The Twins of Noremway Parish (9 page)

Hours passed as he continued to look through the literature. What was he even looking for? Information on the fountain, the holy water, some damn thing; but he found nothing.

As he was calling it a night, the office started shaking. Pieces of dust and plaster fell in slow streams from the ceiling and walls. All the lanterns within the office and out in the atrium blew out as the shaking intensified.

He stood from the desk, holding
The Book of Ragas
in front of him like a shield. “By the power of Ragas, whatever demons fester here, be gone!” The shaking gradually subsided, but all was not quiet. The rumble was replaced by the cries of a child: a baby.

The worship hall was now lit by an ever-present brilliance, gold mixed with red.

He knew the cries were coming from the stoup, and so too must be the light. Upon approach, he found the wings of the angelic child spread wide and glowing red and gold. The water glowed with the same light. His hands shook. The wings folded in and out as if attempting flight. The flapping grew faster, stronger as the light in both the wings and the water grew brighter, redder. The statue of the two-headed child was screaming. The two-headed stone creature stared back at him, mouths wide, and crying. On closer examination, it no longer appeared to be made of stone.

He’d never seen anything like it before. It was one thing to gaze upon its still, stone features; it was quite another to see it in the flesh. The wings folded back in around the screaming child…and then disappeared, dropping it into the bloody water below. Crimson water splashed out and dripped down the side, forming a puddle on the floor.

He hurried to rescue the fountain child from the water, but by the time he reached the stoup he found his rescue effort was unnecessary, because it lay within a dry basin wrapped in a blanket.

“
Oh goodness,” he said, and scooped it up. As he cradled and soothed it, simultaneously loving and loathing its repulsive nature, a wave of light-headedness washed over him, and he was again privileged with a glimpse through the story teller’s eye.

***

He knew immediately where he was this time. He was underneath the Waterman House, of course. Whenever this vision came to him he remembered clearly the events from before, but somehow the experiences escaped him when they could be the most useful.

Why?

The narration, like a booming thought in his mind, started as if it had never left off.

“
What is this curious turn of events?” the voice in the Darkness asks. “How are you able to manipulate this story from below? We have you. You shan’t be capable of this! Thanks to my travelling eyes, the three imps of the Rangment, I saw it clearly in my mind; the child was dying. It was dead. We had killed it. I saw it barely clinging to life as the friar put it in the water and watched it instantly dissolve…and then…that light. What was it? And now, just moments ago, a child emerged from the bloodstained water. Was it the child resurrected like a phoenix rising from its ashes, or was this something else? What sort of sorcery is this?”

“
Do you mean to tell me that you are as confused as Brother Decon? I do not believe it,” I say.

“
So it is you.”

“
Of course not! Would I create such an abomination?”

“
This ‘abomination’ is not the work of the Darkness, Story Teller.”

“
I do not believe that for a second,” I say.

“
Then we have a mystery on our hands. Aye, but let us not concern ourselves with things we cannot change or control. We’ll succeed at nothing but useless worry. Let us see how this plays out.”

“
You can’t possibly believe that I would accept that you have no complicity in this.” Were they taunting me? The Darkness, the banished Darkness: this hideous child was surely the result of black magic.

“
Let us not dwell on what we can or cannot do; nor shall we dwell on how we choose to go deal with this unexpected circumstance. The scheme has gone as planned with the exception of this one minor aberration. You see, notice how the good friar and doctor gave this house only a passing concern. If they had stepped foot in this house they never would have found the child—the original, single child—alive, and would have left it to burn in the field. We couldn’t let that happen, could we? No, that would not do. That would have been condemning our child to an untimely death.”

“
Our child?”

“
Yes, ‘twas the child of the Darkness. Do you honestly think that we would care so much about the child of Tomias Waterman if it were not in fact our own? Tomias housed us here—or so he would say if he had been honest enough to admit to his fellow parishioners that the Darkness was right here in Noremway Parish.”

“
You’ve been banished from Noremway Parish! You do not belong here! The great leader and warrior Ragas Moliere defeated you 2,000 years ago!”

“
Silence! Banishment means nothing to creatures of the shadows. We reveal ourselves when and where we will. No one can hold us out unless we want to be held out—a lesson that Tomias was surely thinking about as he was viciously killed by those wolves. He must have known that we set the wolves on him.”

“
Ragas banished you.”

“
Ragas was not the hero he was made out to be, you know? What is a story teller but a liar in disguise? You interweave a story to spin a tale. A story is no different than propaganda when you think about it. Of course, you say you seek to uncover the truth, and in many cases that may be true. I wouldn’t know, but a story teller often creates his own truth built upon the perspective he has. You and Brother Oleander wanted Ragas to survive into posterity as the sung hero who vanquished the Darkness, yet it was the Darkness that consumed him; consumed him from within.”

“
You lie! I was there! I saw Ragas die a hero! The great wall surrounding the parish—”

“
Is nothing more than a wall; do not tell me you still believe such fallacies even after you’ve seen us here? Such is the shame of a story teller. Two thousand years can be such a drag on the memory. Think! What really happened? You may be a story teller, but every story needs an editor. A story teller is a curious creature. Even now the story you had planned for Noremway Parish is changing, and with it the memories of what was supposed to happen. The difference this time is we have altered the narrative before the story was even told.”

