by David Beers
* * *
The lights burned from inside the cathedral. John watched them from the parking lot, both he and Harry silent.
Father Charles was in there and the only thing keeping John from getting out of the car was Harry. His dead friend remained silent, but John still felt his pull easily enough. Harry had been close to getting what he wanted tonight, and somehow John drove him here, the last place he wanted to be.
How was I able to do it? John said.
“Because you’re a fool,” Harry said aloud. “You think this is going to stop something and it’s not. It’s going to make things worse, I promise. What do you think is going to happen when you go in there? That all of a sudden everything that’s made you from the time you were ten until now is going to disappear—that some holy light will shine down and clean you of all your impurities?” Harry looked over to him. “John, there is no stopping this. I don’t know why you are this way and I don’t care. The priest won’t fix you. God won’t fix you, if he even exists.”
“Shut up,” John said quietly, his eyes closed.
“Go on, then. Let’s get this over with.” Harry opened his door and led the way, not waiting for John to get out of his side.
He followed, though, looking down at the pavement instead of up at Harry. They both walked inside, Harry not waiting, but walking to a pew and sitting down, staring forward as angry as John had ever seen him.
“John?” Father Charles called from his office.
“Yes, Father, it’s me.”
John walked past Harry, down the aisle and toward the statue of Jesus dying for all sins—even those that John had committed. He looked to his right and saw the priest coming out from the hallway, dressed in black and wearing his collar as if it wasn’t the middle of the night, as if he was about to give a sermon.
“Thanks for coming,” Father Charles said. He joined John’s side, both looking up at the dead God they worshipped.
“How long have we known each other, Father?”
“How long ago did you first come here?”
John shook his head. That had been such a long time ago. It felt like a different person walked in here originally, looking for answers that he hadn’t been able to find anywhere else. “Maybe twenty-three?” he said.
“And your first had been by done then?”
John said nothing, knowing that anything outside the confessional booth could be used against him.
“What am I going to do?” John asked.
“Will you take the sacrament with me?”
“Of course,” John said.
* * *
John had been twenty-three when he first walked through Charles Rapport’s cathedral doors. It took ten years from the point at which he watched Harry drown in the ocean until he realized that his life was, as the twelve-steppers would say, unmanageable.
When he arrived, he was close to suicide. The world was closing in on him, ready to suffocate him, and he saw no way to make everything stop. He couldn’t even slow it down.
He went in on a Saturday, hoping that the church would be empty, hoping that he might be able to pray. He had never done it before, not even by accident. His parents weren’t religious and that influenced John’s life as well. But, after what happened two weeks before, he didn’t see much choice. He would be in jail soon, and after that? Strapped to a chair just before electricity surged through his body, not stopping until he sat dead, his skin smoking.
The church had been empty and John felt relief as the door closed behind him. He didn’t know how he would explain himself if people started asking him questions; why was he here? Did he believe in God? Plus any other number of things that John couldn’t imagine.
He took a seat and looked up at the dimly lit platform in front of him. The place looked somewhat creepy, a suffering man hanging from a cross and shadows cast every which way.
How was he supposed to begin? John hadn’t ever asked himself many questions about the afterlife. Whether God existed or you simply decomposed in the ground when this life ended. He still wasn’t too concerned with that question; John came to this place because he didn’t know what other choice he had.
He bowed his head but didn’t close his eyes.
“I don’t know how to make it stop,” he said aloud. “What I did, what I’ve done … I’m going to hurt everyone I love, one way or another.”
He paused for a few minutes, hearing nothing but the creaks of a shifting building. No God. No alerts from the sky.
“Hi,” someone called from across the room.
John’s head jerked up, surprised at the sudden sound in the silence surrounding him.
“I’m Father Charles,” the priest said.
* * *
John stood in front of the priest, Father Charles, who stood slightly higher on the platform. He held a chalice of wine in one hand and an unleavened wafer in his right.
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…” Father Charles said. John heard the words, the same ones he had listened to so many other times standing in this same position. He bowed his head, focusing on the prayer to his Lord and Savior.
“Thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, forever and ever. Amen.” Father Charles brought his left hand in front of him. “The peace of the Lord be with you always.” He moved the cracker toward John. “The body of Christ.”
“The body of Christ,” John repeated, placing the cracker in his mouth.
“The blood of Christ,” the priest said, moving the chalice to John’s lips.
“The blood of Christ,” he whispered and then swallowed the wine.
* * *
John felt an interest from the priest that he hadn’t felt with anyone in his life before. His mother cared, but to venture into what was wrong would unveil things she couldn’t handle. His father cared, but lived in a world where nothing could ever be wrong. Dr. Vondi? He had been a mistake.
