The Monastery

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room.

It was a small window; narrow, about a foot high, and the glass was dirty now with dust and what looked like smudges like someone had their face pressed against it. It was six feet above the creaky, wooden flooring on which young Anna Coscarelli stood, staring up, unable to see anything through it now. There was an old chair below the window for help but she was happy so didn’t use it.

About a year ago, maybe two, when the window was clean, she could see the leafy treetops and had this sense of wonderment. She never approached the window with this sense of wonderment, however, because she’d heard clear and true what the Sisters in the monastery below had warned her about.

There was nothing else in the attic. It was a depressing sight. His bed was to the side, but he was never in it. Anna doubted he’d slept in it in a year, for every time she’d climbed the spiral staircase to the attic, he was never here to greet her. And the sheets always seemed to have the same creases as the day before.

Anna had asked Sister Abigail why he was never there anymore, but Sister Abigail never told the truth. There was never a lie, either, just a way around the truth. She also told Anna to never approach the window with a clear, happy mind.

For years she never understood why. She always assumed the stories she heard from the other Sisters, and even some of the other kids around the monastery when they’d sit down for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, were true, that beyond the window in that forest, amongst the darkness, thousands of eyes peer up at this very window, waiting for a particular set of eyes to peer back, eyes full of joy and wonderment, and when they locked on, they’d lock you in a trance, and they wouldn’t let go until they drained every last bit of happiness from your soul. So, best keep it to yourself. Keep it locked away in your mind. Bury it.

When she was sad, however, Sister Abigail told her to go and stare out of that window. Let the view absorb all that sadness, absorb all that loneliness. To Anna, it felt like the forest fed on it. It felt like these great, invisible organic pores opened across the vastness of the forest and absorbed the sadness, absorbed the loneliness.

The kids spoke openly at breakfast about what lay out there. Some hadn’t seen a single tree, scared to catch even a glimpse of the outside world. At first the kids were scared to even talk about it, quieting their voices when the Sisters came by, wearing their typical black robes, but were then encouraged to converse about what lay out there, and that was when the theories ran wild. None of the kids ever believed what they came up with, but they listened and believed when the Sisters spoke, for they spoke their truth.

The years would pass, the stories would grow, and Anna would continue to believe those truths told by the Sisters, all the way up until her nineteenth birthday.

Her birthday was no different than any other birthday she could remember. In fact it wasn’t much different than any other day she could remember, either, birthday or not. She only knew it was her birthday because a few of the Sisters from the monastery would show up with a stale cupcake and a stack of obituaries from a nearby church.

Anna must’ve read a thousand obituaries in her time. It was the only reading material she had other than the Black Book the Sisters would read from at evening service in the big hall. She never read about a single person she knew until her nineteenth birthday, when Sister Abigail slid something across the table, and Anna read his obituary.

Now she knew why those creases never changed. He’d been dead. But for how long? A year? Or was he taken somewhere until his death?

Anna, looking up at Sister Abigail heading for the door, said, ‘What happened to him?’

Sister Abigail stopped at the door, considered turning and saying something, but thought better of it.

That night, unable to get him out of her head, Anna travelled through the cold, stoned eastern wing of the monastery, and went back up to the attic and stared up at the window. She wasn’t tall enough to stare out without help of the chair, having not yet gained her true mother’s height.

His bed was still there. Unchanged. And an even deeper sadness sunk into her soul, the loneliness growing, so she went over to the chair and stood on it. Using her wooly jumper to wipe the dust and smudges off, she now stared out at the forest that at night. It had been raining, so the leaves glistened in the moonlight. It was somewhat pleasing seeing these treetops roll for miles and miles into the unknown. And then she saw thousands of glowing orbs appear in the blackness beneath the leaves, like eyes awakening.

It was a bizarrely beautiful sight. She almost smiled. The edge of mouth rose a millimeter and those orbs, those eyes grew brighter in anticipation. An intensity mounted inside her, her heart raced, and she placed her open palm against the cold, thick glass. An image flickered bright and brutal behind her eyes and then she pulled back from the window.

It was the first time she felt it.

Sister Abigail was in the study six floors below, reading the Black Book with black pages, and saw the glow beyond the windows. It died down instantly but she stared at the windows, waiting, hoping it remained black. She considered a plethora of reasons why, but remembered she gave Anna his obituary today. She dropped the big Black Book and raced for the door, her black robe trailing behind her.

In the hallway, she pulled down a leaver and an alarm pounded through the cold, dark hallways of the monastery like a banshee wailing at night against the crashing waves. In the wide and dull foyer a few Sisters came to a stop, wondering what was happening. Sister Abigail rushed in and muttered the single word: ‘Light’.

They all knew what this meant. Their cold, wrinkled faces turning cruel, and their eyes darkened.

Sister Abigail gave the order. ‘Three of you come with me, the rest go and shield the children from that thing.’

As Sister Abigail and her three companions paced up the stairs, they could see the world beyond the windows glow. Praying to a greater power that it wasn’t too late.

The other Sisters split up and ran into the quarters to see kids of all ages stare in bewilderment at the world glowing beyond the windows. ‘Get back and close your eyes!’ one of the Sisters yelled. They pulled curtains across the windows. Try as they might, there in the eyes of the children, as the Sisters turned, remained light.

Sister Abigail reached the top of the winding staircase first and was confronted by a locked door. She banged her fists against the wood and screamed.

Anna, up on the chair, face pressed against the window, turned to see the door handle turn back and forth and the door shaking, nearly coming off its hinges as Sister Abigail screamed from the other side. Anna turned back to the window, and smiled.

Those eyes, those orbs became bright, brilliant lights as they rose up from the darkness and into the air, floating, pirouetting like the nucleus of an atomic bomb.

Anna’s eyes aglow now, and she heard their songs, heard their stories. She had read thousands of obituaries of people she had never met, only given a shallow summary of their aura, but now she knew their entire lives. She how they died. She saw the lies in the obituaries. She saw their children. She had ate with many of them here in the hall every morning, and they were the sons and daughters of revolutionaries fighting against the Black Robes.

And then she saw him.

She saw the Sisters pin him to the floor. She saw them slice his eyelids so he couldn’t blink. She saw them dragging him up kicking and screaming and begging for mercy, only for them to slam his face against the window, forcing him to look into the darkness. Sister Abigail with a handful of his hair, shouting at the back of his head, recounting hymns from the Black Book, and telling him to let the darkness out, to curse the lands, poison the lakes, bring the drought, burn the fields, starve the resistance!

Anna collapsed, her back hitting the cold, wooden floor of the attic, eyes still aglow, and the hinges gave way on the door. Sister Abigail stormed in, face a fury, eyes darkened, and grabbed Anna by the hair.

Anna smiled as she was the dragged out of the room, away from the window, for she saw the truth, finally.

They dragged her down the stairs, letting her body feel the every bump, and when they got to the wide and dull foyer they stopped. Stood there, waiting for the Black Robes, was a hundred kids, their little hands bloody, some with tufts of hair in their clenched fists, all their eyes aglow, and they stared at the Sisters.

Sister Abigail let go of Anna’s hair and swallowed hard. Shew knew what came next. They all did.