Book of Souls

The old men knew nothing about any ruins of an ancient library, and they shook their heads and scoffed at the rich mainlander’s questions. Yet when pressed, one grizzled fisherman did recall that as a boy he had walked the abbey fields with his grandfather and had scampered into a grassy hollow, a large, depressed squarish plot. His grandfather had shouted at him to return to his side and had batted him with his walking stick, warning him to say away from the spot as legend had it, it was haunted ground, populated by the ghosts of hooded black-robed monks.

To John, this seemed a promising place to begin his quest, and he made it his nocturnal destination.

The footpath opened into a field, and, by the light of the moon, the Cathedral of Vectis came into view. Even in ruins, it was an imposing structure, grand in scale. As he drew closer, he could see that there was no longer a spire, and the walls were half-gone. The windows that remained had no glass, and long grass and weeds had crept into open door-frames. There were other low buildings, some in shambles, some intact. From one row of stone cottages, wisps of fireplace smoke rose from a chimney. They gave these dwellings a wide berth and circled around them toward a more distant field closer to the shore.

The laborers knew the whereabouts of the sunken ground, and they grumbled as they approached it. They had been unaware the patch of land had a taint, but the words of the old fisherman carried some weight, and they were nervous.

John took one of the torches and inspected the area. In the dark, it was hard to appreciate its boundaries. The tall grass sloped down into a flat depression not more than two feet below the level of the rest of the field. There were no visible features, no reason to favor one spot above another. He shrugged his shoulders and at random chose the ground beneath his feet. He called the men and bade them dig.

When the laborers hesitated at the edge of the hollow, John had to begrudgingly offer more compensation. But when they commenced their work, they proceeded at a furious pace, slicing through the sod into the rich, soft soil. Two of them had been grave diggers, and they were capable of shifting dirt prodigiously. In an hour, there was a good-sized hole; in two hours it was large and deep. John squatted on the edge watching, occasionally jumping down and having a closer look by torchlight. The soil was moist and brown with a fertile, earthy smell, but in time he took note of some lumps of charred wood and a layer of ash.

His heart raced. “There was a fire here,” he exclaimed.

The men were disinterested. One of them asked how much deeper he wanted them to go. He replied by telling them to quiet themselves and keep digging.

Over the sound of the gulls, John heard a clink.

A shovel had struck stone.

John jumped back into the hole and scraped at the ground with his boot, exposing a flat stone. He grabbed one of the shovels and scraped it clean then thrust the shovel into the dirt two feet away. He hit more stone. He picked another spot and dug-more stone. “Clear the whole bottom of the ditch!” he commanded excitedly.

Soon, a surface of flat, smooth stones was exposed, a carefully fitted floor, long buried. John exhorted the men to take a pick to the stones to see what lay beneath. The laborers engaged in a nervously whispered debate among themselves but complied, and within a half hour, three of the large, flat stones had been dug out.

John got down on his hands and knees to inspect the area. With growing eagerness, he saw that the stones had been resting on a large-timbered frame. He gingerly placed his hand through the hole where the stones had been, and it went straight through, his entire arm disappearing. He took a handful of dirt and dropped it through the hole. It took a full second or more to hear the dirt rattling against something hard.

“There is a chamber below!” John declared. “We must climb down at once!”

The men began to back away to the farthest corner of their trench. They huddled and spoke to each other in low, urgent voices, then declared they would not go down. They were too afraid.

John begged them, then tried to bribe them and finally, in a rage he threatened them, but it was to no avail. They swore at him and climbed out of the trench. The best he could do was to get them to sell him their rope and leave a torch. In short order, he was alone in the night.

His apprehension was tempered by the excitement of the moment. He tied the rope around one of the timber beams, dropped it into the hole, and heard the loose end hitting solid ground. Next he tossed the lit torch down the hole and listened to it clatter. The torch stayed lit, and, looking into the void, he could see a zone faintly illuminated, a stone floor and perhaps an irregular wall. He took a deep breath to steel himself for the task, swung his legs into the hole, grabbed the rope, and began to use his arms and clenched feet to work his way downward.