“What brought you in here?” he said a week after they first prayed together. They met in his office, John having asked before Mass if it would be possible to talk with him.
“Today?” he said.
“No, in general. What brought you to the church?”
“I feel lost,” John said. He looked at the priest’s eyes, thinking that he had done something very similar with the psychologist ten years before. Vondi’s eyes hadn’t looked like these, though. His eyes had been curious, almost intensely so. The priest’s eyes were caring, a deep brown that seemed to plead with the world to give up its worries.
Father Charles smiled. “We’ve all felt like that. I still do, quite often.”
“Really?” John said.
“Of course.”
“When?”
Again, when he would ask Vondi something like this, there would be a pause while the psychologist measured his words before speaking. The priest did nothing of the sort, but kept speaking as naturally as one might after a few drinks.
“It’s kind of cliché, actually, but when I see massive suffering. I look at what’s going on in the Middle-East, both to Christians and non-Christians alike, and I wonder how God can let it happen. How He has let it happen for centuries.”
“But you believe anyway?” John said.
“Yes, always. He is there even if I can’t understand Him.”
John was quiet for a few seconds, a question coming to him that seemed imperative to his survival. “Does He understand me?”
The priest nodded. “He does. You’re His child. You don’t have children yet and I never will … at least, I hope I don’t … I wasn’t always chaste before I donned the collar,” the priest smiled. “Don’t let me get off on a tangent, John. We don’t have children so we can’t understand it, but one day you will be able to—on some level. My point is, that God understands us better than we understand ourselves, or anything else in this world.”
“I’m not sure He can understand me,” John said. “I don’t understand me. I’m not sure anyone I’ve ever met unde
rstands me.”
Father Charles smiled. “It can’t be as bad as all that. Tell me about some of it.”
* * *
John tasted the wine, savoring it in his mouth for a second.
He looked up to Father Charles who had tears in his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” John said.
“Nothing.” The priest turned and placed the chalice behind him. “Do you want to be forgiven for these sins, John? Truly?”
“Yes.”
“And do you truly want to stop, or is it something you tell me to help your conscience?”
“I’ve always wanted to stop this. I hate everything about it. I hate myself for doing it.” John felt tears in his own eyes now, though he didn’t try to blink them away.
The priest nodded, his back still to John.
“Something isn’t right,” Harry called from the back. “Something is different here.”
John didn’t need to turn around to know that Harry was on his feet, the stress in his voice filling the church.
“Why did you call me here tonight, Father? Why tonight?”
“Where were you when I called?”
John paused. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“I was outside someone’s house, ready to go in.”
“Bless us Father,” the priest said, his head lowered.
* * *
“Are you ready to take confession?” The priest said.
Three months of conversations.
Three months of moving around the real reason John came to this church. Father Charles tried to convince John he could be told anything, but John didn’t believe it. Not at first, but he began doing his own research, and learned that inside the confessional booth, the words were sacred. The priest could tell no one unless he wanted to be excommunicated, stripped of everything he worked his whole life for.
And John needed forgiveness. He needed absolution of the crimes he committed, not only against man, but also against God.
The past three months had taught John a lot about God and what He wanted. Truthfully, he felt like he was receiving the first real education of his life. He had been to school—good schools, and done well—but none of those places dealt with the soul. His soul, he thought when he first showed up, was black. Blackened more with each passing year, starting with Harry’s death and culminating in the past few years. What was there left to do except join his rightful place next to Satan and call it a life?
Father Charles taught him differently, though.
That no one was beyond forgiveness.
And now John sat inside the booth, the small window open between he and the man saving his life. Or leading him to The One that could save it.
“Tell me your sins, John.”
He swallowed, unsure how to start. He imagined this moment for the past three months, but now that he was here, he didn’t know what to say. How to tell someone the things he’d done, the thoughts that he still held.
“I’ve murdered, Father.”
Silence from the universe’s deepest regions filled the void between he and the priest.
“Murder, John?” he said finally.
“Yes. More than once. I watched my best friend die and I did nothing to save him. I murder because ….” He felt the tears hit his cheeks, hot and unforgiving. “Because I can’t stop it. Because at least a part of me really likes it.”
Again, that silence which seemed to have no end, to know all and nothing at the same time.
“Forgive me, John. I’m ….” The priest didn’t finish.
“You said God can forgive,” John said, his voice hitching. “You said He can make me whole again. That He knows me and loves me.”
John didn’t know if he was even speaking to someone on the other side, such was the cavern in between he and the priest.
“Can he, Father? Can he forgive me?”
“John, I, uh … Yes. He can. He can do anything he wants. But, I didn’t know what your sins were. I’ve never dealt with something like this.”
