Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
There Are
Ghosts.
1
“That’s what I said,” Father Albert Wentley said into the
phone. “There are ghosts.”
There was a pause while he listened to the voice on the other end of
the line. He looked at the door to his office. He looked at the window,
shades drawn. He looked at the desk.
“I know that it’s not traditional doctrine. But they are here.”
He hung the phone up, carefully. He was frustrated but it was exactly
what he had expected. That was why he had not mentioned it before.
He knew what happens when you call the archbishop’s office and tell
them that there are ghosts attending Mass in your church. That was
how he’d gotten through to the Archbishop in the first place. When
asked what he the call was regarding, he’d said simply “Ghosts.”
The Archbishop had then interrupted whatever it was he’d been doing
and Father Albert had explained to him that he had ghosts in his
church. He sighed. He finally looked up across the desk from him.
Two of the ghosts sat across from him. They wore their Sunday finest,
dress clothes and ties and shoes. Their hair was neatly combed. Both
were men. One was balding. Father Albert looked at that one, and
wondered why in the afterlife this man would still be bald. He focused
on the balding and tried not to make eye contact with the ghosts, who
sat mutely across from him. Finally, he met their eyes, each in turn,
and saw the sadness and fear there, sadness and fear he did not want
2
to see because he did not understand it. The afterlife was not
something to fear or be sad about, was it?
Was it?
Father Albert was not afraid of them. He was afraid of what they
represented. He was afraid that the ghosts were here in church
because there was no place else for them to go, and if that was true,
then what was he doing?
He’d never believed that there could be ghosts roaming the earth,
because the dead would fall into two categories.
There would be the Damned, who would go to Hell. And who could
choose to remain on Earth once Satan had his claws on them? The
Devil would surely not tolerate his property walking the Earth.
Father Albert discounted the possibility that these were souls sent by
Satan to cause trouble. The Dark One would not use humans for that.
If he could spring things from Hell, he would send a demon. He always
had in the past. There had never been a case, he was sure, of
possession by another human.
And Father Albert spared no time for thinking about Purgatory, the
flawed creation of the church centuries back.
So he sat now and looked at the two ghosts sitting across from him.
They had come to his office, had been sitting in his office when Father
Albert had come down from the residence this morning at 9, as he did
everyday. They waited there patiently, like any two visitors might. He
did not know how they had gotten in, but he supposed that was not too
much trouble for ghosts. They had sat there as he walked in, and he
recognized them from the Masses they had attended, and they had not
moved when he sat down behind the desk. They had not tried to stop
him from making the phone call, finally, to the Archbishop’s office.
They had sat mutely and calmly while he tried to convince his superior
3
that there were ghosts in his church, and they sat mutely and calmly
now.
He looked at them.
The ghosts’ mouths moved, but he heard no words. When the first
opened his mouth, Father Albert heard a whistling of wind, a cold, chill
wind. He sat back, wondering where that had come from. The wind
made him instantly think of the frozen, chill plains of Antarctica during
the endless night it faced: inhospitable to the greatest degree a
human could imagine. It so distracted him that he could not even
follow the man’s lips to try to figure out what he was saying.
The other man then tried to speak, and Father Albert turned to him but
then turned away because when this man spoke what Father Albert
heard was screams and wails of children, children in pain and hungry
and sobbing.
They just stared at him, with their sad eyes. He said again, “I’m sorry.”
That did not seem to satisfy them. And he was shaken by their
attempts to communicate.
He had been, up until then, taking this rather well. He had to take it
well. He didn’t know why there were ghosts in his church. But they
were there, and after he’d noticed them, that first Mass, when he’d
seen the first of the ghosts sitting there, it had not even bothered him
then. Priests, holy men, spend most of their time pondering the
intangible, the spiritual, the holy and unholy. They contemplate facing
evil and staring it down. They work to purify themselves so that their
spirit will be strong, and so when they meet other strong spirits…
4
But they were trying to talk to him and they could not communicate –
in words. Yet the essence got across to him, somehow, in a deeper,
baser emotion than one he felt humans should still be able to feel.
There are those primal impulses that people experience, impulses that
are not guided by rational thought. The impulses that make us pull a
man pull his hand back before the hand feels the heat of the fire. The
impulses that make a mother able to hear her baby just before it cries.
The shudder of fear and determination that stiffen a spine when
heading downstairs to investigate a sound. In the area of the body
that feels those impulses, the world is still wild and jungle-like.
And, Father Albert knew now, that world also had ghosts, because it
was in that part of his body that he could feel the ghosts’
communications.
Father Albert had prayed over the body of a dying 3-day-old baby.
