We dress quickly, wrapping shawls tight against the morning chill, against the low mist which lies over the ground. We walk in silence, Mama ahead, Elena at her side. I keep my eyes lowered, watching the path beneath my feet, the damp earth dark against my hem. My mind feels distant, muffled, as if wrapped in wool.
A sound cuts through it.
A gasp. Then another.
I lift my head.
A small gathering stands before the church, not pressing forward, but held back, as though by an invisible line. Their heads are tilted upward. No one speaks. No one moves.
The doors.
Something is wrong with the doors.
A shape rises against them. Pale.
For a heartbeat my mind refuses it. It rearranges the lines into something else—a cloak, perhaps, or a bundle of cloth hung carelessly.
Then I see the blood.
It runs down the wood in thick, dark streams, soaking into the grain, gathering at the threshold in sluggish pools. The morning mist catches the scent of it and carries it faintly outward, sweet, wrong.
My breath stops as the shape resolves. Skin, arms stretched wide. Nailed.
Popa Vasile’s body is fastened to the church doors as though they themselves have claimed him. His body is naked, stripped of every layer that once marked him as holy. His skin is waxen in the grey light, stretched taut over bone. Iron spikes pierce through his wrists, dark halos of torn flesh blooming around them. The wood around them is split and splintered where the force drove through.
His head lolls slightly to one side, and where his eyes should be—
Empty sockets gape open, raw and red, torn completely. Blood has tracked down his cheeks in twin rivulets, dried at the corners of his mouth. His mouth hangs slightly open, as though the last breath was caught there and never released.
The mist coils around his feet. The great doors of the church stand closed behind him, as though barred from within, his body the final seal.
Mama’s breath leaves her in a broken cry.
She collapses to her knees on the damp earth, hands flying to her chest before clasping together, fingers digging into one another as though she can anchor herself to prayer alone. "Doamne, miluie?te," she gasps. "Doamne, miluie?te… Doamne, miluie?te-ne…[26]" The words tumble over one another, barely formed, her voice shaking as if it might tear itself apart.
Elena does not move, and neither do I.
We stand among the villagers, rooted where we are, our breath shallow, our eyes unable to look away. The morning light grows stronger, revealing more than it should, illuminating every bruise, every wound, every obscene detail of the priest's humiliation. A thin line has been drawn down his torso, not deep enough to open him fully, but enough to mark him. The cut glistens faintly, the wood behind him splattered, as if the church itself has been baptized in red.
A man near the front swallows loudly. "This is no man’s doing," he mutters. "No widow’s revenge."
Another whispers, hoarse, "This is the devil himself."
The word hangs in the mist like rot.
For a long moment, no one dares step closer. No one dares look away.
Then Radu's father steps forward.
"We cannot leave him like this," he says, his voice rough with outrage and fear. "He is a priest of God."
No one answers. They shrink back instead, eyes wide, as though the body might stir if touched.
"Are you all struck dumb? Help me," he insists.
"Wait," someone hisses. "We do not know what touched him."
"What if it is cursed?"
