Haunting Miranda

"This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine." Shakespeare, The Tempest

      I saw him in the oak tree on the first night of Advent, the day when Sr. Celestine had lit the first candle in the wreath, heralding the birth of Jesus. His arms sprouted from the tree's branches. His face crackled forth from its venerable trunk. A smile creased that face. A smile carved from smoke and wood. And it was dark and beautiful, and the sight of it lashed me to the ground.
      There came in the wood a violent shuddering. The very air seemed to vibrate, stretching and pulling until he at last fully emerged. The eyes that had come to me in what I thought were childhood dreams impaled me. They glittered and sang to me as his long white fingers beat the air. They spoke to me of pleasure and pain (I love you, Miranda).
      I looked at the tree, all ripe with hell, and put my hands over my ears to shut out its unearthly keening. It screamed as Dryan stepped out of its wizened trunk. The branches withered and gold and scarlet leaves exploded as he walked over them.
      (I love you, Miranda. I love you.)
      I held fast to the gold pentagram my friend Hester had given to me. I held fast and ran out of my room into the cold December night, not even bothering with a torchlight. I cried and ran through the woods to Hester's cottage. Dear God, help me, help me, I prayed, tripping over the hem of my gown. A wave of nausea overtook me; I stopped, leaned over and retched onto the wet ground. As I stood, trembling, I saw the clumps of grass on my feet. Wet, brown tendrils that writhed and bled as I screamed and clawed them off my feet.

by Frank Wu © 1998. All rights reserved.

      They said later that the Woodward's infant daughter was found dead in her cradle that night, her angelic face an ugly, mottled blue.
      The cattle on the neighboring farm stampeded, pitching themselves against the barn doors until, in their frenzy, their tongues swelled in their mouths, asphyxiating them. And Jed Hartwell, my father's stable boy, had his skull bashed in by my father's prize mare as she circled and kicked and at last fell to the ground, caught in a violent seizure.
      They spoke of all these things later, and more, but on that cold autumn night, nothing was said. No one knew of the things which had befallen their kinsmen at the time they transpired, and no one had ever seen the being called Dryan, save me
      "Sit down and drink, Miranda. Warm yourself and calm down." I stood in Hester's cottage, shivering, grateful for the mug of hot tea she thrust into my hands.
      I looked at my dear friend and thought of what I had been told about her, that Hester was but an ignorant crone. That she was a scullery maid in the church's employ and it was unseemly for me to be so familiar with her. I wondered what people would say if they knew all that Hester had told me, if they knew I was sitting by her fire speaking of demons whilst drinking tea. For Hester dwelled on portents and stories, especially those of local origin.
      When I was but ten, she had told me the legend of the oak tree on my father's property. One cold and dark December night, as it went, a young Jesuit called Dryan, after being caught in the arms of a seminary student, had been hung and burned to death on the grand old oak. He spoke in tongues, Hester said, as fire snaked up his body, crying out in high pitched words about rivers of blood and years of darkness.
      How silly, I'd told her. What nonsense. The nuns told us to heed no tales save those the Holy Church sanctioned, and I listened to them. When on one fine spring day my pony Madrigal reared and pitched me into the fabled tree, and Hester wept and told me I must take great care, I again dismissed her. My blood and bone were in the tree, she pressed, joining me with the spirit of Dryan. Feeding his energy. Giving it strength. I told her to stop speaking of such things. Still, from that day forward I wore always around my neck the gold crucifix I had been given on my thirteenth birthday.
      As the years passed, I rarely thought of Hester's stories, until the dreams began. Dreams of a golden seraph carrying me through mists while whispering words of love. Pink cheeked, he was. Eyes the color of rain.
      When I asked my dream-angel where we were, he looked at me and smiled. "Why, this is my garden, Miranda," he said. "And I am its gardener."
      "And what am I?" I asked him.
      The mists parted. A high keening filled the air. "You," Dryan said, "are the water."
      I looked down at the sweet grass beneath our feet. A tiny heart enfolded in a gelatinous mass lay there. Small limbs oozed out of it. "What is it?" I asked, frightened. Darkness gathered; the mists swirled around us once more.
      "It is me, love. Here in this misty womb. Growing each day." His words spilled into my ear. "Don't you want to kiss me?"
      I screamed as the odious mass began to writhe and pulse. It screeched and howled while I screamed and screamed and screamed.
      Now I drank my tea and looked at Hester. The warm liquid slid down my throat, soothing me. And then I heard him(I LOVE YOU MIRANDA). The mug fell to the floor. "He's here, Hester(LOVE YOU!). Dear God, he's here!"
