tHE cOnfessiOnal

t was the echo of steps that woke him, steps on the stone floors of the church, steps slow and direct. The church was empty save for Father Casey. Incense burned low and smoke shrouded the pews which had once seated many a soul, but for some time now had remained vacant. Sunday had come again and only the birds seemed to remember as they sang praises in the garden to the Most High.

In the confessional sat Father Casey, older than he wanted to be, but still young enough to know there were many years left ahead. He was tired: tired of the silence, tired of the forsaken Sundays. Once this church had been full of people, warm and worshiping, their breath fueling the Father’s words and benedictions, glorious and shining. 

But the years had only left to him what seemed a tarnished future. One by one they vanished— some with their reasons, others without a word, till not a member remained. Thus the church stayed abandoned. On most Sundays, Casey roamed the grounds like a ghost, lighting the candles, tending to the many tasks required in upholding the order’s fallen splendor. In his isolation he began to acquire strange habits. He found it painful to be in his study, the walls lined with leatherbound volumes, full of texts and analysis of the scriptures, full of perspective. The holy book itself gathered dust— he could not honestly bear its burden. Instead he sat in the confessional.

All his work ceased. More and more he found himself drawn to the solace of sitting on his side of the partition. Every Sunday he used the metal cross on his rosary to etch marks on the wall, scarring the ancient wood to indicate another vanished week. Its wood structure was adorned with carvings of angelic hosts. Such craftsmanship pushed back the mere grain of the wood and gave way to wings in flight; it absorbed the whispers of penitents and in return gave redemption to those who would have it. The compartment stood indifferent to the times. It was simply a part of the church.

With every passing day a subtle corrosion of his spirit took place. He had stopped praying. Had closed the doors of his heart to God. No prayers, no scriptures— only a heavy head and weary eyes. He gave up a little more each week till most days he would sleep within the confessional in fitful naps, as he did now. He was resting his head against the ancient wood when steps woke him.

Only his eyes opened. Nor did he stir from his seat, feeling no need to reveal himself to a lone stranger. Perhaps a few months ago he would have rushed out with open arms, welcoming anyone who had found their way back into the church.

But not now. In an odd way, he wanted to know what the owner of the steps would do. They never paused, but continued closer and closer with an unsettling directness until, to his surprise, they walked into the confessional. Such a silence commenced, worse than the one he had grown accustomed to. The priest held his breath, forgoing his duty. For some reason he would not be the first to speak, and did not want to be. He waited for words to come from the other side of the partition.

Bless me father for I have sinned. 

But only silence. Only the presence of the other side, sitting close. 

It was in this shared silence that Casey’s senses heightened, and he noticed the details of his visitor. There was a scent, faint, of iron and freshly-dug earth. He felt the rhythm of his pulse quickening till it grew in his ears and he wanted to scream, pound on the wall, and demand what the visitor wanted. 

At last the other spoke.

“I've passed by so many times, but I've never truly been in a church before. Yours, father, is the first I have ever entered completely whole.” 

Father Casey found his mouth numb, difficult for his tongue to move and his lips to form a word. It seemed the voice understood this and continued.

“I have roamed the world, seen many wonders, but nothing has fascinated me as much as the Church.”

The voice was strange in the priest’s ears— it seemed both young and old, male and female. He’d heard many faceless voices in his line of work. Discerning a face through the confessional was something of a specialty of his. He could tell if a penitent were fat or thin, ugly or handsome. He could piece together a picture just from the voice. This visitor was indiscernible, and he kept any image at bay.

The voice spoke once more.

“It used to be so bright. Like a lighthouse in a raging storm. So bright, so blinding. Now… it's dim, and I can handle ‘dim’.”

At last Father Casey found a few words. They were weak. 

“Why are you here? Have you come to confess, my child?” 

Such laughter erupted from the other side. High, deep, and powerful.

“Father Casey, I come to mock a man of God in the twilight of his faith—in the weakness of his belief! No confessions from me, father, or we’d be here for an eternity.”

“Do I know you?”

The air grew cold.

“All your life. And if you cannot tell now in the house of the Lord, then I am right, and may enter any place I please.”

“Who are you?”

“Will you not look?” 

