The choir of St. Andrew's, in apparent defiance of the traditional adage on practice and perfection, had instead seemed to decline week by week ever further into a kind of advanced musical decrepitude, for with the first notes of "Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed" I nearly started from my pew in alarm at the sound of their voices. The rasping, shrieking notes from the throats of those singers, common folk arrayed in what I supposed must pass for their church-going best, would have driven me to grimace at the best of times; now, half sunk into the torpor which so often concludes a long day of travel, its effect on me was nearly uncanny. In a detached way I observed that my recent illness had been less diminished by my return to familiar climates than I had hoped, for the whole countenance of the room seem disturbed: the lamps, trimmed against the shadows of evening, caused my eyes to water with their brightness; the scraping and rustling of restless children in their pews seemed almost to drown out even the infernal wailing of the choir; and the candles upon the altar blazed with a sickly light. My condition had clouded my judgement, I told myself. The rest of the congregation seemed calm enough, resigned in a bovine sort of way to the weekly praising of their savior. Surely the music could not be so bad as all that.
My suspicion of my own diminished faculties seemed confirmed at the song's ending, for although I prided myself on my Latin, I could scarcely comprehend a word of the service. The priest's speech seemed slurred and barbarous, a goatish bleating that droned on and on. In my state of exhaustion I began to fixate on the depiction of our Lord that hung just over the priest's shoulder; a poor rendition, truth be told, the splayed limbs slightly off from their natural proportions, the mouth and gash in the Savior's side an identically unnatural shade of red. Something about the eyes of the figure unsettled me. They had been depicted as open, cast upward in what the sculptor had no doubt hoped was a supplicating expression; but some imperfection in the craftsmanship made them appear instead to be staring forward, a kind of baleful light pooling in the yellow irises. Though I knew it was irrational, a product of my condition, I began to feel almost angry at the figure's gaze. It was but a depiction of a dead thing, formed from plaster that had never been alive. What right had it to look upon me so accusingly?
It seemed then, as the light and heat and droning voice settled over me, that I began to dream.
In my dream the body was still nailed to the cross. But the cross itself had broken off at the base, leaving only a shattered stump, and its occupant lay prone where it had fallen. My dream-self approached, kneeling, reaching out with hands I did not recognize as my own. The body was no longer plaster, but flesh, and it stank of man and death and the early sweetness of purification. Blood and water flowed from the wound in its side, and I placed my tongue against the wound and lapped like a dog, filling my mouth again and again.
As I finally pulled back, my thirst momentarily lessened, the figure opened its eyes.
I am dreaming. Surely, I am dreaming.
Its eyes were the sun. Twin suns, where each socket socket should have held an iris. But there was more, for where the white of the eye should have been there was void, and in that void were more suns, as distant and terrible and numerous as all the starts in heaven, suns with wings and faces and great spears held in gleaming hands. They looked at me, all those infinite gazes staring through the eyes of the man on the cross, and their million voices spoke as one through the red gash of his mouth.
Go back to your father, they said. There is nothing for you here.
I reeled back, and there was the terrible noise of the choir, the unbearable brightness of the lamps; and I could stand it no longer. Half blind, jostling against figures that squalled in protest, I staggered from the pew and down the long aisle. Concerned hands reached for me as I fumbled with the door, but I brushed them away. Outside there were horses whickering, a few voices from the street, but otherwise the night was blessedly still. And the sky--so unlike that terrible light-pierced void in my dream--the sky was black and lifeless, empty as the grave.
I raised a trembling hand above my head, and the ground seemed to recede from beneath me. I rose. Trees and rooftops shrank away. The dark was all around me, and I was clothed in darkness, and darkness flooded the caverns of my lungs.
This is dream, I thought. This has to be dream.
And within my own throat, the darkness laughed.
