A Litany

They said an angel lived in the belfry.

It was a strange tale to those who hadn’t grown up with it. A rumor that drew either the most faithful or the most desperate to the source of the claim. Still, it was hard to ignore when the bells rang. One's thoughts would drift among the echoes and chimes, wondering what might exist at their heart. It was a sound and thought familiar among the rolling Tuscan hills. From the farmers in their fields to the monks in their cloisters, all were reminded of the divine entity inhabiting San Philippi with every melodic peal, and those who believed sought it out.

The tale had spread far and wide, passed along by lips both pious and sinful, its message outreaching the echo of the bell. This was how Piero had first heard it, shared by pilgrims on their way back home. Their eyes bright with fervor, their fingers repeatedly making the sign of the cross, and their lips frozen in ecstatic smiles. With every word spoken the young man was convinced that the abbey had to be the most blessed place in the world. In the end, he insisted on taking the cloth in order to see this miraculous sight, and to escape the monotony of the fields which he tended with his family.

When Piero finally arrived at San Philippi, it became clear what a useful tale the story was, for the abbey had little else to offer pilgrims. No Saint's bones or reliquaries were held here, nor ancient texts or eloquent speakers. The monastery only carried a hint of divinity hidden away in the belfry and whispers of blessings that might be possible.

Piero had mulled it all over many nights before when he couldn't sleep. This evening added one more to that list. The young monk stood in the small garden hidden away by high brick walls, a pail of water in his hands. Though he’d rather have left the drudgery of physical labor behind, neophytes were expected to do such work. Above him, the full moon glowed with a serene pale hue, the few thin clouds like strands of wool stretched across the black sky. Piero stared at something else. For between himself and the heavens stood the bell tower, dark and silhouetted, but in his mind commanding more authority than the lunar halo behind it. Only brother Ludovico, the abbey’s singular campanologist, was allowed up to ring the bell. With all the tales of the angel, it had been decided to make the position of ringing the bell a special one, or else hordes of postulating monks and pilgrims might race each other up the old stairs for the glory of standing in the presence of the divine.

Yet the clear view of the belfry proposed a conundrum for some, both layman and priest. If an angel lived there, shouldn't people be able to see it? Was it a Seraphim, one of the archangels, or perhaps the mirror image of a Saint? If the people couldn't see it then did they lack piety? Were pilgrims and monks supposed to cast their eyes downwards in order to avoid possible disappointment? Or was it too divine for the mortal eye to comprehend?

Many answers had been proposed. Few had been definitive. For now the subject remained in limbo. Who were they to question God's will on the nature of a visiting angel? Still, 

Piero wondered.

“What’s the angel’s name?” Piero asked Brother Bonadeus when he first took his vows.

“We don’t know,” the brother had replied reluctantly. “It hasn’t told us. And we dare not name it incorrectly lest we raise its ire. Thus it remains nameless.”

“What does it do?”

“It watches over us, noting our conduct. What must it do? I ring the bell. You gather water. Simple tasks compared to the work of angels.”

“I came here to escape simplicity. I came here to learn.”

“Pray your search for knowledge never becomes a burden, lest it destroy you.”

Brother Bonadeus died that autumn of an unknown wasting disease.

As Piero stared at the belfry, his mind deep in rumination, a sudden surge ran through his body. He dropped the pail of water into the grass. It took a moment to understand the sensation, he was slow to believe it himself. Yet as the moon had passed behind the tower, he had seen something. Something had shifted. A sliver of light not there before. A breeze where none could be felt. At first Piero wasn't sure what to do. His legs had taken root in shock. Perhaps he had only imagined it. Or perhaps he had been blessed with a vision. The spilled water only showed the reflection of the tower. It was a sign. Was faith not a step on the path to understanding? He had to know what waited up there, halfway to Heaven.

