Now the noise was ceasing, dying back as if cut by an invisible sword it was loosing its grip on the would be quiet abbey ruins. The children were being taken away in coaches and cars. The air stilled and calmed like the eerie feeling after a storm. Everyone gone the abbey was emptying; its crowds were dead. The sun bathed the entire building in a warm and comforting light like a mother snuggling a small baby, the sun comforted the abbey. But night was fast approaching and the sun also was dying. Fading away, the warm globe of hope was sinking back down into the hillsides fading slowly until the grassy hillocks that framed the horizon swallowed the sun. As though they would never relinquish their grip on it again.
Soon the quiet and stillness came on like an icy breath the air was cloying and thick, to thick to walk, to thick to breathe. The ruins were left naked and bare; the colour of the day gone forever it seems. They were glowing from the last light as though in happy remembrance of the past day, like they were remembering a loved one who had travelled beyond this realm. The last warm glow tingled tantalisingly on the hills before disappearing from sight. Twilight was upon the abbey.
Dead in the twilight is the memory of the day passed under the warm golden sun. Gone are the people, the colour, and the light. The animals of the night now reign, and once again Mother Nature has power controlling the beasts and creatures. Bats flit round, butterflies of the night their grace and beauty concealed by the shroud of night that envelops the abbey. They play, whirling around ballet dancers telling stories of times past. Darting, mysterious shadows of the night invisible to the eye but plain to the other senses; the sound of their wings and the feel of the air left behind them in a mysterious trail. The abbey mourns; its magnificent walls heave and buckle under the sorrow of years gone by.
The lone owl cries out a wail in mourning for the daylight now gone. The shadows leap out swirling round tricking and deceiving the eyes. Locked up and left the abbey stands alone the last man on a battlefield all the comradeship gone. Left for dead. The wind blows around the great bell tower. It grows louder filling the room until it is so loud it is unbearable but under that sound is another, the sound of a bell faintly it chimes the ears are deceiving but so are the other senses the night is coming.
The night is upon the abbey now the bitter cold freezes the body and mind though the flesh down to the bone so cold that the body stops under the sheer pressure. The cold is heavy and bears down biting hard it beats like a cruel master with a whip punishing his poor servant. The clouds invisible the night is so clear but the moon is not present. It to has been engulfed; the light is faint but the stars are not out the whole abbey is cast in eerie light its source unknown. The main hall is empty of life but for the unbearable wind and on the wind is yet again carried another sound. The voices of monks singing their praise to God and the earth whistling down the walls reaching out to space with no one around to hear it. The moon is dead now it has not risen, the abbeys is cast into complete darkness.
The blackness that the abbey has been plunged into is engulfing, swallowing, consuming. The dark is so smothering that it is impossible to know man from beast. There are no sounds the entire world is a vacuum where even if there was noises nothing could hear them. The world is dead to the senses. In the bell tower no longer can the whistling wind be heard. Now all is silent. The Tall beautiful walls are invisible as though they had been erased from the earth’s surface. The stream that once babbled happily has to been engulfed in the darkness its sound is the only thing that can be heard for miles around. The world is so dead and coated in darkness that the air is thick with the smell of the night and it seems as though a new day will never come.
The everlasting night has swept through the abbey like a disease but from over the hills a warm red glow has spread gently lighting up the abbey; animals are scurrying back to there homes and then. A solitary ray of light now shines out catching the edge of the east wall illuminating the beautiful architecture that frames one of the great windows in the hall. It shines down like a ray of hope in the dark night; the sun is rising as more of the abbey is illuminated a single ray falls on a stone carving of Jesus like a sign from the heavens that morning is here. The sun rises, its beautiful shape emerging from in between two trees its sheer beauty taking up the whole sky. The dark tentacles of the night are fought into submission by the powerful sun rays. The night releases its hold on the abbey. For now a new day dawns.