The Holly King

by Chris Martin

A patient, prolonged wide shot of a forest at snow-filled twilight. The bough of an evergreen bobs with snow and a spectral black takeoff of a bird. A ravine, overseen by hunched trees, seems even more still when you notice it’s a frozen stream. The wind pulls powdery snow from tree tops across the haze of an overcast dimming sun.

  “I always meant to visit my brother at Christmas. I thought I’d do my interview with him and then experience what I thought would be a quiet Christmas retreat at Mashipan. Except, when I got there I realized I couldn’t even be sure whether they celebrated Christmas at all.”

  Shots of Humphrey’s empty room and kept bed.

  “The third day I was at Mashipan, it was Christmas Eve. My brother was gone when I woke up and gone for most of the day. I didn’t know where he was, but we had covered most of what I wanted us to talk about, so I didn’t think about it too much. I took walks with my camera.”

  Shots of the men and women of Mashipan working, walking, carrying loads. Another shot of the cemetery, cloistered among trees and overlooking a turgid gray snow cloud covering, and perhaps dropping snow on the valley below.

  “I was looking forward to filming and maybe participating in the Christmas service.”

  Down in the New Mashipan church. People busily fit hundreds of little sconces and chandeliers and votives with candles, adjust electric lights in the rafters, and, shoelessly, vacuum the huge red carpeting that forms the sacred heart of the sanctuary.

  “I was certain that the service would beautiful. Perhaps even attaining sacredness. And I was especially looking forward to shooting my brother in attendance. That was more or less the shot I wanted all along. My brother in his new surroundings.

  “It seemed a little silly, but I still wanted to – had to – get him to talk about Christmas. That was why I was here, of course.

  “And then this happened.”

  Humphrey leaning in his doorway, hands in pockets, seeming a little irritable, a little rushed, a little tired. Carson's voice. "I'm sorry, can you ... just wait ... ok, I'm ready."

  Humphrey, after a patient inhale: "Alright. Take two. The news I have is I'm going to have to send you, Carson, down to the valley. There's a room set aside for you. You can stay as long as you like, take what ever pictures and video you like."

  Long hold on Humphrey, as if he's waiting for the camera to stop. Carson leads him on. "Because .... " But Humphrey won't go there.

  “That's enough,” he says. “You should go. Many apologies.” He turns to leave then remembers. “Someone is waiting outside to take you down." Then exeunt Humphrey, leaving the doorway open. Carson lingers on the empty doorframe a while.

  “Like I said earlier, I was surprised to find out that Father Max had come to Mashipan a few years ago. And I hoped I could meet him. When Humphrey said he wasn't well, I didn't know that he was in the Mashipan infirmary the whole time, dying."

  Cut to the old Mashipan grounds. Dusk is settling, fighting back against the grainy limits of Carson's video. First a shot looking up at Humphrey's room, which is dark. Then panning down to meet Humphrey walking towards the camera. Hands still in pockets. Humphrey strides with purpose, withdrawn. He walks briskly past Carson who quickly pans to keep up with his passing brother. Who then suddenly changes his mind. Humphrey stops, pivots on his heels, and peremptorily reaches for and hugs Carson. The camera swings up and around Humphrey’s back as Carson returns the hug.

  "I'm sorry," Humphrey says, very closely, the mic on the camera jostling. "Next year, ok?"

  "Of course," we hear Carson say over the mostly dark Mashipan courtyard. The camera swings back down when Humphrey lets go. When Carson steadies it, we see Humphrey continuing away, up a path to another building near by. A little wooden sign out front says Infirmary. Carson holds the shot as Humphrey yanks open the door and enters, closing it behind him. The camera timidly searches up the face of the building, finding a window with warm yellow light. A grainy, smudged figure steps past the window.

  Voices, a congregation, singing "Silent Night." The New Mashipan sanctuary.

  Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people in the enormous candlelit space, ribboned and billowing with colorful wall hangings and drapes. Faces of people singing, following the words, glancing at one another. Children on the floor, some squirming. A woman, eyes solemnly ahead as if listening to the words she's singing. She turns to the camera, to Carson, to us, and smiles.

  Outside the windows shine from the inside, exploding the video highlights. There's just enough light out here, against the bluing snow, to sense the size of the building, the forest nearby and the serenity. And while the congregation continues singing, the camera tilts up, past the trees, up the cold crags of the mountain to the faintly lit monastery where Humphrey resides.

  Fade. Blackness. Contemplation.

  Then the clacking sound of a camera and mic fumblingly turning on. And also, Humphrey’s voice. “Sure, one more question. Go ahead.” Hurried fade in on patient Humphrey, still in his chair, still being interviewed.

  “What are your thoughts about Christmas?”

  Humphrey’s taken aback a little. Carson’s question seems preposterous to him, with some room for humor.

  “Well ...” he starts, then apparently swallows a joke. “You’re still making this documentary about Christmas? Ok. Christmas – the time of the year around Christmas – seems the perfect time for reflection. And maybe a little more than that. Some fun and partying. Why not?”

  He’s not very good at this part.

  “Anything else?” Carson asks. He zooms in, a little wobbily on Humphrey.

  “Alright,” Humphrey assents. “Here goes. As an event, a holiday, I think about what it must have felt like to the soldiers of Rome, retreating to their underground caverns, their secret men of war society, every year watching more and more people celebrate the life and death of an executed Jewish political prisoner. And slowly discovering that their own dedicated beliefs about Mithras, the bull slaughter, the sun worshipping, his resurrection, which they guarded jealously and privately, was being borrowed by others not in the club.

  They still go through the motions of the feasting and the rituals, which maybe they’re still proud of, but what they mean exactly – maybe they’re becoming less meaningful. Less inspiring. Especially compared to that other idea people talk about.”

  Carson leaves Humphrey to continue, but summons photos and video clips of archeological sites, the caves and temples of Mithras. Grown over with and asleep under grass and trees, moss creeping across the scattered mosaic floors, their columns and stone benches chipped and pocked with disuse, the sun god and bull statuary blunt eyed and stained under the drips of time.

  Over this Humphrey says, “The soldiers would have seen how excited the Christians get, how they found inspiration in stories and parables this man told before being executed, some of which sounded very similar to some of the stories they told about Mithras. So much so, this new cult starts to seem more relevant to some of the soldiers. Who normally would have exalted Mithras, worshiped him, and counted on him when they were dying on a battle field, hoping for their own resurrection.

  And then we’re back on Humphrey in person, in his cell. “But on a day to day basis, the ideas behind their religion would have been slowly stultifying. The ideas themselves stopped regenerating. Because the intellectuals, the priests, who constantly provided creative meaning and inspiration to the soldiers, had already moved on to something richer, more meaningful to them.

  “So I think about the quandary they must have gone through, the anger or incredulity they must have felt that at the same time of year they dedicated to Mithras, people, the citizenry, were celebrating something else, but using some of their rituals. Only with greater and greater pomp and excitement. Until, at some unnoticed time, in some unknown year the last few people who cared to celebrated Mithras got together one last time without knowing this was the last time and never did it again. I’m afraid that’s what I think of during Chri
stmas, today.”

  Another Humphrey pause. His fingers then fiddle with something on his chest, the mic. “Is that it? Are we – ” Off goes the mic with a click. Black wipes across the screen.

  Snow falls over the pines on Mashipan's ledge of the world. The snow falls without direction or drive. It falls on the garden, it falls on the stone benches and on the workers at the top of the scaffolding carefully ratcheting chains around the base of the cross which are hooked to cradling lines running up to a crane whose long yellow arm is grounded to a four wheeled machine waiting to lift and gently remove the cross from the top of the promontory.

  * * *