Our Lady of the Martyrs
by Christopher Stanley
I step forward from the shadows so the young boy can see me. His face slackens and his eyes grow wide. He reaches for his mother, but I timed my reveal perfectly and she’s already moved on to the next part of the tour. I hiss at him and disappear.
For three years, I’ve haunted the towers of Our Lady of the Martyrs. I’ve oiled the hinges of every door apart from those I wish to squeal. I’ve learned to play the floorboards like a ghastly xylophone. Visitors shuffle past and have no idea I’m there until I’m ready. A glimpse and then I’m gone.
Nothing draws the crowds like the promise of a good scare.
I wait behind the altar as the latest tour comes to an end. The church is Bath stone and Plymouth marble. A carved-oak statue of the Virgin Mary. Stained glass windows depicting the martyrs. The priest waves the visitors away and then turns to face me. Even with my lazy eye I can read his expression. I know what he’s thinking. The tour groups are shrinking. Interest is waning. The boy didn’t even scream.
As a child, I dreamed I’d be assigned to one of the great cathedrals: York Minster or Canterbury. Those were the posters I had pinned to my wall. Wells might be the smallest city in England, but its cathedral has status, it has history, and its gothic architecture is a thing of beauty. I could have been happy in Wells. Instead, the Council of Kyphosis sent me here.
I carry my frustrations up to the roof of the lantern tower. The early autumn air is cool against my skin. I look down over the canopy of trees, the pristine lawn, the busy streets. When I first arrived, people gathered in the carpark, hoping to catch a glimpse of me without paying the entrance fee. They’d point fingers and phones, and cheer when I shook my fist at them. Now they don’t even look up.
It’s a myth that all cities have cathedrals — a myth I believed until I applied for this role. I’d hoped the novelty of a female with Scheuermann’s kyphosis — curvature of the spine — would be enough. A chance for the all-male Council to address its diversity issues. But they rejected my application, claiming my back wasn’t sufficiently hunched and that I was faking my limp. They said I lacked the star power of my peers. My dreams of being assigned to York Minster or Canterbury Cathedral shriveled like the toes of a gangrenous foot.
On the street below, I spot a man walking slower than the students and professors around him, bent forward under the weight of his rucksack. He has no obvious deformity, and yet I can’t take my eyes off him. There’s something about his rucksack, about the way it clings to his body as though it’s an extension of his clothing. I wonder: is it really a rucksack, or is it a device that’s been constructed to conceal his true nature? I scold myself for being paranoid.
The Council upheld my appeal and three months later they sent me to Cambridge — a city famed for its university, for its academics, for lazy Sunday afternoon’s spent punting on the Cam. A city without a cathedral. The shame of it.
“I thought I’d find you here.” The priest steps onto the church roof, and I know he’s come to deliver bad news. He’s a small man, no taller than I would be if I could stand up straight. His expression looks pained. In my experience, priests are better at listening to bad news than delivering it. “The tour groups are getting smaller,” he says. “The boy didn’t scream.”
On the street below, the man with the rucksack stops opposite the church. I’m certain he’s here to replace me. I wonder what the Council’s orders were. I feel sick imagining he might be more popular than me. Imagining the magnificence of his concealed hunch.
“Until things improve, I can offer you bed and board, but no more.”
The priest wants me to quit. He’s probably under orders to make me leave of my own volition so I won’t appeal again. Does he think I don’t know about my replacement? We’re all cogs in the Council’s machine.
The priest says, “I wish things were different.”
I don’t want to hear another word. I can’t be a failure at the only thing I ever wanted to do. I take the priest by his tunic and swing him towards the edge of the roof. He loses his balance, his feet kicking uselessly at the air as I hold him over the drop.
“What are you doing?” His body shakes as he tries to catch his breath. “Don’t let go. Please, I’ll do anything.”
Below us, a crowd forms in the car park. For the first time in months, people are pointing. I search for the man with the rucksack and see him slip it from his shoulders. It wasn’t concealing a hunch; he’s just another tourist. From his rucksack, he retrieves an old-style camera with a lens the length of my arm.
Perfect.
I’ve sometimes wondered how far I would go to get my portrait in the Kyphosis Hall of Fame, to have my own Top Trumps card, to be gifted the keys to York Minster or Canterbury Cathedral.
Beneath me, the priest’s breathing becomes more even. His face relaxes. He thinks he knows me and doesn’t believe I would drop him. I wonder how he would feel if he knew I’ve been faking a limp for so long, it feels strange to walk without it. I wonder whether he’ll scream when I let go.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christopher Stanley lives on a hill in England with three sons who share a birthday but aren’t triplets. He is the author of numerous prize-winning flash fictions, the darkest of which can be found spreading misery and mayhem in his debut collection, The Lamppost Huggers and Other Wretched Tales (The Arcanist, June 2020). He is also the author of the horror novelette, The Forest is Hungry (Demain Publishing, April 2019) and the short story collection Unbecoming Me & Other Interruptions (Demain Publishing, September 2020).
