Ritual without Faith

The blood she painted along the door was meant to protect her. The carcass at her feet was intended to destroy her. It was fortunate Celeste had been the first creature to find this sheep, chained to the cattle guard at the edge of her property. She was able to kill it swiftly and cleanly. The creatures that looked on from the cornrows, which she only knew by their throaty huffs and the clack of teeth too large in their mouths, would not have offered such a mercy.

The wooden porch creaked beneath her feet as she lifted her brush to the corner of the doorframe. Blood fell like hot rain on her upturned face but dried just the same as paint. She wasn’t sure who had left the sheep, an attempt to call the nighttime terrors upon her. She only knew that many coveted this house, and its ability to keep the evil at bay.

A laugh, almost human, caused Celeste to whirl, paintbrush brandished like a torch. A coyote, more skin than bone, scampered back down the porch steps, bearing its rotten fangs in a startled grin. It was here for the carcass, nothing more. Celeste sighed, knowing an offer of help would bring more trouble than it was worth. Yet if she denied her pity, her soul might smudge further into the darkness of this world.

“Here.” Voice cracking from disuse, Celeste set her boot against the opened ribcage of the sheep, letting its body slump down the porch steps. The coyote drug it as far as it could, to the edge of the rock rimmed path leading to the house, before the faint crunch of bone and tear of sinew added to Celeste’s task. She lifted her gaze.

Her breath used to shake when she looked out to the cornfields at dusk. The sky was the color of imminent snow, a black to gray smudge, a charcoal sketch smeared into oblivion at the hand of its artist. The dead gray corn stalks barely differentiated themselves from the spindly fingers of long dead trees, or the pale wet earth now chewing up their roots. They scarcely hid the flickering black shapes among their rows, or the eyes that shone a reddish brown, like bruises in the night.

And night was approaching. Dipping her brush into the blood-crusted bowl at her feet, Celeste returned her hand to the lintel. The ritual was ancient, that of the first Passover of ancient Egypt, each brushstroke keeping the Angel of Death from her doorstep and instructing it to move on, to find another firstborn to kill. Passover had marked the final of God’s plagues but Celeste knew her plagues were far from over.

The coyote behind her whined. The sound cut off as if a door had been shut. Celeste no longer had to look at the cornfields for her breath to shake. Hair raising, Celeste scooped up the bloodied dish and brush and tossed them over her shoulder. She didn’t dare look behind her as she lunged through the painted doorway, slamming her flimsy door between herself and horror.

She had neglected to light her entryway before riding the perimeter of her property that afternoon. Against that darkness, it was as if Celeste could see her fear sparking red behind her eyelids, each flicker marking the pound of her heart. Remembering her mother’s words, she focused on the scents surrounding her: the tang of burnt cedarwood and last night’s bean stew. She concentrated on what she felt: the chipping paint along the door at her back, the pinch of her blistered toe in her wool sock. Heart easing, she focused on what she heard.

Nothing. A rush of blood returned to her ears. The monster should have been devouring its prey outside, and yet she heard -

Thump. The footstep was subsonic, a bassline boosted in a kid’s car as they drove by. The weight on the porch seemed to suck the door away from Celeste, bending the very frame of her house. The ancient porch squealed in protest, a plank cracking. Celeste winced as if it were her own rib. Even in the darkness, Celeste knew where her nearest shotgun lay. She reached for the smooth cold barrel as a red-brown light peered into the crack of her heavy curtains.

Celeste felt the creature touch the door at her back, as if its proximity smeared itching, stinking mud along her skin. The scrape of claws confirmed her greatest fear and Celeste whirled, shotgun propped against her hip.

A flash of blinding light cast the room in black and white. Celeste blinked, shaking her head to clear the sudden pain in her head while a terrible roar, like an engine slamming to life, rattled the floor beneath her feet. The thrashing faded into the distance.

The ritual had worked.

Celeste was not ashamed of how the barrel of her shotgun trembled as she used it to lift the heavy drapes. There was no sign of the creature. There was no sign of the coyote or sheep. A rime of ice formed on the rocks as darkness fell, and Celeste sighed in relief. Snow meant safety. The terrors would do anything to avoid leaving tracks, usually by staying far from the house.