He could not bring himself to do so.

“What are you?”

“Countless things to countless people, but you would know me as the absence of Christ.”

“I don't believe you— you're just some crazy wretch.”

“There isn’t much you believe in these days, father.”

This angered him and gave him a little fuel.

“I don't have time for this. Get out.”

“Time is all that you have. It’s rotting your flesh.” 

He clenched his fists. The rosary cross dug into his skin. He raised his voice. It echoed its way throughout the stones and pews.

“I said get out!”

“Get out, get out...I'm already in!”

There was a rush of air. The pews were caught up and tossed about in a whirlwind. Candles extinguished and darkness came. Casey could see nothing, as if he’d gone blind.

he voice was quiet for a long time leaving the man in the dark— not the cover of night nor anything natural, but a living darkness that seeped and writhed and stained. Casey felt his soul suffocating, as if some unseen hand wrapped around his throat, squeezing. He could take it no longer. He opened the confessional to escape only to find the floors of the church had vanished.

The confessional hovered in a realm beyond the natural laws of order. Closing the door, he tried to control his frantic breaths. He dared not leave— to do so would result in death. It seemed that the sanctified box was the only thing holding back the darkness. If not for the confessional it would pour in and devour his soul. 

The priest dug into his pockets and found the small matchbox he used for incense. His trembling fingers fought to hold a match steady. He knew he shouldn’t, but he had to see. He held the door ajar with it in his hand, and struck it— a spark, smoke, then fire. Around him were the shapes and things from beyond the veil: countless, nameless, abhorrent atrocities. Sounds arose that no mortal ear could comprehend. Light was an insult— it went out and the blackness settled.

The voice was back. 

“Now you see what has grown out of the world? That collar around your neck is a noose. It grows tighter by the minute, pulled on by those who were once your congregation, freed from your church by fresh pagan delights, sacraments forsaken, prayers unanswered, the hallowed now unholy. Unfettered by your jargon.”

“Let me be! Have you nothing better to do?"

“Nothing is sweeter than the taste of a righteous man fallen.”

The voice pierced his mind and Father Casey finally allowed himself to see the image behind the voice: countless rotting corpses, a million needles in a junkie’s veins, women and children abused and molested, forms malnourished from starvation, ineffable lust, and the subtle atrocities of the heart that in time corrode the soul and the living temple. All such things formed a face as old as the Fall. And it seemed to Casey that the very foundations of the church began to shake, as did he.

“There is no hope for you now, priest.”

“Where there is God, there is hope. God is in all things!”

“I hear echoes, father, no voice of substance. God is in all things? Is he in the murder of babies? Is he in the searching mouth of an adulterer? I am! As I am inside this confessional, as I am inside of you!”

“A penitent soul may find redemption!” 

Casey pulled at the door. In his heart was the knowledge to combat this malevolent force, stored away, but his convictions were as a rusted hinge and would not budge.

It moaned.

“Are you penitent, priest? Does your mind wander in the night when you think God’s not looking? Are you penitent before or after you let me into your heart? I was before you! I have been with mankind since the garden, and you have only grown weaker.”

The Father began to mumble prayers. The voice spoke over them. 

“Do you really think your lukewarm Latin frightens me? Can a man who doubts Christ can keep me away? I have always been in the hearts of your congregation, eating them from the inside, and they are willing, as you inflict the wounds by which they die.”

A new metallic odor afflicted his nostrils. The place where his head had rested became damp. Casey struck another match in the confessional. The walls were slick, and as he looked closer he began to shake. The ancient wood was bleeding. Blood covered his hands, dripping from the ceiling, pooling at his feet.

“This blood is mine. Humanity’s forfeiture given to me over the ages— the blood of the sinful.”

Then Father Casey heard it, heard the blood— have mercy, the blood was screaming. From the crimson came the wails of countless generations, mingled, gushing, wetting the horror-stricken priest’s face. The confessional creaked and moaned, completely submerged in a fathomless ocean of blood. The malevolent host was everywhere, laughing.

“Why?” cried the man.

In utter dolor he spoke not to the voice, but to the one whom he had intentionally not spoken to, the one who so long ago he had given his life to, the one who he had come to resent.