Father Albert had been in the army and had gone on patrol with fellow
soldiers, carrying his Bible and a cross and a gun, watching explosive
devices on the side of the road rip open his friends and blessing them
as they lay torn in half. Father Albert had studied exorcisms. He was
not easily shaken.
He looked up again at the two ghosts. He spread his hands apart and
secretly hoped they would not try to talk to him again. The bald one,
the child-screaming one, leaned forward. Father Albert inadvertently
made the sign of the cross as it did. The balding ghost pointed at its
eyes, and widened one of them. It pointed, with a long, slender, and
slightly translucent finger, at the eye.
Father Albert looked into the eye as he was directed. At first, it was
just an eye, almost transparent like the rest of the ghost. Nobody else
could see them, Father Albert thought. They could feel the ghosts,
because people instinctively did not sit near them, moved away or
blessed themselves when the ghosts passed near them, but they could
not see them because nobody else reacted directly to the ghosts.
As he stared into the eye, his field of perception changed; his eyes
stopped focusing on the ghost’s eye and started focusing just past
that, on the reflection that could be seen there. Father Albert saw
himself reflected, slightly distorted, in the ghost’s eye. He did not
know why he was told to see that.
He almost looked away, but the ghost tapped the finger just below its
eye and recaptured his attention. He stared and his eyes refocused,
one more time—past the eyeball, past the tiny reflected priest that
5
stared back, and then his vision honed in on the reflection of the
window he sat in front of.
Nothing. Just the dull gray morning light shining on the lawn with the
houses across the street. He kept looking. What could have caused
that reflection. He looked at the houses – small, white or yellow, two
stories, older houses. A car in the driveway. Trees. Could they have
looked like that?
He heard the wailing of children again and started, turning back. The
ghost had its mouth open and was pointing at its eye.
He didn’t want to look but he wanted the ghost to stop trying to talk to
him. He leaned in and looked more. He braced himself. He felt his
hands grip his desk. He let his eyes glaze a little. The ghost stopped
trying to talk; the sound of wailing children faded. His eyes drifted.
There. He did not look away and did not refocus. Just over his
shoulder in the reflection, just outside the window, he saw in the
ghost’s eye…
Fire.
Flames.
Heat.
6
soldiers he’d fought with and then they were abstract again, they were
blended together into a wall of reddish-yellow, all uniform and pleasing
and they beckoned to him.
He blinked.
He was panting.
He missed the flames, and shook his head. Where had the ghosts
gone? How could he miss the flames? What were they?
He looked at his hands, still gripping the desk, tightly, still clenched
white-knuckled. He slowly released them. They ached. He looked at
the clock. It had been over three hours since he called the Archbishop.
He panicked for second. Three hours! Three hours! How could that
be?
But he knew. The flames had mesmerized him. And he knew he had
to tell someone. He knew he had to talk to someone. He picked up
the phone. He dialed the number for the Archbishop’s office, but just
before it rang, he hung up the phone.
Flames dancing and twisting and beckoning and hot, so hot, but so
pure…
He knew that was trouble. He also knew that in the reflection, at least,
the flames were outside of the church, not inside. He pulled his hand
off the door handle and looked out the glass panel of the top half of the
7
door. He saw only the same dreary day outside, the same sidewalk he
took to the bus stop, the same children’s toys across the street.
But they’d been outside the window in the reflection and he wasn’t
ready to go outside.
He stood there a few minutes more, and then made the sign of the
cross and went back to the living quarters where he spent the night
sitting on the couch, holding his Bible on his lap and staring at the
television, which he did not turn on. He fell asleep sitting up on the
couch.
He did not see the ghosts for a few more days. It wasn’t until Mass on
Sunday that they reappeared, and this time there were more of them.
He thought maybe 30 of them, total. They didn’t register immediately.
He walked in, behind the altar boys, and turned to face the
congregation, and saw gaps here and there, half-empty pews near the
front for no reason. The ghosts did not all sit together, for some
reason. When he saw the spaces, he waited, and the ghosts became
more visible to him.
Was there?
The elderly lady, the ghost, stood there before him. The elderly
wanted him to place the host in their mouths; newer generations held
out their hands.
The woman behind the ghost stood there, not willing to move forward.
Having spent time near the ghosts, Father Albert thought he knew
why: they gave off an atmosphere, a slightly-repelling feeling that you
8
did not want to get too near to. It was like feeling a draft from a
basement where food had gone bad, cold and slightly off and rotten.
He shook his head, slightly, and her hands, clasped together, quivered.
He saw rage flash in her eyes, then it quickly faded out. She was
pleading with him. Her mouth closed when he stood there, implacable.
She moved away and the rest of communion passed uneventfully. No
other ghosts came up.
