The Haunted Pages

Southern France

The three men came down from the walled town using the secret path, which the one leading had told the others about only hours before. Blood caked his torn, black habit, and his right arm hung useless, broken at the elbow. His eyes were set straight ahead, in a face grim with pain. The eyes of the lost; empty, resigned to his fate. They had beaten him and he refused to disclose the whereabouts of the treasure, until they threatened him with death. Oblivion. Even his faith was not enough to prevent him from telling them everything they wanted to know. And now, here they all were, the citadel looming over them, the screams echoing across the mountainside. Hell had opened its gates and sucked them all inside.

As the first rain fell, the priest reined in his old nag and waited, chest heaving, every bone and fibre of his body aching. He twisted in his saddle and watched the two knights drawing closer, their faces scowls of contempt. Big, burly men, encased in chainmail, their open helms buckled and rusted where numerous sword blows glanced off the thick metal. Fighting men who had travelled far, fighting and killing their way through southern France, instruments of a jealous French king, intent on crushing the Albigensians and taking from them whatever he could. The Pope would rub his hands in glee and both would be damned. Did not Jesus say a rich man could not enter the Kingdom of God? So, how could they justify their actions. How could they justify the destruction of a way of life, the countless deaths?

Simon squeezed his eyes shuts, kneading his forehead with thumb and finger. Pain pulsed through his skull, the mailed fist cracking his jaw, another breaking his nose.

“Are we here?”

The voice, cruel, flat, laced with danger, caused him to blink and stare into the knight who caused him so much agony. So much ignominy. Simon eased the nag around to face the mountainside and let his eyes run up the steep sides, the outcrops of rock sharp, seemingly unscaleable. “It is,” he managed through swollen lips and chipped teeth.

“If you"re lying, I"ll cut off your head and then—”

“I"m not lying,” hissed Simon, without facing the knight. “Wait here.”

He slipped from his mount, groaning with the effort, and when his feet hit the ground, he buckled, almost fell, a hand flaying out wildly to grab hold of the nag"s rein and prevent himself from collapsing. He wheezed in a few breaths and slowly straightened again.

“You have to move to the side,” he said, voice straining with the effort and he took a few tentative steps forward until he reached the rock face, put out his hand and curled his fingers inside a blackened c***k. “The sunlight hides the entrance, the angle of the rocks casting an almost impenetrable shadow. But, if you know …” He sidestepped to his right, emitted a low moan and disappeared inside the mountain itself.

They brought torches with them, knowing from what the priest told them, the cavern would be black as night. A sudden flash of flint on steal and the packed wadding crackled into fire. Held aloft, they gave off a weak, flickering light, but enough to pick out the details.

Simon sat on a boulder, head between his knees, breathing erratically. For the umpteenth time since he regained consciousness from the third bout of beating, he checked his side and winced, gritting his teeth to prevent himself from yelping. It was as he suspected – he was bleeding inside. Soon the strength would leave him completely and he would curl up and die, perhaps in this dreadful place; alone and forgotten. Even by God, whom he had betrayed by bringing these despicable men here.

Simon watched them, sweeping the broad cavern with the torches, trying to find their bearings. The cavernous roof yawned above them, too vast for the light to penetrate the void. Ahead, also, the space loomed blacker than jet, the occasional glitter of quartz or some other mineral glinting alluringly, bringing some relief from the almost uniform darkness.

“There"s nothing here but rock,” spat the first knight and he crossed to the priest before Simon could react, took him by the throat and shook him, a knife appearing from nowhere, “Tell us where the treasure is, or I"ll kill you here.”

Simon fought down the urge to swallow, the knife-edge pressed against his throat. He did not want to die here, but the strength was leaving him, the hopelessness overcoming even his fear. “If you kill me, you will never be able to find your way out of here.”

The knight went rigid, eyes growing wide, the dancing light from the torches seeming to make them dance, livid red. He arched his back and he threw his head back, an animal-like guttural growl rumbling from deep within. He went into a sort of spasm and threw the priest to the ground, his breath coming short and jagged. “Damn your eyes,” he rasped, “you brought us here to die with you.”

Simon said nothing and lay in the dirt, looking up to the endless chasm above him. It was wrong to kill, he knew as much, but perhaps this was a fitting retribution? For these men to die here, in this filthy, awful place, as punishment for the horrors they had inflicted upon his brethren. So many deaths. So much suffering. Damn them to hell. They deserved no better.

“Dear God,” said the second knight, voice little more than a whisper. “Will you look at that, Theo.”

The first knight, the one called Theo, with the back of his hand pressed against his mouth, turned and followed his companion"s out thrust finger.

Simon followed too.

A light, spreading wider with every second, illuminated the far end of the cavern and there, wedged between a scattering of boulders was a huge, twisted and mangled piece of metal. It shimmered as if made from silver and within its centre, the object itself as wide and as tall as a townhouse, stood a woman.

No one spoke, no one breathed. All three of them gaped in disbelief.

She studied them for a moment before moving forward, gliding effortlessly over the rocks as if from a dream for she was far lovelier than any had ever seen.

And then she smiled.