“God! Why have you forsaken me? Why have you left your church to rot?” 

He looked to the markings he had made on the confessional’s wall, felt his isolation; it had not begun thus. He closed his eyes with tears. He recalled the first time he had truly believed in God without prompting, a genuine faith born of free will. In despair Father Casey fell from his seat to his knees, but not to the floor of the confessional. His hands felt grass wet with dew and earth warmed with sunrise.

ather Casey opened his eyes, no longer a frightened, aging man faced with the abomination of living sin, but a small, optimistic boy of eleven. The confessional had disappeared and he was in the quiet woods of his youth. He remembered this day, recalled even the actions that had led to this moment. 

The sun was golden through his bedroom window. 

He’d gone into the woods that spring day after a long winter. It was God’s Beauty, as his mother called this season. He wandered through the trees, the grass cool on his bare feet, until he came to a soft meadow filled with wildflowers, crested with jewel-like dew. They had blossomed over the last few nights into such colors, of kinds stained glass windows only attempted to capture.

The memory brought back the feeling of the presence of the Holy Spirit. 

The question he had constantly asked as an adult was answered in the petals of a violet. Looking closer he saw it was not only a violet, but all the colors which bloomed in the universe. Even deeper was the entire universe, and it enveloped him. Eons whirled past him, stars blazed and sang through space. The celestial hosts known and unknown sang in praise of Jehovah's glory. They were joined by the birds in the garden and every part of natural creation, and the expanse of infinity that wrapped and enfolded him. Deeper, and deeper within deep, into the strands of being and the complex patterns of life.

Before time, before creation, further in he went. The cosmos rushed over his being as the fabric of existence burned and blazed in unison with all things.  He traveled past the capacity of comprehension till even this gave way.

All this born of God's will, a culmination that spanned beyond any human measure of grandeur, beyond existence itself. Everything surged with God's purpose, within the mother’s womb and in the reaches of space, all things grace, and love. Love that burned eternally bright.

The song of creation grew louder. He saw sounds and colors in tangible form; fluorescent, dazzling, and blinding, till he caught fire and burst into ethereal white flames. He did not perish but was given strength. The realization struck him to his core. It was he that had stopped listening, that had ceased singing with creation.

God had not forsaken him— no, never.

Father Casey’s faith was reforged in the confessional, his voice recovered amid the whirling darkness. The unnamed beast still waited on the other side of the partition.

He was in darkness, but it was not the same. Nothing compared to the light he had seen, that lived within him. The voice on the other side laughed.  Father Casey remembered the scripture in his heart. Be still and know that I am God. He was still. He recalled the Lord's words over the void and said them aloud:

And the Lord said let there be light!

A light came from the priest, a light that shone with divine absolution.

The darkness receded as in a tide, draining away, returning the reality of man to the light of God. From Father Casey came the song of creation, a melody that comes from the peace that comes from knowing the King of Eternity. 

The rocking stopped and the voice ushered out a low and loud moan. The confessional’s door exploded open and the footsteps fled, echoing a retreat. The voice screamed with the anguish of damnation. 

Father Casey opened his eyes, not knowing if what had transpired had been dreamed or reality. In his heart he knew. He stood and stepped out of the confessional. He surveyed the damage done in the church and quietly went about setting them right. Songs of praise came to him, songs the birds might be proud of. Sin had left its markings along the floor, out the door into the world where it still roamed. 

He looked back to the confessional and walked over to it, placing his hands on the ancient wood. He knew what he must do next. The enemy had come to gloat when he was bitter and afraid, but the Lord came to redeem. The rosary cross was a steadfast comfort in his palm. He knelt, holding the blessed symbol in his mortal hands. Where there is God there is hope, and God is in all things.

Father Casey turned and went into his study; he placed the rosary round his neck and dusted the Bible. In isolation and pride his faith was weak. To remain waiting alone would not help others. Resolve was on his face. The voice had been right. If God's children would not come to church then he would bring it to them. He was older than he wanted to be, but young enough to know there were many years left ahead. Only now, he no longer felt tired. 

That Sunday the sound of footsteps echoed in the church and they belonged to Father Casey, who in empyrean splendor went out to be a light in a darkening world. ⯀