While this short story can be read independently, it belongs to a collection called Dewayne Hollow and contains references to its other stories. If you are curious to explore this dark fantasy world, click here. The story takes place in Dashcombe, a fictional university town, where the narrator, Jolene, completes her final year of history studies. To complicate matters, she finds herself caught in a war between ancient gods in animal form and a cult that wants to resurrect a demon named Tutfater. As a privileged observer of the supernatural events at work in her town, Jolene uncovers hidden secrets, both in Dashcombe’s architecture and history, and in the souls of its inhabitants (when they aren’t mysteriously disappearing).
Satan waved back. I was paying for my curiosity. I could almost feel the weight of his hoof on my future grave, its warmth transmitting to my fully numb body. Except for my index finger, which decided to press rewind.
The mass of dirty rust smoke retracted in a static shudder. Shreds of electrical wires fluttered briefly in front of the camera, like windsocks. I paused the video. St. Hildegard’s had been built on the ruins of a previous church, that of the old village of Dewayne Hollow, which had burned down in a fire in 1558, potentially killing part of the population. Whole snippets of Abernant’s biography of architect Kalina James suddenly came back to me; my mind clutching the branches of sanity. A church built on a ruin, destroyed by fire, always fire, as if the flames had been waiting beneath the city for centuries, like those dormant in a peat bog, waiting only for a breath of wind to regain their vigor. A dark wind, in a dark season.
The grainy image came to life again, and the spire of St. Hildegard, with its odd pyramidal structure, swelled like a roadkill rising from death in the middle of the former garden. As it elevated, weightless, the muscular legs of a stone lion and horse rolled at the bottom of the pyramid, their upper torsos gone. Suspended in the air, the spire swayed, as if hesitating over its initial position, before settling back onto the skeletal square tower. At its feet, what first appeared to be a messy cucumber salad from Sainsbury’s straightened into the Tuscan columns of a porch with a semi-circular pediment. The church’s roof grew, puffing too high like an enthusiastic soufflé in a hot oven, before falling heavily back down on the desecrated rectangular box of the nave.
The image flashed, bright white, gritty black, and the fireball curled up into the small neighboring building. The video quality, once again optimal, allowed the contemplation of the frenetic dance of flames and embers in the two adjoining buildings, particularly behind the howling mouths of the nave’s sash windows. These were instantly joined by their fragments of clear stained glass, leaping from the burning void to resume their original position. Dross suspended in the smoky air coalesced to reform the statues of a cow and a dog, shattered into oblivion due to their proximity to the first explosion. This one, like a burn on a film reel, resorbed its orange periphery until it was nothing more than a spark, which died inside a frail, blurry, human silhouette. My oesophagus threatened to burst from its protective cavity, and I leaned forward, expecting to empty myself.
I should never have opened that video. I managed to close the page and place the phone face down on the table without shaking like a sapling in a storm. A voice, distant. A place, rediscovered. And, suddenly, reality was restored. Don, from the chair next to mine, watched me, his eyes in a ping-pong match behind his preppy gold-rimmed glasses. He broke the sacred silence of the library. “Is this serious? Was it a bomb attack?” My eyes lingered on his eccentrically patterned jumper, as if the right words might be hidden there. They were not. They were not anywhere. How could I describe what I had seen in that stream of pixels with mere syllables? We had all heard the explosion. No hope of covering it with a voice now.
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Ter-fa-tut. Tut-fa-ter. Scamozzi’s voice rewound in my head too. One year had passed. One hushed spring. One confused summer. One disturbing autumn. One lingering winter. Tutfater. A fascinating demon. The dry, oratorical voice, with its baroque Italian accent, repeated ad nauseam. And once again, opaque skies, the intrusive fingers of humidity, and the straightjacket of cold. I was aware of all these sensations, standing in this place. Tutfater. A fascinating cult. My lecturer’s voice faded away with the crackling of a finished vinyl record. Rubble crunched beneath my soles. Echoes. Tut-fa-ter. I swallowed, hoping no one would bother me for trespassing. The neighbourhood wallowed in a heavy silence, and I had a speech ready just in case, but every movement I made was steeped in sacrilege. After all, I was treading on the ruins of a church. Or rather, what remained of it: blackened 16th-century paving stone.
