By Gavin Cummings
It was over ninety degrees outside that afternoon—and since the air conditioning at St. Pious hadn’t been fully functional since the Clinton years, the inside of our little church wasn’t far behind. Inside the little, unventilated confessional booth—itself tucked in the back corner of the already-stifling little church—well, you get the picture. It was toasty in there.
According to my watch it was already a quarter past, so it was unlikely I’d be seeing any other penitents. The Tuesday afternoon confession time is always dead. People like to get their souls clean toward the end of the week—less time to dirty them back up before Sunday morning.
Point is, with frigid AC and the Royals game waiting for me back at the rectory, the idea of throwing my hands up and ducking out of that stuffy little box a few minutes early was calling me like a siren song. If I’d thrown my hands up and given in, maybe the rest of that day’s horrors would never have taken place.
But my conscience won out this time, reminding me that until the clock struck four-thirty, my place was right there. Sweating through my clerics, ready for someone to stumble in with a need to unburden their soul. That’s the job, after all.
I did take thirty seconds to slip back to the kitchen fridge for a can of Arnold Palmer, though. Gulped a third of it in one cool swig that felt like mercy on my throat.
I figured Jesus would understand—mercy is kind of his thing.
Thirst slaked, I settled my head against the dark vinyl of the privacy screen. Eighteen minutes stood between me and a cold shower. I’d offer them up, then pass them in a doze.
—
I came awake at the sound of a clearing throat.
“Um… Father Doug?”
The voice was male—deep, but wavering slightly.
“Yeah!” I sat straight, nearly kicking over the Arizona can sitting between my sneakers. “Damn. Yes. I’m here. Sorry.”
“It’s, uh… it’s Harvey, Father. Harvey Pepnow.”
“Oh! Afternoon, Harvey! How’re you?”
The small talk isn’t required, but it isn’t prohibited either. I’ve always found that, for non-regulars, the ordeal can be stressful enough without a strict decorum from the get-go.
And Harvey Pepnow was no regular. I didn’t mean to take conscious note of that. But in a town as small as this one, you remembered the usual voices, and Harvey Pepnow’s wasn’t one of them.
“So I, uh… I haven’t done this in a while.”
“That’s alright. How long has it been since your last confession?”
“Years. Years and years.”
“I can walk you through it,” I offered. “Or, if you’d rather, we can just talk.”
“Let’s stick with that for now.”
“Sounds good.”
There was another lengthy pause. The booth tends to foster those.
“Father, I think I might be in trouble.”
“Yeah? What kind, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Possibilities ran through my mind before I could stop them. Was it woman-related? Harvey was a lifelong bachelor who hadn’t had a serious girlfriend as long as I’d known him. Drugs? Not likely. Besides the standard, middle-aged paunch, Harvey seemed like the picture of health. Gambling? Alcohol? Hit and run?
“Are ghosts real, Father?”
Yowzah.
I had to hold back from barking a laugh.
Guess that’s what you get for speculating.
“Well… the Catechism certainly deals with the spiritual plane. Angels and demons do exist. Not so often in the dramatic way they’re portrayed in Hollywood, but…”
“I’m not talking about demons and angels. I’m talking about ghosts. As in dead people, who come back.”
“Let’s say this: the Church teaches about four realms of existence for human souls. Our earthly life, for one. But also Purgatory, Heaven, and Hell. Most of us are likely to experience three of them. By the grace of God, we’ll avoid the fourth.”
Harvey simply continued to breathe.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose, sending up a quick request for the right words. I’d been ready to discuss everyday venial stuff, assign a handful of Our Fathers, and call it a day. This was getting into some serious metaphysical territory I hadn’t expected.
“These life-after-death questions get murky,” I said. “Some things have been revealed to the Church mystics. But mostly, we’re stuck with generalities. Can I ask why you’re asking?”
I’d have to proceed delicately here. If Harvey was having what he thought were paranormal sightings or encounters, there was a good chance he needed to be on a psychologist’s couch—not in the confessional.
When Harvey stayed silent, I continued. “Truth is, Harvey, a guy like me does this a while? He’s pretty much heard it all. Besides, with the seal of the confessional—”
“I don’t know if I want a confession. I don’t think I need one. I’m just…” Harvey hesitated. When he continued, there was a new crackle in his voice, like something broken loose. “I’m scared, Father.”
“Maybe it’s best if you just tell me the whole thing. From square one. Back in school, we called that ‘bringing things into the light.’”
There were creaks as Harvey shifted in the wooden seat.
“Father, is there any chance we can go for a walk? Honestly, I don’t know if talking is gonna do any good, unless I can show you what I’m talking about.”
—
Harvey led me out of the church parking lot and up the two blocks of main street that make up the center of town, past the Early Bird cafe, the Mountain View drugstore, and eventually around a quarter-mile bend of road that eased us out to the nearest cluster of local cabins.
It’s a quiet little town during the summer months, with few visitors until the first snows of late October bring the first waves of skiers. Harvey Pepnow was one of the shrinking number of local holdouts making this place their year-round home, and for the seven years since my final vows and ordination, I’d been another.
Summer evenings here are pleasant here, once you get past the worst of the afternoon heat, and this one was no exception.
There was a polite, kissing breeze, and the woods on either side of the road were alive with shuffles and chirping. Living sounds. It was good to get outdoors, which was the first of the three big reasons I’d chosen to take Harvey up on his invitation, despite the strangeness of it.
The second was my hope that the walk would be a chance to share some actual conversation. For all the years I’d known Harvey, I didn’t really know the guy at all—only that he lived at this first little house on the edge of town. That he’d grown up there, and had kept the place himself ever since his parents moved down south a few years earlier.
Real connections don’t always come easy with certain private, small-town types—Harvey types—and as a priest, you have to pounce on chances when they come.
Another few minutes brought us to a little dirt outlet to a trail that curved up into the pines behind Harvey’s single-story cabin.
“Just up this stretch here,” Harvey pointed.
“Damn,” I said, peering into the trees. “I shoulda grabbed my boots.”
“Won’t need ‘em.” he muttered. “Five minutes more.”
With that, he walked on ahead, face still blank and distant.
Interesting guy, Harvey. In the community, he’d always showed up to the right events, shook the right hands, paid his social dues. Beyond that, he was basically an enigma, which was one of a few reasons why—if I’d taken the time to actually consider things—this outing was probably a bad idea. An unannounced trip into the woods, with no explanation beyond “I have to show you something?” It was inadvisable, to say the least. And all my “tending the flock” justifications aside, my third reason for following along was likely the closest to the truth.
During the summer, this town was boring. Harvey had arrived in the confessional this afternoon with a hint at something that wasn’t boring at all. And dammit, I was curious.
