The Saint - Chapter Two (DRAFT)

 

Chapter Two

by Miles Foley 

Disclaimer: this was an attempt (in vain) to catalogue a strange and visceral dream as a story, which I have come to accept will not work. However, there are some good moments, albeit fever-dream-esque.

Unfortunately for Errard, the Owl had heard his scrambling and had come down into the sixth’s room’s bowels, fuzzy electric lamp buzzing in her hand. He was removed post haste, her copy of The Saint lying on the table. Looking back as he was shoved out the door, the leaves of the forget-me-not were still visible between the pages.

The streets outside were moonlight beneath the fog. That never-lifting cloud of obscurity swirled around his feet as he walked. He shook with cold, though the night air was gentle. He felt as though eyes sat behind his eyes, and his finger bones were made of other fingers. He felt wrong. Along the walk home, he saw few people. None met his eyes as he walked, water dripping from his mouth. He stumbled into the wicker woman’s home using a key that felt like he was holding 3 molars rather than a piece of metal. He saw it as metal, knew it was, but the boy’s fingers had become confused by something that lay watching him from between those pages. She was sitting, weaving her latest unfinished basket by the window and watching him with her one eye. Errard paid her no mind as he rolled into his room and locked the door. Hacking, he clawed at his throat. Algae caught itself between his fingers, pulling slowly in thick strands from his mouth. He retched onto the floor, spitting more water. After a few minutes, within which he undressed his chest bindings to breathe easier, he slumped to the floor, mouth finally no longer spewing its aquatic treasures. Errard felt the cool, stale air of the room flood his lungs and gulped thankfully at the reprieve. Within a few moments he was asleep, exhausted and bare on the willow coated floor.

He was woken the next morning by a harsh banging at his door. He scrambled up, covering himself and peeping out into the hall. The wicker woman stared and grunted, throwing her head in the direction of the front entrance. There stood Florence, her linen journal clutched tightly to her dress, hair woven the same way, wearing the same smock. She glanced stiffly past his landlady and looked at him expectantly.

“You’re not even dressed yet?” Errard looked down, his bare chest covered by a clutched sweater.

“Uh… no.”

“Well, hurry up. You have the second volume to review.” With the sound of cracking stone, memories of last night flooded back wrapping him in a terror than fixed his feet to the floor.

“No,” he uttered.

“I’m sorry?” Florence abandoned all pretence and entered the hallway The wicker woman left to sit in her chair, seemingly unconcerned with the evolving events. “It sounded like you just said no.” Errard looked at her earnestly and a little viciously.

“I don’t know what the fuck I read last night,” he hissed, “but it was not the word of a Saint.” Florence’s eyes flared in anger, a cold blue fire burning behind the beautiful irises. Her expression, however, remained calm.

“You had the honour to read the works of Irving, saint of change, expression and growth. You have heard his word and he has blessed you.” She squinted her eyes, looking closely at Errard’s face. “He’s… he’s done more than that. He’s given you something.” She looked down at Errard’s chest. “Or taken something away.”

Instinctively, he made to cover the front of his torso from her prying eyes, but somehow it felt… emptier. Clutching beneath the knitted fabric, he felt for his breasts – something he had tried to hide for many years, but there was only so far cloth bandages could get you. The slightest bump at the front would send him into a spiral, and so he favoured larger clothes to hide what God had deigned to be his. But now there was nothing. No lump, no mass. He lowered the sweater and realised for the first time in his life, his chest was flat. There was no scarring, no blood – they had simply disappeared. Tears welled in his eyes, and for a split second he worried the algae would return in a newly terrible place. But no such thing came, and he turned to look at the bandages torn and tangled on the floor.

“What… how…?” The tears spilled forward now, a joy so burning and ecstatic he could barely stop smiling. Florence looked at him again, this time not unkindly.

“He is the saint of change.”

 …

Errard didn’t take his hands from his chest the entire walk to The Library, still disbelieving the truth of his touch. He even brought his bindings, scrunched up in his pocket, just in case the magic – for what else could it be - decided to undo itself. Florence had provided him no further answers, only gesturing him to the doorway and repositioning her notebook. They had stepped out together, the blue mist of the morning parting at their feet. It felt like he was walking on clouds, although perhaps that was the adrenaline. Florence walked with purpose, the slim soles of her shoes clipping against the fumbling cobblestones. He hadn’t been this close to her before. She smelled of violets and… He hid his face as his nose wrinkled… Something acrid. It was like… rotted pond water. The kind that is covered in decaying, watery vegetation and holds foul looking fish. He coughed, attempting to shoot the smell from his nose, unsuccessfully. Luckily he didn’t need to look for a distraction: she gave him one by extending her arm to halt his pace.

“I hope you realise what this means,” she said quietly. Errard shivered beneath his thick, faded-green sweater. Her words were simple but embroidered with a doom he could only feel – not yet comprehend.

“I’m not quite sure I do,” he replied.

Her blue eyes flicked sideways at him, sharp as broken ice. “Then you’d better realise quickly. Saint Irving -bless his sight, love and hands - has given you a gift.” She stepped in front of him and turned so they were inches apart. If this had been any other person, Errard might have blushed. But the intimacy was not warm or inviting; rather it was cold and invasive. He could feel her breath on his lips. “And a gift… demands a gift,” she murmured before turning and resuming their walk. Errard absent-mindedly ran a trembling hand over his new chest and forced his feet to move forward after her.

