The Abbey

Ruined abbey under haunting grey light

Ellis lay, staring at the darkening sky where a full moon laboured up over spindled autumn trees. The car’s metal roof struck cold into her back and thighs. Next to her, Dylan took a long, lazy drag and exhaled slowly, sending thick white smoke into the chilly air. He nudged her, holding out the joint but she pushed his hand away without looking, her attention fixed on the deep purples and blues bruising the horizon. The others sprawled on coats and car rugs around a makeshift bonfire, its damp, windfall branches spitting and crackling. The leaping flames threw crazed shadows on the abbey’s ruined walls, making them flicker with phantom life. The whole place gave her the creeps, but you couldn’t say that kind of thing when you were the new kid in school.

“What happened here?” she asked, half to Dylan, who was a local boy and knew such things, half to the stars spreading like a rash across the deepening night. “Why was it left to fall down?” She had a dim recollection from a dusty history class, a king with an axe to grind against religion, but Dylan’s voice was low and sly with the freight of a secret.

“You sure you want to know? Might scare you.”

“Unlikely. I don’t believe in ghosts, if that’s what you mean.”

“Maybe you should. But nope, this is something different. There was a plague.”

“Oh right.” That rang a bell, too. “Black Death or something, yeah?”

Dylan turned to face her, and she could feel him grinning. “If that was all it wouldn’t be worth telling. Half the car parks around here are built on top of plague pits. Nope, this was something different. Something even more horrible. They still don’t know what. But one thing they do know – the townspeople were so scared of it they got rid of anyone who showed the smallest sign they were infected.”

“What do you mean, ‘got rid of?’” She turned to face him, propping herself on an elbow, intrigued despite her best efforts not to encourage him.

“Well,” he paused for effect, and the wind picked up as if he’d summoned it. “You see those walls over there?” His finger bobbed toward the abbey ruins, six feet of thick stone, their tops tumbled to rubble.

“Mm-hmm.”

“They’re not solid.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re not just solid stone. Castle walls were built thick like that for defence, but why would you bother with an abbey? No army’s going to attack it. Sanctuary, and all that.”

“Why’re they so wide then?”

“There’s rooms inside.”

“Rooms? But how’d you get into them? There’s no doors.”

Dylan grinned infuriatingly; this was what he’d wanted her to ask. “Not any more there’s not.” He waited for the penny to drop.

“You mean–?”

“Yep. There must be three, four cells in that wall. And every one of them sealed up.” He held her eye knowingly. “With a body inside. A body that was living at the time.”

Ellis shuddered. Horrible. Shut in alive, watching the wall close up in front of you, the light cut off. Scrabbling with bleeding fingers in the dark for a weakness in the stones, all the time growing hungrier, thirstier, the air becoming staler and harder to breathe. It loomed in her imagination so vividly she felt her heart pounding in panic, her throat tightening in fear. No wonder this place gave her a bad feeling.

“That’s not the worst part,” Dylan went on, like he could read her mind.

“How could anything be worse than that?”

“Oh,” he said carelessly, and took a pull on the joint, its tip glowing like a firefly. “Story goes, some of them didn’t stay trapped.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some of them came back.”

“How? That stone’s got to be a foot thick, even with space inside.”

“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? But they did. Least that’s what the stories say. Only they wasn’t quite – themselves, afterwards.”

He leaned closer and whispered in her ear, a single word. “Demons.”

“Oh, don’t be bloody ridiculous,” she snorted, and rolled off the car, turning her back on him. Was any of it true? Or was this just another of his attempts to impress her? They’d been best friends in primary, before she moved away. Now he thought he had rights on her.

Irritated, she headed away from the bonfire, toward the white stones of the abbey that jutted like broken teeth between the trees. Dylan called after her. She ignored him and walked on, under a half-fallen archway, into an open square that might once have been a courtyard.

Here, the noise and light from the fire were muffled, the stones a ghostly glimmer in the moonlight. Another step and they cut off completely, like a switch had been thrown, making her reel dizzily for a moment. She put out a hand to steady herself.

Instantly she pulled back, crying out. The rough texture of the stone under her fingers sent a chill that cramped her stomach. She withdrew her hand and stared. Her fingertips were bleeding.

As if scalded, she leapt back from the walls and almost fell over a figure kneeling on the ground. Slowly, it raised its head, and she screamed.

The eyes were caverns, glowing as if lit from within by dark flames. Hollow cheeks led to a mouth blackened and decayed. She watched, mesmerized, as it opened to show charred stumps of teeth between which ichor oozed, thick as tar. From rotten lungs the creature dragged up something that was half laugh, half hacking, tearing cough. She drew back aghast, as black liquid splattered across her face, her hands scrabbling to wipe it off.

Whimpering, she fell away from the creature, feeling her skin crawl where its spittle had touched her. It stretched out a hand, the pale arm etched with black veins spreading like a canker.

Turning, she ran toward the comfort of warmth and noise. This couldn’t be. There was something wrong with her, something in the smoke Dylan had exhaled as he told his tale. At the ruined archway she gazed in disbelief.

It was whole.

Plunging under it she scanned desperately for the bonfire, the normal world. Flickering flames leapt up like hope, but something was wrong. They were moving, rushing toward her, on a sea of shouts and curses.

“There’s one!”

“Drive her back!”

“Don’t let her touch you! She has the contagion!”

The mob surged, ragged and desperate. Their clothes, their rough accents should have been strange but they snagged at something familiar, deep inside her, rotten as an ulcer.  Running, she saw her own pale legs naked under a rough white smock, her bloodied fingers trailing red marks on the linen. Back under the ghostly white archway, silence fell, thick as a blanket. She turned. The crowd had vanished. She turned again. The creature was gone.

For a moment she stood, her heartbeat stuttering. Was it a hallucination then? A bad trip? She hugged herself against the fear and the cold night air. Her raw fingers chafed on coarse linen.

What was happening? This couldn’t be Dylan’s secondhand smoke, it was too real, too vivid. Was she dreaming? The pain in her fingers said no. She passed a clammy hand across her forehead and stared in fear. Creeping up her arm like diseased vines, her veins stood out black. Her throat closed, swollen, choking off her breath, and she fell backward against the abbey walls.

“Ellis!”

White light sliced through the shadows. Someone was pulling her, dragging her up, half carrying her back under the archway. She tried to protest, recoiling from what might lie on the other side, but the scarlet flames were only a bonfire, the shouting voices raised in concern.

“It’s ok, I’ve got you. You’re alright!”

Light shone in her face, dazzling, and she realized she could breathe again, the swelling in her throat gone.

“What happened? I heard you screaming, came as fast as I could! Was someone there?”

Ellis shook her head weakly. “No, nobody. I think I’m ill. Can you take me home?”

Dylan’s concerned face swam into focus. “Sure,” he said, sliding an arm under her shoulder to help her into his car.

She lay back gratefully against the headrest, watching the abbey’s walls recede in the rear-view mirror. Gradually, her heartbeat steadied and slowed as the lines on the road ahead lit up white in the headlights, disappearing rhythmically under the wheels.

“You saw, didn’t you?” Dylan’s eyes stayed fixed on the road but his fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Good,” he said, turning to her, and his lips drew back in a black, withered smile that showed gums leaking dark ichor. “It’s high time you returned.”