—
The short switchbacks zigged and zagged a few more times before leveling out to a more gradual, curving trail up the hill. The tree coverage grew steadily thicker, and the sunlight quickly lost its authority. The kind of woodland gloom that made me think of unseen, watching eyes—back when I was a pipsqueak, anyway.
My lungs and legs were burning by the time we saw real sunlight again, a quarter mile further. The tree cover opened up, and the ground flattened in a small clearing, maybe fifty yards across.
I’d never seen the place before.
“This the spot?” I asked between heavy breaths.
Nodding, Harvey gestured at the far end of the clearing. When I saw what he was indicating, I blew a raspberry.
Together, the two gray boulders at the tree line were about the size of the St. Pius kitchen. At some point, the larger of the two had obviously careened down the hill and crashed right into the smaller. They’d worn together over the eons, grinding and crumbling and becoming like one.
“Look at that,” I straightened. “Almost looks like they’re wrestling each other, doesn’t it?”
“Wait’ll you see the inside.”
“The inside?”
“C’mon.”
Harvey led me across the swaying grass.
On the far side of the boulders was an opening between them—barely more than a foot wide—that opened up to form a small, improbable cave.
“It opens up once you’re in there,” Harvey said absently, then ducked his head down and shimmied into the dark.
Later, looking back, I’d recognize this as the moment when better judgement should’ve ended the little jaunt. But the curiosity was a magnetic pull now, and I barely felt as though I had a choice. I followed, but stopped to peek my head in before stepping all the way in.
“Hey, Father?” Harvey’s hand jutted back out of the crack suddenly, and I’ll admit I jumped. Harvey pointed past me, not noticing or not caring. “Do me a favor—before you come in, walk over and snap one of the small branches off that tree right there.”
“This little one?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Humor me.”
I sighed, then walked over to the little spruce Harvey was pointing to. Snapped a six-inch branch from the side, then held it up and wiggled it.
“This work?”
“Sure. Just take a good look at it. Remember which one it was. The shape, the size, everything.”
I shrugged, still riding the mellow of evening freedom.
In for a penny...
I glanced down at the stub, studying it—the jagged, L-shaped break, the drop of sap that beaded up at the tip. It had been about three feet off the ground, five or six inches below a knot that was shaped almost like an owl. There were no other branches near it.
“You got it? Look hard.”
“I got it, Harvey,” I tried to cover my annoyance with a chuckle.
“Alright. Drop it, then come on in. Take your eyes a minute to adjust.”
I grimaced as I side-shuffled through the crack, then looked around as my eyes made sense of the gloom. The space around us was bigger than what seemed possible from the outside. The open area was at least eight feet from side to side, and curiously circular—almost as if the rock had been hollowed out purposefully.
Was that possible?
Harvey stood with his hands against the wall, examining something. I stepped forward to see. It was a red pattern painted on the rock, about six inches tall. A red line, swooping and spiraling around itself, like a top-down view through a cartoon tornado.
“Did you draw that?” I asked.
“Here when I found it. They all were.”
He gestured around the little room, and now that my eyes were fully acclimated, I could see them—dozens, hundreds of the little spiraled paintings. Some were bunched close together, some spaced apart, all strewn haphazardly around the walls and up to the dome-shaped top of the cave, where a basketball-sized hole opened up to let some sunlight in.
“Who do you think painted these?”
“No damn clue. The best guess I’ve got is that they were done by the same people who carved that.” He nodded up at the hole in the ceiling, then turned his attention back to the same spiral painting on the wall.
“Did you ever tell anyone about this place?” I asked. “Bring any friends up here?”
Harvey shook his head. “Never had many.”
I didn’t say anything. Just nodded in a way that I hoped said go on if you want to. It’s one of the effects of the collar, really. The people who aren’t repelled by it usually want to give you, their story.
After a second he continued.
“People can be tough in this town, Father. It’s this way they look at you—like they have something on you. Like they think they can see something ugly inside, when they don’t actually know you at all. It’s not right.”
Strangely enough, Harvey didn’t seem to be looking at me as he talked, not really. It was like he’d retreated to some private room in his own head, where he was reciting from a well-worn scroll. His eyes were dark, vacant, and it seemed only by coincidence that I’d placed myself in their unseeing line.
“I came up here for the first time when I was eight,” he said. “I was running. From my dad.”
“He was chasing you?”
Studying his shoes, Harvey brushed past the question.
“This was the early eighties, and I had this lightsaber. A green one, like—”
“Like Luke Skywalker’s, right?” I smiled. “From Jedi? I had the same one. With the telescoping blade. Super cool.”
For a brief second, Harvey smiled back, seeming to soften at the shared memory. The warmth lasted only a second, before his features were hard again. “Anyway. One day I’m down by the house, playin’ with the thing. Well, my hands were sweaty, and at some point, it just slipped out. Flew at the house like a fuckin’ helicopter blade and went right through the living room window. Smash.”
“Yikes. Bad news.”
Harvey nodded. “Y’know, my old man always hated me playing with that thing anyway. Called it ‘babyshit.’ If I’d have thrown a football through that window, he probably would’ve laughed and said, ‘nice spiral.’ Anyway, I panicked. Took off. Right up these switchbacks, didn’t even really know where I was going. I just wanted to hide out for a while. Get free of the blast radius and give my mom a chance to cool him off. So, I ran.”
He paused a second to scratch at his nose.
“Found this cave by total mistake, but it worked as a hideout spot. I curled up,” he pointed at the far corner of the little cave, furthest from the opening. “Laid right there for three hours, whimpering, feelin’ sorry for myself. Wishing it was possible to bring that window back to life. Make it like the damage had never been done. I sat, and I closed my eyes, and wished with everything I had. I mean I really, really wished, you know?”
“It’d be nice if things worked that way, huh?” I laughed, trying to lighten the mood. “Could’ve salvaged some bad haircuts over the years.”
“Eventually, I screwed up some courage,” Harvey ignored the joke. “Crawled outta here, marched back down the hill, ready to face things like a man. But you know what, Father? When I got back to the house, that fuckin’ window was fine. One piece. Spic and span, like a Windex commercial. Just the way I’d pictured it.”
Harvey grinned, maybe hoping it would be matched. This time, I don’t think I managed one.
“I thought it was a miracle—not that it changed much about my day. Old man ended up smacking me around anyway—on account of my clothes being dirty, the sour old bastard. But that window…man. It was like nothing ever happened. I figured somehow, being in here…wishing in here…”
Here, Harvey glanced up. He must’ve noticed the skeptical crease in my brow, because he frowned.
“You don’t believe me.”
I raised my palms. “Harvey, I — ”
“No, no, that’s okay. It’s a nutzo story. I understand that.” He put his fists on his hips. “That’s why I asked you to snap that branch off.”
