“Bye, Mother!” The chorus of voices called out in unison. A gaggle of girls in newly-pressed habits stood in a line, waving their handkerchiefs at the retreating figure.

“Bye, Sisters! Be good!” Mother Superior was already sweating in the hot summer sun, her little briefcase tucked under one arm while the other held a simple lace parasol. She dabbed at her face with her sleeve, chattering to herself with an “Oh my,” and a “Deary me!” whenever a stray thought hit her.

Insects hummed in the verges, their song merging with the sound of grass swaying in the breeze. Above her a kestrel wheeled (“Goodness!”), while out on the marsh the chattering of warblers filled the air with life. It was hard to believe that just last night, let another one of those Golems had been spotted just outside the gate. Sister Harriet had tried to describe it to her, but Mother Superior had waived her off - life was, she thought, too short to dwell in horror. Be that as it may, she still had her duty to keep, and so she sweated her way down to the gatehouse where Isidore waited on her.

“Ahh, Sister Izzie! Or is it Brother Izzie, now?”

“Neither, Mother. Just Isidore.”

“Right right, yes I see. Marvellous! Quite, quite.” By now Isidore was used to the older woman’s constant mutterings. It was like the birdsong from the marsh; an ever-present melody that one grew accustomed to. When they had first moved here from the city, the intense, rural darkness of a night without streetlamps had unnerved them, as had the dawn chorus which woke them every morning.

“Please Mother, won’t you have some tea before you go? It’s ice-cold.”

The two of them sat in the gatehouse with the windows wide open, gazing out over the marshlands in silence. Relative silence. Mother Superior’s idea of a quiet moment was to hum a little hymn. Between them on the table was a large, golden candlestick.

“Are you worried, Izzie?”

“Oh Mother, it was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen. I had no idea they would come this close. It was just stood there, staring right at me. I couldn’t breathe. Do you have to go out there?”

Mother Superior nodded.

“Why? Please don’t leave us, Mother. We need you. Lydia is an imbecile who couldn’t supervise her way out of a barrel. You just know she’s going to get ahead of herself.” Isidore had dropped to the floor by her feet and wrapped their arms around her knees in supplication.

“I hear you, my dear. I really do.” She took a long sip of iced tea. “But everything is happening as it’s supposed to. Just a tad early, according to calculations.”

Isidore looked at her askance until the old nun slid her briefcase over.

“It’s all in there, Izzie my dear. I’m not supposed to share it, not just yet, but… I trust you. You’re a very intelligent young thing. I wouldn’t want you to be worried.”

Twenty minutes later Mother Superior had a candlestick lodged in the front of her head. Isidore had cried until darkness, tore at their hair and wept fitfully in the corner of the room. Once the bell tolled for Silence, they had carried the body over to the gardens and tossed it into the old well. The briefcase they kept, and they would pour over it in many weeks to come.

Our experiments have taken an unexpected turn, they had said. The red lake rises soon.

It wasn’t until months later, when Sister Harriet had come babbling to the gates with a parade of Gol behind her, that Isidore had understood these words.

“The church exists to protect these… These friends of ours. I shan’t call them ‘Gol’, Isidore.” Harriet had said, twirling her red-beaded rosary in one hand. “They are not something other, they are us. Do they really look like monsters to you?”

Isidore kept her talking until sunrise, when just like that her procession of protectors faded away in the morning light. She put up a struggle, but ultimately, she was alone. It took several hours of painstaking work with shears and branches and rocks to make the wound look like it had come from a Gol. Isidore had even used their own teeth to bite and tear, ineffectually, at the tendons in her chest to simulate what they thought an attack might look like. It was then when they found the cascade of ribs upon ribs, growing haphazardly, slowly yet almost visibly. They stopped and spat and vomited and washed their body until no trace remained of Harriet’s blood upon them, and yet the nightmares continued - of transforming, of turning into something beastly and cancerous. In their dreams they would look up from biting Harriet to find that they were merely eating grass, their body mutated into a bloated ovine creature, where instead of wool soft lumps of flesh grew all over their body, weighing them down until it grew to cover their vision. In some, they were shorn of their flesh in a painful yet precise process where they were hung up by a single back leg, hanging from the tatter-tree as the fat and meat was reaped from their body. A jolly table of feasting faces would accompany this, as their tender flesh was seared and served to a laughing host who ate them without compunction, until nothing remained but bone.

---

Isidore woke screaming. Every night brought that same dream, and every morning it had the same effect. They sat up, wet with sweat and shivering, their fingers curling into the shirt on their chest as though clasping the skirts of their mother.

