“Do you have a family?” He wasn’t certain why he asked, only that he needed to say something.
“Aye. I have a wife an’ children.”
“Does your wife know about these things you’ve told me?”
“No, she doesn’t,” he said, “but I’m not certain that matters so much.”
“It would likely matter to her,” Father Jim observed. The tight feeling in his chest had increased and he feared anxiety was about to take over.
“I don’t know that it would at this point, Father.”
“What is it you really want to speak of?” he asked, feeling there was a reason beyond confession that this man had chosen his lonely little church this dark and rainy night.
There was a long silence from the other side of the screen, as if the man were carefully weighing what he said next.
“What I would speak to ye of is this—can a man ever really return to the world of the living, once he’s walked years in the world of the dead?”
The spurts of adrenaline had turned to a waterfall flooding through Father Jim’s body. He put his hand to his chest and stood slowly, wondering if he were actually asleep and having some strange dream which seemed more real than life. Either that or he was talking to a ghost.
“Casey,” his throat almost choked on the name for it wasn’t possible and if it was possible, it was so damnably late—too damnably late.
He stepped from the confessional into the steeped dark of the church, with only the candles for light, glowing softly with memory and prayer.
A man stepped into the shadows from the other side, a big man, bigger than most.
“Aye, Father, it’s me.”
And it was then that the words of the Irish poet came to him.
We can write but one line that is certain, ‘Here are ghosts.’
In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4) Page 102