      "'Tis show, child. He's not really here. Not yet. Not yet."
      I put my hands over my ears as his words streaked through my mind, a wild white brilliance. I saw again in my mind the specter of his emergence from the oak tree, his hands outstretched, shooting curls of fire that were meant for me. Dryan's love, meant for me. I threw back my head and began to scream.

      "Here, have some of this."
      I lay on Hester's sleeping pallet. "What time is it?" I asked. How long have I been here?"
      "It is near to midnight, Miranda." She stroked my brow and smiled. "You slept for three hours. Are you feeling better, child?"
      I sat up and hugged myself. I reached in my bodice for the cross and the pentagram. "Yes, with you and the pendants I feel calmer, stronger."
      "He has such irony, does he not, picking Advent. Still enthralled with the church's pageantry, no doubt." She squeezed my hand. "But it had to drain him, this grand performance. Know that. He'll not be able to manifest for a while, for now he seeks to frighten. He's not strong enough yet to come into being. He's not ready to corporealize. We have time yet, time to pray and time to prepare." I looked at the Tarot cards and pentagram on Hester's small table. A gold cross sat next to them, as did a crystal sphere. To others it would seem blasphemy, this union of faiths. To Hester, it made perfect sense. God, she said, was in all of these paths.
      "I know what your oracles say, Hester. I want to believe that this is not yet the time." Coldness chilled my bones. Icy fear. I drank the rest of the tea. "Because I am not ready, I'm not." Hot, salty tears spilled from my eyes. "What am I against this thing I refused to acknowledge, this that I unwittingly fed?"
      Hester's eyes glittered. "Goodness has its power too. You can fight this being."
      "How? You've already told me that the tree cannot be chopped down. That those who once tried were run through the heart with its branches and killed as surely as if a sword impaled them."
      "'Tis true. The old tales say that, and you know my Great Aunt Alice was witness to such horror."
      "Then there is no way, is there?"
      "I said you can fight this, and you can, in the right arena."
      "How, then? Where?"
      "Why, in the place where he died, where he dwells." She leaned forward. "Never forget: This being needs you. That is your strongest weapon. He needs you to come into corporeal form. Now he is but flame and shadow, all dazzle and show. He needs to be beautiful and have you see his beauty. Remember that. Dryan has had only himself for many years. He wants to be adored, revered, and if 'tis colored with fear, all the better to boost him."
      "But I am only terrified, Hessy, that is all."
      "You fear him well, fear is energy. It feeds him." She looked away. "As does the attraction."
      "Hester!" I declared. "How can you say such a thing?"
      "Ah, Miranda, I mean no harm. We have no time for pretense, child. What this being has shown you does terrify you, and compel you as well. As it would any young woman."
      I thought of the odd quickening I had felt in my groin, the hot stirring when he held me in the mists. When he had come through the tree and called out his love for me. It sickened me to admit it, but it was so, and Hester knew it. "I am shamed," I whispered.
      Hester held up her hand. "Don't be. 'Tis part of his power, Miranda."
      "Power, power, power! What power have I?"
      Hester shook her head. "Oh, Miranda, can't you see? 'Tis Advent, the perfect time. How rich in meaning for him to manifest in this time we look forward to the birth of the king of kings." She took my hands. "He seeks to be king, and every king$#133," she tapered off in a miserable silence.
      "Needs a queen," I whispered, finishing for her. I stared into the fire. It threw off sparks of blue and orange. I thought of Dryan's hands, two glimmering torches. I squeezed shut my eyes. Little pinwheels danced beneath the lids.
      "Listen well, Miranda. I will fast and pray. Then, we will cast a circle. Not just me, but the two of us. Together. Your energy and mine. And then, Miranda, you will go into it, and we will use the old spells to set your protected spirit free and send it to Dryan. There you will face him and just as we can cast a circle, you will cast him into hell."
      "I can't, Hessy. He'll consume me. He will."
      "No, do not say that! The Christ cast out demons and gave his followers authority to do so in his name."
      I shuddered. "What must I do to prepare for this?"
      "Keep busy. Stay always among people. Light and laughter are anathema to him, he cannot come to you under such conditions."
      "When," I shuddered, "must we do this?"
      "As I have said, he needs time. Several weeks, at the least. He will likely want to make his grand entrance during Christmas week, but my cards tell me he will not be strong enough. I'll get word to you when the time is right."
      What time is right, I thought, to dance in hell? "Oh, holy night," I whispered.
