Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

In the northwest corner of Spain, where the Atlantic mists come up the drowned river-valleys and the granite crosses stand at every crossroads, the night roads have never entirely belonged to the living. Galicia—Celtic in its bones, green as Ireland and as haunted—keeps to this day the most fully documented procession of the dead in western Europe: the Santa Compaña , the Holy Company. It walks after midnight, in single file, along the parish paths: a line of souls in hooded shrouds, each carrying a lit candle—though some say the light is the glow of their own bones—preceded by a cross and a cauldron of holy water, leaving behind it the smell of wax on the night air. And at its head, by the law that makes this legend unlike any other, walks a living person : a parishioner, condemned without knowing it, who leads the dead night after night, carrying their cross, wasting toward the grave—and who can be freed only by the blunder or the cunning that passes the office to someone else. The ...