It took me a moment to understand what Harvey was getting at. When I did, I felt my face flush. The wrongness of this excursion suddenly seemed more obvious, and I felt slightly ashamed for agreeing to it. This wasn’t quite playful anymore, and now, it was time to offer real help.
“Listen. Maybe it’s time we head back down. I think—”
“Father, if you’ll just indulge me for a second—”
“Your head does funny things when you’re a kid, and—”
“Please. You came all the way up here, and I’m just asking— ”
“Harvey, I just really don’t —”
“FATHER!” Harvey erupted. He slammed his fists down against his legs, his face swelling with red, like a giant pimple about to burst. I recoiled a step without thinking.
“WILL YOU JUST… CAN YOU JUST?!” Harvey’s voice, usually at a deep register, lilted into a high-pitched whine that tore at the stillness of the little cave. He closed his eyes and dropped his head toward the ground. He pressed slow breath out, sucked it slowly back in, and repeated the process a few times—clearly a well-practiced method.
I stood silently, my heart sent galloping by the outburst.
“I’m… I’m scared, Father. Can’t you get that? I’m in trouble here, and I need you to try and believe me.”
Harvey had regained his composure, that calm blankness back on his face. But he’d lost it briefly there—his veiny yells blasting temporary cracks in the facade—and through them, I’d seen something truly wrong. I decided I was going to do whatever it took to get Harvey back down the trail and into the capable hands of a professional without cracking that facade again.
“Okay,” I nodded, trying for a soothing tone. “Okay, Harvey. What do you need from me?”
“I’m gonna step out,” Harvey said. “Give you some quiet. Once I do, you sit in the corner and close your eyes. Think about that branch you snapped—paint it like a picture in your mind. Think about all its details, and then do your best to wish it back together. Like you’d never broken it. If you come back out, and it’s still layin’ there on the ground? I’ll lay on someone’s couch and talk about my childhood wet dreams till the cows come home. But before that, you gotta promise me you’ll try.”
We stood for a few seconds, looking at each other. Finally, I nodded. Harvey turned to shimmy back through the opening, leaving me alone in the dark.
How long would I need to stand in there to satisfy Harvey? Hell, how long did dark restorative cave magic take to do its thing?
Must’ve missed that lecture back at seminary.
I shook my head—but, dumb as I felt, I didn’t want to lie to Harvey’s face in a minute here. So, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and pictured the little branch. I imagined the spot where it had hung, six inches below the knot that looked like an owl.
The three leaves on the end. The L-shaped break where he’d snapped it off. The little drop of sap, beaded up at the tip.
I pictured it meshing back together, like its breaking had never happened.
I wish I may, I wish I might, I wish I’d been born a Baptist so I didn’t have to deal with this shit. Abra-Cadabra alakazam.
When I stepped back into the afternoon, I had to shield my eyes as they tried to make sense of the light again. Harvey stood looking into the trees, his hands clasped thoughtfully behind his back. He turned.
“Well…” I threw my hands up. “I, uh…did the thing.”
“What thing?”
“What do you mean, ‘what thing?’”
“What did you undo?”
“The… the branch?” Annoyance was starting to claw me now. “Did you forget?”
“I didn’t forget,” Harvey shook his head calmly. “I just never knew. I couldn’t know. Because you undid it.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, clinging to my temper by a thread and utterly lost on where to take this conversation next. I glanced over at the little tree.
A strange feeling came over me, then. Like all my veins went stiff and brittle.
The little fern stood where it had before, a lonely sprout of green in the mostly rocky outcropping. A tuft of little branches on top, and a bare stretch of tan trunk. Further down, there was an imperfection in the wood—a knot, which swirled into a shape like an owl’s face. And six inches below that…
There was a lone branch. Thin. Three leaves at the end.
I stepped over to it, floating more than walking, then dropped into a crouch to examine it up close.
This had to be a different branch—a second one, I’d somehow missed the first time. It had to be. But I ran my hands up and down the trunk cleanly, three times, and found no breaks. No fresh wounds, no jagged stubs. At once I was pawing around in the dirt and pebbles, looking for the branch where he’d dropped it.
Right damn here.
I glanced up at Harvey, half-expecting to see him standing there with a shit-eating grin on his face, holding the missing branch in his hand, ready to reveal it all as a bizarre prank.
But he only wore the same infuriating blankness.
I studied him. Searched for any glint of humor, any break in the stoney expression. Nothing.
“My ass,” I growled.
I reached down, snapped the branch off again, and headed back for the cave—this time, keeping the branch clasped in my hand. Suddenly, my easygoing afternoon mood had soured.
I emerged from the cave less than a minute later, shaken and pale before I could even examine the tree. I didn’t need to; as I’d sat there in the dark, chastising myself for taking Harvey’s bait, I’d pictured the branch again—imagined it as it had been before, reattached and healthy. When I’d reopened my eyes, the branch had no longer been there in my fist.
With that, I’d really felt the threads of my sanity start to fray.
I steadied myself on the side of the boulder, looking over at the reattached branch as my stomach roiled.
“If you’re up for it,” Harvey said. “I’d like to keep talking now.”
—
We sat on a pair of adjacent rocks near the other end of the clearing, about forty feet from the mouth of the cave. The urge to puke was fading, but only just.
“Y’know, it’s been thirty years since my last confession.”
“Is this us starting?” I asked.
“No. Just statin’, for the record.” He leaned back on his rock, smoothed out the legs of his pants. He seemed to have collected himself, regained some sense of control. “It’s been so long that I can’t remember the standard procedure. If there is one. Would I start with the heaviest sins first? Or the lighter ones, and work my way up?”
“You’d start wherever you need to.”
Harvey looked down at the ground. Looked for a long time.
“Why don’t you, man?” I asked. “Doesn’t have to be a big, scary thing. I won’t make you whip yourself or anything.”
Truth was, I really did want to hear his confession now. Doing so would be something familiar, something sane.
“I think I’d like to talk more, first.”
“Okay, but you’re familiar with the seal of the confessional, right? It means that anything you tell me during the sacrament—”
“You can never tell anyone.”
“Right, or else excommunication. Fire and brimstone. Bishop Gunner shoving bamboo shoots under my fingernails, probably.”
“I know. I’m not worried about you blabbing my secrets around town, Father. You don’t seem like the gossiping type. Besides, I wouldn’t say I’m repentant for these things.”
This made me frown. “I doubt that. Otherwise, why would we be out here? What could you be wanting?”
“I’ve killed some people, Father.”
Some mechanism seemed to clamp tight in my chest, and my cheeks tingled strangely; Blood was either flooding them or draining from them. I’m not sure which.