      The week passed uneventfully. I went about as usual, doing my lessons, practicing my dulcimer, working on a needlepoint pillow for my mother. By the next Monday the events of the previous week seemed but a dream, a horrid one, to be sure, but still just that. I wondered if I had really seen what I thought I had. If I had gotten so caught up in Hester's stories and beliefs that I had conjured some demon of imagination. Things were calm. The tree was but a tree, no sign of fire or spirits.
      Still, I did feel my heart race when Sr. Celestine lit the second Advent candle. And when the night passed peacefully, I was filled with relief. Dear Hester, I mused, perhaps the nuns were right.
      December spun out like a string of brightly colored beads. All through the house was the fragrance of evergreen. Berry-studded swags hung above doorways. Candles gleamed in the frosted windows. From the kitchen came the most wondrous smells: pumpkin and mince and cinnamon.
      I gave way to the season's excitement, and when the remainder of Advent passed without event, I let Hester's words slip still further from my mind. Why should I dwell with casting out a demon when the world was awash with joy?
      A grand gala was planned for Christmas Eve, a yearly celebration hosted by my father and mother to express goodwill to various kin and neighboring folk.
      At my mother's side, I assisted in the selection of cheese and meats and sweetbreads. Together we selected music and decorations for the great hall.
      So busy was I that on that festive day, I eagerly eased into a hot bath of rose-scented bathwater, completely forgetting that I was, despite Hester's most fervent urging, alone. I leaned back in the hot, scented water and relished the feel of it on my muscles. I lathered my body with cocoa butter soap, inhaling the rich, earthy smell of the soap mixed with the floral fragrance of the water. When done, I rinsed my body with heated water from a pitcher set near the tub. I set the pitcher aside, rested my head on the tub and sighed.
      And then he came to me. A hot acrid smell pricked my nose. The water began to churn madly about. From its roiling surface sprang the limbs of an old oak tree. They snaked around me, oily tentacles that gripped and pulled me down in the misty place where first I had met Dryan.
      I whirled about. "Where are you?" I screamed. "Show yourself!"
      "My love." I turned to see him, his arms like alabaster totems, raised to the sky. His cape, black and billowing. His skin all pink and gold.
      "I am the wind that blows by day and the fire which dances by night. I am the bard, and I am the harper. My tongue to speak my love for you, and crumble the walls of the world. To come to you and walk with you there, if you will but give me welcome."
      In an instant I was in his arms. In a grasp that was not flesh but heat and need.
      I felt his breath on my neck and saw it curl up in black screams that fluttered about like tiny bats.
      The mists grew heavy, the voices louder. Then came Dryan's kiss. A dark benediction. A burning prayer. And it flamed me, and it savaged me, and I welcomed it. God help me, I did.
      Miranda. A different voice, rising out of the capering and gibbering tongues around me. Hester's voice, strong and clear. The cross, child. The pentagram.
      Dryan's voice rose above it, the hot wetness of his tongue somehow filled my mouth as he spoke into it in a way I could not comprehend: "I am everyone and no one. And time is a river of blood."
      I grabbed my cross and pentagram and began to pray. In an instant I was back in my father's estate. Back in bathwater now grown cold. Dank, cold water that began to churn and bubble while I held tight to my pendants and recited the Lord's prayer over and over.
      "What's wrong, Miss?" Delayne, the chambermaid, hovered over me. I looked up, frightened, confused. "You look pale as death, Miss, if you don't mind me saying so." She fluttered over to me and held out a towel. "You were in here for so long that your Lady Mother began to fret."
      "How long?" I croaked through parched lips, "how long was I in here?"
      "Why, near to two hours, Miss," Delayne said.
      My head reeled. Two hours, dear God, how could that be? I swallowed bile and gave myself to Delayne's ministrations. I smiled as she powdered me and helped me into my gown. I nodded my approval as she fashioned my hair into sausage curls. As soon as she left me, I staggered to a basin and retched.
      I rinsed my mouth out with cool water from a pitcher Delayne had left for me. I remembered Hessy's words about being with people. About sound and color and movement being anathema to Dryan. "Be with me, Hessy," I whispered. "Forgive me for doubting you."
      I collected myself and went out to greet our guests. I smiled and chatted while fear lay coiled in my stomach like an angry cobra. I shall go to Hester's as soon as I can slip away, I told myself. When everyone is filled with drink and food, then I will go. We'll cast the circle together. She'll help me to do what I have to do. She has to. She must.