A movement out of the corner of my eye alerted me, but by its size, I assumed it was a dog that had gotten stuck in the construction site. I cautiously approached the small, nervous figure, bumping into the metal fencing. I sneaked between two dozing excavators, which had finished clearing away the remains of Composite capitals and wooden smithereens of the church pews, preparing myself to calm a vulnerable animal. When he faced me, I registered that I was the vulnerable thing to quieten.
“You were trembling so much I thought you were going to collapse too, ha!”
The sardonic creature that approached was no canine; he was a small, ginger-coated deer, firmly planted on short legs. A Rorschach inkblot mark framed his face, extending into two fine, single-pointed antlers, symmetric to two vampire fangs which protruded from his deceptively cute snout. A muntjac.
“The city’s sigil was broken by the explosion of this church, it cannot be a coincidence, why don’t you take this seriously?”
“What do you think we all ended up here for? Besides, permanence is an illusion, I’m living proof of that.”
He pridefully raised his pointed muzzle towards me, expecting me to beg him. I did not flinch; this divine charade left me cold now. He let out a sigh, and growled.
“I have many names, many faces, blah, you call me Janus. Okayyyy, if you think all it took to erase the protective sigil inscribed on Dashcombe’s urban plan was a bomb, then you are seriously mistaken.”
He savored the incomprehension on my face for a moment, and, with a sly air, added suavely: “Nu-uh. T’was an anodyne, or should I say insidious, second year of university. Yours.”
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The first class of my second year, the room they had put us in looked more like a closet, and we were so tightly packed it was impossible to turn heads to make eye contact. The others hated Mergot, an awkward lecturer they deemed surly, and their stubborn silence allowed me to locate the new student’s energy without seeing her first. Calm. Confident. Refined. Her voice, high-pitched and rhythmic, settled comfortably in the space, as if building for the long term. I had written her off too quickly as a teacher’s pet, but something about her both intrigued and bothered me. She seemed too sweet to be true. I remember speculating she might be a method actress, in immersion for an upcoming role.
I did not remember the first time God inserted himself into the conversation. Having been exposed to religious nuts all my life, I felt squeamish around them, and so, quickly, I internally called her Saint Maud, because of the movie. There was that eager spark in her eyes, slightly disturbing. The how-far-could-she-go-with-her-belief. Her complete frankness about her religiosity had me nonplussed. It seemed so anachronistic for a girl our age. There could have been no sharper contrast with Salome and the female student crowd, a coherent collection of Billie Eilish clones and well-to-do girls cosplaying as chavs. The tolerant welcome she received from my classmates stupefied me, and, with an unhealthy curiosity, I lent myself to this social experiment.
The irony? It quickly became apparent Maud actively sought my company. Her doll-like face swivelled, and beneath her long eyelashes, her gaze lit up with a laughable surprise; submissive, charmed. Nothing that came out from the toolkit of the perfect proselyte, because she had given up with me insanely quickly, during a meal, together in the kitchen of my old student accommodation, her torso leaning towards my anti-Catholic cynicism.
“Jolene, God knows you. He knows everything about you.” I had fought not to sing the Genesis song, but I had blown her beatific smile like a candle by revealing I had read Teresa of Ávila.
“Then there’s nothing I can do to convince you,” she had almost sobbed, leaving me perplexed. After that evening, I noticed that, for a faithful, her enlightenment became scarce. Her eyes heavy with fatigue, she confessed to me about an addiction to scrolling, and a disquietude linked to ASMR.
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Startled as if waking from a dream, I opened my eyes to two obsidian spheres. Janus’ eyes. He breathed in my face, a musty smell, and I recoiled, rubbing my forehead where his antlers had left two marks. I was also kneeling in the mud. Great.
“Did you choose the form you took when you came here?”
He noticed my teasing mood, and grumbled again. “Don’t be insolent, the important thing was to blend into the background.”