He could not shake the sounds out of his head. After Mass was over,
after he’d said goodbye to everyone, when the church was quiet, he
went back into the church itself, dimly lit now only by sunlight, pale
and gray outside, filtering through the stained glass windows, the
scenes of incredible loveliness and horror that lined the walls, the
bright yellow and blue and red and white glass depicting the torture
and death of Jesus in primary colors.
“Tell me what you want,” he said. He forced his voice to be calm. This
was one of the reasons he was here—to help people deal with the
mysteries, the vagaries, of the soul and the afterlife. These were
people, too, he told himself. They existed, now, on a different level
than he did, but they were people.
9
Their heads watched him, mostly men, a few women, only one old
woman, no children.
As one, they opened their mouths. They looked, to him, like nothing so
much as the same crowds he expected on weekdays: small but
devoted, opening their mouths to say “Amen.”
Roar moan car crash fire crackling Help building collapsing person
drowning us person shrieking baby crying woman sobbing timber
falling please white staticky noise waterfall lion roaring won’t you
snakes hissing chomping gnashing of teeth cloth tearing.
He looked around and saw the woman, the elderly woman who had
come up for communion, who had gotten angry with him when he
would not give her the Host. Her mouth was open, too, like the
others. None of the ghosts moved their mouths as though they were
talking, and she did not, either, but as he caught her eye (her dead
glassy marble-like dull eye) she nodded, maybe a little, and he
motioned to her.
“You all be quiet for a moment,” and they did, as the elderly woman
stood up. She approached the pulpit, the front of the church now
emptied of congregants. Father Albert stood there still in his
vestments and kept calm as she approached. She bowed her head
10
when she came into the aisle, and made the sign of the Cross. That,
too, bothered him. Could the denizens of the Eternal Damnation of Hell
show respect to the cross, to Jesus? And if she did so, why was she in
Hell? Was she in Hell? Was she damned? Was she not? Why were
they walking the Earth? Why were the ghosts here?
She stood before him, then knelt. He smelled the odor of ghostly
presence again, the smell of low tide. The smell of old body odor
trapped in clothing. The smell of the houses of the elderly who have
nobody to care for them and are discovered, one day, dead or just
clinging to life, laying in their beds where they have been for two or
three or more days, unable to get up and eat or go to the bathroom,
discovered by accident, always by accident.
She opened her mouth and then closed it quickly, a tiny squeak of
terror emitted. She looked down again.
She just looked up at him, a tear forming in the corner of her dead
eye. He knelt down, then, remembering his position, and was face-to-
face with her. Nobody ever told me only to minister to those who are
living, he thought, and he felt braver for that. He held out his hands to
her.
“Pray with me,” he said, and she reached forward and took his hands
and as he did he felt a cold chill, an icy current of energy that flowed
into him and threatened to cause his arms to be numb and he looked
at her and tried, he really tried, to hang onto her hands. “Our Father,”
he began but his hands felt then hot the way frostbitten and frozen
fingers feel hot and his neck was starting to tighten with the cold
seeping up to it and he had to let go and the woman moaned and fell
to her hands and knees, head down, and Father Albert massaged his
hands to get feeling into them. He looked at them. They were blue-
ish, and hard to work. He rubbed them on his thighs and they felt like
rubber.
“Who art in Heaven,” he continued, and the woman sat back a little,
and looked at him, and put her hands together in prayer but did not
take his again. He held his still-numb hands out from his sides, palms
up, and looked from her to the other ghosts still sitting in the pews,
mouths closed, watching this.
11
Father Albert finished the Lord’s prayer that way, and the Church fell
silent.
The woman just stared at him, sadly, and shook her head. She opened
her mouth a tiny amount and he heard the wind howling distantly, cold
and quick, and carried on the sound of the cold was a voice “Help us
please won’t you.”
He wanted to take her hand again but could not. He still could not feel
his own hands properly. He said to her “Tell me how,” and she looked
frightened again and then backed away from the pulpit.
“I can’t help you if I don’t know what it is you want help with,” Father
Albert said, louder, but the woman just walked down the aisle of the
church slowly. The other ghosts stood and followed her out, a ghastly
procession that was done in complete silence.
At the door, the woman paused and looked back. She was shivering,
Father Albert realized. And his hands were still numb. And now they
looked more than blue, they looked black.
12
“And let us pray,” Father Albert said, as he raised his hands. He
looked out on his congregation and tried not to show on his face what
he felt.
He supposed that everyone in the pews, everyone who was alive in the
pews, would look around and see that the church had only a few
people in it, maybe 10.
But everyone who was dead in the pews would look around and see
what might be as many as 100 ghosts. He had not counted them at
all, but they were growing more numerous as the days went by.
