Tas-Setta

Small balls of light bob gently around the abandoned church.

They drift to and fro, like tightly packed stands of fairy floss tossed in the wind. To an outsider, they’d look peaceful, even pleasant. But that is far from the truth. The kobba are restless, agitated, angry. The souls want vengeance for their unjust deaths, they wait for a saviour to put them to rest.

High above, nestled next to a grotesque stone gargoyle, an owl stretches out his legs. Impatient, he gazes down at the spirits congregating below.

The tas-setta is also tired of waiting.

His wings are mangy, his beak chipped. Once sharp claws are now dull, and once clear eyes that could see from one end of the island to the other have begun to cloud over.

Next to him, a rat stretches out across the mossy stone. Yawns, tiny rotted teeth clattering together. A snake slithers around an eave, thin skin shedding in its wake. His brothers and sisters.

The owl rustles the tattered remains of his feathers. Of all the forms, he’s proud to be stuck in this one. The other tas-setta might be bound to the land as cats, reptiles, and rodents, but he? He can still fly. Not as he used to, covered in oil, hurtling through currents so strong he’d librate roofs from small shacks, but it was better than nothing.

No, if he had been stuck as a rat all those years ago, he’d likely have thrown himself from this tower already, splattering himself across the overgrown courtyard below.

Not that that would have killed him.

Sometimes he yearns for the life he one had, before he was trapped in a cage of plumage and claws. He misses the rhythmic sound of his wife’s breathing as she’d fall asleep next to him, the warmth of her body next to his. He misses the patter of his children’s footsteps, pounding down the stairs in the morning, eager to see what the new day had brought.

But mostly, mostly he misses the magic. Dancing with the other tas-setta around a crackling fire pit, rubbing his body with unblessed oil and flying across the sea to lands he’d never seen. The thrill of rushing home before four o’clock so the church bells didn’t knock them from the starlit sky.

Back then, transformation had been a hobby, a trick, a game. Not a prison.

Back then, his family had been alive, not six feet under, rotting in the dirt.

Back then, they hadn’t been trapped, back then he’d still been human, back then - back before the gate to the otherworld was slammed shut by damned saints and pious priests.

Such is the price when you dabble with the Dark.

Preening, his beak rustles through his feathers, he cleans what little lustre still remains. He doesn’t worry that his wings can barely hold him aloft these days. His master will restore them soon.

A shadow at the gate. A man, barely past boyhood, who has stopped by the church every night this week.

At the sight, the kobba become restless. Some begin to bob up and down like ducks in a pond, others spin in tiny spirals like leaves in a gutter.

The man squints towards them, entranced.

It’s always unnerving, getting your first glance of the otherworld. The tas-setta remembers his own. Unnerving, but also miraculous, as though a tapestry of possibility had unrolled before him.

The young man hesitates. No doubt he’s heard the stories of strange disappearances in the haunted house of worship. But for all the stories, there’s never been any proof.

Curiosity really is a fickle creature. Especially when the haunted look so enchanting.

He steps through the gate.

The tas-setta freeze. The kobba halt.

He takes another step, eyes growing wide.

The kobba move quickly now, crowding around his ankles. They cannot speak, the only sound they emit is a gentle rustling as the ragged strands of their souls rub together.

Compelled by their beauty, he follows them. They usher him forward to the door of the church.

From the top step, the young man stares up at its imposing facade. Wide eyes travel up the thick wood of the door, the beaten brass of its adornments, the warped iron of its cross, up past the stone gargoyles that loom down from their perch. He looks up to the steeple, not thinking it strange that the church has no bells. He does not see the snake hidden behind the wings of a stone beast, or the rat that peers over a limestone shoulder.

But he does see the owl that leers down through the dark.

The kobba begin to rise into the air, flowing up the man’s body as if they were a stream and he a parched riverbed. Circling his wrists, playing in his palms, they pull him towards the door.

With a push, it creaks open.

Moonbeams disturb the gloom.

With a gentle clack of claws on stone, the owl takes flight. He falters, flaps hard to stay upright in the breezeless night, but manages to silently swoop inside through the shattered remains of a stained glass window.

The window had once depicted a glorious battle, a pure white horse rearing above the damned, a glorious knight blasting the dark away with his holy light. Now only the down-trodden remain, glassy ghouls and haunted souls alike clawing upwards into the moonlit night.

The owl lands on the altar. Stumbling, he rights himself. The tas-setta’s bones ache, his wings drag.

He looks out across his congregation.

Without his keen sight, you’d never spot them. Hidden under pews, draped over eaves, tucked into the nooks and crannies of the church's foundations, their only acknowledgement of their leader is the gleam of their tiny eyes.

Encircled by the kobba, the young man stands at the door of the church, glowing like a saint in the night.

His eyes are wide as he takes in the finery before him. It is clear that this church was once a wondrous place. Golden statues gleam from niches in the sandstone walls, moth-eaten velvet covers the pews and drapes the altar.

He looks as they all do when they first see the church, amazed, baffled at the decadence. Mouth open in wonder, you watch the gears of his mind turn. His village is so poor. Pirates raid it yearly, any riches are long gone. How could this much wealth be sitting in its midst untouched? How has no one found it?

You see the moment when the greed kicks in, when it overtakes and drowns out the fear that taps at the base of his spine. You see it in the twitch of his lips, the grin that spreads across his face, the way his heartbeat picks up, his breath quickens.

Enraptured, the youth steps inside, the kobba shedding away from his skin as he does. They cannot cross the threshold. They do not dare to cross the threshold, for they know what awaits. They can only hope he will be strong enough, that he will be the one to set them free.

The door slams shut.

Now, the owl stands. He opens his beak, lets out a soft coo into the silence.

There is only one way to call the Dark.

The owl hops to the edge of the altar, flaps down to the floor. Lifting his beak high, his old beak, his cracked beak, he brings it down on the tiles.

Sacrifice.

Rap.

His beak splits.

Rap.

His beak breaks.

Rap.

Blood trickles down his face. He cries out in pain.

Rap. The sound echoes.

The stone slides back.

Friends, fear is never far away. Fear is never vanquished, no, all the gold in the world will never conquer true, bone deep terror.

And that is what the boy feels as the għul slides out of the ground.

———

Atop the eaves of the church, an owl preens in the moonlight. His feathers are sleek, his wings sturdy, his beak sharp as a razor. His master is sated, his strength renewed. He will live to see another day - at least for now. Beneath him his congregation make their way into the darkness, scrambling, crawling, slithering through the ruins and into the night.

Small balls of light bob gently around the abandoned church, one extra in their midst.