Hymn of Keeping

Each afternoon, I wake and count what's left of me.

Ash beneath my nails. Wax hardened across my palms. The smell of smoke clinging to my flesh like a second skin. No amount of lye or prayer can remove it. I am stained, tainted, cursed. 

I scrub anyway, trying to brush the ash onto my apron; the soot leaves dark streaks across the fabric, then I wash my hands until my skin burns. I eat. I sleep, and at sunset, I begin.

The old church sits at the edge of the cliffs, half swallowed by fog. Its ancient wood has been soaked with sea salt for so many years that the walls seem to sweat it. The iron doors groan when I push them open. I step across the threshold, the line between one world and the other. I feel the darkness greeting me, like an old hello. Inside, the silence is never truly silent; something breathes when I am still. The statues watch me pass. 

There are eighty-seven candles upon the altar, one for every soul the sea took from the village below. I light them the same way every night. East to west, front to back, never wavering, never crossing myself. That is the first rule. The second is that I must not speak while the flames rise. The third is when the last wick catches, I must whisper the Hymn of Keeping and sit. Then I watch the flames curdle through the damp air. 

I do not know who taught me the hymn. I learned it the way a child learns to breathe, by doing it long before I understood why.

Some nights, when the storms roll in from the sea, the wind strikes the church so hard, the stained glass trembles in its frames.

The flames bend low, shadows stretch across the pews, and sometimes I hear them. Voices behind the stone, murmuring. They are patient, waiting for me to falter. 

Once, years ago, when I first started my ritual, I missed a candle. Only one. The next morning, the sexton was found by the river, his mouth full of black water, his hands blistered as if he had held them against the fire. No one knew what happened to him; I did, and I have never missed one since.

When the last candle is burning, I sit in the first pew and whisper the hymn, then I wait; the night passes. Eventually, the flames grow small. I leave before they go out.

I walk the miles back to town, carrying the smell of smoke with me, always feeling as though some small piece of myself was left with the flames. And though I was chosen, I can see the way they look at me as I head back home. I see in their eyes the pity and fear, and sometimes disgust. I do not blame them though, so I go home to scrub, and eat, and sleep. When the sun begins to fall, I wake and do it again.

Until tonight. I awake to thunder; the sky is black though sunset is still hours away. I hate nights like this the most: the rain, the wind, the churning black sea. I pull on my coat and hurry out the door. Mud sucks at my boots as I follow the old path towards the cliff. Below, the sea hurls itself against the rocks, rising and falling like a chained beast trying to tear free. By the time I reach the church, I am soaked through. The iron doors groan open, like it always does. I stop. I can feel something watching me. Not from the altar or the pews. But something breathing inside the walls. 

I stand there, listening to the storm howl behind me. Something’s not right, I tell myself. I step inside. The doors close behind me.

 I run to the alter to strike the first match. The flame catches and then gutters. For a heartbeat, I hesitate. The breathing comes again, but I realize it is not breath; it is hunger.

I strike another, trembling, the air thick with smoke. The wicks refuse to hold a flame. East to west, front to back, silence and then a hymn. East to west, front to back, silence and then a hymn. The same routine, the same thing I have done each night, over and over. The words burn my throat as I whisper for the fiftieth time,the old melody filling the church while thunder rolls somewhere beyond. But the candles will not hold. One by one, the flames shrink and hiss, sputter, and die. I light them again and again and again. But something's not right. The church grows darker.

It rises from beneath the altar, curling through the cracks in the stone. A voice inside the smoke. I step backwards as all of the flames return, not to the wicks, but to the air. 

Faces begin to form within them: the villagers, the children, the old men, the women, the sexton, every soul the sea took. And suddenly, I understand. The candles were never saving them. They were holding them. The hymn was never a prayer. It was a lock, and I have been turning the key every night. For days, for months, for years, I had been keeping these poor souls trapped.

The candles erupt all at once, all eighty-seven of them. The church fills with white fire, flaring like a sunburst. The stained glass explodes inward; the sea roars in greeting.

I drop the matchbook, and for the first time, I do not whisper the hymn. I let the dark come in.

Each afternoon, I wake and count what's left of me. Ash beneath my nails. Wax hardened across my palms. Smoke beneath my skin. No amount of lye or prayer can remove it. 

I still try to light the candles, though they will not light. I cannot undo what I have done. The hymn comes to me in my sleep; sometimes I wake singing it, sometimes I hear the voices beneath the floor, sometimes I feel the old church breathing inside my chest. My ritual is the only thing I know. So I return every evening, and I sit before the flameless altar and wait for the night to pass. I count the candles. East to west, front to back, eighty-seven. Always eighty-seven. I have counted them for years. Tonight, I count again, and for the first time, I notice there is a flame burning at the end of the altar. I reach towards it; it does not flicker, it does not burn my hands. Then I understand why the hymn always came so easily. Why the church always felt like home. I am not the keeper. I am not the one who lights the candles. 

I am the wax, I am the candle, I am the flame.

And there are eighty-eight souls in the church tonight.