Prologue, Part II
Being outdoors, alone, in the dark, was a new sensation for Erik, one he found he reveled in. The landscape had undergone a magical change after the sun had gone down, and everything looked new and different. He might have been the only human being in the world, with only the singing and rustling of the night-creatures for company.
The marais always seemed dull and ordinary during the day; dark and moonlight transformed it. He skirted its edge, following the well-worn path, and, guided by the tiny flicker of the candle flame, reached the edge of the forest.
He stopped to study the shrine in detail. It looked like a tiny house set on a stake, complete with pointed roof. A hinged glass door kept the flame from guttering; a cache beneath the shrine held a tinderbox and spare candles. Next to the candle was a small silver statue of a wolf with bared fangs. At the back of the shrine was a curious quote in Latin, attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas:
Omnes angeli, boni et mali, ex virtute naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra.
"All angels, good and bad, have the power of transmuting our bodies." Odd, that saints and sorcerers alike seemed to have the ability to change form…
Erik opened the glass door and put one hand on the statue of the tiny silver wolf. It felt warm to his touch. He leaned over and blew the candle out.
"What was that?" Sister Marie-Thérèse sat up in her bed.
The terrible scream sounded again, along with a horrible growling noise she'd never heard before and hoped never to hear again.
As it gradually died away, she ran out into the hall, where she was met with a scene of confusion. Everyone else had apparently been awakened by the same noise.
"What is it? What can it be?" she asked, but no one had an explanation.
Then the cry from one of the sisters, who had gone to check the dormitories: "Erik is missing!"
Sister Marie-Thérèse felt ill. Somehow she had known. When Georges came tearfully to her side, she was certain.
"God save us all," she said.
A party of men from the village brought a limp and blood-soaked form back to the orphanage. The screams had awakened the entire town; the men had followed the ghastly noise and found the missing boy, or what was left of him. The curé, the doctor, and M. Guillaume were with them.
Erik was taken down to a spare room next to the infirmary. Tables, a cot, and a washbasin had been installed there at the doctor's request.
Sister Marie-Thérèse ran down, her appearance panicked and disheveled. "Did you light the candle? Did you light the candle?" she asked insistently.
It took the curé a moment to recognize her; her eyes and her bearing were wild, her face contorted with fear. But he understood her at once.
"Yes," he said, "You must have no worry on that account."
She relaxed only slightly. "How is he? Let me see him!" she demanded.
"I think it would be much better if you did not," the priest said, quietly.
"But M. le curé! Does he live? Is he – will he – "
"He is gravely wounded. I fear it may be fatal. The doctor is with him now."
"Please, let me see him!"
The priest studied her. "Calm yourself. If you wish to pray by his bedside, you may. But it will do him no good to see you in such a state."
"Of course. My apologies." Sister Marie-Thérèse made a visible effort to compose herself and to settle her voice and bearing. "Then – he lives? Is he awake?"
"He is," said the priest, "Though I'd have thought the pain alone of the wounds he has sustained would be enough to kill. And the loss of blood – "
"Please…"
"Yes, yes, all right. Only – prepare yourself, sister."
Sister Marie-Thérèse nodded, and the door swung open.
But nothing, she thought later, could have prepared her for the sight that met her eyes. It was all she could do not to scream.
Erik lay, soaked in blood, on one of the laying-out slabs. What seemed a small lake of blood had collected beneath him.
The doctor looked up, motioned to the curé to shut the door, and revealed Erik's face to Sister Marie-Thérèse's sickened, horrified gaze.
One half of his face looked the same as it always had – terribly pale, and spattered with blood, but still clearly recognizable.
But the other – dear God – how could anyone – let alone a child – survive such an injury?
His skull was flayed open, the bone clearly exposed. His scalp hung back in strips, flapping loosely and wetly, like stripes of damp leather – but they were his living flesh. She could see the pattern of pores on bottom of his scalp, and the hair growing out the other side.
His forehead, mouth, and cheek and been savaged, part of the eye socket laid open; the eyelid split and torn. One cheekbone poked sharply through a savage gash, looking absurdly white in that ghastly sea of red.
Vicious slashes extended down his face, over the bridge of his nose, and part of one lip had been peeled back.
Such terrible injuries would have been bad enough – but the most horrible thing of all was that he was awake – awake, and looking at her. One eye was Erik's own, but the other seemed the eye of a monster, rolling obscenely in its bed of raw red meat, and crying tears of blood.
And then he smiled at her, with the half of his mouth that was still his, and that was worse beyond measure. He now truly looked as if he had a dual nature – half angelic boy, half a demon so repulsive that no human being could look upon him and stay sane. That he could smile at her in such a state!
She reminded herself that this was only Erik – just Erik, terribly wounded! But it did no good. She felt bile welling up within her throat.
"Hello, sister," he tried to say, with that nightmare of a mouth. The doctor, busy with sutures, put a hand on him to still him.
She could bear no more. No more of his terrible injuries, and no more of his unnatural indifference to them. Sister Marie-Thérèse turned, and, clawing frantically at the door, made her escape. She fled only a short way down the hall before she was overcome, falling to her knees and vomiting onto the cold flagstones of the passage, all the while asking God to forgive her.
The curé came up behind her and touched her lightly on the shoulder.
"What did that?" she gasped, between sobs, when she could speak. "What thing?"
"None of God's creatures, I think," said the curé.
"And what, then," Sister Marie-Thérèse asked, as she turned, looking up at him with naked fear in her eyes, "What is he, now?"
The priest hesitated. "It might be better, perhaps, for us all if he does not live. Even better for his own soul."