Chris Holm - The Big Reap

At the front of the room was an unfinished wooden altar scattered with tools. Larger items — a radial saw, a couple sawhorses, a stack of two-by-fours, another of plywood, and a couple dozen paint cans full of stain and polyurethane — were scattered haphazardly beside it. Above the mess hung a utility light, a bare bulb in a hook-hatted metal cage whose cord connected to an orange extension below, which in turn snaked away into the darkness to the rear of the church, beyond the altar. A faint engine thrum from outside suggested it was plugged into a generator.

I watched as Father Yefi set the lantern down atop the altar and clicked on the hanging light. Under its harsh glare, the magic in the room receded. Now it was just an old and dusty church once more.

It was then I realized this was more than just a church to Yefi, because behind the altar I saw a military cot upon which rested a tousle of blankets and a well-worn Bible; a mini-fridge; and a hot plate, beside which sat a stack of canned goods, a single saucepan, and a wooden spoon. “You live here?” I asked him.

“I do,” he said. “It may sound foolish, but there are times I do not feel safe out there, among the villagers. Here, I am safe, if perhaps less comfortable.”

“I didn’t see a lock on the church door.”

“The safety of which I speak is not merely corporeal,” he replied, “although that which I fear is barred entry from this place just as surely as if it were locked.”

“And what is it that you fear?” I asked him.

“Before I tell you that,” he said, fetching two chipped, age-clouded juice glasses and a bottle of ?uica from beneath the altar and pouring us each a belt, “let me ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“Why did you come to Nevazut?”

I thought long and hard before I answered. Then I figured fuck it, thinking long and hard ain’t what I do, so instead I dove right in. “You mentioned a great darkness resides here,” I said. “If that’s true, then I aim to kill it.”

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 some thing , 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?”