It had been more than a week since he had left the church or his
quarters. He could not bring himself to go outside. He was scared to
do so. But it was getting harder to move around the church, too,
without bumping into the ghosts.
They had hardly any substance, but they had some substance. He
could, as he’d done with the old woman, touch them if he wanted to,
and sometimes if he did not want to. His shoulder hurt as he held up
his hands and prayed the Lord’s Prayer for the few living parishioners
that still attended Sunday morning mass. His hand hurt, too,
bandaged up and shriveling inside. He had not been able to get a
doctor to come look at it, and each time he tried to walk outside the
door this week, he’d been met with a heart-pounding fear, a terror that
he would walk outside and into Hellfire, or a blizzard, or…
…Damnation.
He was worried that somehow the church, or he, or both, had ended up
in Hell, because when he looked into the eyes of the ghosts, when he
imagined going outside, when he tried to go outside, he saw the
landscape of Hell and did not know if it was his imagination or reality.
Others in the church came and went. The few people who attended
Masses entered and left without difficulty. Father Albert no longer
greeted them at the door because he could not bear to be near the
door. He waited further inside the church, trying to pay no attention to
the ghosts popping into the pews and their… feeling… that drove away
others.
13
had become concerned this week as he’d canceled appointments,
claiming illness. He told himself he would go to confession, or have
someone else come in and hear his confession, about that lie, but he
could not bring himself to leave.
She’d looked at his bandaged hand, the day after the old woman had
hurt it. “What happened?” she’d asked.
“You should see a doctor,” she said. But he’d told her it wasn’t that
serious and decided he would think later about whether that, too, was
a lie – it was actually serious, he thought – because he hadn’t wanted
to linger around her office, since Clicking Boy was there.
He told Nettie to get one of the other local priests to handle some of
the home visits that week. “Not feeling well,” he told her.
“I can drive you to the doctor,” she’d said. He looked out the window
when she said that. She parked, he knew, where she could see her car
from the window of her office.
Outside the window of her office that day, though, were vines and
branches and leaves and trees, pressed ferociously up against the
glass. Not nice, clean, spring-like plants. This was diseased, rotting,
melting, oozing, poisonous vegetation, the kind that he would shy
away from under any circumstances.
“No, thanks,” he said, and watched as she shrugged and picked up the
phone. He looked to his right, where Click Boy sat and shuddered. He
made the sign of the cross as he walked out to get away from Click
Boy, and as he did so, he had to dodge to the right to keep from
bumping into two other ghosts, both young women, standing in the
hallway waiting for him.
He didn’t want to be afraid of any of the ghosts, not even Click Boy,
but he couldn’t help it. After the old woman had injured his hand, he’d
tried again, with one of the older men, a man with a beard and
moustache and bald head, a man whose eyes sometimes flared up red
and who, when he opened his mouth, emitted only the sound of
crackling flames.
14
“What do you need?” Father Albert had asked the man, sitting on the
pew next to him in the main church. His hand, hurt the day before,
was bandaged.
The man turned to him and opened his mouth and Father Albert heard
only flames roaring and popping, logs bursting.
“Tell me,” he said, and listened for the words underneath the sound,
hoping this man, like the old woman, could talk.
Father Albert had not seen the old woman since she had touched him,
since she had hurt his hand. That bothered him, too. Why wasn’t she
coming around anymore?
The man had turned to him and Father Albert was surprised to see
tears in the man’s eyes. The mouth was open, gaping, the fire sounds
snapping and bristling. Underneath that, Father Albert thought he
heard thanks and then sorry and he said:
The man then hugged him, threw his ghostly smelly arms around
Father Albert, who screamed in pain and terror as the heat from the
man’s arms burnt right through his shirt and into his skin, causing his
flesh to boil up and liquefy as he pulled away, to no avail, as the man
continued hugging him until Father Albert blacked out.
******
Father Albert sometimes lay in his bed at night and wondered whether
he was really hearing clicks, or if that was his imagination.
*****
15
He had never seen them in here. He had taken to closing the door and
locking it. But they were ghosts. They could come in here if they
wanted to, he knew. He didn’t know what it was that kept them out of
the room.
But he couldn’t sleep anymore. He couldn’t lose the fear that they
would come through the door, that they would become less polite, less
respectful to him. The Hot Man had scared him because it seemed
premeditated. In the two days since then, he had called in sick,
difficult to do when the office workers were just in the other part of the
church complex. He had stayed in his room, though, had called down
and lied… again… and said that he was terribly ill and didn’t want
them to catch it.
