THE END.
CHURCH ON SUNDAYS
“It’s not like that. I always had good experience with priests growing up.” There was still some doubt in Father Crosby’s face. “Really, as an altar boy Father Adair used to have us butt heads like before a football game. He’d rally us up with more energy than he had once he got up on the altar. He was a retired priest still getting in a mass here and there; he fell eventually, but he was great to serve with. Really it’s priests that made me want to be a storyteller. The stories they told, they made me believe. They made me want to instill that same kind of sensation in others.”
“Fiction?” He pried into the level of my faith, which perhaps I had instigated by using the word ‘stories’.
“Well, I wanted to tell fiction. Everything is fiction the second you put it into words or take a photograph of it, even if you videotape it. You are removing all the many facts that make its existence real and you display the facts you, the storyteller, find pertinent.” I cleared my throat, I had spoke so fast as not allow my words to offend even though I believed them. “I believe in the stories they told me. It’s not like I don’t have faith in God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, everything I learned in Catholic school. That is engrained in me and I don’t think I could be made to disbelieve it until I’m at the pearly gates and told otherwise.”
“You still haven’t explained to me why you don’t attend mass any more.” Father Crosby was staring down at his notes. I wish I had lied. I really wished I had just said I’d started attending mass regularly down in Richmond.
I lie about little things all the time, why did I speak truthfully when the meeting about the wedding arrangements was going so well?
“You really do need to start attending mass, as part of your relationship, marriage needs spirituality and that must be nourished along with everything else. You need to start attending mass with her before the wedding,” then after a moment he added, “and after.”
“I know. I know.” I was desperate to end the conversation and get out of the rectory and start wondering if I’d actually start attending again or take more time and effort to fabricate a solid lie complete with the name of the pastor and priests at the church in Richmond I would start attending. But a lump set in my throat because I knew why I hadn’t been attending.
Most people I knew assumed it was a priest who I literally hated that drove me away, and it certainly kept me away but I know I was gone before that moment. I looked at Father Crosby, his lower lip tucked in with disgust as he leaned back in the chair waiting for something more like a promise from my lips.
“Even if you’ve lost faith in the church, please, go.” He said.
And then I slipped up again. I spoke the truth when I was better off lying.
“I can’t.” I squeaked out of my lips and landed on the table between us. Father Crosby’s bottom lip flipped out and his tongue wet his upper as his eyes strained to understand what possible excuse I would attempt next.
“You’re right, it’s not just laziness.” I shrugged. “I challenged the Devil.”
I hid my eyes and waited to hear his lips form a response, but nothing came.
“I was very self righteous. I wanted to become a priest. I wanted to fight evil, the Devil himself. And one evening in Church I can remember it was in the fall, because of the drive home. I challenged the Devil. I told him I was going to take him out. And something terrible hit me, the worst kind of feeling of dread, like my challenge had been heard. My sister drove us back home that night from the youth group and the trees… the way the headlights played off their naked branches, it wasn’t right. It was the darkest night I had ever experienced.”
The memory was like a knife in my brain, twisting. I could remember the weight in my stomach.
“I had nightmares, I hope that’s all they were that night. Maybe I was just young, maybe it was all the stories I’d been hearing about possession, exorcism, the stories of Monks in South America battling the devil in their rooms late at night. I’ve always had a great imagination.
“I felt evil on my bed. I felt it pressing down at my feet, looming over me, taunting me. I prayed and prayed. I didn’t have a lamp next to my bed, I do now and will always have one, so to jump up and run to the door to flick on the light was too much for me. I slept tucked under the covers in a fetal position tight enough to be back in my mother’s womb.
“I slept with the lights on for a few weeks after that. Plenty of nightmares keeping me up until one day it just stopped. Maybe I’d had something else on my mind but life went on.
“I wanted to be a writer and an artist and started to pursue that, as priests came and went in our parish I met more that didn’t inspire me and worse in the lay people who ran the youth groups. They were the worst kind of people in the world. When I see Sarah Palin trying to run for office I see those women and it turns my stomach. I don’t mean to get political but that woman defines the evil PTA president who bans classic books. I don’t know much about Palin, I just get that vibe from her and others do too, so I assume I’m not crazy in my dislike for her.
“So I lost my extracurricular interest in Catholicism, I explored it rarely now, I’d read the Catechism as a sixteen year old! And now I was more interested in just writing stories and girls and college.
“I kept up church for most of College and the passion in me to fight evil came back and I thought about how I could do it and not have a repeat of what I believed had happened. No matter how much of it might’ve been my mind playing tricks on me. I didn’t even want to trick myself again. The safest way to battle evil would be a pen and paper, or in my case a computer and a keyboard.
“My interest in battling evil and the occult had only grown. I met interesting people, Wiccan’s who I didn’t view as evil and many other faiths but I still had mine and I still believed in evil. So I started a fictional story about the dangers of the occult. I had trouble finding other stories and movies on the subject and wondered why that was the case. Sure there are the well known like the Exorcist, and the books of Dennis Wheatley, but I don’t think many were striving for the realism that I wanted to report on.