John didn’t speak this time, letting the priest’s words hang in the air—the final rebuke, what John knew had been coming since the very moment he watched Harry trying to keep his head above water, and yet did nothing to help him. Because he was unforgiven. He was unloved. He was the monster he always thought, and now, with this holy man’s words, it all came true.
“The most important thing, I think, is whether you have a true desire to quit, John. I don’t know everything that’s going on with you. If I’m being honest, I’m not even sure I know you at all right now. God can forgive and He can purify, but you have to be in the right place to accept his forgiveness.”
A pause, and then John spoke. “I know.”
“I’m not sure you’re there. I’m not sure about a lot right now, John.”
He put his hands to his face, sobs coming freely. “I have to stop, Father. I can’t continue. I can’t.”
* * *
Father Charles kept his head bowed.
Lord, forgive me. Please forgive me, he prayed.
He didn’t know if forgiveness was possible, but he felt his hand was forced. He couldn’t stand by and let it continue to happen. He couldn’t let this man continue to murder.
The priest turned around, raising his head and looking at John.
“Let’s go to my office. I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”
John nodded.
“Okay.”
* * *
God helped.
John couldn’t deny that. God and Father Charles, and eventually, Sexaholics Anonymous. It all helped to keep Harry at bay and the world he brought with him.
Years passed and the initial shock over what he told the priest faded.
John went to church. He participated. He took communion and he prayed daily.
“Have you thought about therapy?” Father Charles asked.
“I’ve been. It didn’t help.”
“And this? How is this helping?”
“It’s the only thing to ever help alleviate the urges,” John said.
Their relationship was close, if strained. John still saw the care inside the priest’s eyes, but he saw fear there as well.
John met Diane. Father Charles married them.
“Does she know?” he asked.
“No. I can’t tell her.”
“And you think you can live this lie forever, without telling your other half?”
“I’m not sure I have a choice,” John said.
“We always have a choice.”
“Not if I want her to stay.”
Years went and John stayed, what the twelve-steppers called, sober. Until he didn’t.
How many years passed? Three? Four? Quite a few. His longest stretch ever, but as always, Harry returned. He came back wanting the only thing he knew—murder. John saw him and knew that the only choice he had was to turn to Father Charles. The group couldn’t help, and though he prayed, God’s representative answered him more often than God.
“It’s back,” John said inside the confessional booth. Once the rite concluded, John could confess, and even evil thoughts were protected under the seal. “The thoughts, Father. I can’t stop them. They’re all the time.
“Have you prayed?”
“Yes, but God’s not answering.”
The priest sighed. “You have an opportunity here, to end all of this, John. You can turn yourself in now, before any more damage is done. God does not always alleviate us from our suffering. Sometimes we must alleviate ourselves.”
John said nothing.
“You’re talking about murder. You’re telling me that you’re having thoughts of killing someone and you don’t know how to stop it, yet when I say, turn yourself in, you don’t have an answer.”
Father Charles had never spoken like this. The relationship was complicated, but John hadn’t felt the pull like this since starting church. It seemed as if Father Charles would take the attitude that as lo
ng as the dogs slept, let them.
Until now.
Turn himself in? The thought never crossed his mind. He would have sooner killed himself than put his family through the knowledge of what he’d done.
“Do you hear me, John?”
“I can’t do that, Father. I love my life too much.”
“You love yourself more than the rest of God’s children?” the priest said.
John felt the hot damp of tears in his eyes.
“Only you can make this choice,” Father Charles said. “You can choose to do what is right or what you’ve always done. No one else can make that choice for you. If you choose to continue down this path, of even entertaining thoughts like this—I’m not sure how much more help I can be.”
* * *
“Have a seat, John,” Father Charles said. He watched as John took a chair in front of his desk, placed there for a very specific reason. The priest sat on the corner of his desk, halfway standing. “Is it worse than before?”
John nodded but didn’t make eye contact.
“How so?”
John looked up at that question. “You know I won’t tell you out here.”
“No details.”
John took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s happened twice already.”
“Another one since we last spoke?”
John nodded and Father Charles looked down at his feet. Black shoes to go with the black get-up. So much black, though the Lord was supposed to be a God of joy. Maybe, though, the Church only peddled that. Maybe God was something very different and Father Charles was just now coming to understand that. Maybe God didn’t care about humanity at all, despite what the Book said.
He looked at John and thought, what God would make him like this? What God would put Father Charles in this position?
A serial killer and a priest?
God brought this man in front of Father Charles and left him no choices.
Perhaps God was a sadistic child and did this for fun. Perhaps God and John Hilt were more similar than not.
Is this why I’m here? Father Charles prayed. To do this bidding?
