Door of Bruises

Prologue It took him a long time to find the chapel, coming from the wrong direction. A few hours at least, striking from the unnamed lane, which branched off an obscure B road, and then straggling through open moorland until he found a pair of standing stones at the edge of the property, like an ancient stile. Only when he walked through the stones did he see it properly—the manor house with its glinting windows, the trees in their autumnal riot of scarlet and orange and gold. The strangely dark roses that were crawling everywhere. And the chapel. The chapel. He hadn’t been able to stop dreaming of it. Couldn’t stop thinking of it. When he prayed, it curled in his mind like candle smoke. He had to come back. His parents would be furious with him, he knew, for taking his Nanna’s car; even the famously indulgent Hesses drew the line at grand theft auto, especially when at home he only had a learner’s permit, but he truly had no choice. It was either take the car and drive to Thornchapel, or burn alive with a yearning he didn’t understand. He was called. And now here he was. It took some time to work his way down to the heart of the valley, especially with the roses, which were guarded by razor-sharp thorns and which snagged at his pants and coat as he pushed his way to the chapel. He stopped between the trees before he got to the clearing, something like awe and alarm together filtering through his blood. There was a door. There was a door where there hadn’t been a door before. And it was open. The zeal flared in him, making everything blurred and dreamlike. The door. The rest of your life is through that door. He took a step forward—only to freeze as he realized he wasn’t alone. There was someone else in the chapel—a man—a man who was on his knees in front of the altar. The man was wearing a torc around his neck, and while Becket watched, the man lowered his head and wept. Becket knew who he was. Dislike and fear ran cold fingers up his spine. He’d seen the man hurt Auden earlier this year—a backhanded strike right to the face—and he’d seen how the man controlled the other adults, sometimes with venom and sometimes with charm. He had no doubt the man would hurt him if he knew Becket was there—in fact, he had a knife dangling from one hand, a pale knife that looked to be very, very old. As if the man had come here to do violence anyway. Becket swore softly to himself, his gaze going to the door. The zeal whispered to him, plucked at his sleeves, entreated him on. The rest of your life is through that door. Becket wondered if he could get to the door anyway. But then a woman burst into the clearing, running, dark hair tousled from the wind and her clothes creased as if from travel. There was something small and white in her hand, like a folded piece of paper. Her voice carried from the ruins as she called out to the man—she was relieved to have found him, but her distress was palpable. His voice raised to match hers, and though Becket couldn’t hear what he said, he could hear the pain shaking in the man’s voice. It was the pain of someone with nothing left to lose, Becket thought, and he suddenly felt scared for the woman. He stepped closer to see, and both adults whirled at the noise—eyes scanning for him. He ducked just in time, but then when he raised back up, he saw something horrifying, something that sent adrenaline flooding through him—a bright, chemical buzz to mingle with the beautiful blear of the zeal— The man was trying to kill the woman. The knife was between them, and she was trying to grapple the man away from her, she was desperately trying to keep him from stabbing her… Becket didn’t have to think, he didn’t have to decide. Someone was in danger and he could help, he had to help. He would help. He launched himself from the trees and over the wall, meaning to tackle the man to the ground, meaning to stun him long enough for the woman to run. He would never know, in the years to come, what his mistake was. A mistake of trajectory, perhaps, or of speed. Or maybe it was the zeal, which always muffled his earthly senses at the expense of his spiritual ones. What Becket Hess would know—and remember—was the slam of his body into another’s. The sound of puncture. And the slick crimson of blood spilling into the earth.