The Cloth of Thorns

My name is Ines, and I live in the coastal town of Mar Azul, a place that thrives on salt and superstition. I am twenty-four, a graduate student in folklore, which means I spend my days sifting through old customs and my nights trying to forget them. But some things refuse to be forgotten, and some stories refuse to stay in their pages.

Three weeks ago, I found a book in a dusty secondhand shop near the docks. It was bound in cracked leather, with no title, but the spine whispered of age. The shopkeeper, a woman with eyes like dried kelp, told me it was a diary of a Portuguese missionary who had worked in the Azores in the 1800s. He documented the possession of a young shepherd boy, detailing every symptom, every ritual, every futile prayer. My research needed primary sources, so I bought it with a mix of scholarly excitement and an uneasy thrill.

The first cut appeared on my left palm the very next morning. It was a thin, neat line, as if drawn by an invisible blade. It stung, but more than that, it itched, demanding attention. I bandaged it and ignored the coincidence. But the cuts kept coming—new ones each day, on my hands, my arms, my chest. They formed patterns, almost like a lattice, and they burned with a cold fire that no ointment could cool. My skin grew warm to the touch, but my fingers were always cold.

I tried to rationalize. Maybe it was stress, or a reaction to the salt air, or some bizarre allergic response to the book’s ancient mold. But the cuts didn’t heal properly; they puckered and thickened, feeling like raised scars that wept a clear, oily fluid. And along with the physical signs, a creeping exhaustion settled into my bones. I slept ten, twelve hours a night and woke up feeling like I’d been dragged behind a horse. Irritation prickled under my skin, making me snap at my aunt, my research partner, even the stray cat that sometimes visited my window. My heart would pound in my chest, not from panic—I’d learned to manage my anxiety—but from a sense of impending violence, a pressure building like a tide before a storm.

One night, I had a dream. I was standing in a clifftop chapel, the one that overlooks the Atlantic. The air was thick with incense and the murmur of a foreign language. A man in black vestments, the missionary from my book, stood before a crude wooden cross. He was speaking to a boy who was tied to a chair, his head lolling, his body covered in wounds that mirrored my own. The missionary turned to me, his face gaunt with terror, and he said, ‘It’s not the boy. It’s the cloth.’ I woke with a gasp, my skin slick with sweat, and I knew I had to examine the book more closely.

I tore the brittle pages apart, searching for a hidden pocket, a folded cloth, anything. And there it was, sewn clumsily into the spine: a small square of fabric, the color of dried blood, coarse and stiff. I pulled it out, and the moment my fingers touched it, a searing pain shot through my hand. I dropped it, and when I looked down, a new cut had appeared on my thumb, deep and welling.

The old women in Mar Azul speak of mementos, objects that carry the stain of a painful event. They say that if you hold a memento, you absorb its suffering. But this was more than suffering. The cloth was from the boy’s shirt, soaked with his blood and his torment. The missionary must have kept it as a relic, a savage reminder of his failure. And now, I had unwittingly become the next vessel.

I tried to destroy it. I tried burning it—but the fire wouldn’t take. I tried burying it in the hills—but a wild dog dug it up and left it on my doorstep. I tried returning it to the shop—but the shop was gone, replaced by a wall of salt-sprayed concrete. In desperation, I hid it in the chapel, behind the altar. That night, I dreamed of the boy again. He was free, running on the cliffs, laughing. But then he turned, and his face was mine. He pointed at my hands. ‘You have it now,’ he said. ‘The pain. It must go somewhere.’

When I woke, the cloth was on my nightstand, resting like a malevolent pet. And my cuts were worse—they were weeping, and the skin around them had taken on a greenish hue. My anger had turned to a cold loathing. I hated the sea, the town, the sun. I hated the missionary for his cowardice, the boy for his weakness, and myself for my curiosity. My heartbeat became a drumbeat of rage, and I felt an energy coiling in my stomach, waiting to lash out.

I began to understand the missionary’s diary in a new, terrible way. His entries didn’t tell a story of a boy possessed by a demon; they told a story of a man possessed by guilt. The demon was here, tangible, in the cloth of thorns. And its hunger was not for souls, but for carriers. It needed someone to feel its pain, to be its wound. I was just the latest in a long chain, and I was fraying.

Two nights ago, I saw the old shopkeeper again. She was standing at the end of my street, indistinct, like a memory. She beckoned. I followed her, my bare feet on the cold stones, past the sleeping houses, to the little rock pool where the children say a mermaid once drowned. She pointed downward, to the dark water. ‘The boy was not the last,’ she said, her voice like dry sand. ‘The missionary could not bear it. He cast the cloth into the sea. But the sea threw it back, again and again. Some objects are too heavy to sink.’

She turned to leave, but I grabbed her arm. ‘What do I do?’ I begged. ‘How do I end this?’ She looked at me, and for the first time, I saw pity in her eyes. ‘You can’t end it. You can only pass it on. But that would make you a thief, like him.’ She pointed at my hands. ‘The cuts will deepen. The pain will become you. And one day, you will find a person who burns with life, and you will be tempted to give them the cloth, to make them your successor. And then you will know peace.’

I let her go, and she dissolved into the mist. I stood there, feeling the salt on my skin, the ache in my hands. I knew I couldn’t keep this. But I also knew I couldn’t give it to anyone else. That would be a cruelty beyond measure. So I’ve decided to leave Mar Azul. I’ll take the book and the cloth into the desert, far from any ocean that might return them. I’ll find a canyon, a dry place, and I’ll bury them under a cairn of stones, and I’ll pray that the earth holds them tighter than the sea did.

But tonight, as I write this, the cuts have started to burn again. And I can feel the energy inside me, not as anger anymore, but as a dull, patient hunger. The cloth is in my pocket, pressing against my hip like a wound that never closes. I don’t know if I’ll make it to the desert. I don’t know if I’ll have the strength to bury it. All I know is that I’m tired, so tired, and that the boy in my dream no longer runs free. He sits at the bottom of a pool, waiting, his eyes open, his mouth moving soundlessly. And in his hand, he holds a scrap of cloth, dipped in blood, and he is offering it to me, saying, ‘It must go somewhere. It must go somewhere.’

And I’m afraid that I’m starting to believe him.