      My head spun. Hysteria bubbled in my throat. I swallowed it and forced myself to smile. I ate and made merry while I thought I would go mad.
      When the clock chimed nine, I could bear it no longer. I slipped away, glad of the cover of the night, for the music and laughter. I made my way outside and stood, shivering, in the cold December night. I recited the Lord's prayer, then a passage of Scripture taught to me by Sr. Celestine. "'I will not be afraid of the terror that flies by day, or the pestilence that flies by night(I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU)."
      "Leave me alone!" I screamed. I ran and prayed that I would make it to Hester's cottage safely, that Dryan was so enervated by his earlier manifestation that he could but rail at me now, nothing more. I ran and ran and ran.
      Fools rush in, they say. And when I reached Hester's cottage and saw the open door flailing wildly in the wind, I knew I was indeed a fool.
      I stepped inside the cottage, my heart high and sick in my throat. A putrid smell filled the air. Debris littered the ground. The deck of Tarot cards was in pieces, strewn about. Worse, far worse was my poor Hester, lying there, all quiet and still.
      "Oh, Hessy," I murmured. I bent down and gathered her in my arms and wept. After a time I released her body and fumbled about for the lantern and matches I knew she kept near the hearth. I lit the wick with trembling hands and held up the lantern.
      It was then that I saw the full measure of Dryan's rage. Tallow burnt Hester's skin, hot tallow which had singed her poor flesh. I set down the lantern and covered my mouth with my hand. For as I peered more closely, I saw that it was more than haphazard torture. Dryan had written to me on my friend's body. A twisted paean of love fashioned in charred flesh.
      My name was burned in Hessy's forehead. Proclamations of love marred her arms and chest..
      I threw back my head and screamed. "Why didn't you take me?" I screamed. "Why not me instead of Hessy?"
      I staggered out the door. No more, I thought. No more. I plowed ahead in the darkness, running over twigs and stones, guided only by memory and the shaft of moonlight streaming down through the dark canopy of trees.
      I ran, panting, my arms and legs tingling, my heart hammering in my chest. I heard Hester's voice in my mind: He needs you, Miranda. That is your greatest weapon.
      I stopped, gasping for air. I looked up and saw that I was once more at the door of Hester's cottage. "What is this?" I murmured.
      (Miranda.) Dryan's voice, echoing in the woods. I felt his hot breath upon me. (Look, my love.)
      An eerie white light illuminated the forest. I looked up to see clouds of fleecy white dotting a sky of inky darkness.
      Birds sang and flew about. I shook my head and squinted up at the bizarre scene.
      The faces of my parents appeared in Dryan's clouds, lines of sorrow creased their visages. Next to them, my faithful nurse Lizzie, her eyes red from weeping. Dryan's sky pictures, painted just for me.
      His long, elegant fingers appeared, reaching up and plucking them from the sky. They twirled about on his fingertips. Twirling clouds which emanated with the cries of those I loved most.
      Thunder rocked the night. Fire sliced the twirling clouds. Fire shot from Dryan's fingertips. Blood fell from the punctured clouds of Dryan's creation. It fell from the sky like rain in an angry cloudburst.
      I knelt on the ground while blood poured over me. I screamed and railed until the earth tilted beneath me and the world went black.
      I woke at the pond beneath the oak tree. Had I somehow made my way here on my own, or had some kindly sprite plucked me from Dryan's horror and set me here? I did not know the answer. I only knew that I was in the place where first we had encountered one another. In the distance came the sounds of music and revelry; I heard the bells chime nine times. More madness, I thought, that it should be the same hour as when I fled.
      I sat up, thinking of Hester's teachings, of how they had failed to save her. That the burden of vanquishing Dryan now fell completely to me. I heard Hessy telling me that I must do it at the place of his origin.
      I wondered when he would next come, and I hated him. For the first time I hated him more than I feared him.
      I reached for my cross and pentagram. The metal was cool in my hand. Gold, the only alloy precious enough to hold the blood of Christ. More than equal to the tree upon which Dryan had been hung and torched so many years ago.
      I stood on wobbly legs and began to laugh. How could I not have seen it before?
      Hester was right when she said that Dryan must be destroyed in the place of his beginnings, but she was wrong, too. For Dryan, as he had been since the day my pony reared and pitched me headfirst into the tree, was born of my blood, not of the void where he walked. Born of my blood in the gnarled old oak. No matter what the legends of cutting it down, the key was here.
      I stood and walked to the tree. Wind rustled its branches. The air was cold and crisp, filled with the thick melange of burning leaves from some nearby bonfire.
