A Question of Ghosts

Before I begin my story, there is something you must understand. I have never been afraid of the dark or ungodly things that walk this earth. It is just not in my nature to be fearful of the unexplained. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I was raised in a monastery – a more sinister location I cannot quite imagine. Or perhaps that's the key – I am perhaps just of too simple a mind to imagine the horrors that others find in the shadows. Certainly I never foresaw the danger in this particular tale.

        My story begins and ends in the Glass Cathedral. The Glass Cathedral is not, in point of fact, actually a cathedral. Its official title is the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows, but it is known by locals and travellers alike as the Glass Cathedral, due to the large amount of intricate and wonderful glass work that is featured in the windows. It is not unusual for the church to receive visitors who have come purely to study (or sketch) the windows, particularly the altar piece that stretches from floor to ceiling. Father Micah preached a sermon last year welcoming such visitors. He doesn't mind if they have come for less than pious reasons. What matters is that they come at all. Of course, the glass work also attracts its fair share of less than savoury characters. That's where I come in. Not as a less than savoury character, but as a guard. I think the Glass Cathedral must be the only church in existence to have necessitated a guardian. Nevertheless, it was deemed essential by the powers that be, and I was called in.

        I have been a guardian of holy relics before, but only ever in transit. I would ride with travellers who were carrying precious cargo, defending them from wolves and bandits. A skilled swordsman, with a letter sealed with the crest of the Duke, I came highly recommended. Fearless, the letter said. To an extent that’s true. I am never afraid. I see a problem, a threat, and I eliminate it. I have been in situations where I seemed unlikely to succeed – but as you can see, I always came through in the end. I always knew that my luck would end, and one day I would be defeated – by the thief, the bandit, or the wolf.

        I just never supposed that my defeat would be at the hands of a woman.

        This story really begins about a month after I accepted Father Micah’s offer. Bed and board, in return for the safekeeping of the Church’s most holy treasures – including the windows. At face value, a simple enough task. All it would take was a few strolls in the moonlight, carrying a weapon large enough to scare away prospective thieves. Easiest money I had made in a while. Also, somewhere to lay low. My time on the road had acquired me more than a few enemies alongside my glowing recommendations. I was becoming a liability rather than an insurance. I had accepted without hesitation.

        That first night I took a walk around the Church. It is not a large building. There is the main chapel, a smaller office for the Father, a backroom where I slept, with a small fireplace and a privy, and the upstairs walkway for maintenance of the organ pipes. What the Church lacks in ground space, it makes up for in height. It is taller than any Church I have seen before, and I’ve travelled to a fair few places. I guess, if you were going to be poetical, you would say it reaches all the way to the heaven. While I doubt the literal veracity of such a statement, I have no doubt that was the architect’s intention. The closer the sky, the closer to God. It’s logical. That first night the weather was foul and dark. Rain lashed the windows, streaming down the cheeks of the lead lined saints, and snuck across the flagstones in quick, spitting shadows. I headed down the aisle, my boots sinking into the plush red carpeting. I ran my hands over the wooden pews, peered into the large, stone font by the door. I climbed into the lectern, stood with my hands bracing the sides, ready to preach my sermon to the silence.

        It was then that I saw her.

        This first time, it was only a glimpse. She was a passing shadow, a quick, bright movement, almost lost in the spitting rain. I heard, rather than saw, the rustle of her skirts, the laboured sob of her breath. She flittered across the aisle, unknowingly tracing my steps, until she drifted up the steps to the altar, bare of its ornaments, its draped cloth, a large stone table. There she stood, the shadowy rain running darkly across her. Running through her.