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The church, usually bathed in light, is now shrouded in inky black shadows reaching out over the walls and wooden pavement like claws. Gared escapes their grasp as he follows the priest down the aisle, to the confessional. Chris hasn't battered an eye when the young man has knocked over the parish's door at that godforsaken hour of the night, asking for a confession with a manic look in his eyes. The priest is always like that. Calm, collected, with a soft voice that still resonates deep and that more than once has made Gared wonder how it would sound if spoken hoarsely against his ear.
That is one of the sins the young man has already confessed, although not in so many details. He has confessed to impure thoughts, and Chris has given him God's forgiveness. We're all flesh and blood after all, he has even said jokingly.
Tonight's confession will be different. More honest, for a start.
Chris sits in the confessional and Gared kneels down. His knees ache even if the cushion is soft. He keeps his hands stuck into the pockets of his jacket.
Honesty. So he can't begin this with the usual formulas. He is not going to ask forgiveness for things he doesn't regret.
"I have sinned," he says, simply
"Tell me, son."
Gared looks at the grate. He can barely make out the outline of Chris' head in the shadows. Maybe he should find it strange that Chris hasn't turned any light on, but he pays no attention to that.
Where to start?
Of course, with what happened while he was asleep.
"I have dreamt of you," he says.
"At first I didn't remember the details of those dreams. I only knew something happened, something changed. I woke up... afraid. I had the feeling someone had been chasing me in my sleep, that I had barely escaped them. Sometimes I woke up screaming. It went on, until the night I was finally caught. I knew that's what happened even if I didn't really remember it. But when I woke up... I was hard, rutting against the sheets. I forced myself to stop and I took a cold shower. It was Sunday, so I went to Mass. I didn't want to, I was feeling... strange. Confused. I kept rubbing my wrists, and my neck, trying to wipe away the sensation of someone grabbing them. But I had promised you to play the organ and I didn't want to disappoint you. And when I arrived here and you greeted me... I remembered. It was you in the dream. You pinning me down, you staring at me, smirking... Until the fear of what you would do to me turned into fear you wouldn't do anything at all."
Gared swallows. He clenches his fists in his pockets. There's a stickiness between his fingers, pulling on his skin. He's just at the beginning.
"I tried to find a reasonable explanation at first. They were just dreams after all, and you even said it in one of your sermons: we can't feel guilty about what we dream, it's out of our control. But after recognising you, they became clearer and clearer. It was you hunting me down, night after night, through the woods or down some strange corridor in an abandoned place. Sometimes I tried to run away, sometimes I hid in dark, small places, but I could never escape you. Then came the pain. You would hurt me in the dreams, in ways I couldn't understand, and I woke up biting my own arm, or scratching my skin open. I was... I was trying to make the pain real, but it always was a shadow of what I dreamt. And still I woke up aroused as I never was before. When we met, I always wondered if you could tell. That I somehow was wearing scratch marks that you left. Later I found out, of course, but back then it was driving me crazy..."
No, he's rushing too much. He needs to tell things in order.
"There were nights when you wouldn't come, and those were the worst. It felt so lonely to wake up from a dreamless night, without my body reminding me what happened. But still, when you appeared in my dreams my first instinct was always to run away. Because you scared me, but that wasn't the whole truth. I think... I wanted to give you, and myself, the pleasure of the chase. And I wanted to give you so much more. I remember stopping, during one of those dreams, and turning around to face you. Seeing you clearly for the first time... Your hair was different. Longer. Your clothes were different too, your chest was bare, something like feathers adorning your shoulders. Your lips were stained black. And your eyes... They burned through me. I didn't dare walk towards you. But I know I was smiling, watching you, and that surprised you. You stared back, in silence, and then you smirked. I remember thinking that I had impressed you somehow. I was... happy about it.
The next day, I was sorting out some scores in the parish's office. You were writing at your desk, and I was standing in front of the shelves. And then I heard you, speaking close. You asked 'What would you give me?' I turned around, but you were on the other side of the room, still sitting." Gared chuckles. "You looked at me, with such a puzzled expression. The answer was on my tongue, but I held back. I thought I was hearing things, that I was losing my mind. I still didn't know.