“And no offense, but modern thinking and even the Church, I felt were straying away from demons, and it did leave me wondering a bit more if I had been deceived by those priests I’d idolized. Heck, rumor was one of them even performed an exorcism in our area and I’ve heard stories from non-Catholics around here that would be enough to support those claims if I trusted the mouth they came from. I’m not asking you to confirm anything.” I added and wondered if I was speaking too fast, but he sat with his brow lowered and his chin pushing folds of skin against his neck.
“So the project came and went depending on my current passion for it, in my mind I’d take notes. But it wasn’t until I actually started to work on it. When I completed a first draft, bad things started again. My life around me started to fall apart. I ran out of money, I was kicked out of my parent’s house, got into a heated argument with my girlfriend’s father. All around my world was just this terrible place and I wanted to rebel and escape it. Gave up writing, tossed a lot of work, burned my artwork. I wanted to be somebody else and all the time just haunted and pained at night. I had gone to Church and felt nothing.
“It was Easter Sunday and I was outside the church because it was too crowed and they had a tent with a television on so we could see the altar. I felt detached. It was the first time I ever felt that, and I’ve felt it ever since.
“A few weeks later everything resolved itself, almost like it had never happened. I had stopped going to Mass, though I would show up on the holidays required by my family. You know when the twice a year Catholics show up. But my life made an upswing. Grades improved, found a job I loved, had my future fiancé. My relationship with my family was even the best it ever had been.
“I always wanted to go back to Church, it wasn’t like I had actually lost my faith. I still believed it feverishly. It wasn’t even a disgust a
t the way things were being done or even how the scandal was handled. I knew the media is what it is, it’s meant to sell, and they worked an angle that was unfair to the Church as a whole. So like I said, it wasn’t that. It was the people at Church with me. I didn’t believe in them. I didn’t want to be associated with them. They would say ‘Peace be with you’ and shake your hand (before germs scared that tradition out of the parish) and then they’d cut you off in the parking lot or gossip solely to put others down. If that was a Christian I didn’t want to be one. So I did start to develop my faith more personally with God, but I admit I wasn’t doing it every Sunday.
“But the project was still there, it was still something that would shout into my mind and sometimes I’d mean to start it again and forget, and other times I would sit down and get to work on it and passionately report my work to others only for bad things to start again. Creepy things. I mean most of it would sound so cliché, right out of a horror movie. And again it may have been my imagination already in tuned for the writing. Sometimes it would be little things, like the way my apartment’s bedroom door is, it looks out into the hall and is 90 degrees to the bathroom door and the entrance in about a door’s width’s distance, and I think I had lit a candle in the living room down the hall and in my bedroom, and then had partially closed my door, not too far because I wanted to remember to blow out the candle.
“And I went to work. Researching, taking notes, getting excited about inspiring others that evil can be fought. And I hear a creak on the floorboards, this was an apartment in the Fan District, every wood floor creaks when you step on it. I paused. My computer was in line with the door and I stared over at the door and listened. Some one was there watching me. I could feel them, same as when my roommate would use the bathroom, and I knew he was outside the door brushing his teeth and still watching the television in the living room. Through the crack in the door I could even make out the dark figure that candlelight was silhouetting. I knew some one was outside my door and I couldn’t take it. I knew I was the only person in the apartment that night. It felt like it was one motion, but I flung the door open and stood up, and there it was.
“My bathroom door was open all the way, against the wall, the towels on the door hooks had been the dark figure. It was my mind playing tricks on me, but how come it felt like something had just left? Like there had been something there in that space a moment ago? Do you know that feeling?
“I stopped working again. Had a bad day at work the following day, other little things. That’s what always happened when I would work on the project, things would get real bad and if I said no more and shelved the project things returned to normal. Like nothing bad ever happened. Any bridge that seemed burned was never burned at all. It was strange and comforting to know.
“But my attraction to this project still stood, still stands.” I corrected myself, “I remember jotting down a note in my yellow pad for when I was brave enough to tempt fate and forget superstition and write again, and that night I was awoke by what I thought was arguing, but there was no arguing but perhaps in my dream. Ellwood Avenue was strangely quiet that night and then I heard a woman’s voice, screaming, and it sounded like she was screaming into my window from the porch outside, the window right next to my pillow.
“’I’m not afraid of you anymore!’ She screamed, several times, but it wasn’t so much fear but as if she were mocking me. As if she meant to do me harm. Suddenly I swear it was a gunshot and maybe it was a door slam. But the night became quiet again. I waited for sirens, anything. Her words repeating, ‘I’m not afraid of you anymore.’
“Terrified of what might’ve happened if it had been a domestic or something. I searched the Richmond Times Dispatch the following day and found nothing. I was convinced it was another of the strange bad things that happened when I worked on the project. I didn’t pursue work on it again.
“Well until maybe a year later, and I remember waking up and seeing the dark form standing against my door. It was the most terrifying shape just lurking there against my door, watching me sleep. I knew it wasn’t going to do anything unless I got up, it was waiting for me to move and I swear I could feel it smiling.
