All About Spike - Plain Version
This plain version is for users with very old browers, WebTV, tiny screen resolutions, or very slow internet connections.
All other viewers should use the regular version of the site.
The Innocent's Day
By Fallowdoe
"O Almighty God, who out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast ordained
strength, and madest infants to glorify thee by their deaths; Mortify and
kill all vices in us, and so strengthen us by thy grace, that by the
innocency of our lives, and constancy of our faith even unto death, we may
glorify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
--The Collect, The Innocent's Day. December 28.
---
December 28, 1931
---
The church was alive with quiet sounds. He was immediately aware of them
as the heavy door fell shut at his back, its dull wooden echo fading around
him as the bitter cold of the street dissipated from his hands.
The evening service was sparsely attended. Even so, he could hear the
whispering breaths of the congregation, the rustling of their heavy winter
clothes, the movement of hands across the pages of the prayer books. The
human sounds bounced from the gothic arches, from the branching vault of
the ceiling. The vaulting was like the arms of trees rising in a dense
forest.
It might seem strange, that he should come here. It might seem that way--
but it wasn't. It was somewhere out of the bitter wind that he could wait
for his train. Somewhere away from the wet streets.
But truth be told, he enjoyed the music.
It drew him in, sometimes, when he saw lights inside a small chapel in the
winter cold. He could never explain why.
He stepped into the sanctuary, behind the columns, and against the outer
walls. His footfalls were crisp, and broke the quiet sharply as he moved.
The choir children began to sing, lined up in an orderly row.
"Lulley, Lullay-- Thou little tiny child,
By, by lulley lullay..."
The ancient melody moved over him, solemn and slow. Medieval, and shrouded
with age and wonder. The bodies buried in the floor below him had listened
to it. He walked over their names where they were carved on the stones.
More plaques covered the walls with their dead, cobwebbed, encrusted with
dust. This church was ill kept, and the dusty smell of decaying wood rose
from its neglected corners. A small brown mouse ran swiftly across the
stones.
"Oh, Sisters too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day,
This poor youngling, for whom we sing
By, by lulley, lullay?"
And now this congregation listened to the old song-- to its gentle, rhyming
movement. They were a pathetic assemblage of dowagers, of trembling old
men. Of workers and grocers and their ill-behaved children.
He had never understood that. Their clumsy, earnest faces, staring up at
the rose window, trusting in something beyond their own poverty to see them
through. The Army of God should be shining and lithe, finely tuned. Like
Slayers-- all fire and decisive movement. Bursting through with the
brilliance of their own power. Something strong-- understandable and
concrete. Something he could touch and fight.
This couldn't be the true face of things. It was too normal. Too full of
human sentiment, too muddled with searching and uncertainty and simple
trust. And yet he felt a discomfort here that he never experienced in any
battle. It crawled on the back of his neck.
"Herod the King, in his raging,
Charged he hath, this day,
His men of might, in his own sight
All young children to slay.'
He almost turned to go, driven away by that uncomfortable sensation
creeping into his skin like a swarm of beetles. He started back towards
the doors. But at that same moment, he heard a distant noise. It made him
start. He froze in place.
Crying.
The gasps and sighs were faint beneath the perfect, ringing chords of the
choir. He tilted his head towards the sound, closed his eyes, and let it
fill his mind, separating it from the tapestry of singing voices around
him. It came from the far end of the church, from beyond the grated entry
there.
From the Lady Chapel. It wept in the presence of the Virgin.
"Then woe is me, poor child, for thee
And ever morn and day,
For thy parting, neither say, nor sing,
By, by lulley, lullay."
He walked through the arches in their symmetrical rows, against the wall,
past the memorials and stained glass windows, which were dull and dark with
the night. Had he paused to look, he would have seen Saint George slaying
the flailing, sinuous dragon, and Saint Michael the Archangel, casting
Satan from heaven, pierced through by the holy sword.
"Lulley, lullay-- Thou little tiny child,
By, by lulley, lullay..."
The minor key broke into thirds, and the last note split into a pure and
major chord. It was bright and clear, ringing and complete, but he did not
hear it where he stood in the arched iron entry.
He was intently watching his prey, where she knelt weeping.
---
Her dress was expensive, but very worn. Its wool was smooth with age, and
the butterflies embroidered there were faded with many washings. There was
a carefully mended seam on her right arm. She was perhaps fourteen years
old.
Her shoulders were shaking, making her hair tremble in light brown strands,
where it fell from her loose braid. She was kneeling before a stand filled
with candles, most of which were lit. Their dim flickering glow surrounded
her, creating a strange brilliant rim of gold around her hair. Their was
no other source of light, and long shadows fell across the small room, its
kneelers, and its statues.
She was praying as she wept, her lips moving in the shapes of words. But
there was no sound. He stepped into the room. She froze with the noise,
and exhaled in a soft sigh. She smiled thinly as she turned around.
"Dennis--" she said with relief, as she turned.