"I started taking walks in the woods at dusk, trying to clear out my head. I went down to the old church, you know of it. The old stone church, with its caved in roof and the traces of the fire... I remember you asking about it, that time at dinner with the parishioners, everybody shushing each other and crossing themselves. My parents used to say it was mob mentality, people getting irrational at a time when witch hunts should have been but a distant memory. Whatever its history, I loved that spooky place when I was a kid, and I started visiting it again, looking for some peace. I would sit on the stones, just listening to the wind, or grab some sticks and start drumming."
Closing his eyes, Gared can still conjure back that feeling of peace. But there's a smell now in his memory, mingling with that of fallen leaves and wet soil. A smell of smoke and iron. He blinks, and the smell goes away.
"I started feeling like someone was watching me almost immediately. I peeked around corners, turned around abruptly, hoping to catch the watcher. Until finally one day I saw him. I saw you, I saw you for real, not in my mind at nighttime." His voice still trembles, with the disbelief, and the hope, he felt in that moment. "I was about to head back home, but while I was crossing the threshold I turned my head to glance back. And here you were behind the altar, leaning on it, watching me. I blinked, and you were gone. But I was sure it was you. I went back. And I saw the traces on the stone slab. Black, like soot. I traced them with my fingers, and brought them to my mouth.
I opened my pants and jerked off, in that ruined church in the woods. I came on the altar, with your name on my lips, and I imagined you coming forward, grabbing my hair and pushing my head down, making me clean the altar with my tongue."
Gared is getting hard again, even as tired as he is, after everything. He takes a long breath.
"I don't remember leaving the church after that. I remember waking up in my bed, with the taste of soot in my mouth."
Now this is where it becomes more difficult. Gared needs to keep it straight in his head, tell things as they happened.
"The night after, things changed again. I was running away... And then I wasn't. I was running after someone instead. There was someone else, just as scared as I had been moments before. But they weren't a companion, an ally. They were prey. And I had been allowed to hunt too. It was... I can't begin to explain it. It was exhilarating. I followed their traces to the church, and inside it I saw you again. You were sitting on a tall chair I never noticed there before. You were leaning forward, your chin on your hand, and you were staring at me. I was panting, and I was feeling so excited…” Gared's voice almost breaks at the memory. The way Chris had looked at him then… It lit a fire in his belly, and awakened a new hunger. “That thrill remained with me when I woke up. I never allowed myself those kinds of thoughts. I would have confessed them before if I did," he adds that in a rush, eager to prove he never wanted to hide something so big from Chris. "But you brought them forward... And I couldn't push them away. I didn't want to push them away. When I met people in the following days... The girls who ignored me, who I knew joked about me, the weirdo, the aloof guy. The guys who thought I could be an easy pastime, while they stayed well hidden in their closet, going back home to their wives and their Sunday dinner after a quick fuck in a backroom, leaving me to deal with the mess..."
Chris knew about them already. He had spoken to Gared in a compassionate voice, after that particular confession, done sitting next to each other on a pew in the empty church, because Gared had felt like he couldn't breathe in the confessional. Chris' hand on his shoulder. The memory feels out of place now, a discordant note, and Gared refuses to let it linger.
"I started thinking about what I would do to them all. It was so easy to imagine the worst things... But I wasn't sure if that was what I was supposed to think. I went to the church again. I knelt on the floor, and I asked you. I don't think I was expecting a quick reply. But while I was there I looked at the floor, at the traces of the fire. Did someone eventually tell you the whole story? That witches congregated there, and that they made sacrifices, of their bodies and of other people's, to the powers they worshipped?" Gared laughs again, shaking his head. "It's so obvious in retrospect, isn't it? I felt like such a fool... I could hardly wait, once I understood, but I had to be careful. To plan everything. So I did."