Father Albert had asked “What’s wrong with them?” Nettie had said
that they, like him, just had a bug. Father Albert wondered if the other
employees could see the ghosts. Wouldn’t they have screamed?
Wouldn’t they have told him? He hung up the phone and then realized
he hadn’t said good-bye to Nettie. She would attribute it to the illness,
which, he realized, was a little like a lie in itself, letting her think that
he had been rude because he was ill rather than letting her know that
he wasn’t trying to be rude, not at all, but he was distracted because
the hallways were teeming with ghosts who he was afraid would touch
him.
Would other employees see them? Feel them? There had been fewer
and fewer people in church, but nobody had looked as though they,
like Father Albert, could see the ghosts. And would they tell him about
them?
16
He went over to his desk, where there was an old laptop computer that
he sometimes used. He opened it up. Put on the word processor. He
opened up a list of “contacts” and found the address he was looking
for. He logged onto the Church’s internal network.
It seemed odd, contacting the Vatican by email, but that was what he
was going to do.
It was difficult because he could hear the ghosts… voices… out in the
hall. They still could not talk properly, or he could not understand
them properly. The conversations he overheard were fires crackling
and trees falling and babies screaming and winds howling and metal
bending. With words, hidden way down inside.
He began to type. He had met, once, a priest who now worked within
the Vatican as a researcher. He was not an exorcist, not an
investigator, not anyone high up. But he worked in the Vatican and
was an insider, of sorts, the highest-up person Father Albert knew.
Father Albert typed to him now:
I hope you will forgive my being somewhat short. I have not written in
a long time and I’m sorry. I have a terrible problem that I need help
with and nobody can tell me what to do.
There are ghosts in my church. Ghosts, and I’m serious about it. They
walk the halls and make terrible noises and they have started touching
me and I don’t know what to do.
When I look in their eyes, I see Hell. When I look outside the Church, I
see Hell. I am in terrible pain and cannot see how to resolve this and
help them or make them leave.
Please let me know if you can help and see if there is someone you
can talk to about this.
He shivered a little and made the sign of the cross and hit “Send.”
17
He sat there for a moment and then saw that his “Inbox” was
highlighted. He clicked on it and saw that Father Artenosk had
replied. Eagerly, he leaned forward and clicked on it. As the email
from the Vatican loaded, he prayed again: Lord, help these tormented
souls. Help me.
The email, when opened, read: I am out of the office and will respond
when I can.
Father Albert sighed. Then he looked at the door and heard the ghost
voices outside. He had not slept at all last night and his eyes were
watery with fatigue. He walked up to the door, listening.
Five ghosts stood there. A man, about his own age. A woman, nearly
the man’s age. Two children. And a bent-over elderly woman. They
all reached out their hands and opened their mouths and he heard the
tintinnabulation in their howls.
He backed away, just a little, from their outstretched hands and the
noise they made.
He prayed again:
He turned to his right. There were two ghosts there, and a few more
beyond him. The closest to him looked at him, a young lady, maybe
30, she would have been pretty if she wasn’t so bedraggled. She held
up her hand and reached towards him. She was wet, dripping wet, the
ghostly drops of water falling from her and disappearing into thin air.
18
opened her mouth and he heard the sound of water roaring, more than
that, he heard
And Father Albert realized what had happened and saw her torment in
her eyes, saw that she was damned, for all eternity, to hurl herself off
of that bridge again, to have the cell phone drop from her grasp as she
swerved the car out of the way of the other car in the lane she’d
drifted into, saw in her eyes her own car swerving back, saw her
drinking something after work, saw her belting her baby in, and he
realized that for all of eternity she would come up from underwater,
shocked sober and freezing and realizing that she had to go back
under and then realizing that it was too late.
He stared at her. Her hand was right by his face, separated by so little
space it appeared she was touching him already.
He looked at his own hand, blackened and shriveled under its wraps.
He felt the burns on his back. He knew what would happen.
“Why?” he asked.
Rocks hitting metal people shouting police sirens rescuers pulling her
out ambulance sirens metal tearing a baby crying just once You can
take this away the cell phone ringing tires squealing a horn honking
the steering wheel smacking against her chest water splashing a tiny
gurgle.
He looked into her eyes and closed his own and said “I can’t.”
19
But he nodded, then, and said “Touch me.”
She was cold and she was wet and then he was cold and he was wet as
she touched her hand to his cheek and he felt an icy blast furrow into
his body, wind whipping and he was drenched, water fell all around
him and he couldn’t breath and he shivered and gasped for air, water
going into his throat and lungs. Through the cold water, through the
bitter wind, he watched as she held her hand against his face and
faded away, and he fell down into a heap on the floor, in a puddle,
soaking wet and shivering, teeth chattering, heart sinking, as he saw
that she was no longer there. Water ran down the hallway on either
side and he told himself to breath again, that he was not underwater.