      He needs you, Miranda, he needs to be beautiful and have you see that beauty.
      Be with me, Hessy, I silently prayed. I took a deep breath and began, hoping desperately that what I was about to do was right. I raised my arms to the sky.
      "You are the wind that blows by day," I cried, "and the fire which dances by night." I slipped off the cross. "You are the bard, you are the harper." The wind became stronger, vibrating, shifting. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I gritted my teeth against the fear churning in my belly. Come to me, you demon spawn, I prayed; now that I am finally calling you, come!
      "Your tongue to speak your love for me and crumble the walls of the word." The smells of blood and fire filled the air. I heard the sound of Dryan's laughter.
      I looked at my parents' estate, at the gabled windows and charming turrets. I looked at the candlelight flickering in the great hall. The sounds of music and laughter spilled out onto the vast, sloping lawn. "Forgive me," I murmured.
      I took off the pentagram and quickly etched a five-pointed star into the tree trunk with the pendant's pointed edges. I held it and the cross up and watched the shuddering air. "God forgive me." I plunged the tip of the cross into my right eye and then into my left, quickly, madly before the searing pain stopped me.
      I laid my head on the tree and let my blood flow there, onto the pentagram I had so crudely fashioned. "Our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name." A screaming tore the sky. "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." He needs to be beautiful and he needs to have you see that beauty. "In the name of the risen Christ I call you! In his name I banish you!" Words, I knew not from where, poured out of my mouth as the blood poured out of my eyes. I prayed and cried and spoke in the tongues of the Holy Spirit.
      The tree shook. I held fast, my blood pouring onto the venerable trunk. I heard the screams of Dryan as he shook the heavens, his rage around me like a vise.
      I heard the sounds of my parents and their guests as they ran about and witnessed the mad spectacle.
      Fire sparked the tree, fanning upward and out. It hissed and crackled as it leaped up the trunk and down the branches.
      (MIRANDAMIRANDAMIRANDAMIRANDA MIRANDA!!!)
      The bitter smells of blood and burning Dryan's howling the rumbling of the earth. The flames licked my body and still I would not let go of the tree. I prayed and wept until at last I felt the tree wobbling, listing as its roots pulled up from the ground. It flew across the ground. At last my grip was loosened and I too sailed through the night, my body aflame, an agony of burning flesh and searing pain in my sightless eyes.
      "Dear God, dear God!" cried my mother. I heard her weeping, heard the cries of my parents and the others as they gave witness to the mad spectacle of blood and fire which I felt and heard gathering in its bitter movement. A vortex, it was, which sprang from the earth and the hole left there by the sundered tree.
      From that hot and bloody cyclone came sounds no one should ever hear.
      (MIRANDA!)
      Dryan roared through me in final, desperate fury. A searing torched my soul. A screaming tore the night sky as the burning earth where the tree had stood sucked away the last vestiges of what had not been consumed.
      I lay on the ground; people called my name and threw water upon my burning body. Thick, oily smoke filled my lungs, stealing my breath and the last of my wits. Pulling me into burning slumber. Asleep in the arms of the fire and blood and the echoes of Dryan's rage
      The tree is but charred earth now. No flower grows there. Sunlight never falls on that patch of ground.
      They tell me this, for of course I cannot see what is left of Dryan's tree, and I am glad.
      Once, years ago, my old nurse Lizzie took me there at my bidding so I might feel with my hands what I could not see.
      I remember the tightness in my chest as I leaned down and touched the charred earth. I remember the hot tears spilling from my sightless eyes. Tears of sorrow, tears of joy.
      I am well cared for. My parents do not know the full measure of what transpired that long-ago Christmas eve, only that a demon was once loosened upon the earth, and that it has been rebuked, and that I was spared. I spend my days quietly listening to my mother read sonnets and verse of a light and pleasing nature. My father is full of news of the court, political intrigues and romantic dalliances. When it is clement I walk in the garden with my good and faithful nurse Lizzie.
      Sometimes, deep in the night, I think I hear him calling me. His driving need. His unending rage.
      Yesterday at morning vespers Sister Angelica lit the first candle in the Advent wreath. When I soaked in my bath this morning a faint acrid smell skimmed the water, rising above the scents of lavender and jasmine. The water, it seemed, churned ever so slightly beneath my aged flesh. And when Lizzie helped me from the tub, I heard a skittering, keening sound from outside the window. It is nothing but the wind, I tell myself, Hester's old pentagram and my cross rubbed smooth beneath my trembling fingers.
      Nothing but the wind.