What is happening to my memories? There were no sages…and there was never any protection from the Darkness? It was a…lie? And Ragas? I clearly see the tall, beautiful man with flowing red hair, holding the Angled Cross over his head as the sun gleamed off his breastplate, a creature of the Darkness defeated at his feet.

“
The image currently in your mind is nothing short of fallacy, and I think you know it.”

“
What are you doing? How are you doing this? Why? This cannot be true. This just cannot be true. IT CANNOT BE!”

“
But it is. Our child has been born, yet there is another that we did not foresee. This other…we cannot see what the future holds, and it scares us.”

***

“
Ghora, get up,” Franz Phoenix ordered as they entered the Waterman House. Urey had fallen to his knees in some sort of prayer; at least that was how it had looked to Phoenix. In fact, he had fallen involuntarily, raising his arms in the air and shouting a chant in a strange tongue. “I said get up.”

Urey’s arms came down, one grazing the wound in his stomach, the other rubbing the injured arm. “My legs won’t move,” he said, but when he tried to stand he found that his legs were in perfect working order. Looking sheepish, he said, “I don’t know what happened.”

“
You showed a lack of spine is what happened,” Phoenix sneered.

“
Franz.”

“
Stop talking, you insolent mutt.” Urey did so without argument. It was strange, this feeling that had come over both of them. Phoenix found he was confident, empowered, in command, while Urey, who usually took charge and often was able to keep the brash sheriff in line, discovered that he had neither the will nor the ability to do so.

It was a curious feeling for them both.

Phoenix felt like a new man with a new purpose. It had come on him as soon as he witnessed the parting of the wolves. How they had lined the path to the house, allowing him entry in stark contrast to the treatment afforded the chancellor. He felt like he commanded these wolves, these harbingers of Darkness–like they had welcomed him into their fold.

He grabbed a hold of Urey’s good arm and pulled him through the house. He didn’t have a specific idea where he was going, just that he was drawn to a far room. The inside of the house, like outside, was dark; the only light was the moon shining through the windows.

“
Should have brought a lantern,” Phoenix said, but then saw several hanging from a shelf. “Thank you, Tomias for being so well stocked. Such a good mayor you were.” Then he laughed. He laughed like he’d never laughed before. It was the hysterical laughter of a crazy man, but somehow not unpleasant.

Before they reached the room that he was so mysteriously drawn to, three beings appeared in front of them. Yellow eyes first materialized, followed closely by long fangs. The rest of their bodies quickly appeared, but in the moonlight (since he had yet to light the lantern), details were not immediately forthcoming. But these creatures struck fear in his heart nonetheless–not that he would admit it later. Besides, the fear only lasted the briefest of moments before he seized control and ordered the demons to move.

“
The Darkness awaits you, Franz Phoenix of Noremway Parish,” the middle one said and stepped aside, allowing him to pass through into the room. Urey stayed behind, ignored by the demons for the moment.

Phoenix entered the room and saw the piano in the corner. A candle propped in a large decorative holder was perched and lit upon it. A sweet unfamiliar fragrance filled the room, apparently coming from the candle.

There was a bookshelf immediately inside the doorway containing a wide variety of books. He really had no interest in them, but as the demons followed him in, they seemed to want to gather around it, removing random books, leafing through them or skimming through them quickly and throwing them aside.

It was quite an interesting thing to watch a trio of demons do.

But as they moved from one book to another, the house began to shake and he found himself falling through the floor into a dark realm.

***

Decon woke from his surreal vision, remembering it and all the others that had come before. He was determined not to forget this one. There was something strange going on at the Waterman House; something peculiar; something that needed to be addressed.

Then he realized he was holding a two-headed child in a blanket.

He would not be making another trip out there tonight.

***

Franz Phoenix found himself face-to-face with something he had never seen before. Wisps of black fog encircled him, but his attention was drawn to the being suspended in thick smoky filaments that resembled chains. The being was not there, but he was there. He didn’t exist, but he did exist. He could think of no other words to describe this being.

The three demons were in front of him and blocked his way as he attempted to move past them.

“
Do you mind?” Phoenix asked, but they still did not move. The being suspended in “chains” spoke to some entity in the shadows. He decided instead of just standing behind these three demons, he would try to either get the attention of the “chained” being or whoever he was talking to.

“
Eh! I am Sheriff Franz Phoenix of Noremway Parish and I demand to know what’s going on here.” There was no immediate response. It was as if they didn’t notice him. “I said I demand to know what is going on here!”

This got the attention of the “chained” being that looked over in his direction. Its eyes glowed with a brilliant blue light that cut through the black fog.
“Who is there?”
came a voice inside his mind. It was a sweet voice, yet piercing. It was commanding–the type of voice you had to listen to.
“Please, identify yourself. Are you the friar?”

“
What of it?” Phoenix said. He didn’t want to confirm or deny anything until he knew what this being was.

It writhed in the chains.
“I have been searching for you, Friar. You are the only one who can save the parish! My messages could only get through to you in a discombobulated cycle. Surely the memory of such a scene would dissipate quickly. Mortal memories of my communications are always short-lived. It is part of keeping intact the integrity of the story if I were to inadvertently reveal myself.”

Phoenix absorbed this speech into his mind and thought,
what is this being even talking about?
He knew nothing of Decon’s visions, and he knew nothing of story tellers. Even his knowledge of the Darkness was weak, insubstantial. But none of this confusion or ignorance stopped him from seizing control. “Yes, I am the friar, the one you seek. How may I be of service?”