He wiped water away from his face and shivered and started to cry.
He coughed once or twice and then knelt down and vomited up water
that he had swallowed when the Drowned Woman had touched him.
He stood up again and held a hand on the wall, legs shaking.
There were three ghosts at the corner, standing near the stairs. They
held out their hands to him.
The nearest one was a woman who reminded him of his own
grandmother. She was kneeling, and holding her hands as though
praying or beseeching him. The two behind her were an elderly man
who seemed out of place, wearing clothing that was too old fashioned
for the era. His face seemed marked and pocked. There was a woman
with them, standing protectively near the man. A family, Father Albert
thought.
The elderly woman opened her mouth as she neared. He did not hear
anything at first. He stopped and looked. She was trying to talk, but
she could not. He bent down in front of her, and stared at her face.
The man behind her, the woman, maybe their daughter, all seemed
too thin. He looked into the elderly woman’s eyes, and saw a small
20
room. A small room with a child’s bed in it. On the bed lay a boy, even
skinnier than the three of them.
The elderly woman’s mouth opened again and Father Albert listened.
He thought he heard whispering. He bent closer. He did hear
whispering. People’s voices, whispering in the background.
He’s always been sickly won’t make it through the winter need to keep
my strength up or who’ll plant in the spring father not coming back
how deep is the snow he may be ill with something else not much
bread left anyway give it to him and we all starve and then he’ll starve
anyway
“You didn’t,” he said, but they started looking as though they would
cry, and all three of their mouths opened and he heard the whispering
louder then, two women’s voices and a man’s
shouldn’t have let him go alone don’t we have to give the boy at least
something there’s not enough to go around you’re his mother share
with him we’re all in this together he hasn’t even gotten up out of bed
all day maybe he’s sick with something else doesn’t make sense to
give scraps of our last food to someone whose gonna die anyway
maybe tomorrow we can get some food and maybe he’d make it he
ain’t gonna make it.
They just stared at him. He wanted to get up and leave and go down
the stairs. He didn’t want to help them. That wasn’t a mistake. That
wasn’t unexpected. They’d let that boy starve.
21
If he didn’t help them, if he turned his back on people in need, he
might end up finding out. But if he did help them… What happens to
the sin-eaters?
The last thing he’d heard from the starving family before they’d
disappeared, dissipated, was this: Thank you.
He shuddered.
He felt wet, still, and cold. His hand was nearly useless, blackened and
crisp under the bandages, skin sloughing off.
His burns hurt, across his back and on his shoulder. He wanted to
move his hand.
“But these are damned souls.” Tears welled into his eyes. “These are
damned souls, people whose evil has already condemned them.”
Should that matter? He wondered, as he stared at the fourth sandwich
which he knew he would not finish even though it felt as though his
stomach was collapsing on itself.
He knew what did matter, and what did matter, he did not want to
admit to himself, but he did, as he stood up and wavered on legs that
were weak with hunger now, weak with the sins of the family that had
starved an infant so they might live a fractional bit longer, weak with
the cold that chilled him to the bone from the water of the mother who
had opted to have a few drinks before picking up her child, who had
not wanted to pay attention to the road while she talked on the phone
and who had slithered free of the car before checking on her baby.
22
The burns wracked him and he saw image after image of a man
lighting a car on fire, pouring gasoline on it as a woman cowered
inside, and the gasoline splashed back onto him so that when he
flicked his lighter to engulf her in flames, the fire sprang down his hand
and up to his face and hair and eyeballs before leaping to the car to kill
her.
On weak legs, he made his way down from the residence. The ghosts
were less numerous, now, in the middle of the night, for some reason.
There were still five or more in the halls, and he saw them and passed
them warily. They did not approach.
From off in the distance, he heard clicking, and he knew what else
mattered, but what else mattered was driven down below the fear.
And he knew what was outside. He saw it through the windows, now:
dirty foaming water filled with blood and ice and car wrecks and oil
spills and the water was burning somehow and it was flowing down
mountainsides that were strewn with broken bones, shards of bone
razor-sharp to cut the flesh that passed over them as acid-rain fell
from the sky and created rivulets in the rocks, chasms that opened
and left people falling falling falling for all eternity skin scorched and
animals gnawing at their throats…
23
That was not what mattered most.
He turned and looked back at the ghosts that were down the hall from
him, staring at him, mouths closed.
He looked at his hand, still loosely wrapped and in pain. He felt his
stomach gurgle in need. His shoulders tore underneath his clothes,
and water puddle under his feet.
He looked still at the ghosts, and said “I don’t know how many I can
help.”