His black spots imprinted in my field of vision, they reminded me of a Rorschach test I had taken. A long hour spent answering “an inkblot” to every “what do you see?” without managing to unsettle the smile and the blank eyes of a manic therapist. But this time, the one I had in front of me clicked.
“Hey! I remember seeing you before, but that would mean you were around before the blast!”
Janus curled his vampire teeth into a devious smile. “Hmm, perhaps. Time is not as linear as you mortals think.” Pausing, he snarled. “Damn, now I sound like Aion the pompous. Anyway, do you want to know one of my other names? Geminus.”
Fuck, I remembered; the day things went south.
The first beautiful evenings of spring had arrived. I had just finished a tutoring session with Dymphnia, and Maud and I had agreed to have a picnic in the park nestled between the posh student residences of Wyston Hill and the prestigious Victorian Gothic Law building. In its gravel entrance, tourists lingered, producing excited little cries; a small wild animal frolicked on the thin strip of lawn that bordered the yellowed walls, overflowing with Virginia creeper. My gaze went from the muntjac’s small, fluffy white tail to Maud, amidst a group of young strangers. Something about her seemed different as she tracked the creature with her trendy phone. Were her clothes more revealing than usual? Her tan, more caramel? Or, was it that liberty in her hips? Approaching, I placed my hand on her arm to signal my presence.
I was taken aback by the glower I received. “Are you out of your mind? You just don’t accost providers in public!”
Her voice was deeper, husky. Her eyes, carnal. This young woman was the spitting image of my classmate, yet her antithesis. Confirmation came from Maud’s frantic voice behind me: “Magdalena? What are you doing in Dashcombe? And why did you cut your hair? Now people will think I’m you!”
Choking, my classmate tightened her long coat around her torso, as if feeling exposed, and ran off as fast as she could into the evening. “I beg your pardon...” I offered the remaining double. She gave back an apologetic grin. “You didn’t know Maud had a twin. A professional paramour, no less... too embarrassing for the religious prude she’s become.” While I processed this information, I tip-toed around it, “Your family...?” “We’re not religious at all. She caught it like a virus when she came to be an au pair in Dashcombe last year. Sorry, I have to go... I’m here for clients.”
She let out a cackle. “I have to role-play a satanic nun for a rich metal musician!” I watched her leaving, mouth wide open, her laughter echoing off the buildings and the wooded hillside. She also did a particular type of ASMR, but I only learned that later.
Magdalena and Maud. Gemini. Click.
After this incident, the believer became an elusive figure in the corridors. That semester, she avoided Mergot’s lectures on feminist history like the plague. I crossed her path only in the loos, just before the door, adorned with a freshly pasted anti-abortion sticker, closed behind her exhausted smile. Snippets reached me from outside sources. For example, her plea on the mental deviance of homosexuals, smack in the middle of a meal in the cafeteria with Inigo and Don, an inappropriate (though remarkably patient) audience.
Once, Maud and Anjanue crossed paths while Walter lectured at the museum. My colleague winced as if she had touched something clammy. My classmate crossed herself. Bemused, I grilled Anjanue about it. I learnt that before working at the Le Bone, she used to be a cleaner in the Wyston Hill student accommodations. I imagine the elite sleeping there had been particularly gracious to the girl from Bubbley Road, no doubt using the term “ethnically and economically diverse population” to describe her neighbourhood while she scrubbed their toilets. Yet she had resigned because of a coworker. “That Catholic girl kept buzzing around me like a fly. Like her cross got stuck in my hijab, you know what I mean? I had a good laugh when I heard from my Filipino friend they had fired her. I guess she went full crusades on the rich white kids’ morals. Next thing I know, she was picketing with an anti-abortion sign in front of the Bubbley clinic.” Tick.
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I had gotten into the habit of reaching the campus by a secretive path, which ran alongside the canal, the railway line, and wound its way past schoolyards and back alleys. Nature was reclaiming its gentle rights there, soothing my nerves. Janus trotted beside me, sniffing here and there what I imagined to be the invisible signal of another animal god, or, on the contrary, remnants of goo from an enemy creature. I passed a row of dilapidated and abandoned student halls. At a window, a life-size teddy bear with a sinister look watched us pass. When we came within sight of the hill, my feet refused to go any further.