“When I woke up I realized what I had seen. The bedroom door has two hooks on the back that I hang my Cahart jacket on and my nice jacket on. When my fiancé had visited to attend someone’s wedding she’d hung her dress on the one hook and moved the Cahart jacket over top the other jacket. When she’d left I hadn’t switched the jacket back over since it was late spring and I wasn’t using either. In the way the streetlights illuminate my room at night the whites of the wall stand out. Without the familiar dark shapes on the door and just this one monstrous one I must’ve imagined it. And the smile? I could even equate that to the flickering of a Netgear Router I’d moved up higher so my roommate could get a better wireless signal. Perhaps it had flickered and caught the hood of the Cahart jacket just right.
“You see I can explain it all. It’s not unexplainable, there’s always an answer and I should be content with the idea that it is solely my imagination. But I can watch a horror film and never jump, never get tense. And I’m left with a phrase I’ve heard so much, ‘the greatest trick was…’
I didn’t finish, Father Crosby knew the line and it sent shivers up my spine to even remind myself that something more than a jacket or a towel was in my room that night.
“But the thing is, it’s not just when I work on the project anymore. It’s anytime I attend mass or even go in a church. I feel like it’s saying the challenge stands.” I sighed. “I’m afraid to go to church.”
I believe Father Crosby grunted but he might’ve made no sound at all, just simply shifted in his seat before shuffling his papers neatly in his hands and setting them back down on the table.
He stood gently and said, “Come, let’s go pray.” I knew he meant to step outside and go to the Church and pray. I knew I’d be in there on my wedding day. I knew there was no stopping that and it worried me what horrible things would befall me on that day. Maybe Father Crosby was right. I needed to go to church. I needed to face it now before something like the ruining of my wedding day happens. I love my fiancé too much to drag her into this mess. Maybe this will be the time when there are no coincidental bad things to follow and I’ll finally realize it is my stupid mind playing stupid tricks on my stupid self.
I entered the church I had not been in for three years. It had changed some of the pews and I remember seeing the old ones tossed outside the church several months ago during the renovation. There was also navy blue carpet around the altar instead of the bright red that I’d grown up with. It was ten o’clock and the sun was high enough not to really be lighting up the stained glass windows.
Father Crosby turned on the lights and we walked up towards the altar. I thought I should genuflect, but didn’t. I actually couldn’t remember what the rule was anymore. Since Father Crosby did not I stood and waited until he directed me to kneel down in the first pew.
We prayed silently, then he started the Rosary, and then we went back to our own prayers. I begged God as I did the Sunday after I had made that stupid challenge. Please just let this be over, I’m not strong enough to take up that foolish challenge, protect me. Protect me from him.
Father Crosby and I talked a little more and things seemed peaceful and cordial between us. He reminded me to go to mass on Sunday with my fiancé. I made no promises but smiled as if I were.
I glanced back up at the rectory before finishing my goodbye. I swear I saw some one standing in the window smile at me. It wasn’t a friendly smile. I glanced back down at Father Crosby then back at the window and the person was gone.
“Is there anyone else at the rectory this morning?” I asked wearily.
“No.” Father Crosby smiled, “Don’t worry, I’ll treat this as I would a Confession.” He patted my shoulder and his smile was warm and proud and everything God intended a smile to be. Nothing like the smile I’d seen in the win
dow. The fact that no one else was there made my heart sink. I said my good bye and promised to tell my fiancé ‘hello’ for him.
I had to drive back to Richmond, when the stormy clouds rolled in I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Was this supposed to be another scary omen? The light rain started and was easily displaced by my windshield wipers.
A pleasant thunder rumbled and I smirked. “You’d have to do better than that.” I spoke aloud in the safety of my Corolla. Then I thought I saw her—my fiancé walking along the side of I-95. I jerked my wheel and went off the road, the rumble of the end of the asphalt shook my grip and I felt the wet grass tugging my wheels in every direction. The steering wheel yanked around and I heard the car grinding something it shouldn’t. And finally came to a halt facing the wooded median. My heart racing, I watched as cars whizzed by, completely embarrassed.
“It’s all your imagination, idiot.”
I noticed my radio was on suddenly. I must’ve bumped the button when I had gone off road. I listened for anything sinister, but there was nothing. I accidently grinded the starter, thinking I had to restart the engine, but it was still running quietly. I drove through the grass and tried to gain speed before I merged back into the left lane. I was glad a cop hadn’t seen me and decided I’d better pull off and have lunch or something.
I picked exit 86 because I knew it lead back to plenty of options near Virginia Center Commons Mall. My head jerked back the feeling was real. There was some one in my back seat. I twisted and was so grateful it was empty, but I kept my eyes in the rearview mirror, waiting for them to return. I could almost hear the click of the door opening and someone stepping in. I started to cry.
I worked back to my senses and arrived back at my apartment. The rest of the day went on into night without a hitch and I’d soon lost any discomfort from remembering my challenge. It was late when I felt it. That feeling that the door was open to the porch and cool night air was working its way from the back of the apartment through the kitchen down the hall and finally gently touching my bedroom door. I looked at the time and it was almost four in the morning, plenty of time to go back to sleep.
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