Piero scurried back into the abbey, careful to ease the old wooden doors open and closed. His footsteps were soft along the cold stone floors, hurried on by faith and silenced by the fear that his brothers would think him mad. Thankfully most were asleep, and those that were awake were too preoccupied with their own dull chores. Besides, it was easy to avoid his brothers in the labyrinthian hallways of San Philippi. The stonework of the abbey shifted the further he ventured. The foundations of the walls grew older the closer he came to the base of the bell tower.

Piero prayed that the enlightenment he sought waited for him at the end of the twisting hallways. Where once he had questioned if an angel truly did live in the belfry, now he wondered how he was supposed to approach it. Every life of a Saint included the moment where they dropped to their knees in prayer and submitted themselves before the power of God. But one did not approach the divine truth shuffling forwards on their knees. Piero supposed he must at least hold his hands together in prayer, but in his excitement he couldn't calm them. Fingers threaded themselves around endlessly like the rats in the many little tunnels of the abbey. Once the thought of meeting the angel had been ensconced foremost in his mind, the monk wondered what would happen to him afterwards. The thought nipped at him, scratching at the back of his brain. Would he be canonized for such an event? The excitement began to grow, hurrying his feet on. Was it a sin to feel pride at such a possibility? At such an opportunity? No, it couldn't be. Why would it be a sin to follow his faith to the natural conclusion? Perhaps afterwards, when others asked him for his experience, for his blessing, he would have to play the stoic. Act the part of the Saint. But for now, down here in the bowels of San Philippi, pride was what guided him on; pride, excitement, and faith.

Carefully he opened the door to the small room at the base of the bell tower. It was here that brother Ludovico slept. The chamber was dark except for a small candle burning low, the flame nearly drowning in liquid wax. On one side of the circular room, at the base of the stairs that twisted upwards, were a set of keys hanging from a nail. Piero silently neared them, hands outstretched, fingers trembling. It was like grasping at the keys of Saint Peter; Heaven and its gate just a few steps beyond. Surely this would be a sin if he had not been on a divine mission.

“No more, please,” a thin voice croaked behind him. “Leave me be.”

Piero nearly fumbled the keys, a soft jingle escaping into the darkness before they were muted between his palms. Peering over his shoulder he found Ludovico in his small bed, turning back and forth in his sleep. The monk made sure he had not woken the old man before starting up the wooden stairs, careful not to let a sound slip from his grasp. Looking down at the sleeper, Piero couldn't tell if he felt pity or envy for the old man. He was, perhaps, the holiest brother at San Philippi, having been chosen and trained by brother Bonadeus to properly ring the bell. Laying in his sheets, the monk was thin and wan, nearly nothing but bones and liver spots. Rumor had it that he was only forty.

Continuing up the staircase, trying to pry his gaze from the small man below him, Piero remembered how disappointed he’d been at the revelation that a mortal man rang the bell of San Philippi. Rumors had sprouted from the pilgrim’s tales that the angel rang the bell with its own hands or inhabited the clapper in spirit. Some thought the peal emanated from the angel itself every Sunday. Others believed that the bell rang on its own, having been blessed by Saint Andrew in Constantinople and ferried from the besieged city by the angel that now remained at the abbey to watch over its charge. Maybe one of the tales was true, and Ludovico was simply around to keep up appearances. Piero had to know the truth.

“Please,” the old man wheezed down below, “Please, for the love of God.”

Piero finally reached the hatch that opened up to the belfry. Groping around in the gloom he placed the keys in the lock and turned, feeling each tumbler click one by one. His beating heart seemed to slow in order to match the momentary rhythm.

With a soft squeal the hatch opened wide, the monk climbing out to stand in the belfry. The sky remained dark. The full moon hung high. Around him the Tuscan countryside stretched out in every direction. Rolling hills, plowed fields, and in the very distance lay a lonely village only visible to those who knew where to look. Yet Piero's attention remained purely on the bell. It was twice his size, formed of a smooth, undecorated copper.

The monk wasn't sure exactly what he'd expected. Up here all was still. The moon remained fixed where it had been, the clouds hovered on the horizon. Only the slightest hint of dawn stirred in the east. The soft whisper of a breeze could be heard, but none was felt. Piero realized that he was holding his breath, which meant that something else breathed. A divine breath.