“This habit of refusing to remember is tiresome!” The muntjac leaped roughly onto my shoulders, its antlers clamping my forehead.
I first heard the suppressed laughter of Becky and Mary, as if coming from the bottom of a well, before the light returned. The sensations were uncannily vivid; I had fallen into another classroom, just before a lecture of Scamozzi. The sour smell of Inigo’s salad, the girls leaning over a phone, Queen Mary stepping aside to let us glimpse the subject of their mockery.
An outdated black and white filter, the disproportionate forehead of the video selfie, the typically hubristic phrasing of the Tik-Tok format. Miss Gospel Truth babbled with a strange accent, synchronized with robotic head movements. The Catholic Church is tru-ly the best for women. I love my new job, going into schools and talking to teenagers about the pre-cious-ness of babies. It all comes down to the struggle between pu-ri-ty and sin. Everything that came out of that little mouth oozed performativity; meaningless, but, on repeat, threateningly sticky.
The laughter stopped, hidden behind laptops, and the little, pursed mouth turned toward the whiteboard as Maud, its owner, sat. Scamozzi’s satchel hit his desk, and his stentorian voice filled the room.
“Today, we will search through religious history for instances where the Holy became repugnant, and where the Demonic became wondrous. Do we have any science students among us?” A shaking finger went up. “Good, explain the principle of entropy to your classmates.”
“Uh, well, entropy is the general tendency of the universe toward, well, disorder and… the end. When, uh, ice is melting, or...” An abrupt hand stopped the student.
The professor continued, allowing no breath-catching. “If the universe contains entropy, that is to say death, uncertainty, chaos, then God built it into our world. Meaning, he deliberately introduced Evil, the demon, sin. This realization is something humankind has had to confront throughout history. Open today’s documents.”
Hearing a student voice in a Scamozzi lecture only resulted from coercion; no one dared interrupt him. I remembered it now: that day had created something unprecedented.
“God is testing us, he controls everything, he doesn’t need any laws. And the repugnant Holy, the Demonic...” Maud suppressed a gag. “How can anyone teach such nonsense?”
The professor received her invective, placidly studying her over his glasses. “Am I to understand, Miss Matheson, that you believe, without dressing and keeping, our society would maintain its order, instead of plunging into disorder?”
“N...no, of course not, we must make the effort...”
“So, God does not control us. Free will, remember? That gift from God to mankind. On an individual level, Miss Matheson, entropy is a fear-driven energy. The fear of difference triggers wars. The fear of doing wrong makes us doubt. The absence of fear, pride, threatens order. Pride. A cardinal sin. As yes, every historical figure who cloaked themselves in Holiness, convinced that God validated their violent opinion, sinned mortally. The medieval Inquisition. The witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries. We had a very good example of this in the history of Dashcombe with the Hasard Trial. The Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Modern American neo-Catholicism...”
A howl interrupted his list, this time, visibly making him jump.
“All of this was justified! All these Satanists are threatening the world, the Conservatives are protecting our values… and God doesn’t need to control us, he knows us, he knows everything about us, he knows...”
“He knows some embryos will be aborted. Because he wants them to, as he controls the universe, as he understands pain, despair, and the difficulty of life. Is that what you were about to say, Miss Matheson?” Tick.
Breathless, she stared at him with wide eyes, his sharp remark burning her like a slap. We were all frozen in place.
“You are a snake...” she retorted, imitating the aforementioned reptile. “You are a devil worshipper, always painting Satan in beautiful colors... Evil reigns in this world, but God protects me...” She crossed herself frantically.