He was still afraid of Click Boy. He knew what he had to do and feared
that he could not do it if Click Boy was there.
The first was just down the hall from his quarters. He had come out of
his door, he had been intending to try to do something, anything, to
feel as though he was not falling apart, and he had seen Click Boy out
of the corner of his eye. By then he had become more familiar with
the ghosts, not comfortable with them, not by any means, but at least
he recognized them and knew them and saw some of them around.
This was, too, before he’d known why the ghosts were here, why they
were seeking him out. Why they wanted to touch him. This, the first
time he’d seen Click Boy, was when he was still trying to figure out
why the ghosts were here.
And even though he was familiar with the ghosts, even though he was
not afraid of them and did not know yet why they were there, he had
turned away from Click Boy, revolted. And terrified.
24
Bites.
His entire body was pockmarked with tiny dots and deeper gouges and
welts and bumps and bruises and pinpricks of blood. His body was
swollen with poisons and pain and looked as though it might burst. His
eyes were pinched closed by the bites on his eyelids and brows. His
tongue lolled out of his mouth and he could not close his mouth even
when he pressed his puffed, limp hands to the bottom of his jaw, which
meant that his voice, the sounds of his Hell, were always escaping.
And the sounds of his Hell were just clicks. Tiny, nearly-inaudible
clicks. But so many clicks, so many noises, so many infinitesimal taps,
that they became a constant chatter of clicks, building to a staccato
the way a billion billion drops of water falling over a cliff can roar.
And in the midst of that, a tiny voice… I didn’t know it was wrong…
threading its way out of the clicks.
The second time he had seen Click Boy was in the office when he was
talking with Nettie. Click Boy had been sitting in a chair, and when
Father Albert had left, had hurried into the corridor and tried to walk
down the hallway without looking, he had heard the clicks following
him, had looked back to see Click Boy dragging his nearly-useless legs
one after the other, wincing when his feet hit the ground. His feet
were in tennis shoes, the kind a fourteen-year-old boy would wear, but
the shoes were tattered, in shreds, they were always disintegrating
and regenerating, just as the rest of Click Boy’s clothing did. He was
being torn apart and rebuilt as fast as he could, and more welts
appeared, welts on bites on bumps on bruises on welts. The clicking
rose and fell and his voice sometimes came through:
Father Albert did not need to run. Click Boy could scarcely move and
as he did move, he was distracted and brushed his hands over his face,
clawing at his eyes. He put his thick fingers, pus-filled and rotting, no
doubt, up to his mouth and tried to brush out his tongue, which itself
was black and blue. Click Boy coughed and stumbled and rasped and
dug at his ears and shuffled along, trying to catch Father Albert, who
only had to pick up his pace a tiny bit to leave him behind, and who to
his shame, did so, without even a kindly word to help the boy.
25
The third time had been the most startling, and was why Father Albert
had started locking his door, although he knew it was ridiculous
because he knew that the ghosts were leaving Hell – were they? – and
that they could move around and if they could leave Hell and move
around through walls and doors, they could come through a locked
door. But they did, through long habit maybe or respect for him, try to
stay in the hallways and did not come through locked doors.
So he locked his door at night, something he’d begun the night he’d
had the dream and woken to find Click Boy there.
In the dream, he’d been standing in the dark. He was on flat ground
but it was dark, too dark to see around him, the kind of darkness that
can only exist in a dream.
Or in Hell.
But it was a dream and it was too dark to see and he could only hear,
as he peered into the darkness, but at first he could hear nothing.
Then more.
Then more more more more more more more more more and they
grew closer and louder and then he felt the first twitch and he looked
down, for he could see his body clearly in the dark, his body that was
wearing the outfit he’d worn that day, a blue sweater vest over white
button-collar shirt with khaki pants and but he was barefoot and it was
his foot which he could see clearly and his foot which he lifted now
amidst the more more more more clicking and he looked and saw two
ants, two tiny ants, crawling on his foot. He brushed them off and felt
more on his other foot, so he put the first foot down and tried to ignore
the more more more more more clicking and lifted the other foot to
see twenty, maybe thirty ants and some other bugs he could not
identify and he brushed them off and looked into the darkness but now
his first foot was tickled and itching and he felt it up his shin and he
lifted that one to brush it off, putting the second foot down and hearing
and feeling squishing and crunching, as amidst the blackness he
brushed more ants and centipedes and spiders off his leg, repeating
that dance over and over as the clicking grew and grew more more
more more clicking and he peered into the darkness and brushed and
began to brush the bugs out of his waist
26
And he’d woken then, startling, lying there in the dark and the only
difference between the dark of his dream and the dark of the room was
that in this dark he knew he was lying down.