“For fuck’s sake, Harvey, I really think we should—”
“No confession. Not yet. I will not beg for forgiveness for something that requires none.”
This made me snort. “Believe me—killing would require it.”
“You haven’t heard the story, yet.”
“What do you mean some people?”
“Fifty. Give or take.”
Not forty minutes ago, I’d been sweating through the midday heat. Now, a shiver overtook me. I told myself this was just hypothetical—that I was dealing with a mentally unstable man here, and nothing more.
“Most recent was two weeks ago. I killed Pete Tillman, out in front of the Early Bird. Threw a bowie knife into his chest as he held the door for me. I've been practicing throwing that thing, and I guess I wanted to see if I could do it in real life.”
There was a moment of sickness and confusion—then, relief washed over me like a warm breeze.
Pete Tillman wasn’t dead. I’d seen him just the day before, at the little gas station past the cafe. Pete had made a joke about the Royals, I’d made a joke about the Rockies, and we’d parted with an agreement to see each other at Sunday Mass.
Thank God—Harvey was insane. Or at least suffering some sort of psychological break. Not great, by any means. But it was a hell of a lot better than being a prolific serial killer.
“Harvey…” I tried for a gentle, soothing tone. “Pete Tillman is alive.”
Harvey’s face tightened in frustration.
“You’re not getting this, are you? I fucking know he’s alive, Father. He’s alive because of me. Because I made it that way. I took him away, and I brought him back, and that’s what I’m confessing to you.”
“You’re saying you killed him. And then you… undid it. With… with that.” I pointed back to the cave with a shaky finger.
Harvey sighed impatiently, scratching at his jaw.
“And it worked?”
“Yes, it worked. It works every time.”
I was at a loss. For the first time in my eight ordained years, I was sitting across from a “penitent parishioner,” and I had no idea what to say or do.
Fifty... oh, Jesus… Fifty?
No. The story wasn’t true, because it couldn’t be. It was science fiction, science horror, and had no basis in anything I’d ever studied or learned. I just needed to hear Harvey out, get him back down to town, and hand him to someone with a PhD in psychology hanging on their wall.
As for the mysterious, regenerating tree branch? Well… one lapse in sanity at a time.
“Y’know, it’s not like I just gave it a try one day,” Harvey said. “The first real time, it was more of a wing and a prayer. I was sixteen, and I was driving one night, hauling ass, because I had to get home before ten—my dad woulda ripped me a new one if I was late. And I’m fiddling with the radio, and Carrie Kelepe just runs right outta the trees. You know Carrie Kelepe, right?”
I nodded. The Kelepes had a cabin on the east end of town. These days they only came up during the ski season—but when they did, they were regulars at the Sunday ten AM mass. Carrie had to be in her early thirties now. Married, with a couple kids of her own. Very much alive.
“Right. Well, she runs right out in front of me, right out of the trees, and fuckin’ smash. Sixty miles an hour, straight on. It was bad, Father. I mean, she flew. By the time I even know what’s happened, she’s layin’ there in the headlights. Crooked and bent up, and her brains leaking out. Did you know brains are gray, Father? I always thought they were pink.”
He made a go-figure gesture.
“Anyway, that’s when this cluster of kids runs outta the woods behind her. Friends of hers—they must’ve been playing flashlight tag or something. And then they’re all screaming ‘You killed her, you killed her!’ and I’m just about ready to puke, thinking I’m going to prison for the rest of my life.
“And then out of nowhere, clear as a picture, a memory comes to me. That day with the lightsaber. I’d almost completely forgotten about it, to tell you the truth. When you’re eight years old, you just kinda accept that the world is a magical place sometimes. But I remembered it. I remembered those paintings, those… loops.”
He used his index finger to draw one in the air.
“So, I hopped back in the truck, and I floored it—those kids are all still yelling, and they're throwing rocks at me—but I split. I make it back home, throwing up all kinds of dust and rubber, and I leave my rig in the driveway, still running. I hoof it up here, and I sit in that corner I showed you, eyes closed, and I picture her—Carrie—back together again. Playing flashlight tag in the woods, pigtails bouncing, those gray flecks of brain right back in her head where they belong.”
He’d grabbed a twig from the ground sometime near the beginning of his story, and he’d been turning it over with his fingers.
“Stayed up here for half an hour or so, dead sure there would be cops sitting there in the living room with my folks when I got there. But…. nope. No cops. No brains in my truck’s grill. Nothin’ at all. And when I drive myself to school the next morning, you know who I see standing there on the corner, waiting for the bus down to the middle school?”
“Carrie?” I said. It came out in a weak, dehydrated croak. “Was it Carrie?”
“Pigtails and all,” Harvey’s mouth curled up in a half-smile, and I had to clench down another shiver.
“Anyhow,” Harvey sighed. “I waited for some clue that I’d hallucinated the whole thing. But time went on, and the further I got away from it, the more real it felt. The more sure I was that I’d found some little rift. Some little… gift from the universe, I guess.”
“It doesn’t sound like a gift, Harvey.”
This comment went ignored.
“I figured I oughta count my blessings, leave the place alone. ‘Powers too great for man’, sorta thing.” He snickered. “But then…then my old fuckin’ man.”
His expression, a small smile, was tinged with spite.
“My dad got on my case one night at dinner, a few months later. Happened a lot back then, but this was a real barnburner. I’d told him I wanted to try out for the school musical ‘stead of the backcountry club, and he started ripping on me, calling me a fairy. No-son-of-mine and all that shit. And I was sitting there takin’ it, and suddenly all I could think about was Carrie Kelepe’s brains—the way I’d sent them right back into her skull.”
He tossed away the twig he’d been playing with.
“At some point, I’d just had enough. So, I reached across the table and put my steak knife through his throat.”
Suddenly, to my horror, the little smile on Harvey’s face was replaced by a full grin.
“And he just fuckin’ geysered.” Harvey giggled. “Stood up straight, his eyes all wide and white. Gotta give him credit, he didn’t go down right away. Grabbed his own knife, actually started staggering around after me! Can you believe it? Swiping and slashing. Trying to take me with him. And his neck’s just gushing, and my mom’s screaming bloody murder—and I’m just laughing. You’ve got no idea how long I spent fantasizing about doin’ that miserable old bastard. And just that way, too.”
He shrugged. “Course he couldn’t go on for long like that. Eventually he’s on the kitchen floor—splat, right in his own juices—and my mom is sitting in the corner. Moaning, pawing at her own face. And that upset me. You don’t like to see your mom like that, you now? So, I grabbed my sweatshirt, and I headed on up here, and I undid it.”
“And…” I asked with a heavy tongue. “It worked again?”
