The priest laughed, full-throated and full of delight. It echoed through the dusty church, growing hollow as it rose, like a chorus of sycophants trying desperately to let the boss know they were in on the joke. Then he pressed a glass into my hand and clinked his to mine so hard both sloshed. “Well then, fair stranger, you and I are well-met, even if I fear you’re as batty as this old girl’s belfry.”
He tossed back his glass. I did the same. The drink was hard and sharp, but with an undercurrent of fruit. Distilled from plums, if I recalled, ?uica was Romania’s preferred form of moonshine, more rocket-fuel than wine. I set my glass down and wiped the sting of it off my lips with the back of one hand. Father Yefi poured a second for us both.
“So you wanna tell me what’s really going on here?”
“When you arrived in town,” he said, “did you notice anything peculiar?”
“You mean the no-women thing, or the business with the windows?”
He raised his glass in a toast of mock-salute. “Both, in fact, for the two are closely tied. Nice to see you do not miss a trick.”
“Yeah,” I said, tossing back my drink and feeling my eyeballs roll around loose in my sockets. This shit was strong. “Bully for me. So where’d they all go?”
“Oh, they’re all here,” he replied. “They’re simply disinclined toward socializing in the daytime.”
“Come again?”
“I confess, when I first arrived in town on this assignment, it took me a while to notice the women’s absence. Blame a cloistered existence. A life spent among men and men alone. And at risk of committing the sin of pride, it took me longer still to inquire as to where they might be, for I was raised to be polite above all else. When I did, I was assured the women of the town had not fled en masse on my arrival. In fact, they were, and are, right here. It would seem the women of Nevazut all suffer from a rare affliction — a blood disorder, to hear their husbands tell it — which leaves them pale and wan, and quite light sensitive as well. Some it seems are only mildly afflicted; others are wild, delusional, bed-ridden. Again, by day, you understand. At night they are as well as you or I. They dance, they drink, they cook, they sing. I’d not encountered them because I’d set my own internal clock to accord the day’s light. My access to power is limited by my ability to keep my generator fueled, and my work here leaves me so exhausted at night, I’ve scarcely enough time to read a verse or two after dinner before sleep takes me. And my Lord, the dreams I’ve had.”
“What kind of dreams?”
The priest took a long swallow of the spirit, like he was buying time, or maybe avoiding the question altogether. Given the color that rose in his cheeks as he did, I was betting on the latter. Then again, that coulda been the booze.
“Let me simply say they’ve been far from pious.”
“You mean far from chaste.”
“In part, yes. In fact, I’m ashamed to say there’s not a woman in this town who hasn’t featured in my subconscious’ nocturnal meanderings, and never in fewer than groups of three or more. But there’s another aspect to the dreams beyond merely addressing my own repressed desires of the flesh, for of course that’s what I at first assumed them to be. Occupational hazard, you could say.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
Another pause. Another shot. “They always end with me tearing the throats out of the women with whom I find myself entangled, and bathing in the hot, wet, sticky-sweet nectar that is their blood. The light of life guttering and dying in their eyes. Their last breath begging me to drink them dry. A request with which I’m always happy to comply. And invariably, they expire at the, ah, height of their enjoyment, if you take my meaning.”
I downed my drink and wished hard I could unhear what he’d just told me. In life, I went to Sunday school, for God’s sake. There’s some shit you should never be forced to picture a member of the clergy do. “Trust me, Padre, your meaning’s hard to miss.”
“There is one fact that serves to blunt my shame, and cast doubt on the origins of those dreams.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Many of the women who appeared in them I didn’t meet until afterward. And by the glint in their eyes when they first saw me, I’m willing to wager they knew me just as well as I knew them.”
“You mean to say–”
“That someone, or more likely something, filled my head with these vile, blasphemous fantasies? That the women of this Godforsaken town are in the thrall of that selfsame something? Now that I say it all aloud, I’m forced to admit it sounds ridiculous. And yet here you stand, the first stranger to arrive in town since I was sent here so very long ago, asking questions about the castle on the hill and claiming you’re here to fell some ancient evil. So you tell me, is it ridiculous? Or am I right to make my bed beneath a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice so that it, and He, may watch over me?”
I sighed and set down my glass, then poured myself another belt. “I don’t know shit from Jesus, Padre, but I can tell you you ain’t crazy to be scared.”
“But you’re not scared.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “You kidding me? I’m nothing but scared. Been that way near as long as I can remember. But that don’t change what I have to do.”
He nodded, his face screwed up all drunk-serious. “Something’s changed of late,” he told me. “The dreams are more sporadic now, and less vivid than they used to be.”
His words and tone didn’t seem to synch. “That sounds like a good thing to me,” I said, “only you’re throwing off a vibe that says it’s anything but. Why?”
“At first, I was pleased with the development as well,” said Yefi. “I even told myself perhaps the light of my presence had dispelled the pall that hung over this poor, afflicted village. After all, I reasoned, I’d seen no overt sign of malignant intent from any of the women I’d encountered here in my conscious life, at least. Perhaps they were as much victims of these visions as was I, and once those visions abated entirely, everything here would return to normal. I even toyed with the idea of posting flyers advertising Sunday mass, the first such public Christian mass this village would have seen in centuries. But then I began to hear the night sounds, and shortly thereafter the children started disappearing. That’s when I realized the evil in this town had not moved on after all. It had simply changed its tactics.”
“What kind of night sounds? And what do you mean, the children started disappearing?”
“They’re hard to describe,” he told me. “Somewhere between a click and a low growl, and a sound like fine-grain sandpaper, or snake-scales dragging past dry leaves. Down by the river, mostly, and only ever at night. And as far as the children are concerned, I mean exactly what I say. Used to be, a day like this, we’d have fifteen, twenty children frolicking about the square. How many did we have today?”
I thought back. “Seven, maybe eight. But that hardly proves they’re disappearing.”
“Doesn’t it? This village has no school. No daycare. Nothing whatsoever for the children to do but entertain themselves while their parents do as parents do to provide for them. So you tell me, where have the others gone?”
“You ask their parents?”
“Of course I asked their parents.”
“And what did they say?”
“They told me to mind my own business. In fact, they veritably begged me to.”
“And what did they say about where the missing children went?”