Faux

Chapter 8

Eatonbrook Forest : 3 November 1864

There are no dazzling lights or unidentified flying objects careening across the starry Winter sky this cold November. Barely a tremor shakes the chattering forest to alarm the wren nor to alert the rodents. The spider spins its web and the bugs burrow into their hollows.

*

The Church of St. Catherine is nothing more than a narrow bricked structure housing less than a hundred parishioners. Just about the size of Eatonbrook's farming population in that year. The bell tower rises just above the nearby oak tree and the steeple peeks over the leafy tree. A circular stained glass window will let in morning sun from the east in a couple of hours, casting a heavenly golden hue onto the altar.

Behind the church, and what will later become part of a larger structure, is an abbey. At such ungodly hours, most of its inhabitants are lost to the dark abyss of sleep. All save for one. Sister Ignatius pads barefoot between the row of cots where her fellow sisters slumber. The door whispers open and with one final glance across the hallway, the young girl hurriedly tip-toes across the cold floor and towards the door. She waits, an ear cocked to the air, listening for Mother Supreme's footfalls. But there are none. With one final breath she pushes the door open and steps into the cold.

*

Eatonbrook Forest knows no time. Knows not the present nor the past nor the future. All is all to all for all. Within the very heart of the woodland, where in a distant future two lovers will find illicit solace and death, there is a waver of energy. A string of grass-stalks tilt in opposition to their kin. A pink worm lies in an endless loop with no head and no tail. The soil thrums, turning to rock then earth then rock then earth. There is a stench. It reeks of nostalgia, and has the scent of death. No human eye can see, no ear can hear, no mouth can taste and no nose can smell. Yet the skin will ripple in raised flesh while frozen fingertips caress the spine in an emotion as old as time itself. Fear.

Translucent tendrils grope for Eatonbrook's secrets.

*

Sister Ignatius slips on the woolen socks and flat shoes that are too big for her. The habit is replaced with a black skirt that resembles the holy tunic . On top is a heavy, collared blouse that matches the dark sky. At thirteen she does not need much to uplift her looks, but a fine smattering of powder illuminates her face. The cold adds a pink blush to her cheeks.

She walks quickly through the field, following the same steps that Benjamin Calhoun would walk when the field became a parking lot and this present became the past. The night sounds do not scare her. The puffs swirling before her lips are excited breaths. She cannot wait to see the Thompson boy. The cold reminds her he'll be fully clothed and the thought adds more colour to her face. While her parents deem her old enough for the monastery, youth calls her to a different life.

And the translucent tendrils of Eatonbrook Forest call her to death.

*

The air grows colder. 

Warmth approaches. 

A luminous glow of iridescent hues indiscernible by the human eye beyond the spectrum of a rainbow. 

The glow of humanity. 

Of a soul.

*

When Ignatius steps through the thin film of earthly plane and whatever lies beyond it, she immediately feels a rush of cold that begins from her neck slithers down to the cleft of her buttocks. She shivers. Gooseflesh breaks out along her arms and legs. She feels the prickles and gushes,

"A goose walked over my grave." she whispers with a smile. She's thinking of the Thompson boy who lives just beyond the forest. The little cabin must already be swaying with teens and the sound of a guitar played by Bobby Jones, who had learned from his father and his father from his father. She hopes to have her first taste of alcohol. Perhaps her first kiss. Maybe more. She most assuredly hopes that Patrick Thompson will lay one of his large, weathered hands around her hips.

Only darkness suddenly fills her vision. She can barely scream as the dark forest is swallowed up and she's standing in a black field. The grass, black spikes that somehow gleam like diamonds, prickle her feet and she realises she's naked. No. Not naked. She is without real form. The trees are not trees but also trees. They gyrate and twist. Trunk and branches like worms the colour of rotten egg-yolk, and avocado that has been left out too long. A hue of colours race from the ground and into the worm trees. The leaves are black crystalline sheafs fluttering in the windless air. The sky is a white abyss and at its center - eyes as blue as oceans and black as onyx, rove about. One of them fixes itself on her. 

A tentacle sprouts from the ground and wraps around what should be her ankles. Only it's a single ankle but also two. The feeling is wet yet scrapes what should be skin. The sensation is both freezing cold and white hot. It's not a scream that escapes the hole where her mouth is supposed to be but a guttural groaning shriek intermingled with other unintelligible sounds beyond the scope of human hearing.

The tentacle slinks up her leg or legs or what is there that would be legs. Around her faux waist and chest, lunging upwards before her face in a large purple-orange head that is all teeth and all eyes and all claws. She garble-screams again as the head rears itself open like a flower. 

It swallows her face first.

*

Ignatius stands still in the middle of the forest. Naked. Really naked this time only it's hard to tell as her pale skin sags on her bones like melting wax. She does not feel the thud of her heart. Nor the jolts of synapses remembering her human form as they fire feeling back into the body. Not the creak of bones or ocean sound of blood rushing through her veins. The skin slips off onto the forest floor, turning ashen as it touches the grass. New skin gleams blemish free on her faux body.

Ignatius stoops down and lifts the skin, draping it over her shoulders like a shawl. Bobby Jones' guitar is gone from her thoughts. Patrick Thompson fades from her desires. The church is burned into her thoughts like hell's fire.

As though waiting for the thought, a book slips from beyond the veil and slides against her bare feet. It is not leather that binds it but skin, charcoal in colour. Etched on the front with gold lettering are words Ignatius should not know but does.

ܟܬܲܒܼܵܐ  דְּ ܡܘܬܐ

Her mouth forms the words, tongue brushing against the lips as though tasting the words. Finally she says it out loud with a hollow grin.

"Book... of Death."