“Brothers and sisters,” he said after a pause. “Listen to those words of Peter the Apostle. Listen, for soon the judgment foretold shall be upon us—’And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear’?”
The language was so treacherously dark that it felt out of place with these people, yet all of them listened closely. The priest’s eyes scanned their faces, pausing and considering his next words.
“Who knows when this end shall come?” he proclaimed. “Ten years from now? A month? A week? Where will you be on Monday if it happens then? Will your soul be ready?”
He nodded at all of us, his croak of a voice seeming to command the very air we all breathed.
“And what of the unrighteous—those who lead our souls astray?” he went on. “For if we are the sheep, we must follow a shepherd. But what if we find that we have been deceived, and are living in the herd of a shepherd only leading us to slaughter?”
An unusual gravity had taken over the entire room. He bowed his head for a moment, tilting the microphone away a half-inch to ease the power of his voice.
“Listen for the voices that warn of the coming. Listen for the voices that cry out for the purification of your soul before the farmer comes to harvest,” he said. “Because only those who listen can hear what is true.”
Like they had been spoken in a deep chamber, the priest’s final words reverberated in my head, my hands freezing as they clutched at the wooden armrest.
The priest was done. He turned and walked back to the altar. The Expositor had been in front of me all along.
It’s strange how many motions a body makes all on its own. Even standing up is a symphony of legs pushing and arms supporting, an endless and yet unconscious attention that no one really notices before they’re on their feet. All of a thousand things happen in the span of a second, like a set of instructions your brain has so you don’t need to remember the steps.
However the moment I’d identified the Expositor, I became conscious of every motion I made. Suddenly it was as if everyone else in the church had disappeared, and if the priest were only to look up he’d pick me out at once. My breath was too loud so I tried to slow it. My arms were crossed so I uncrossed them. Breathing slower started to make me dizzy, which only made me feel more awkwardly evident. I simply couldn’t get the autopilot turned back on.
So I sat with my back pressed into the corner of the pew, trying as hard as I could to keep my eyes from the priest as he went through his long-practiced motions of finishing the service. It was him. I knew I was right.
Soon the organ’s sounds filled the halls with a final song, as the priest and his assistants filed out and around the opposite side of the church, disappearing into a small room. The song finished and everyone around me started to buzz with low greetings to their neighbors, some leaving hurriedly and others grouping into friendly pockets of conversation.
I managed to stand. But what next? I’d watched the priest go into a side room in the front of the church, and I could see his shadow and the shadows of others as they performed their cleanup duties.
I wasn’t about to let him dart out a door and disappear before I could find some answers. But it wasn’t like there was any good way to start this conversation either. Have you heard any good conspiracy theories lately, Father?
Frosty air blew at me from vents against the wall, an usher switching off some of the lights that were over the altar just as I got to the pulpit. He nodded at me as I walked up the steps. I could hear the monk talking merrily with another usher, something about the old woman who’d been snoring, and they all laughed at once as I turned the corner.
The room was barely the size of my bedroom, mostly one wall with a long counter and many rows of cabinets. A table was beside the door, holding up sconces and a tall chalice that sat upside-down on a towel to dry. There was a tiny open closet with just enough room for about a dozen colored robes that hung inside, and at that moment the priest was putting his robe up, now dressed in an all-black suit and white collar of clergy. He turned just as I walked in.
“Can I help you?” he said. His voice was cavernous and mellow, the warmth of a person who lived off speaking. I stopped in the doorway.
“Um…yes.” Any words I’d prepared departed at once. The priest looked at me, his ocean eyes even more piercing now, set in the circles of age on his face. Certainly not a man who knew dark secrets—certainly not a man who knew why I’d almost been killed?
“I have a question. About…what you said earlier,” I said. He closed the door of the closet.
“Yes?” he prompted.
“Did you write it yourself?” I blurted. The lines in his face showed confusion.
“Of course,” he replied. “Well, I didn’t write it. I merely spoke from the heart. The Spirit works best when we let it guide us.”
The priest picked up the chalice and placed it in the cabinet. I glanced at the monk and usher who were still in the room. They were bantering loudly but I wasn’t sure if taking chances would be in my favor.
“I’d like to talk to you,” I said. “Alone.”
The priest raised an eyebrow. “What about?”
“I…I can’t say.”
His face twisted up. “Can’t you talk about it with me here?”
“I don’t think it’s safe here,” I said. The priest did not look convinced.
“Well I don’t know what you want to say that you can’t tell me here with Brother James,” he said. “I’ve got tomorrow’s mass to prepare for. If it’s not a time sensitive matter, maybe you can drop by the office tomorrow evening at—”
“I’ve seen the blog,” I whispered, hoarsely because it had slipped out without warning. Immediately his hands stopped, hovered in the motion of picking up the sconces, face frozen like a stone cutting. In the shock I’d given him, I saw one of the clearest and most unhindered Glimpses I’d ever witnessed. Raw terror, like the fleeting thought of a person one second before a car was about to crush them. It was paired with a feeling of entrapment and a second where he wondered just how short a time he might have left to live.
His lips parted to say something but in mid-thought he must have realized that he’d already given himself away, and there was no use in denying it.
“I won’t talk about this,” he said under his breath, moving to place the sconces into the cabinet and closing the doors.
“Please, just—”
He pushed me aside, moving to escape through the doorway I’d been standing in. In my desperation I grabbed him by the arm of his shirt, causing him to spin around, arms coming up to defend himself.
“Stay away from—!” he shouted, but his voice cut off like the breaking of a tree branch. His eyes had locked with the hand I’d lifted to stop him, straight to my black birthmark now throbbing and red.
“Daniel…” he whispered in shock. Then realizing that the room had gone silent, he blinked and looked up to the monk and usher who’d turned around to see what the trouble was. His face went paler.
“I—I’m sorry,” he said. “I will…I’ll hear your confession now, if you’d like,” he said to me hastily. “No sinner should be forced to wait for forgiveness, yes?”
Without another word, he turned and started away, so I followed. He headed straight for the back of the church, hands nervously grazing the tops of the pews as he went, head darting to each side as he checked the room. All of the parish members were already gone.
On the wall near the entrance was a set of wooden boxes that looked almost like closets, a pair of doors going in with a light over one. The priest said nothing, darting through one of the doors and closing it behind himself. On it was a plaque that read: FATHER LONNIE PETERS.