An excerpt from Proseuche, due in November 2013 –
This was the beginning of his end.
The heavy wooden doors waited before him.
Weeks ago he had spied the man, a stranger, lingering near in the silver light of early-morning.
Weeks ago, the sun waking behind a canopy of slate grey clouds, he had wrestled with the keys that turned the locks that opened the door to this, his church.
Weeks ago, he had sat in the confessional, the dark-haired Penitent hidden by the lattice-work screen separating them.
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
The words had come, halting, thick with exhaustion, the heavily accented English breathed by a soul in torment.
He hadn’t known what to say, the priest.
The Church believed one thing, he another. Were he to close his eyes, though, the sight of all those shadows sitting in the pews would rise up from memory and haunt him. The echoes of faces, of arms and chests and torsos and slender shoulders, their necks long as they bowed their heads in prayer. Still, he was haunted by the gentle warmth of phantom breath on the back of his neck as he worked in his office, alone. Still, the feeling of all those eyes on him persisted, like a stain. Eyes watching him, following him. Souls eager for him to see them, to know them and remember them and love them. The scent of them at his heels as his footsteps echoed in the nave at the end of the day as he jingled the keys that would turn the locks to bolt the doors as he left this, his church.
“Yes,” he had finally said in English as well, his voice the barest of whispers lest this blatant insurrection be heard.
“Yes, I do.”