Leaning the shotgun against the stair banister, Celeste dared to flick the lights on. The dusty old bulbs barely lit the foyer, leaving the faces in their photo frames obscured, the shape of what might be blankets or a body in question along the chaise. Thumping heavily to the stairs, Celeste removed her heavy boots, then her thick canvas jacket before realizing her breath puffed before her.

Celeste shuffled to the woodstove, clearing a space among the heaps of ashes. Cleaning out her hearth was a task she always left until too late. The cedarwood logs she stacked had a faint resemblance to meat; she had no qualms lighting them on fire.

Stoking the flames and praying the chimney wasn’t as clogged as the hearth, Celeste eased the heavy stove door closed and made her way upstairs. The carpet was worn thin in the center. She remembered it plush beneath her soles as a child, when she would race after her sisters and dash onto the porch, into the sunlight, unafraid. She paused at the top of the stairs as if she could still hear their voices.

She was the only ghost that haunted this house now, and she knew its map as if she had created it. Flicking another light switch provided a dull yellow buzz over the kitchen table, piled with books and laundry. Celeste allowed the windows to stay open on this floor, a luxury in the dark. She’d had to repair the window over the sink last summer with strips of red and blue plastic. They cast faded colors, like stained glass, on the pale wall.

If the kitchen window was stained glass, converting her house to cathedral, then this was Celeste’s nave. She rarely left this small room, evident in the many mugs of tea gone cold, in the bullet casings scattered across the table for handloading. In the stink of fear she so hated about it.

The rest of the house was worse. Far too big for Celeste alone, each room was a tomb for the loved ones that had left her behind. Or that she had left behind. It was hard to remember for some, and made little difference. The gaping dark doorways led to regret and shame either way.

Yet Celeste always left a light on in one room. She stared at the warm orange light, casting a sharp relief over the tattered hallway carpet. It was almost inviting, like the woodstove downstairs, but required a different form of fuel to burn.

Turning her gaze to the cornfields, fallen to the soft gray dark of the now drifting snow, Celeste filled a glass with water from the tap. She refused to turn her back to the lit room, as if another shadow, another ghost, might eclipse its light.

The water had the copper tang of blood but that was familiar. So was the creak of the house, like an old coffin, as the winter wind picked up sharply. The bulb in the lit room flickered, threatening to go out.

Celeste did not move. The light spilling from that room was dread. It was pain, and loneliness, and everything Celeste did not want to encounter tonight.

The light flickered with the winter wind. Celeste set down her glass, the last of a long broken set, and forced her feet down the hallway. A terrible gravity pulled her to the open doorway on the left, then the right. Celeste closed her eyes until she faced the light.

The bare heat lamp in the center of the nursery wreathed the fur of stuffed animals in orange, the angels painted along the wall almost coaxing the flame to life. Celeste could not look at the name inked lovingly over the window. Covering her hand with a blanket, Celeste turned the hot bulb so it was firmly in its socket and placed squarely over the only other soul in her house.

In the bassinet, wreathed in folds of lace and skin, was a moon white python. The snake was a practical pet. The dogs and cats Celeste had kept even on chains or strictly indoors found ways to escape to the cornfields. Those that returned came back with a coldness to their skin and a malice in their eyes. They were the only unmarked graves out back.

This snake typically kept out the small nuisances: rats seeking warmth by the fire, raccoons intent on finding her pantry. Unfortunately, for the past week the snake had been molting, using the bars of the bassinet to scrape off sheaves of ghost-like gray skin. The new scales were almost blindingly white, celestial. Celeste could barely look at them.

Transformation was an ugly thing, outgrowing a skin nauseatingly unnatural. It was easiest for a body not to change at all. Celeste observed her hands beneath the lamp for cracks, for flecks molting from her knuckles, a dreaded sign of change.

Nothing. Celeste left the snake to its harrowing task and returned to the kitchen. Her clothes on the table needed mending, her tasks never ending, but first she would enjoy a cup of tea.

As Celeste approached the sink, she nearly missed the small addition to the window. A streak of green glass pushed against the red plastic, causing it to lift. To molt.

Celeste hadn’t changed. The house had. Celeste lifted her hand, but paused, afraid to touch the intrusion.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, Celeste spotted something so unfamiliar she nearly dropped to the floor. Despite the blowing snow fluttering their coat and lifting the brim of their hat, someone approached the house. No one ever dared come up her drive. No one dared set foot outside at night.