It's tedious to recount that. He didn't have any particular reason to pick her rather than someone else. She hadn't even been one of those who had dismissed him so blatantly in the past, if anything she had seemed pleased that he wanted to reconnect. Maybe she was bored... They fucked in her car, and as she moved on him Gared had to fight the urge to wrap his hands around her throat and just squeeze. This wasn't the right time, the right way. But the desire to do it had been so intense it had taken his breath away and pushed him past the edge.
After that, she had agreed to his suggestion to follow him to "see something interesting" not far from where they parked. She seemed to think of it as something quirky.
"She knew of the church too, and had probably believed I wanted to spook her." Gared grimaced, thinking of her shrill giggles. He almost could hear them again, echoing in the church, and he had to stop himself from glancing around. He clenched his fists tight. "She started to grow uncomfortable soon enough. She said the sounds made her nervous. But I know it wasn't just that. She was feeling it too. You were watching us. And... you weren't alone."
For the first time Gared had caught sight of the others, with the corner of his eye. A man standing near the wall, his eyes bright like those of a wolf, a shadows lattice criss-crossing his body. Another figure, on all fours. A line of sharp needles protruding from his arched back. They stayed behind, waiting.
"She said she wanted to go, but I told her we had to do something before, and went to the altar. She was still curious. When she saw what I was doing, lighting up the candles, she asked if I was planning to do a black mass. I took her hand and I pulled her to the altar, and bended her over it. I wanted to give you a show... Then she really heard something, some animal, and she said she had enough. I pushed her down, like I imagined you doing to me. She cried for me to stop, she tried to fight me... But I wanted to hurt her. I had to, because I knew, I just knew, that you would have liked it. You would have liked the way I made her scream, you would..."
Gared stops, out of breath. He pulls his hand out of his pocket and presses it over his mouth. The smell of dried blood fills his nose.
"I had placed the knife near the altar. I don't remember the moment I took it. I... I'm sorry, I can't describe it. I realized that I had stabbed her and that she was writhing, and I was still inside her. I was covered in her blood. I pulled back when she stopped moving. I fixed her, taking her clothes off and laying her properly on the altar. Then I knelt down, raised my hands and I waited for you to come, to take your sacrifice."
He had waited, in the trembling light of the candles, until her blood had made a puddle under the altar, until his knees were aching and he was shaking from the cold.
"Then I realized what I was missing. I had to come here and tell you. I had to confess. That was the final step " Gared's voice is trembling. But he knows he is right. He has to be…
His knees ache, as if he was kneeling on that hard stone. And he smells it again. The woods, and the blood, and the smoke.
"That's it, right? You were waiting for me, weren't you? Did my sacrifice please you?" Gared presses his face against the grate. There is only darkness, behind it, he can't make out the pastor's presence anymore.
"...Chris...?" He whispers his name. Why isn't he talking to him, why…
He shifts. Pain shoots from his knee up his leg. He places a hand down, and realizes he is touching cold stone.
"What..."
He looks around. He isn't in the small, tidy confessional. Crooked wood, blackened by the flame, surrounds him. Speechless, he stands up.
He is in the old church. In front of him, the body of the girl he killed is laid out like a offering of meat on the altar, under the moonlight.
This is impossible. He took the shortcut through the woods, and then went to the parish house. He is sure of it. How can he be back there…?
A shadow creeps over him. He spurs around, his heart in his throat. He's alone...
No. Someone is standing beside him.
Gared feels the hand on his throat. The relief is so big he almost falters, almost falls back. He's there. He is there.
"I heard your confession," the voice is deep, rough, it is fear, pain, and desire. It is everything he imagined it to be and more.
"Did it please you?" Gared's voice is barely more than a whisper. "Was it... What you wanted?"
Lips brush against his ear.
"Oh yes, little one. And you will have your reward."
"My penance..." Gared says, almost pleadingly, and it feels like another confession.
He hears a cruel chuckle. Strong arms come around him, sharp claws leave bloody lines over his chest.
Blessingly, Gared knows he won't wake up from this.