Harvey laughed. “What do you think? You’ve met the old piece of shit yourself, haven’t you? I came straight down to the house after it was done, and the whole place was in order. No blood on the kitchen floor, no knife in the old guy’s neck. Just a big scowl on his face, on account of my being late to dinner.
“But you wanna know something funny? It didn’t bother me. Not one bit. I just sat there with a grin on my face the whole time he was yelling, thinking to myself, ‘You old son of a bitch. You’ve got no idea, do you? You’ve got no clue what I could do if I really wanted—hell, what I did do to you. So keep running your wrinkly mouth. You don’t know that you belong to me. The whole of you—your living and your dying. I’ve got you on both ends, you old fuck.’”
When it comes to hearing confessions, there’s a rolodex of standard, repeat offenses that any priest can expect to discuss on repeat—lusts, drunkenness, anger, gossip—typical fallen-humanity crap. Usually, the biggest struggle is against daydreaming while you listen.
But sitting on that rock in the fading afternoon sun, listening to the macabre ramblings of a man who was certainly insane, but not so certainly a liar, I was numb. Empty. Congealed by horror and the growing sense that I was far out of my depth.
But this was only the first of Harvey’s tales. They went on, in detail.
There was Mr. Ladue, Harvey’s junior-year English teacher, who’d dared to offer constructive criticism on Harvey’s stream-of-consciousness poetry presentation—and received a shovel to the head as a reward.
Kira Martinez, the top-of-class homecoming queen, who’d tried to let Harvey down easy when he showed up at her door with roses and chocolates one day during their senior year. Waving daintily to the crowd, she’d been knocked off her perch on the float by a well-placed pair of .30-30 rounds through the front of her sequined dress. Harvey said he’d pulled his rifle back through the window, fired up his truck, and coasted out of the stadium’s parking lot before anyone even knew to scream.
Mrs. Rubin, a seventy-something fixture of grumpiness in town, who’d angrily sent her patty melt back to the kitchen one afternoon at the Early Bird—something about questionable cheese. Unfortunately for her, Harvey was manning the griddle that day, and suffering through a dour hangover. He said he’d followed her out to the parking lot and planted a meat cleaver near the top of her spine.
A Harley-rider, he’d bumped off the highway and into a roadside boulder.
A drunk at the bar, who’d missed the little tab dropped into his whiskey, and spent the better part of a week tied up in a strange basement before eating the business end of Harvey’s firewood axe.
A Forest Service cabin full of poker-playing buddies, who died without ever knowing why the fire had started, or who the hell could’ve chained both sets of the cabin’s doors closed.
And Mr. Pepnow himself, Harvey’s not-so-dear old dad, who’d met his end again and again, in ways so depraved and nauseating that I stopped bothering to listen after the ninth or tenth description.
Death after death‚ murder after murder. Inexplicable undoings for each and every one of them.
“Why?” I asked finally, cutting Harvey off from a series of gory details about a road-tripping college couple he’d kidnapped at gunpoint and tortured years before. He stopped mid-sentence, looking genuinely surprised to hear another voice—like he’d somehow forgotten I was even there.
“Sorry?”
“Why would you…?” I began again, fighting to keep my voice level and strong. “Why?”
Harvey stared up into the canopy of trees, as if the question was one he had never considered.
“Because it works,” he said finally. “Before this place, I spent my life being treated like I was just… taking up space. You know? And that’ll drive a guy crazy. Spending every day of his life walking through a town of people who… who have to plug their nose just to get through a conversation with him.”
He spoke with conviction, certainty. And I had no honest idea what he was talking about. I’d never seen anyone greet Harvey with less than a handshake and a bright smile. It was paranoia, malignant insecurity—and I would've told Harvey so, had I not been so afraid of re-cracking that brittle facade.
“But you know what?” Harvey asked. “Things ain’t so bad anymore. Because of that, whatever it is?” He nodded at the cave. “I own them, Father. I own just about everyone in this town. I’ve taken everything they’ve got, and I’ve given it right back, and I could take it away again—whenever I fuckin’ please. You know what that means? That means they belong to me. That means I’m God.”
Then he smiled again—a broad, toothy crocodile smile, utterly without warmth. In a moment, I realized what I was looking at—it was the true base layer, below the eerie blankness and whiny, voice-cracking outbursts. Naked, vindictive resentment.
Suddenly, I wasn’t fearful anymore. I was angry.
“You know you’re right, Harvey. You’re not confessing—you’re bragging. And to be honest, I’m getting sick of listening to it. Why am I here, if you don’t want a confession? You’re not repentant for any of this shit.”
“What should I be repentant for? Killing these people? They’re alive, aren’t they?”
“So it’s that simple. You’ve got no remorse. You don’t see anything horrific about these things you’ve supposedly done.”
Harvey shrugged. “Not particularly, no. Unless I dragged you up here today, there wouldn’t be a soul besides me who’d know they ever happened. A sin’s destructive in nature, right? Well, you take a walk around town, and you try to find me one person, one thing I’ve destroyed. I dare you.”
“Sounds like you’ve rationalized the whole ordeal, Harvey. So I’ll ask you again — why am I here?”
Harvey hesitated. He took in a slow breath, let it out. “I’ve been reading. And I think what I’m looking for is imperfect contrition.”
“Imperfect contrition.”
“Yeah. That’s absolution without need of remorse.”
“I know what it is. But usually that’s someone who’s looking to escape some consequence—which you don’t believe exists. It can also mean a confession that’s made purely from fear of Hell—which you don’t think you deserve. So I’m gonna have to ask you for a third time. Why am I here?”
“Because I’ve got no one else to go to. Because I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
For nearly half a minute, we sat quietly, barely blinking, barely breathing. Harvey broke eye contact first, glancing over toward the tree line at the sound of a snapping twig. When he saw no one there, he turned back and leaned in until his face was within inches of mine.
“They’re coming back, Father. I don’t know how…but they’re coming back.”
I said nothing.
“Started three weeks ago,” Harvey said, covering a crackle in his voice by clearing his throat. “Middle of the night sometime, two or three AM, and there’s this crash. Shattering glass. I figure it’s a burglar, so I grab my .38 from the nightstand and I bust outta the bedroom. Nobody in the house, but that big front window is shattered. I step over to see if it was maybe some kids or something, some fucking hooligans who threw a rock.
“But it wasn’t a rock, Father. It was my lightsaber—that Luke Skywalker one. Hadn’t seen it since I was ten years old—but there it is, laying in the middle of all the broken glass. And at first, I’m pissed—figure someone is fucking with me, tryin’ to get under my skin. So I step out the front door, and I start yellin’ so anyone nearby can hear. Telling ‘em what a big fuckin’ mistake they’re making.
