Page 5 of Nightshade

At the sharp bark of his words, I didn’t press. Clearly, he’d heard of them, though.

“My apologies for being so terse.” His voice was much calmer that time. “It is not the first inquiry I’ve had about them.”

“Someone else asked about them?”

“Weeks ago, yes.” He leaned into the screen and lowered his voice. “I probably shouldn’t say anything, but he asked about you, as well.”

Frowning at that, I looked away for a moment. “Detective Hines, by chance?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“What did he inquire, if I may ask?”

“Oh, just simple questions, really. How long you’ve been coming to the church. Nothing entirely too personal.”

A cold feeling swept over me. “You didn’t tell him where I lived, or anything, did you?”

“No, no. Of course not. It was benign conversation, really.”

Hopefully, he hadn’t shared details of the few times I’d confessed, though the occasions were relatively mild. And supposedly, priests were sworn not to talk about confessions.

Despite the lingering discomfort of the detective having asked about me, there was nothing I could do about it at that point. The guy had already figured out where I worked. Probably wouldn’t take much to figure out where I lived. Desperate to push away thoughts of Hines breaking into my house at night, like some crazed stalker, I tuned my thoughts to distraction. “Father, is it possible for any one person to hold a higher purpose in God’s eyes?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, once again, making me frown at his unexpected response. “We are all born to accomplish the magnificent. The Holy Father expects some of us to fail. While others will ascend to the resplendent heights of His grace and praise. There is much work to be done. But when His eyes feast upon the glory of our toils, it will be complete exaltation!”

His exuberance cast an uneasy chill down my spine, as I sat quietly absorbing his passionate words, slightly disturbed by them. “Do you dream of things, too?”

“Yes!” he hissed and leaned into the screen. In the dimness of the confessional, I could just make out two milky white eyes staring back at me. I’d never really felt threatened, or uncomfortable, by his disability, until right then. “It is the only time I truly see.”

“How did it happen? Your blindness?”

“Parasites, as a child.”

“That’s horrible.”

“It was The Holy Father’s mercy that allowed me to become what I am today. We must never question His motives. For they will lead us to the divine.”

Sitting there for a moment, I glanced up at a flyer clipped to the wall inside the confessional--one I’d ignored when I first walked in. A special vigil for one of the choir boys who’d apparently committed suicide a couple of weeks prior.

“The choir boy who took his own life, do you believe his soul to be damned?”

“God has entrusted us with stewardship of the soul, and as such, it is not our place to carelessly dispose of such gifts.”

“Do you believe in Purgatory, Father?”

“Of course. But do not be fooled by stories of the afterlife, child. One way, or another, we all burn for our sins. Dominus vigilans.”

“Dominus vigilans. What does that mean?” I’d studied enough Latin to know it’s literal translation, but not its significance in the conversation.

“It means, watch yourself, for you are watched.”

* * *

Leaning back against the cushioned chair at Aunt Nelle’s old-fashioned desk, I stared down at the symbol on the image Hines had left me.

Boxes sat on the floor beside me--my father’s old journals that Aunt Nelle hadn’t bothered to unpack, but had locked away in a cabinet in her office. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted me exposed to his madness. It wasn’t until she’d left the aged, two-story Victorian to me in her will, as sole heir, that I’d been given access to the keys, along with a decent-sized inheritance.

The money kept me afloat. The notes? They fueled a renewed quest for answers about what had really happened to my father in those years we’d been apart.