The Midnight Man by Paul Doherty Read Free Book Online Page B

mouldering skulls, snatches of violence, the smoke and stains of past offences?’ Anselm stared down at Stephen. ‘Augustine claims our sins run like foxes through our souls while God, for his own secret purposes, sends in his hounds to hunt them down. In times of distress these foxes manifest themselves.’
    â€˜Even if you have confessed and been shriven?’
    â€˜Sometimes the foxes are only driven off – they slink away and lurk waiting in the undergrowth.’ He patted Stephen on the shoulder. ‘All I can do is ask God, if I’m in His grace, to keep me there and, if I’m not, to put me there. My sins may be absolved, Stephen, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t lost my appetite for them.’ He gestured around. ‘There’s certainly a banquet going on here, an unseen, diabolic feast. Evil spirits summoned up by the Midnight Man have, and are, feasting like hungry hounds on the rank despair which seeps through this church. Anyway, go round, look for anything untoward.’
    Anselm walked across the sanctuary. Stephen went down the steps into the sombre nave. He entered the chantry chapel of St Joseph and admired the cleverly carved statue of Christ’s protector as well as the paintings depicting scenes from the carpenter’s life. He turned left and stopped before the tombs of former parsons, read their inscriptions, then walked on. The light was dim except where the painted glass caught the flash of the sun. Nonetheless Stephen now felt a prickling fear: he was not alone. He glanced up and caught the twisted smile of some gargoyle carved at the top of a pillar or the corner of a sill. He recalled the legend of how such babewyns could spring to life and crawl down the pillar to taunt and trip the unwary. Stephen stopped before a wall painting describing the death of Holofernes in the Book of Judith. The artist had created a vivid scene in the fallen tyrant’s pavilion. Judith the heroine clutched a great two-handed sword. The tyrant’s corpse lay sprawled amongst his precious cloths and treasures; his severed head had rolled away and stared out from the corner of the painting. Not a dead gaze, the eyes held a ghastly glare, as if the head still lived and was aware of its ignominious situation. The more Stephen stared at the painting the more those eyes seemed to pulsate with a vindictive life. He walked on to another fresco, undoubtedly the work of the same itinerant painter. Here the artist proclaimed his own vision of hell: a great city high and wide under a sky of fiery bronze, cut through by a turbid, blood-black stream boarded by trees with thorns as sharp as daggers. Flames leapt up to greet black snowflakes and pelting grey rain. Fruit, bloated and rotten with noxious potions, gave sustenance to savage dogs. Lungeing vipers and all kinds of loathsome insects crawled. Demons swarmed like bees, thick and plentiful from the hives of hell. Dragons swam the fiery heavens while beneath the soil of hell other monsters reared their ugly heads, fighting to break through. Stephen glimpsed the tags written beneath the painting. ‘“Within its darkness dwell”,’ the novice translated, ‘“regions of misery and gloom”.’ He heard his master cough and turned. Immediately a fierce chill seized him. Anselm was staring up at an iron bracket fixed to a wall in the far aisle on which lantern horns could be hung. The exorcist was not alone. Figures clustered around him: a blond-haired man dressed in a shabby jerkin, followed closely by young women with long dirty hair, ragged clothes, pitted skin and horrid faces. Stephen shut his eyes and cried out: ‘Magister!’ When he looked again, Anselm was standing by him.
    â€˜What is it? Stephen?’
    â€˜Magister, nothing.’
    â€˜Nonsense!’ Anselm pushed his face close. ‘You saw something, didn’t you?’
    Stephen nodded and described what he’d