“And they respond—a bunch of kids, just like I thought—and they’re yelling, but I can’t understand ‘em at first. Can’t see ‘em either. Thought they must’ve been hiding in the trees. So I stop and I listen hard—and they’re yelling ‘You killed her, man! You killed her!’ Over and over, just like that.
“And at first, I don’t recognize the voices, but then I do. They 're the same ones as that night I ran down Carrie Kelepe—and I know that sounds crazy, because it’s been twenty years, but I know they’re the same.”
Once again, he’d retreated to that private place inside his own mind. I thought he’d be telling the story the exact same way, with the exact same intensity, even if he were talking to a brick wall. So I continued to listen, knowing it would be futile to try and interrupt.
“I grab my flashlight off the table and I come back out to shine it around the yard. Scare the little fuckers off, whoever they are. And I flip it on, and I point it up the yard, out at the road, and there—”
His voice cracked again. This time, he just let it hang there for a moment, making no effort to cover it up.
“There’s Carrie. She’s standing there, up on the road. But not like she is now—it’s ten-year-old Carrie, with the pigtails. Just like she was, except her eyes are… shining. Gleaming, more like it. Like there’s some green hell-light reflecting off of ‘em, and her head’s opened up—same spot I opened it up when I hit her that night—and her brains are leaking out, dribbling down her neck and onto her shirt. But she's not crying or anything… she’s just standing there.
“And I’m scared, sure. But I figure, ghost or not, she’s just a little girl. So I screw up some guts and I yell at her. Tell her that she can fuck right off, and she’s got no business looking at me like that, because I never even killed her—not really, anyway. But she ignores me. And then I hear this, this… cracking. Crunching.
“She started walking down from the road, Father. Staggering, more like, right toward my front door. And I realize the cracks are coming from her—like all her insides have turned to twigs and sticks and crunchy leaves… like in all the years that’ve gone by, she’s gone stale.
“And I’ve still got the .38, but I know it won’t do anything—I mean shit, she’s already dead, right? So I ran back inside, and locked myself in the bedroom, and I sit in the corner, ready to give the .38 a try anyway if she comes through the door. I heard her—those cracking twigs, comin’ thru the house. They stopped right at the bedroom door. I And just below the crack, I can see the shadow. And that green light, peeking through.
“She never came in,” he said, rubbing at his arms as if to brush away the memory. “But I spent the whole night there, sitting in that corner. My arms were sore for a week from holding that gun up. Eventually the sun came back up and so did my courage. Half convinced myself that I'd hallucinated the whole thing. Couple days go by, and I even see Carrie at the grocery store, all happy and healthy and thirty-five, and that eased my mind even more. I even went up to her to say hello. Ruffle her kiddo’s hair a bit.”
He said it so casually, without any apparent awareness of the horrifying dissonance of the story, that I once again had to muscle back a shiver.
“So I’m chatting with her, feeling like a brand-new guy. She asks me about these crackers I’m holding, and I at point across the store…
“And my dad’s there. Twenty years younger. Standing quiet, not sayin’ anything, right by the apples. And he’s got that knife sticking out of his neck. That same one I put there myself. And he’s bleeding, just gushing blood, the same he did that night—all over himself and the fruit, and Carrie’s asking me ‘What, what?’ and so I ask her, ‘Can’t you fuckin see ‘im?’
“And I point at him—his eyes gleaming green, just like hers had. And then he reaches up, all slow-like, and he pulls that knife out of his neck. And God, that… sound it made coming out… like tearing Velcro. And then he starts walking toward me. With that knife in his hand. Crackling, and snapping, like all his bones are breaking at the same time.
“So I took off. Left my cart full of groceries sitting right there with Carrie. I sat in that cave over there all night. Looking at those spirals, trying to un-do it all—to really un-do it. I stopped with the resets. Haven’t killed anybody—impermanently or otherwise—since Carrie showed up on the road that night. Hasn’t helped, though,” Harvey wrung his hands. “It’s gotten worse.”
“Worse?” I asked, ignoring a loud protest from my conscience. Why prompt the guy to keep unspooling his own twisted fantasy if there was nothing I could do to help? Because I was starting to become convinced—that was why. With each piece of the story, each nervous swallow, each dart of the eyes at the sound of a crumpling leaf. In some deep place, deeper and truer and more horrible than logic—some bone-marrow level—I wasn’t certain this was a fantasy at all. “Worse how?”
“Mrs. Rubin was on the side of the road the other day, watchin’ me as I drove by, meat cleaver in her hand. Her eyes were glowing green, same as the rest. Then I came out for a glass of water one night, and that bachelor party was set up at my dining room table, playing cards. They had the green eyes too, but they were… they were burned. Charred. Black and crumbling, and they stank.”
Harvey was talking faster now. His voice was cracking regularly, two and three times a sentence.
“They’re getting closer, too. Carrie and my dad, they were far away when I saw them. Twenty, thirty yards at least. But those boys in the kitchen, and that college couple…”
“What about the couple?”
“They were waiting for me,” he whined. “Two nights ago.” Tears welled in his eyes. “They were laying right there in my bed, when I pulled back the covers. Close enough to grab me, and she tried to…she tried to pull me in with them.”
He stopped a moment to lean back and rub his hands on his knees of his pants. They left dark sweat streaks on the khaki.
“I don’t know what they want with me. I’ve come up to this fucking cave ten times, and I’ve tried to undo it, to really undo it all, but it’s not working and they’re gonna fucking get me!”
He was unraveling now, firing off sentences at a fever pitch, his fists pressed against his eyes as he rocked back and forth.
“Harvey,” I tried to cut in unsuccessfully.
“They’ve got those eyes, the glowing eyes...”
“Harvey!”
“They watch me wherever I go…”
“Harvey!” I yelled through cupped hands.
The yammering stopped, winding down with a meager squeak.
“Harvey, look at me. Look at me.”
I cursed myself. My gullibility. I’d let myself get caught up in a campfire story like a snot-nosed twelve-year-old. Between the woods, and the cave, and the heat, I’d let himself go loopy, and caught a good, old-fashioned case of the creeps. Sure, the commitment of Harvey’s delivery had strung me along at first—but of course he’d sounded committed. The man was disturbed, maybe more so than anyone I’d ever met—and to him, the story was completely real. He’d lost his grip on the dividing line between nightmare and reality. And like an asshole, I’d given him full permission to spiral.
No more. Not one second.
“Are you listening to me, Harvey?”
He nodded, weakly.
“These stories you’re telling me? They’re impossible. They did. Not. Happen. Carrie Kelepe is alive. Your dad too. You’re going through something right now, and I’m sure it’s gotta be scary as hell. But you don’t have to figure this out yourself, okay? It might take a day or two, but we’ll get you to the right people. And I need you to trust me when I say that no one is coming after you. No one wants to get you. And I’m not gonna leave you alone. Okay?”
