Page 24 of Malady

What about…

Gideon is forever preaching that the soul leaves the flesh upon death and returns to whatever divine hand fashioned it. He has also devoted a great many sermons to the creatures waiting to waylay it—things from below that hunger for what belongs to Heaven.

It explains so much. Why he refuses to cross the threshold of the church. Why he seems to understand so little of basic human comforts, like sleep... or a hot mutton pasty.

No. You’re being absurd, Ophelia.

I’ve spent years believing Hell a tale for frightening children and comforting dying men. I will not start filling it with monsters because I saw something I cannot explain in the dead of night.

Angels and demons, Heaven and Hell, saints and the Almighty—none of it’s real. I do not get to abandon every sensible thought in my head because I saw blue light through a shutter and something I can’t explain leave a dying woman’s mouth. If I allow even the smallest part of that other world to be true, then I have to accept the rest of it too.

That someone was listening. That someone had been there when I was twelve years old, while I begged for help until there was nothing left in my throat but blood and breath.

No.

Far better that there had been nobody listening at all.

Beyond the mill, the Vance babe is still crying furiously. Mary is waiting with a breast hot enough to turn feverish before dawn, and that is a thing I understand.

I push myself off the wall and walk towards it. The rest can wait for daylight, when I am less inclined to believe in devils.

“Keep the poultice warm,” I tell Arthur, stepping out over the threshold. “And let them both sleep for as long as they need to.”

Without waiting for the tired thanks, I pull the door closed, breathing in air cold enough to sting my teeth. Dawn has begun to grey the sky above the ridge, and the whole village sits pale beneath a crust of frost.

The last few hours have passed in a blur of hot cloths and a baby determined to scream itself hoarse. Between working the hard knot from Mary’s breast and coaxing enough milk free to settle the poor little thing, there had been no room left in my head for anything beyond the next sensible thing to do, which had been a mercy. But now, there’s nothing between me and home but a long, bitter walk through an almost-silent village, and the moment I start down the lane, Alice Fletcher’s cottage comes rushing back to me.

I try to force my mind towards other things—like the bundle of rosemary hanging above the hearth that needs stripping before the leaves dry to useless little husks—but my head fills with that strange blue-green light pouring from Alice’s mouth and disappearing into Iscairn.

There must be an explanation. Admittedly, I’m struggling to think of one that does not involve demons.

Perhaps exhaustion has finally addled me. I’ve slept very little, eaten even less, and spent most of the night with my hands buried beneath another woman’s breast whilst her infant screamed into my ear. Under such circumstances, the mind might reasonably be forgiven for inventing a glowing physician or two.

Except I know what I saw. So either I’ve gone mad, or Doctor Iscairn is⁠—

A crack splits through the morning.

My first, deeply unhelpful thought is that the Almighty has finally grown tired of my blasphemy and decided to strike me down personally.

Then another crack follows. And another.

I stop in the middle of the lane.

It’s too heavy for an axe striking wood and too irregular for any hammer I know, with something unpleasantly wet beneath the sound that makes the skin between my shoulders tighten. Somewhere beyond the mist, several voices rise together in a low, rhythmic drone, too far away for me to make out the words but close enough that their cadence carries clearly through the icy air.

It grows louder. Another crack cuts through it. Then, farther down the road, a woman screams.

Whatever little patience I had left for this morning promptly abandons me. I gather my skirts and hurry towards where the narrow lane opens onto the broader road running through the heart of Beswick. By the time I reach it, half the village appears to have had the same idea. Doors are being flung open left and right as people spill out, wearing aprons thrown over nightclothes and coats hanging half-fastened.

“What in God’s name—” “Keep back, get the children inside!” “What are they doing?”

People shift reluctantly aside as I force my way to the front. More than a dozen men are making their way towards the churchyard, stripped to the waist despite the cold, their ribs protruding through their pale, shivering skin.

Yet it isn’t the sight of half-naked strangers marching through Beswick in January that makes me recoil. It’s what they’ve done to their backs.

The flesh is flayed from neck to arse—new bleeding welts and older, festering lacerations that make my stomach turn. Each man carries a short wooden handle trailing thick strips of leather. The ends are knotted and woven through with pieces of jagged iron and what looks to be broken glass.

Their heads are bowed, their blue lips moving in unison around that chant. Then, as one, they lift the scourges.