Upon This Waste

Chapter 18

They walked on until they could see it not far ahead of them. Standing gray and proud, it leaned against the falling sunlight, the waning evening breezes, the waxing shadows. It looked cold and the stones gave off a soft pale light as if they were wet. The central hall of worship wasn't large and corridors wove from its sides, jutting out slightly into the grass and the shadows. The edifice had a short bell tower and inside its stone enclosure the bell could be seen dully shining.

They had heard that an old cathedral was nearby. Sam couldn't remember who told him about it or when exactly they, he, had decided to leave to go look for it, but he knew they'd arrived. He looked up at it with a kind of awe. He seemed not to think they would find it. For some reason, his legs seemed light, fresh, like he'd had a day or two of rest. Yet, he still felt like he was inching along, like he was dragging something heavy and unperceivable behind him. He couldn't remember much at all. It seemed like all he could focus on was the ominous cathedral.

Without speaking, they walked up to the building and stared into its storied stained-glass windows. They told of things long eroded by time and made immortal by glass; things that could well have happened thousands of years before on some desolate plain, or the week before in a village square. The windows drew them on farther toward the halls of the building and they came to the door.

It was large and made of sturdy wood. They knocked on it but received no answer. They had seen what appeared to be candles burning with dim flames through the colored glass away from the hall, so they knocked again louder, thinking someone must be inside. No one answered, no sound was made.

Still without speaking, they tried the aging wood door and it opened silently into the dark passageways of the mystic place. They crept into the darkness slowly and found themselves alone in the shadowy halls. They closed the door and shuffled through the crooked and fading beams of light that slanted into the hallway from the tall windows on the walls. They began to hear something, like a low hum, as they moved down the passage.

They walked out from the slender dark path into a wider room that appeared to be the worship hall. In it were pews leading up from where they were to an altar on the far side. The pews seemed to be made of the same wood as the door, but the altar appeared to be crudely carved out of ivory or bone. Candles flickered, sporadically glowing along the sides of the room, and burned in larger number bunched around the altar.

Shaded figures lined the walls to the left and right of the far altar wall, standing straightly erect in the black spaces between sprawling stain glass windows that had been covered by thick dark cloths. They were singing in a low hum in the fashion of some chanted incantation. Cloaked and hooded in tattered monastic robes, the light from the candles flickered off of the bottom of their faces.

Sam walked carefully on past the back row of pews. He crept his way slowly to the front of the room and sat down in the row nearest the unusual alter. Out from the darkness behind the altar a figure stood and moved forward, gliding almost, into the low and subtle glow of the flickering candle flames. Their face was still guarded by shadow, but the brown folds of their robe were visible in the pallid yellow glare.

From behind the shade of darkness they spoke with smooth clarity and a boldness that made their words alike to running river water. "Are you a man of the Lord?" the intrepid voice called out calmly, beckoning Sam's answer.

Sam's gaze had been fixed somewhere between the hazy candle glow and the dull gray wall in front of him. He seemed not to notice the words that had been spoken. His stare didn't shift as he sat until the candle flames changed slightly in their lean, and then as if newly animated, he finally spoke. "I have said so," he whispered as if to no one and the words felt like foreign words, forced words, air escaping his throat and producing its own sounds.