Harvey sat still for a moment, staring back at me with that glassy gaze. He took a few of his deep, self-calming breaths, then lowered his fists back down to his knees.
“Okay?” I tried again.
“Okay,” Harvey finally agreed, nodding resolutely. “Okay.”
Somewhere off in the trees behind us, a flock of birds erupted in a cluster.
“Good.” I gave Harvey's knee a squeeze. “Let’s go while we’ve still got some light.”
I stood, grimacing at the creaking in his knees, then turned around to find the trail.
There was an impact—a massive, meaningless thump. My vision exploded into a dizzying burst of light and sparks. For a few seconds, it was like I had no coherent thoughts—just a looming, amorphous “What?”
I realized I’d fallen face-first on the ground—grainy dirt and pine needles dug into my right cheek. And there was… yelling. Whining screams.
“Going through something?!’ You think I’m going through something?! You’re fucking right I’m going through something! There are fucking ghosts! With green eyes, and knives, and they’re trying to get me!” And you say you wanna help?! Some fucking help you are! You cracker-munching sack of shit! You don’t even believe me! You don’t think this shit is real! Well how about that split in your head, Father? Is that real enough for you?!”
I reached for the back of my head. Felt warm stickiness.
Shit.
I propped himself up on an elbow, straining to see. When I did, I saw Harvey—he was stomping around in a small circle, holding a softball-sized rock in his right hand, running the left through his hair as he ranted.
“I came to you for help! So what the fuck are you good for, man? What are you fucking good for?!?!”
“It’s okay…it’s okay, Har…” I managed. It was all I could think to say. Suddenly, I was yanked up to a sitting position. Harvey stood over me—a fistful of my clerical shirt clutched in his left hand, the bloodied rock still in his right. His eyes were wide, gleaming, pink. His teeth were bared like a rabid animal’s, his nostrils flared open and closed.
“Maybe you’ll be more helpful the second time around, Father,” Harvey snarled. “Or the third, or fourth. Doesn’t matter—I can try as many fucking times as I need to, and you will help me. You understand? You will. Because I own you. Just like everybody else in this little shithole of a town, you’re mine. You belong to me.”
He raised the rock again. I held my hands up weakly in front of me, mumbled a few quick words of prayer, and waited for darkness to come.
But it never did. Instead, there was just a sound—a dry, dusty cracking. Like dead branches or the rotten ceiling beams of a cabin, splintering after years of neglect.
Then, quiet.
“Fa...Father…” Harvey whimpered.
Slowly, I lowered my hands. The fervor was gone from Harvey’s face, replaced by stark horror. He was staring over to his right, where the clearing hit the tree line and continued its slope up the hill. The rock fell from his hands, thudding harmlessly onto the grass behind him.
“Father… do you see her?”
I let my head roll to the side and followed Harvey’s wavering finger. The fuzziness in my head vanished. It was like my hammering heart rate seemed to chunk between gears.
I could see her. She was just far enough back from the clearing to be nearly shrouded by the dancing shadows of the trees. She was standing still—perfectly still, too still.
Dead still.
But her eyes… those couldn’t be hidden by the shadows. They were gleaming green, as if both had been scooped from their sockets and replaced with radioactive coins.
Her skin was the color of butchered fat, streaked with slime and caked with dried mud. Her left arm stuck out like a gruesome, uppercase L, bent in the wrong direction at the elbow. On one side, her hair was stringy, strewn with twigs and leaves. The other side was greasy, matted down with something gray, and dripping.
Brains. They ran down the side of her face, and onto the tattered, yellow fabric of her t-shirt.
“Please tell me you see her,” Harvey whined again. I couldn’t answer. My throat was too dry—suddenly full of what felt like sand.
Harvey straightened his back, trying and failing to look unafraid.
“What do you want?! What the hell do you want from me?!”
The ghoulish thing that looked something like Carrie Kelepe didn’t respond—only stood, staring through those unreadable glowing eyes.
“Fuck you!” Harvey cracked. He picked the rock back up off the ground and heaved it in her direction. But his arm was weak, and the throw came nowhere close.
“Hey!” He turned and grabbed me by my cleric, yanked me to my feet. “Get your ass up! Do something!”
“What can I do, Harvey?” I asked groggily. I’m not proud to admit it—but compared to the snarling fury, it was somehow good to see pure terror on his face. “I thought you owned me.”
Harvey’s eyes crackled with fear and hate. His quick, sour breaths buffeted my face.
Then.
More of the cracking, splintering, snapping. But not from the Carrie thing—this was a bigger sound that seemed to surround them. Harvey released my shirt then, and we stood together, watching as the others staggered rigidly out of the tree line to join Carrie, rotting bones cracking and decayed tendons tearing with every step.
There were dozens of them now—each hidden partially in the dancing shadows, each sporting the same pair of gleaming eyes. I looked from one to the next, recognizing some but not all.
There was Pete Tillman—a trail of browned blood running down his chin, bowie knife protruding from his chest, just as Harvey had described.
There was Kira Martinez, still wearing her shiny homecoming dress—although now, there were two smoldering holes in it, exposing festering, maggot-filled wounds where Harvey’s bullets had struck her. A grimy tiara sat cockeyed on her head.
A quartet of young men—or at least, once young—standing together. Their skin was black and crumbling, peeling away at spots to expose bright pink skin and startling, white ribs.
There was Mr. Pepnow himself—a steady flow of thick, brown blood was bursting from his neck.
They each made it to the edge of the clearing and stopped, leaving five or six feet between them, forming together into an arching semicircle. I turned to look at the tree line behind us, and saw we were almost completely surrounded. There might’ve still been a gap to reach the first switchback of the trail, but it was narrowing fast.
Aside from that, our only option was back toward the cave.
As quickly as it had started, the cacophony of cracking and splitting stopped. Silence fell like an iron gate. Somewhere, back in the trees, a dove cooed gently.
Harvey whined again, then let out a full sob.
“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT?!” Again, he slammed his hands down on his legs, stamping his foot like an insolent toddler. “YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING TO ME! I OWN YOU!!”
There were another few moments of pregnant silence.
Then, they began closing in. They walked slowly but deliberately, their noise becoming deafening as they approached—a continuous crackle, like a conquering army trampling over a field of dried bones. Men and women, young and old.
A teenage carhop lurched, skidding with every other step on her single remaining roller skate.
A younger man, in a white shirt and black tie—a door-to-door Mormon missionary, maybe—had a fire poker rammed clumsily through his chest.
