In the old church of Saint Francis, in Lucería, there is a statue of a young woman. Not many guides know about it, but if you ask the priest, he will lead you to a subterranean chapel under the main altar. The steps are slippery, the neon light defective, but the statue is well worth the trouble. It depicts a girl of about fifteen, life-size, with arms raised overhead, gripping a hammer. Her countenance, a fierce expression of will and defiance, is not easily forgotten. More striking are her cloak, woven from eyes, and complexion, black as ink. But when you ask the priest which saint she is, he will avert his eyes. For the young woman is no saint of the Day.
She is a Nocturnal.
In those days, it was understood that every town had a patron saint. Lucería’s saints, though, were of a peculiar kind. Their statues, adorned with the usual halo and candles, always had something off about them, something twisted: a touch of the Night.
The Lucerini still worshipped the saints you can spot on any calendar, such as Saint Anthony or Saint Agatha. But their town was also home to seven Major Ones, seven Night Saints represented with the same statues and holy cards as their counterparts in the Day but after dawn, became someone else entirely.
For those seven were Nocturnals. Ogres, fairy queens, ghosts—you can find these aplenty in Naples. But Nocturnals belong only to Lucería and its woods, have resided in this land right at the heel of Italy's boot since long before it was finally made into one country. Before the Spanish reyes and before Napoleon, before Emperor Frederick of Hohenstaufen and his Muslim subjects, before the arrival of German hordes, before the Roman conquest of the Daunians, Nocturnals lived in the Night that is just on the other side of Luceria.
Sensing there is a tale to be told, you invite the priest for a glass of wine in Piazza Tribunali. He smiles thinly at your invitation and says he will tell you the story of the statue, but only if you promise not to believe a word of it. You think it must be your precarious understanding of Italian that makes you miss the joke, but the priest seems deadly serious. You mustn't believe a word, he says again, or repeat this story to a living soul, ever. And yet he seems eager to tell it himself.
You can't help but ask why you mustn't tell her story. In response, he stares at you with the same look he usually reserves for catechism students faltering over the Apostles' Creed. His hands shoot up.
She is a Nocturnal, he says. A story made flesh. They live on their telling and feast on belief. If you believe in them, they can come back. Kings and warriors, smiths and sailors, Wyrms, and Wiccae, and Garaudi, and Mazapegul, and Nuriae, Gale Riders and Pales, the whole lot, Minors and Majors, all the dead. And that's why you mustn't believe a word of it.
So you listen to the rest of the story and when it is finished your head is ringing. Maybe it is the three glasses of wine, maybe it isn't, but you shake hands with the priest, go back to your hotel, and when you arrive there, lay your head on your pillow. Just for a minute, you think, as you fall into a dark stupor, one so deep you cannot climb out of it.
You try to resist, for it is only seven o'clock, and if you sleep now, you will wake up in the middle of the night, here in Lucería, where the Night was born. But you can't resist, and so fall asleep, like a body slipping into dark waters.
And this is the dream you dream.