Chapter 7: The Trail on the 199 Steps

The stone staircase cut through the damp shale of the East Cliff like an ancient, weeping wound. Each of the hundred and ninety-nine steps was worn smooth by centuries of parishioners, fishermen, and mourners, but tonight the flags were slick with a thick, gelatinous slime that smelled of stagnant ocean trenches.

Caleb went first, holding his iron lantern low to illuminate the risers. Arthur followed close behind, his boots slipping on the black silt that filled the hollows of the stone. His brass-bound camera case thumped rhythmically against his ribs, heavy and cold.

"Keep your footing," Caleb muttered, his breath coming in ragged white plumes. "One bad step here and you’ll roll all the way down to the harbor cobbles."

Every three or four paces, the lantern light caught the same wet, dark print pressed firmly into the stone. They were not the marks of sea-boots; they were the bare, splayed outlines of swollen feet, leaving behind tiny deposits of crushed mussel shells and long, hair-like strands of black kelp. The salt water pooling in the impressions was so cold that thin, crystalline crusts of frost were forming around the edges, despite the humid sea air.

Halfway up the ascent, where the stairs doubled back past a narrow ledge overlooking the harbor below, Caleb stopped dead.

"Listen," he whispered, extending an arm to bar Arthur’s way.

From somewhere above them—veiled in the dense, shifting sea fret that swallowed the top of the cliff—came a low, wet sound. It was not the wind pulling through the arches of the Abbey, nor the roar of the surf against the harbor piers. It was the frantic, rhythmic slapping of wet rope against a wooden mast, accompanied by a voice.

The voice was hollow, choked with phlegm and silt, chanting a frantic, unintelligible string of Latin phrases. The cadence was broken by heavy, wet gasps, as if the speaker were trying to draw air through lungs filled with sea mud.

"Is that a priest?" Arthur whispered, his hand tightening on the strap of his satchel.

"That’s no parish sermon," Caleb said, his jaw locked tight. "That’s coming from the churchyard."

They scrambled up the remaining steps, emerging at last onto the flat, grassy plateau of the East Cliff. Here, the fog was so thick that the towering outline of St Mary’s Church was reduced to a dark, looming mass. The headstones of the ancient graveyard leaned at grotesque angles out of the turf, half-buried in the creeping mist.

The trail of wet footprints did not stop at the church doors. It cut straight through the long grass of the graveyard, passing between the leaning headstones, leading directly toward the iron gates that separated the church grounds from the high stone walls of the ruined Abbey.

Caleb raised his lantern toward the gates. The heavy iron latch had been forced open, bent outward as if struck by a massive wooden beam. Hanging from one of the iron spikes was a shred of sodden, black wool cloth, dripping with cold brine.