A gashed and bloodied figure in a leather jacket limped toward us. There was a tearing sound as the last of the ligaments in his jaw finally snapped and fell against his neck with a meaty slap. That noise is stamped on my eardrums and probably will be till the day I die.
“Harvey…” I rasped. “Harvey, we gotta bail. C’mon.” I reached out to grab him by the shoulder. Harvey shirked away.
“DON’T TOUCH ME!”
“Harvey, come on! We’ve gotta go! Right fucking now!”
“OFF!” He bent sharply and seized a sizable branch from the ground, then actually swung it at my head. I barely ducked it.
Harvey spun back toward the oncoming hoard, brandishing the branch before him like that plastic green lightsaber we’d both loved as kids.
“YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING TO ME! NONE OF YOU! YOU BELONG TO ME! YOU’RE MINE!”
The lumbering barely human shapes were close now—within twenty yards. I could smell them. Death. Infection. Decay. Every molecule of my body cried out to run, to bolt for the trail while there was still a small opening.
But I couldn’t just leave Harvey here to those, those things. Not without one more try.
“Harvey! Let’s go!!”
I lunged at him, meaning to wrap him up and drag him. But he took another swing with the branch, and this time he got me square—directly on the wrist I’d raised to block it, and the impact knocked me down. Something had cracked—whether my wrist or the branch, I couldn’t yet tell.
Harvey started backpedaling toward the mouth of the cave, stumbling on roots and rocks as he went.
“COME ON! YOU WANT ME? I KILLED YOU! I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU AGAIN! YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!! YOU LITTLE WORMS!! YOU BELONG TO ME!!!”
I tried to press myself up, but my wrist shrieked in protest and I slumped back again. Two shadows were converging on either side of me now, within a few feet. I mentally grasped for words—an Our Father, a Hail Mary, something—but couldn’t wrangle them.
All I could do was clench, waiting for those dry, cracking hands to grab me.
They didn’t.
The two shapes—a once-prostitute in a satin miniskirt and a mutilated boy in a shredded little-league uniform—passed right by, barely seeming to notice me. Their glowing eyes were fixed on the sniveling Harvey, who was clumsily headed for the cave.
I got to my feet, using my good wrist this time, dread spreading through me like an oil slick across water. Harvey was still screaming. Tears streaming down his face, snot dribbling from his nose. Backed against the boulders, he took a final impotent swing with the branch, then dropped it and ducked into the mouth of the cave.
The Carrie thing was the closest of the hoard behind him. Without hesitating, she bent—her spine splintering with a trio of cracks—and followed him inside.
The rest followed behind her, one-by-one-by-one.
And the screaming continued.
I took a step toward the cave. Still had no plan, but I had to try something. A cold, vice-like hand clamped on my shoulder, stopping me.
I spun—and when I did, it was like all coherent thought came to a screeching halt. I felt my sanity trip—like my mind had stepped out into the dark, expecting a stair that wasn’t there.
It was one of them. I couldn’t meet its gaze, those horrible green eyes. Not up close, not like this. So I stared at the shoes, and began slowly working my way up.
Black slacks—threadbare, dirty, tearing at both knees. A black shirt, button-up, as filthy as the pants. A white collar at the base of the throat, stained brown with crusting blood, and punctured dead-center with something long and thin.
An arrow.
There was a fucking arrow through the collar.
My lungs contracted, emptying. My legs went limp. I stared at the arrow. Couldn’t bring myself to look any higher, at the figure’s face. I just couldn’t.
I remember learning in seminary about a favorite saying of the Trappist Monks: “Memento Mori.” It means “remember that you must die.” At the time, I’d thought it was a sticky and useful reminder to keep your thoughts centered on eternity—above the trials, annoyances, and fleeting temptations of everyday life.
As it turns out, it can mean something much more.
Something terrifying.
The figure made a noise—a gurgling, slimy, choke. Then, it raised its right arm slowly, extended a finger, and pointed toward the trail.
I ran.
I ran without looking back, letting Harvey Pepnow’s fading screams propel me forward like shockwaves.
My sneaker soles skidded at the turn of the first switchback, but I was able to grasp a tree branch with an outstretched hand and keep myself from flying off the path. When I reached the second turn, I skidded again.
This time, there was no branch to grab.
I tumbled, head over heels over head again, rocks digging into my back and chest, pine needles and branches tearing at my face and arms, until my world was black again.
—
It was dark when I woke up, face down in the dirt. My first thought was little more than a jagged mental question mark. My second thought was to remember the real reason for the pain, and I groaned.
I lay still, trying to slow my breathing—until the sound of approaching footsteps kicked it back into overdrive.
Those ghoulish things had ignored me the first time—but maybe only to get Harvey first. Now that they were done with him…
I rolled to the side, adrenaline muting the pain. The figure coming down the switchback was less than twenty feet away. But this was no phantom. No glowing eyes, no bones crunching as it stepped. A few steps closer, and I saw who it was.
“Harvey!”
Nothing. Just one, shuffling foot, placed in front of the other. Harvey stepped out into a patch of moonlight, and I saw his face was completely blank. It wasn’t like the blankness before, though—that had been a mask for something animal and wild. This was, well… truly blank. Slack-jawed. Hiding nothing at all.
“Harvey… Harvey!”
Harvey passed by, unresponsive, maintaining the same shuffling pace down the hill.
And after a few moments, on wobbly, exhausted legs, I followed.
—
Back down the trail, then down the road, then into town. Main street was quiet, and we passed through unencumbered, me trailing some ten steps behind him. The general store had been closed for two hours now. The large window of the diner glowed warmly, but no one stepped out to greet us.
Finally, with the gas station behind us, there was only one building left before the edge of town.
I guess I wasn’t surprised to watch a shuffling Harvey Pepnow turn up the front walk of St. Pius; somehow, on that same, marrow-deep level, I’d known it was where we’d been headed all along. I hung back for a moment, watching through burning eyes until the front door had closed behind his hunched figure. Then, I crossed the small patch of lawn and entered for myself.
I stepped into the thick quiet of the church just in time to hear a light chunking noise I knew well. It was the sound of the confessional booth—the penitent's side—latching closed. I stared at it for a long time. Standing in a beam of new moonlight, separated from me by a humble cluster of pews, the box seemed to almost glow white.
Any other place in the world, I thought. I would rather go any other place in the entire damned world.
Then again…
This was the job, wasn’t it?
I didn’t let myself think anymore. Didn’t let myself stop.
I just swallowed the sour tack of my spit, ignored the drumbeat of my pulse. Crossed the floor of my stuffy little church, unlatched the priest-side door of my stuffy little confessional box, and stepped inside.
You’re familiar with the seal of the confessional, right? You know what it means? It means the story, for better or worse, ends here.
Right damn here.
The End.