There was clicking in his room, clicking clicking clicking and he pressed
himself down into the mattress away from the clicking. He snuck one
hand out of the covers and switched on his bed lamp.
Click Boy’s bloated misshapen face was hanging right over his, his
mouth open, his tongue bleeding, his face coated in tears and scabs
and bites.
I didn’t know it was wrong and couldn’t help it he’d said over the clicks
but Father Albert had screamed and rolled away and gone to the
window to see that outside the window were walls and walls of bugs,
crawling over each other, spiders and ants and centipedes and
mantises and flies, so thick he could not see the streetlights and he
had fled the room without looking again at Click Boy.
That was why he wanted to get to the church before Click Boy could
get there.
In the church, a few minutes later, he stood near the front. He looked
at the ghosts, filing into the pews, the ghosts already sitting in the
pews, the ghosts coming past him into the doorway, heard the doors at
the front of the church itself opening.
Because how else were they doing this? How were ghosts, spirits,
souls, leaving their torments and coming to see him, to give him their
torments, to ask him to save them by having him physically suffer the
punishments they were otherwise doomed to experience themselves?
27
He stood not near the altar but off to the side. He listened to the door
in the front creak open and closed, the tiny whoosh of air as the heavy
door shut itself. He watched the ghosts, all silent, shuffle in and walk
in and crawl in. He tried not to envision what each was going through.
He made the sign of the cross over himself and marveled at how many
there were. Over a hundred, he thought.
His hand was nearly dead. He was damp and wet and squishy and his
shoulders hurt and his stomach strangled itself with hunger. More
ghosts were coming and he wanted to begin before Click Boy came.
“I know why you’re all here,” he said, but his voice cracked and it
barely came out.
He tried again.
“I don’t know how you found me or why this works, but I know what
you’re all doing here,” and his voice was still soft and weak but the
church carried it around enough, he thought. He held up his hand,
blackened and dangling. “I am just one person,” he said, and lost the
strength to go on. He couldn’t make a speech. He knew what they
wanted him to do and wanted to explain to them that he would let as
many of them touch him as they could, that he would take their
torments even if that meant that he would go to Hell in their place, but
that he wasn’t sure how much he could suffer, that they had to go
quickly, that he didn’t know whether it would work if he died himself,
and that he was sure he would die before too many of them passed
their punishment to him.
28
But he couldn’t talk and his heart leapt into his throat as he looked at
them. There were over 150 now, he thought, filling the pews. A few
stragglers were coming in.
He heard no clicking.
Now. Start now before you lose your nerve, he told himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said, so softly that he wasn’t sure, at first, if he said it,
but he realized he must have because the ghosts in the front row
started, looked more closely at him, opened their mouths all at once
and he knew, then, that he didn’t have the heart to go through with it.
Saving souls is what I was meant to do but not like this, he thought.
And so he ran. He lurched forward from the spot in front of the altar
where he stood and tried to run past the ghosts, wanted to run through
the church and out the front door because even if it was Hell outside
he was certain that Hell for him would not be as bad if he could suffer
only his own punishment for being too weak to do his job. He might go
to Hell for failing in his life’s purpose but he would spend eternity
suffering only for that and not for all the rest of their sins.
He made it to the middle of the pews before the ghosts, who were
slower, slowed by their torments and their insubstantial nature, were
up and in front of him and around him, mouths open, eyes wide and
showing what awaited him as they clawed at him. They grabbed him
and tore at him and he staggered when the first few touched him.
Fire
Ice
Knives
Bullets
Screams and roars and car engines and airplanes crashing and waves
and rocks and sounds he could not identify washed through his ears.
He smelt burnt flesh and burnt hair and burning wood and vomit and
fear and he saw flashes of light and heat and more accidents and
tortures and cruelties flashed before his eyes as one, two, three, ten
ghosts grabbed at him. He heard their relieved howls as his body fell
and twitched spasmodically on the floor, as they disappeared and his
29
own body began to bleed and scorch and contort, as he struggled to
breath and struggled to see and struggled not to feel.
More ghosts piled on and on and his vision went black and he lost
feeling in his legs and his head was pounding as though split by an axe
and he felt pins jabbing into his heart and he tried to scream but his
mouth was full of something that he could not identify.
He opened his eyes, blinking them clear of the foul substances that
were coating them as more ghosts grabbed at him. He tried to see the
crucifix, the altar, tried to utter one last prayer for their souls and his
own. As he got his eyes opened, though, he looked and saw, coming
closer, Click Boy.
And a spider crawled onto Father Albert’s eye and he screamed and
screamed and never stopped screaming.
Ever.
30