Sacred Union

(…)

The hacienda seemed like a small fiefdom, a world contained within itself. Around the main house, minor constructions were distributed, elegant yet simple, built with the same solid, ancient stone, adorned with vines that seemed to have been guided by an invisible hand to accentuate, and at the same time conceal, their contours. Large windows, dark as empty sockets, reflected the dying light of the sunset, giving the impression that the inner rooms burned with a contained, silent fire.

They were received by members of the congregation, men and women with impassive faces and slow, almost choreographed movements, whose detailed attention bordered on the reverential. They treated them with all honors, but their hospitality, though impeccable, felt ritualistic, their soft and melodious voices pronouncing welcomes that sounded rehearsed for centuries, devoid of genuine warmth.

Led through a main hall dominated by a chandelier of darkened crystals that barely returned the light and a wooden staircase curving into an infinite darkness on the upper floor, they crossed an interior garden where the banquet would take place. Large rectangular tables were already set, adorned with blackened silver candelabras whose tallow candles did not yet burn, and a profusion of flowers of a purple so dark they seemed to absorb the light, almost black, exhaling a dense and narcotic perfume. Beautiful extinguished torches, driven into the earth at regular intervals, delineated the space, promising an unreal and ethereal illumination for the night looming ahead. The main table, under a triumphal arch woven with those same purple flowers and touches of sepulchral white, boasted two chairs richly adorned for the bride and groom. And to one side, slightly separated, an imposing chair, almost a throne, carved from a single piece of dark wood, with veins that seemed to move and writhe under the uncertain light like sleeping snakes.

Enzo’s mother, unable to contain her curiosity before such a display, asked the silent guide in a low voice who would occupy such a distinguished seat.

—It is for the guest of honor —was the answer, polite but dry, his eyes revealing nothing, closing off any possibility of inquiry.

The mother assumed, with a shrug and a growing unease, that it would be for Isis’s father.

They continued their path, moving away from the banquet garden, toward a separate structure rising at the back of the property: a chapel, or what appeared to be one, though its architecture was strangely austere and massive, a great dome of ancient and imposing rock that seemed to sink into the earth as if wanting to hide its secrets from the heavens. Upon crossing the threshold, the air became incredibly cold, static, and an almost absolute silence enveloped them, dampening even the sound of their own footsteps, as if they had entered a bubble out of time.

The aisle leading to the altar was flanked by enormous red wax candles, almost black, already burning, their tall and still flames casting dancing and oversized shadows upon the bare stone walls, which seemed to sweat a cold humidity. The same dark purple flowers were repeated in severe arrangements, their perfume more concentrated and suffocating in here. There were no crosses, nor recognizable religious images, no detail indicating which god or rite would be worshipped there. Only the imposing altar of solid rock, arranged like a sacrificial monolith table, its surface polished but stained by what looked like ancient libations, and behind it, reflecting the infernal light of the candles, a great mirror of burnished silver, its surface smooth and dark like a bottomless well, drawing the gaze and promising abysses.

Enzo was guided to his position in front of the altar, feeling the weight of the silent gazes of the congregation already gathered in the gloom, their silhouettes barely discernible. A chill unrelated to the temperature ran down his back, bristling the hair on his nape. Then, a guttural sound, like that of an antique organ exhaling its last breath or the distant bellow of an unknown beast, broke the silence, followed by a mixed choir. Deep male voices, resonating from the chest, and the sharp lament, almost a wail, of female voices intertwined in a chant that, although remotely recalling Gregorian sacred music, possessed a dissonant, undecipherable melody, full of strange intervals that seemed to crawl under the skin and make the bones vibrate with a disturbing frequency. It was not music that elevated the spirit; it was something older, earthier, an invocation generating a strange physical sensation, unearthly, a pressure in the chest and a humming in the ears.

Enzo’s family exchanged looks of open bewilderment, a morbid fascination struggling against a growing discomfort and the instinctive desire to flee that place. They felt a fearful respect toward the unknown, toward the palpable solemnity of a rite they sensed was ancestral and, somehow, irrevocable, a point of no return.

The air in the stone chapel solidified, becoming dense and gelid, when the officiant materialized in front of the altar like a specter summoned from the depths of time. He was a man of unnatural height and thinness, his face aquiline and furrowed by a web of wrinkles that spoke of centuries, not years, but his movements possessed a contained strength and his eyes, sunken and dark, burned with an expectant shine and a rehearsed calm that was more unsettling than any open threat.

Under the melody now openly dissonant and the guttural voices of the choir, Isis appeared at the beginning of the aisle. Her dress, of a snowy white, dazzled against the gloom, but her skin seemed even paler, almost translucent, a perfect canvas for the dark purple red of her lips and the large bouquet of purple flowers, almost black, she held with a ritual delicacy. Her mere presence seemed to drop the room’s temperature even further; a frigid breath, as if emerging from a freshly opened crypt, accompanied her advance.

All eyes, hypnotized, turned toward her. Enzo watched her, entranced, a beauty so pure and ethereal it stole his breath, forgetting for an instant the strangeness oppressing his chest. Her walk was not a walk; she seemed to float over the stone floor, a rhythmic and supernatural cadence that allowed one to admire every detail of her serene majesty, charging the atmosphere with a crackling energy, almost painful in its intensity, making the air itself vibrate. By her side, her father, a figure of silent authority, accompanied her, his gaze reflecting a solemn pride and an ancestral power that seemed to flow from the very earth beneath his feet. With a gesture charged with a meaning Enzo could not decipher, but which he felt as a frozen warning and an irrevocable surrender, he delivered his daughter before the altar.
(…)