Matrix

by Lauren Groff

And then she feels a small chill wind upon her neck as though a breath blown upon her from close by. Someone or something is in the nave behind her. She swallows and sees her hands shaking before her and says a prayer while slowly standing up. She reaches for her candle, but as she touches the holder, the flame is extinguished. The smoke in the darkness spools over her hands. And she steels herself and turns to look, and sees a distant simmering of light in the place directly above where Marie has been buried under the stones. She knows without doubt that what she is seeing is the old abbess’s ghost, though later she will ask herself if it may have in fact been the moonlight shining off the glossy leaves of the oak outside and through the window, perhaps quivering its reflected light in the air.