“If evil reigns, either Satan is God, or God is Satan, if I really have to paraphrase the horror film Evilspeak in my religious history course...” It was the first time I had seen Scamozzi show any signs of fatigue. He took off his glasses and pinched his sinuses. “I understand your last essay better now, the fact you completely disregarded the figures of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, taking the humanism and socialism theories out of Catholicism… Your behavior is unbecoming of a history student, Miss Matheson. I was very clear when introducing this module: personal beliefs must stay out of this room, and only critical thinking should enter. The study of human history must be ambivalent, whether you like it or not, because a dogmatic mind is a dangerous mind.”
“You are the Devil.” One last snarl, and she stormed out. The lecturer’s gaze settled on me with telepathic intensity. Boom.
The next week, all our lecturers were waiting for us in the room, all white as sheets, except for Scamozzi, who was looking out the window at Wyston Hill. We had all heard the explosion. Now we had to hear that our classmate, Maud Matheson, had played the suicide bomber in front of an abortion clinic, located next to the church of Dewayne Hollow. My friends screamed in shock. I did not. I had recognized her silhouette in the video of the attack. I just wished to know what Magdalena had thought about her twin’s demise.
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I had climbed half the hill when I returned to my body, Janus leaping before me. Kalina James’s unfinished mausoleum lay like an abandoned crown at the foot of the Wyston manorial student hall. Passing under its main arch, I let the sea winds beat me, while contemplating the strange neo-Egyptian tomb in its center, sealed for centuries, as well as the Roman mortuary urns in the niches, their impish faces sticking their tongues out at me. This construction belonged to my dissertation, exploring the occult architecture of Dashcombe, but on this day, it took on a bitter taste. The famous filming location for a 1970s horror film about the Devil, it had also been announced as the setting for an upcoming porn. A protest had made the front page of local newspapers, with a photo showing Maud shouting, fist raised. The article appeared the day after her death. She fought the Devil, but destroyed what protected us from a demon; how could I make sense of that?
I was racking my brains when a group of young people surrounded me. I recognized some of them from the photos of the demonstration, others from Maud’s lodgings. Girls in long skirts, boys with crosses on their shirts buttoned all the way up. Nice little Catholics. With the vicious smiles of the Cultists of Tutfater, sacrificial flutes in hand. One of them brandished an artifact with an unknown sigil, and the muntjac deity tensed, his fur bristling. “Janus?” The anxious echo of my voice distorted in the neo-classical arches.
“Well, we learned something new today, the Cult is like me, it has many different faces...”
No time to brainstorm about it, the cultists launched their attack, pinning me to the ground. Struggling, I saw Janus make good use of his sharp antlers and fangs, cutting and biting ankles, but each time the nebulas invaded his obsidian eyes, the enemy sigil made him stagger on his frail legs. A cross was pressed against my forehead. “Seriously?” I spat. The girl sitting on me, drooling with excitement, was about to exorcise me, or whatever she had been led to believe she was doing, when the heavy metal door of the tomb was ripped from its hinges, crushing a cultist in the process.
A pair of Chuck Taylor All Star was the last thing I expected to get out of this 16th-century sepulchre, but the side kick the bitch holding me took in her face delighted me.
“Lady Thomasina taught me how to fight, and tough luck for you, she taught me some women deserved to be beaten, especially creepy zealots like you.”
The mischievous voice also possessed an arm clad in black leather and metal chains, which came to smash chins, and legs molded in skinny jeans ripped at the knees, which made ribs crack. The hostile sigil fell broken to the ground, and soon shrill screams echoed through the mausoleum, then cascaded down the hill.
I heard Janus panting near my ear, and a face leaned over me. Heart-shaped mouth, a charming smile revealing crooked teeth, a cleft aquiline nose, sparkling eyes, and tousled brown hair. Again, the childishly playful voice, but this time, warmer.
“Hey. Nice to meet you, Aion the god of time sends me. I’m Bevil Kottow.”
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Well I'm back and that will teach me to read things when I'm not feeling all that well. This was so bad ass. I take back my previous comment. Rapid fire action, not dizzying at all. I am IN IT! haha. thank you for your patience. I'm swooning for Bevil.
Ohhhhhhhh Bevil!! This was dizzying. I'm gonna have to go back and read it again. Loved the reverse explosion. Well done.