Father Andreas always found pleasure from extinguishing the candles at the end of evening mass. Like the drawing of a veil across a stage at the end of an evening’s performance, the snuffing out of each flame with the small metal cup gave one the chance to reflect on the day’s achievements, whilst drawing one day to a close and heralding in the promise of another.
But not tonight.
Tonight there was no peace to be found for the Father in this slow and measured act. The deliberate smothering of each flickering flame brought no respite to his own flickering thoughts. How could the snuffing out of candlelight in any way halt this raging torment within the mind of a man who had, in one single act, snuffed out his worthiness to his faith?
For seven weeks Father Andreas had tended his flock at St. Vaast’s Cathedral of Arras, an ambitious post for one so young. He remembered, as if it was yesterday, when he was first approached to take up the role. He wasn’t sure if it was his impetuous enthusiasm Cardinal Poré had recognised, or his seemingly endless commitment to doing good which had secured him the post, but at twenty four he was the youngest Father ever to be awarded the position at the Cathedral.
Almost immediately, he became a figurehead amongst the local population of Arras, adored by the existing, and ever swelling, congregations. He was young, handsome, brave, devout, possessing a natural way with people, words and deeds. The older members of the congregation loved his godliness and his piety. “A local saint achieving his rightful place,” they would say, being born, as he was, in the city. The younger attendees at the church were inspired by his style and ardour. People joked that the Cathedral would need to be rebuilt to house the new influx of worshippers coming to witness and find sanctuary there thanks to this wondrous new appointment within the Catholic Church.
His ambition could sometimes overwhelm him, not his personal aspiration for he was meek and humble before his faith, but his ambition for his Church and its capacity for correcting the wrongs of its past and solving the problems of today. That ambition never left him, like a voice forever taunting in his ear, and it was the very thing that led him to make choices that he knew ran counter to the will of the Church.
Momentarily distracted from his thoughts, Father Andreas became aware of the silence in the Cathedral. He stood and listened, turning his head slowly from side to side to check that he had not simply been struck deaf. Out there, in the east, at the front where the German, French and British forces had fought each other into the earth, there was, for the first time in weeks, a silence almost too beautiful to bear. The guns had stopped. It was usually at night that they were at their most terrible, pummelling the darkness and those beneath their trajectories with their dreadful payloads. Arras had been already been cruelly pounded, an inexorable killing within the city and its people, which had seen hundreds killed, many more injured. It was not unknown for Father Andreas to blow dust from the holy passages of the Cathedral bible as he celebrated Mass. Homes had been set on fire or had been blasted to rubble and shabby silhouettes of their former selves. Many residents had forsaken the city, abandoned their homes and moved west to wherever they could find some liberation from the churning machinations of war.
Father Andreas closed his eyes for a moment, bathing in the moment of stillness. Then he knew he had to press on.
With the left hand of the ambulatory now cast into darkness, he crossed to the opposite side and raised the conical lid of the snuffer to the sixteen candles on the right, their flames dancing gently in the still cool of the Cathedral air, oozing white wax onto their dais. A trail of smoke snaked lazily from the first extinguished candle, up into the rafters of the building. Andreas looked to watch it rise. The ceiling of the Cathedral of St. Vaast never failed to inspire him. His head spun as he craned his neck to see, the blood pooling in the base of his skull from the crick in his neck. He wavered a little gingerly on his feet and closed his eyes, enjoying the lightheadedness that his stance gave him, a feeling almost like a wave of righteousness washing over him from the Lord above.
“I trust I have not failed you too greatly, Lord?” he murmured quietly to himself, as if in prayer, as if in reflection. “I mean only to do right.”
He lowered his head and felt his senses settle themselves squarely back onto his two feet, his mind clearing. “Thank you, oh Lord, for the gifts you have given,” he added, almost as a liturgy.
He opened his eyes and looked at the candles, now raising the lid to extinguish them quickly. It was time to return the whole of the Cathedral to blackness, to permit it rest for the night, to let Father Andreas himself rest. For he was gravely tired.
Was it guilt that made him feel that way? Was it the dishonesty he felt so keenly, knowing he had failed himself in everything he had ever been taught to do? He’d tried to tell the Cardinal, to reveal his doubts and his concerns as to what he had done, the part he had played in the plan. But as he’d stood before him, fighting back at the grief which was trying to consume him, the words had failed him. How could he speak so openly of his blasphemy to one who had showed him such faith and belief?
Each candle died with a hiss, as he flattened the lid into the wax. Sometimes he liked to choke the life out of the candle by holding the lid a fraction above it, watching the flame slowly splutter and die, as it was starved of oxygen. But not tonight. Their slow, tormented dying reminded him too much of how his own soul felt. Tonight Father Andreas thrust the lid down and snuffed the flames out firmly into the wax, wicks and all.