Her face fell when she saw him before her, her smile fading as she looked
at him with grave intensity. Her red-rimmed eyes seemed to fight a moment,
the glimmer of panic moving through them in a lightening flash. But the
inner struggle passed off, fell away. There was nothing she could do. And
then there was a strange calm in her face. Her eyes were laced with a
solemn gravity, woven smoothly through their youthful green.
She knew. She knew exactly what this was.
He did not understand it, but, very rarely, they just looked into his eyes
and knew in the seconds before.
And after, he carefully folded her hands against the iron rail, where she
knelt before the candles. He checked his watch. It was coming very close
to his departure time. He would have to hurry if he was going to catch the
train. He turned to go.
But then he paused, and lit a wick for his mother before walking away.
---
The snow was coming.
He could smell it in the cold air, in the dull matt blackness of the sky.
The peculiar, electrically charged feeling one senses before a snowfall
filled his senses. It hung on the homely girders above the train platform.
He would see her again soon-- her. It had been far too long, and he ached
for her. His watch told him his train would be a while yet. The impatient
hum of excitement hovered all around him, through him. It fluttered in his
skin like a dragonfly. He would see her again-- soon-- in mere hours.
He was uncommonly happy. The cold nipped at his fingertips as he deftly
lit a cigarette, and eased onto a bench.
His train was late, and there was no one on the platform with him. Alone
with his thoughts and anticipation, his simply took in the night, hands
alight with tension as they rapped the iron arm of the bench on which he
sat.
It was cold, bitter even. But it did not bother him. His blood was warm.
And so he sat, in the electric air, the scent of the cigarette smoke and
coming snow twining in the cold wind.
----
"I know you," a harried, mumbling voice called over to him.
He started, a small thrill of anxiety passing through him. He immediately
scanned the face in front of him, wracking his memory for somewhere to
place the old visage. Hundreds of random encounters and violences and old
schoolteachers ran through his mind, until his companion calmed the race of
memory with his words.
"You're in love," said the old man. So that was the shape of it.
The hoarse sounds had broken his reverie. He had been thinking of pale
hands and soft lips and the eternal, ever-present wonder in her beautiful,
black eyes. He was unconsciously rapping his foot against the metal legs
of the bench in a fast and anxious rhythm. He checked his watch again,
sighed, and looked up as he replaced it in his pocket to see what was
before him.
The tired old eyes were glazed and red. The heavy folds of its face were
surrounded by wiry, greasy, peppered hair. Its clothes hung on it, and it
smelled of any number of dead and unclean things. Most of this left him
indifferent. But its eyes were lucid, and that disgusted him somehow. He
did not respond, and looked around to see how many were watching, weighing
the difficulty in getting to his train with a body left behind. There were
passengers departing from the other side of the platform, the crowd swiftly
moving to escape the cold.
He simply sighed, and put down his newspaper.
"You're in love, " the old man continued, "You're going to see her again
now, after some time. I'm sure of it. Wife?"
He smiled.
"You could say that."
"Ahh s'good," the creature said in a tone that set itself down to business,
gesturing to the cigarettes in his coat pocket, "Could you spare one of
those for an old man?"
He reached into his coat, and offered the old creature a cigarette. He lit
it for him. He noticed a bit of ash that had fallen onto the grey wool of
his pants leg, and he brushed it away casually. The old man sat down next
to him, patting his shoulder amiably. His hands were worn and the skin was
thin. Unsavory smells rose from it and mixed with the rancid odor of his
breath.
"Things have gone all wrong," the old man said, gesturing at the newspaper
folded neatly beside them, "These are ridiculous times, my boy. Ridiculous
times. Desperate. Not many the likes of you around, mate."
"I wouldn't disagree," was all he replied, smiling to himself again. The
crowd was dispersing, and soon they would be alone again.
He could hear the progress of his own train as it rumbled in the distance.
It was right around the corner. The support beams tremored faintly with
the sound.
"As well you shouldn't," the hoarse voice continued on, as if in an eternal
race to spew out words, "No, no you shouldn't. You're too young to know--
but when I was as young as you, things were different. We knew who we
were, and we weren't afraid. No, not afraid at all. Nothing crawled and
crept. Nothing twisted itself to fit... nothing burned with it all."
The roaring of the train came closer, and it pulled into view, coming to
its stop with a stately slowness. There was no one, for a moment, who
could see them there, together.
He casually noted that the old creature was missing a leg. It was a
shuffling mass, a disgusting pile of the worst of humanity. It wheezed
into a soiled handkerchief as he studied it.
And he realized, suddenly, that they were roughly the same age.
He stood from the bench, and the old man stood with him. Before he moved
to pick up his bags, he took a step towards his companion.
Miserable thing, it'd be a mercy to break him, really.
He pulled his hand from his coat pocket, and found himself offering some
coins to the old man. The old man smiled at him warmly as he pocketed the
meager profit.
"God bless you, son," he said kindly, and hummed as he walked away.
The snow fell fitfully, in small dry flakes as Spike walked towards the
train in the night.
---