“Hello?” he asked, nervously looking around.

Wandering around the cramped belfry, Piero placed a hand on the bell. It was cold. Ice cold. The bell shuddered. Not a chime, but a soft metallic groan. A finger slithering across copper.

“I do not know you,” a voice, monotone and distant, echoed from within the metal shell. Piero instinctively dropped to one knee. The other remained standing and so he found himself in an awkward crouch. Looking around he could see no change in the belfry. But he had heard the voice. It was real. He'd been correct.

“Know me?” he stammered, “Lord, my name is Piero. I've been in your service for five years now.”

“You are not the expected supplicant,” the voice replied.

“But I saw you. You showed yourself to me.”

A silence passed between them. A silence that gestated with every conceivable damnation of Piero's immortal soul. Had he said something wrong?

“O Lord, I didn't mean to presume. I didn't mean to trespass. I didn't mean to understand your will. I only meant to know the truth. The truth of your nature, the truth of my faith, and the truth of myself.”

Still the silence persisted. Piero dropped his other knee, prostrating himself until his forehead nearly touched the wooden floorboards. From the corner of his eye he thought he saw something coiled within the lip of the bell.

“Lord?” he asked.

“The expected supplicant must withstand,” the voice noted. “Even now he writhes day and night. You would only break.”

“Lord, I only wish to understand. Break me if you must. If that's your will, then let it be so. I fear no torture nor death as long as I ascend. Please, enlighten me. I beg of you.”

“Enlightenment?”

“Indeed, O Lord. Teach me what you showed the prophets. Teach me the nature of mortality. Lift the veil from my eyes. I’ve come so far for this.”

“Enlightenment is to break the bonds of mind and body. The revelations will not leave you unchanged.”

Something long and thin descended from the bell, dangling just above the floor. Piero barely gave it a glance. He feared the angel might disappear if he stared at it.

“Raise me, O Lord. Raise me above the busy work here. Fetching water. Tending the fields. Sweeping. I’m better than that. Aren’t I?”

The words hung in the still air. Piero’s doubt escaping for just one brief moment. Long enough to prove himself false.

“Very well,” the voice finally replied. “You are unprepared but you will suffice. You have come too far to refuse me.”

“I would never think of it, O Lord. Not with your gifts. Not when I'm so close to the truth. Not when I’ve desired this for so long.”

“Very well.”

He could feel the long angelic fingers, slick and cold, run across his hands. They curled around his wrists, tightening along his arms, but Piero feared no pain. Still, even in the moment of ecstasy, the touch of an angel wasn't what he had expected. More and more fingers, boneless and prehensile wrapped around his ankles, slithering up along his robes, looping themselves in the folds of his cassock. He could feel himself being pulled, dragged across the floor at first before being lifted off the ground. He couldn't help but smile. Here it was. The divine touch of an angel. Enlightenment. Revelation.

“Amen!” Piero gasped, his eyes welling with tears, “Amen!”

Suddenly the fingers coiled around his throat, tightening like a noose. Their strength squeezed the air from his mouth, his eyes fluttered open to bulging. Forcing him to look upon the angel. There from within the bell spread countless long, grey tentacles that wound themselves around and around the monk. In an instant he couldn't move a single muscle in his body, only his head uselessly flopped from side to side. At the pitch black center of the bell's mouth glowed a collection of gibbous red eyes, emotionless and piercing. Scattered across the shadows like a constellation, they seemed to stare at, around, and beyond Piero as though they didn't exist in the same reality. As he was pulled closer, a viscous, drooling maw appeared among the eyes, a deep well of needle-sharp teeth, opening wider and wider until it matched the lip of the bell.

“Have your truth,” it said.

And there Piero stared upon the angel with a hundred names. Upon the saintly ascension that awaited him. Upon the understanding he had desired for so very long.

“O Lord...”

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Marsden Lyonwahl studied creative writing at the University of Washington before returning to his native Los Angeles where he cooks in order to fund further creative endeavors.