Suddenly, those candles still alight flickered in unison. He felt the draft from an open door. Andreas turned and peered through the gloom of the Cathedral. The side door to the Cathedral’s transept stood ajar, wide enough for a figure to have slipped through, narrow enough for the wind to have blown it open. Father Andreas strained his eyes to try and spot a figure standing near the doorway, someone stepping up the aisle towards him, perhaps someone returning to the Cathedral having left something behind at Mass?
He called out, quietly. “Hello?”
He lowered the snuffer and peered hard through the gloom. A peculiar sense of fear gripped him. His voice sounded small as it left his throat, but it echoed around and up into the vaulted ceiling of the Cathedral, as if God himself was taking the timid voice and empowering it with his grace.
No one returned the greeting, but Father Andreas knew he was not alone. Someone had entered the building. He could feel a presence. It wasn’t due to any special talent or divine intuition. He could now hear the sound of heavy breathing, a scratching on the hard tiled floor, perhaps from hobnailed boots. He wondered, for a moment, if a soldier had entered, looking for respite, maybe injured at the front? After all, the front was only a few miles from here. It might be possible.
“Hello?” he called again, a little stronger this time. “Is any one there?”
He tilted his head to one side and listened intently. The grating of a chair being pushed roughly to one side drew his eyes into the darkness in the middle of the nave. He peered, but all he could see were shadows.
“I know there’s someone there,” he called, trying to sound both assured and welcoming, but aware that his voice wavered with the final words. He could feel his heart beat hard within his chest, a trembling in his hands.
He placed the snuffer on the candle tray and stepped cautiously to the front of the ambulatory, as a servant might do when called before a tyrannical king. He peered out over the Cathedral blackness, his eyes flicking backwards and forwards, urgently trying to see someone, something. He tried to speak again, but the shadows cast from the few remaining candles appeared to rise up amongst the pews and overwhelm him. There was someone who chose not to be seen with him in the Cathedral, of that he had no doubt. He drew back, defeated with fear, his hand to his chest, his eyes wide. He stole past the candles to the antechamber. He was already tugging off his top garments by the time he’d reached it. He heaved the robe over his head and hurried to the cupboard to hang it on the peg.
It was then the shadow came at him.
It was the beast’s eyes which snagged him first, like a hook in a fish’s mouth, the smouldering rage of its glare grasping and holding his gaze. He tried to scream, but his tongue was lame, even after he felt sharp teeth tearing into the soft flesh of his left arm.
There was no pain, no fear, just surprise when he looked to his side and saw the tattered remains of his butchered limb gushing blood onto the crouched feral figure in front of him. Vast and repugnant, its fetid coat knotted, its wicked eyes staring upwards into the Priest’s with hatred and malevolent rage. It readied itself to spring.
Father Andreas fell backwards as the thing leapt, a filthy thick taloned claw catching him hard on the side of the face. It sliced effortlessly through his skull, gashing open the Father’s eye socket, splattering the far wall of the chamber with torn shards of bone and flesh from his face.
He stumbled, trying to raise his one remaining arm in defence or supplication. Blood gushed out of his face, pumping down his cheek and into his mouth. Finally he found his voice, as if the rich liquid had invigorated his tongue. All he could do was scream. He managed to get to his feet and shuffled around in a circle, disorientated, trying to rebalance himself against his missing limb, staggering like a drunkard towards the door.
For a moment, the beast sat back on its haunches and watched, its head turned to one side like a cat teasing a dying mouse. It lingered, almost hidden in the shadow of the antechamber, as if in that moment finding pity in the floundering, weeping figure of the Father. It watched him stagger through the opening and out onto the ambulatory, before rising up and bounding after him with giant, effortless leaps.
There was a swagger to the way the thing moved, a terrible elegance and might, as if every step brought the beast pleasure, a pride in the magnificence of its prowess.
Andreas threw himself down the steps of the apse, tumbling into the pews at the front of the assembly. His head spun. He could feel the life blood pumping out of him, the front of his cassock drenched, his face sticky and tasting of iron. He held up his right hand, slick with gore, and turned it over in attempt to kiss his signet ring.
A dreadful weight thudded into the back of him, his chest thumped hard, as if he had been shot. He felt his legs crumple and he tried to let himself fall, to collapse into the thick embracing darkness of death creeping in from the periphery of his vision. But he found his legs wouldn’t buckle, as if, in his final moments, they had found new vigour, new life. He allowed a last joyous thought to wander through his slowly dying mind, that the Lord had granted him new strength at the end.
He turned his one good eye downwards and despairingly saw how the beast’s taloned claw had punched straight through his body, the wicked thing dripping with his lifeblood from the gaping hole in his ribs.
He realised he was unable to move, unable to breathe. His mind faded. He felt his body rise and be thrown backwards as the clawed hand pulled away, thudding him hard into the bottom step of the apse. He slumped over onto his back, staring up at the Cathedral’s ceiling. How he loved that ceiling, he thought, as death swept in and his vision faded to blackness.