Celeste forgot to breathe as the figure disappeared beneath the eaves of her porch. A knock, muffled by heavy gloves, sounded on her door.

The ritual had not worked.

Swallowing the dread rising like blood in her throat, Celeste descended the steps. She drew her drapes the barest sliver, as if she could deny she was home.

The figure was already looking her way. It was a man.

He was unwelcome.

He was salvation.

He was a cosmic darkness.

He was her husband. And he was dead. Or he had never existed at all. It was easiest if he had never existed, if the pain in her chest was foisted upon her not by her own mistakes but by imagination. Either way, there was a man at her doorstep, dragging shadows through the snow. He beckoned her toward the door.

Celeste looked up the stairs, toward the window slowly molting to green and the beast transforming in her nursery. She opened the door.

The winter wind forced her to squint. She could barely make out the man against the darkness. “Who are you?” Celeste asked.

The man looked down, as if disappointed. “I was hoping this time would be different.” His voice was warm, the wind quieting as if to listen.

“This time?” Celeste shivered against the doorframe. “You’ve never been here before.”

The man shook his head, freeing snow from his broad brimmed hat. “You and I have been here a hundred times before.”

“Celeste waved her hand dismissively. “If you’re here for your sheep, its gone.” She pointed to the blood-soaked lintel.

The man’s gaze traced the thick line of blood. With his face lifted, his pulse was obvious, obscene, along the stubble of his throat. “Did you think ritual alone would save you without faith?” he asked. When Celeste failed to answer, he said gently, “Besides, you know who left the sheep.”

Slowly, Celeste reached for her shotgun behind the door. “Are you suggesting I left the sheep? That I called danger upon my head?”

The man’s gaze seemed to follow her hand behind the doorframe. Perhaps he did know her next move. “You required sacrifice,” he said, “to keep this place intact.”

The house shuddered, rocking in its foundation. Blood dripped from the lintel, as if fresh, undoing Celeste’s ritual. “Stop it,” she growled.

“You know who I am,” the man said. “You know why I am here. Please, Celeste, leave this place. You don’t have to carry it anymore.”

A pop sounded at her back. The banister lay suddenly as shrapnel on the floor. “Don’t,” she begged.

The man stepped back only to point to the windows overhead. “These rooms only remind you of your failures. They serve no purpose.” Glass exploded as if shot, sparkling shards landing in the snow.

Celeste racked her shotgun. “Stop it! This is my home!”

“It is your prison.” The eaves cracked, threatening to tumble onto the porch. Gritting her teeth, shivering with rage and bitter cold, Celeste followed the man into the night. She took aim at his chest. She would leave his meat in the snow for the monsters.

Only there was no snow around the man. The rocks were bare and dry at his feet. “Transformation is a terrible thing,” his words, nearly whispered, carried past the wind to her ears. “Your family loves you, Celeste. You do not need to stay in this wretched, empty house.”

A terrible crash sounded behind her, the house crumbling to ruin without her.

The sounds drew eyes from the darkness. A snap of teeth, a mangled swallow, had Celeste raising her shotgun again.

“I understand,” the man said, raising his hand as if to block her blow. “This place has protected you from the demons outside. I did not realize there were so many.” He spun, taking in the constellation of eyes through the reedy cornstalks.

“You needed this place once, when you were alone. When your body failed you. When I failed you.”

Her sob came from nowhere. Celeste dropped her gun. It disappeared into the snow.

“You don’t have to come to this place anymore.” The crumbling behind her was distant, unreal, as the house was unmade.

“Stop calling in these demons. They are not yours. They were created through no fault of your own.”

Celeste shook her head. “I don’t believe that.”

The man smiled. “Look around you.” Wiping at her eyes, Celeste looked to the cornfield. One pair of eyes, then two, winked out. “You are enough.” The lumbering creatures retreated, eyes leaving blazing trails in their hurry. “This weight is too much for you to carry alone.”

Celeste looked to her hands. They were molting. She was leaving a ghost behind. “It is my weight, though.”

The man took her hand, casting off the lacy, dead skin. “And you are mine. Come with me, Celeste. Be free of this place.”

Celeste squeezed his hand and followed.