 

They arrived at The Library, fog still congealed around their ankles. The Owl paid no mind to Errard now that he was accompanied by Florence. It seems she was a model visitor. Since it was the early morning, sunlight poured in through a skylight above the front desk area. It seemed that the foyer of the Library stretched up almost three stories, walls covered with an impossible amount of tomes. “I don’t think there’s enough fiction in the world to fill this place,” Errard murmured. “At least some of these have to be Encyclopedia Britannica collections.” Florence sighed as she stepped through the door to the first back room, dipping down to its lowered entry. “Y-you know, those big collections of books your grandmother has and never reads?” Florence continued to ignore him and continued to the far door. The first room was plain; beige and worn, it seemed the most well worn of the rooms and accessible to the public at all times – should they respect the Owl’s rules. Posters of plants and dissected animals adorned the walls. Errard wondered if children came here to study for school. It would be more than a week later until he realised there were no children living in Everton.

The second room was painted a dark green, with a surprisingly fancy set of velvet furniture. It was worn, almost threadbare, but at one stage in her life the Owl must have been able to afford something better than fourth-hand books. Judging by the third room, that time was long since passed. Room three consisted of a single chair facing a south window. The fourth room held a complicated rigging of ropes, twine and something akin to hair all tightly wound to hooks embedded in every surface of the room. They were permitted to move through this mess by a small path. It was in this room Errard realised absolutely none of this was here yesterday. It had been a few yellowed rooms and the occasional bean bag. Dubious as his memory was, the hair was something he felt he would remember. It had the same tangled consistency as the algae. The fifth room was seemingly normal. Robin’s egg blue on the walls, a few comfortable armchairs accompanied by the usual bookshelves. But the entire time they were moving through the room, Florence’s woven hair was floating as though in water, and the air from Errard’s lungs felt trapped and expanding at a rapid pace. It was only a few feet across the room to the sixth room’s door, but he ended up scrambling, attempting to overtake the calmly walking Florence. He burst through the door, slamming to the ground and expecting a wave of water to come crashing in behind him. But it was silent. Gray sat waiting at the study table in the same yellowed, tired room he had been in yesterday. Sunlight streamed in through a grimy bar window and three fat novels sat waiting. The stalk of the forget-me-not was gone from his copy of The Saint. Florence strode past Errard’ prone form, stepping over his arms and nodding at Gray, who barely managed to nod back. Slowly lifting back to his feet, Errard coughed and attempted to catch his breath. The old man’s eyes were vacant as usual, but Florence’s glinted with something he could easily mistake for pride, though by now he was learning better.

“Come and sit, blessed boy,” she smiled. “You have passed through his waters. You are a follower of Saint Irving.”

 

The second day of 'study' was far more boring than Errard was prepared for. He expected to be plunged again into the suffocating and freeing dark waters of St Irving's cold embrace, but instead he was faced with 8 straight hours of Florence making sure he was reading every very normal word on every very normal page. The text itself was odd, often making use of metaphors Errard couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

“By my river, a caved mind opens and from it runs forth a terrier.” This one caught his eye, and he dutifully took down note of its page number and his deeply provoking thoughts. ‘Dog?’ he wrote. Florence glared at him flatly.

Occasionally he would jokingly bring up the idea of breakfast, or lunch, or whatever meal was most appropriate for the time of day. He was famished, having come directly from the wicker woman’s house to the Library and not eating. Florence would dismiss his comments and continue working on her own journal, while Gray simply turned page after page slowly, reading at a seemingly impossible speed – or not reading at all. His neat, unopened journal sat beside him, a constant irritant to Florence’s mood. Eventually, she pulled forth a small bundle and begin to eat a plain sandwich. Gray did the same, taking achingly slow bites of the simple cheese bun. Errard felt an anger flare inside him, irrational and perfectly justified at the same time.

“Why didn’t you tell me to bring something?” he cried at Florence, voice shattering the strange warm brown silence that had engulfed them for hours. She didn’t meet his eyes, nor respond. Gray was lost in the apparently euphoric flavour of his cheese. “No,” he said, looking at both of them and rising from his low chair. “I have sat here and read your damned drivel for hours, no questions, no complaints, and yet you wouldn’t give me the simple comment that hey you might need to bring lunch?” Frustration was filling his throat like hot water, bubbling and broiling his insides. “I haven’t been given an answer as to what this saint has used to magically chop off my chest, and I have been reading alien riddles for an entire day…” He looked at them. Both were still transfixed on their lunches, though Florence now had an air of smug spite. “I’m leaving, I don’t even know why I came,” he grunted, grabbing his sweater and opening the door to the fifth room. The water hit him with a force that shook his bones. It wasn’t an illusion like last time, where he felt dry while walking under a lake. This time it was water, cold and bracing and choking. It wrapped around him, drenching his clothes and holding him too tight. His arms thrashed against the compact waves, but it was no use. He felt his strength waning and the world turning so dark it was like the water had turned to pitch.

“You’ve more to learn.”

The voice was like a whisper you hear before waking up properly: hissed, screamed and murmured all at the same time. Suddenly he was being hurled against the back wall with inhuman force.