“You should have asked that before you came for her?”
Amy
The notification appears from an unknown number while I’m sitting on the edge of my bed. My stomach knots before I even unlock my phone and swipe it open.
There is an image, but it’s dark. The picture is poorly lit. I zoom in and then out. My eyes widen when I recognize the expensive coat and the watch.
Enough to know...it’s Roman.
I blink, trying to unsee what I’m seeing, but it’s no use. My phone slips from my hands onto the floor with a thud. I can’t breathe. My pulse pounds inside my ears. There was no message or a threat. Just the photograph.
Roman in pieces. His head decapitated. His eyes white with death.
My hands won’t stop shaking.
One thought repeats over and over.
Saint.
I don’t remember leaving my dorm. I don’t remember crossing campus. The church’s heavy wooden doors shut behind me with a thud. The incense hits my nose, and the candles flicker beneath stained glass.
It’s empty.
The interior of the church is nothing like the surrounding campus. Where the academic buildings are cold gray stone, this is something older.
Vaulted ceilings pull the eye up until the architecture itself feels like an argument for something larger than what you came carrying. The light comes through stained glass on the west wall. Deep reds and golds, the kind of light that lands on stone floors in bars and pools, changing everything it touches. The smell of wax and centuries.
I stumble toward the confessionals. I’ve never confessed before, never been allowed to go to church. My father never believed it would matter.
But right now, I didn’t know where else to go. The wooden screen separates me from the unseen figure on the other side. The guilt grips my insides.
My voice trembles as I begin. The little I know from watching movies. “Bless me, Father...” I pause nervously. “For I have sinned.” My fingers tighten together. “It’s my first confession.” I manage to get that out, closing my eyes and finally letting the tears fall. “I don’t know if I should be horrified...or relieved.” A tear slips down my cheek. “I think someone died because of me.”
Silence, but I continue.
“I shouldn’t be afraid. I didn’t do it, but I know it was because of me.” I swallow hard, trying to take deep breaths. “The first thing I felt wasn’t grief.” My voice breaks. “It was that maybe because…he can’t hurt me anymore.” The confession tastes like poison, but who could I talk to? Who could I tell? “I don’t know what that makes me.”
All I get is more silence. A long, uncomfortable silence that stretches, holding the fear of judgment.
Then...one sentence. “It makes you honest.” My hands slip. The voice is familiar…Too familiar.
Before I can place it, the church doors open. One pair of footsteps, then more follow. I turn slightly to open the door. The door opens from the other side of the screen, and the priest steps out.
I slowly open the door and find the church no longer empty. Row after row of figures dressed in black robes fill the pews. Their faces are hidden behind black plague masks. Every one of them faces the altar. Whatever this is has nothing to do with the church.
My hand flies to my mouth to stop the scream clawing its way out of my throat, hoping they don’t look back.
At the front of the church... another figure stands beneath the crucifix, dressed in an imposing black robe and a plague mask like the rest, hands folded behind his back. He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. Shoulders wide and imposing.
His head turns, the beak pointing in my direction. My knees threaten to shake.
Suddenly, he inclines his head. The congregation rises as one. Without a word, the masked figures begin filing out. One row. Then the next. Until only one remains. The one at the altar.
I step back, and he reaches up. Slowly. Black-gloved fingers curl around the edge of the mask. The beat of my heart pounds in my ears. The church suddenly feels impossibly large.
I’m standing in the middle, and the stained glass is painting both of us in colors.
“Come here,” he says quietly. The sound bounces against the stone, every syllable distinct.