Just a bad dream.

With pains they lifted one leg, and then the other, off the side of the bed. They shuffled round to the end and leant into their chair. The wheels creaked as they set their weight on it. A moment later and they were tying back their hair - now long, thin and grey - into a ponytail. The fire had kept alight throughout the night and despite the weather, so that was one less chore to do. They heaped a spoonful of dried leaves into a small canteen and set it out to boil. Before long they had a steaming cup of tea to sip as they sat by the door of the hut, surveying Palus Somni.

The marsh is not kind to abandoned places, and the stones were thick with slime molds and wet-furred mosses. It was not safe to venture too far into the confines of the old building. The shards of glass and shattered wood made a fall dangerous, and the terrain was not suited to a wheelchair. Besides, it was still sinking. Slowly, to be sure, but Isidore had lived here long enough now to know when even a single brick went missing.

“Ha! Get!” Suddenly they threw the canteen at a shadow on the ground. It bounced harmlessly off the spongy earth as the shadow skittered away into the ruins, while the exertion only made Isidore start a coughing fit. Behind their hacking they heard the mocking gurgles of a child. They had never succeeded in harming one, though they tried. Oh yes, they tried. Traps and tricks and knives and flame. In the early days, when their legs were newly healed, they had retained some movement in them and had stalked the children throughout the night. Spectral infants that seemed helpless, lying exposed on the ground in corners and crevices, that jumped and ran with the speed of an adult when startled. It was only when caught that they revealed their true nature; that of the bilious, squirming mass of flesh and carapace that writhed in their hands in muscular spasms, all while emitting that singular buzzing drone.

On a few occasions, though more often than they would like, Isidore had caught sight of the parents. Two nuns, one with dark hair and one with light, walking side by side with hands clasped as a train of small children wandered behind them. At these times it seemed even the walls had returned, that they could peer through the ghostly corpse of the monastery itself, thriving somewhere beyond this world.

“Come back,” Isidore had called, “Don’t leave me here! Claudia, Sister, come back!” But morning would always come and bring with it the knowledge that they did indeed live, if living is what you could call it.

Nothing much had been saved from that night, but the gatehouse being so far away had been mercifully untouched. They had lived there for many years before it became unsafe to stay in any longer. Now, sat in the shadow of their small bog-hut, they found themselves recalling the documents in the briefcase. The ones they had barely understood at the time, the ones with star charts and charcoal sketches of the moon in different phases.

...and so with the last remnants of its strength it set up a beacon, in the hopes that it would be found...

The lake lay somewhere deep beneath their feet, denatured and frail, unable to break through the surface in the face of our most powerful star. It had called out for aid, and one day that aid will arrive, but until then this world had Isidore.

“Hello there! I say, good morning old fellow!” Came the cheery cry from down the trail. A few minutes later there stood a tall, middle-aged man in a cotton shirt and leather chaps. Isidore narrowed their eyes at the belt of tools that lay slung across their shoulder.

“An archaeologist? In these parts?”

“No, no my friend. Like my father before me, I am a cryptographer.”

“Your father?”

“Indeed, yes. He told me his family came from these parts. Estranged from my grandfather, he was, poor chap. They never did speak before he… Well.” The newcomer sat with his silence.

“What is your name, friend?” Isidore asked.

“Oscar. Oscar Mallory the Second, at your service. My Grandfather Aloysius owned a mansion in these parts, later sold to some cult.” Oscar shrugged as though to say he knew no more about it, before his eyes lit up. “But I do believe I have finally found it! The ruins of our ancestral home. You are the groundskeeper here, are you not?”

“Something like that.” Replied Isidore, grimacing and wheeling themselves back into the hut.

“Ahh, to think! A Mallory, back in his rightful seat! My father told me never to come back here. He said the ground was cursed. What a fool I was to believe him. I cannot wait to see what intricate work lies beneath the surface here - Did I mention my grandfather was a cryptographer? - Yes, indeed, this,” and with a big breath he turned and faced the rotting remains of his family’s legacy, “...This is God’s country.”

“Your father was a wise man.” Mumbled Isidore from the hut as they rummaged around in the old travelling chest by the window.

“Aha! Here you are... My old friend.”

They withdrew a long, pointed dirk, still as sharp as the day it was smelted, and placed it carefully under the blanket that covered their broken, withered legs. Their arms were strong yet, and they knew, more than anyone, that the cost of sanity was owed in blood.