoning with presented arms and battle banners. The witch hobbled, his blood drops falling into the howling pit. He reached out for them, groaning in agony between his calls for help.




                                                                                  VII




        The maid awoke from her cuisine coma. She didn’t sleep long, only a nap from eating all the bread that the squire kept in the sack. She still had plenty left over, and as she listened to the robins sing summer songs she noticed sweat trickling down her temples. Wind flooded the cart and kept her cool. Someone opened the door.

        She walked back to the village. Ravens flocked o the hill top. More than she ever saw in one place before. The ground still felt cold, but softened. By the well she saw Kalister laying with his arm fractured and blossoms of blood dried on his jacket, but no wounds inflicted that she saw. His eyes remained sharp, and his jaw unhinged in frozen torment. She used the sack he gave her to cover his face.

         She entered the church, and found someone she’d never seen before collapsed on the altar, holding his own severed foreleg. A bloody arrow lay before him in light cascading from the window. The pieces of the Inquisitor's crossbow lay scrambled along the floor.

        In the shade of the barn outside of the village, she found the Inquisitor resting. He looked asleep, with his legs folded and head lowered under his hat. She didn’t know to kiss his cheek or flee. So soundless and still he remained. She held a box containing all she recovered from his fallen crossbow.

       She bit into a red peach, and when she finished it, she held the intact crossbow. She considered killing him, but when he lifted his head… with one eye open, red but still inspired, blinking unbroken.