F Wilson: Midnight Mass

But for all the imagined horrors conjured by the night noises, the silence was worse. No human wails of pain and horror had penetrated their sanctum, but imagined cries of human suffering echoed through their minds in the ensuing stillness.

"Dear God, what's happening out there?" Bernadette said after they'd finished reading aloud the Twenty-third Psalm.

She huddled on her mattress, a blanket thrown over her shoulders. The candle's flame reflected in her frightened eyes and cast her shadow, high, hunched, and wavering, on the wall behind her.

Carole sat cross-legged on her bed. She leaned back against the wall and fought to keep her eyes open. Exhaustion was a weight on her shoulders, a cloud over her brain, but she knew sleep was out of the question. Not now, not tonight, not until the sun was up. And maybe not even then.

"Easy, Bern—" Carole began, then stopped.

From below, on the first floor of the convent, a faint thumping noise.

"What's that?" Bernadette said, voice hushed, eyes wide.

"I don't know."

Carole grabbed her robe and stepped out into the hall for a better listen.

"Don't you be leaving me alone, now!" Bernadette said, running after her with the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders.

"Hush," Carole said. "Listen. It's the front door. Someone's knocking. I'm going down to see."

She hurried down the wide, oak-railed stairway to the front foyer. The knocking was louder here, but still sounded weak. Carole put her eye to the peephole, peered through the sidelights, but saw no one.

But the knocking, weaker still, continued.

"Wh-who's there?" she said, her words cracking with fear.

"Sister Carole," came a faint voice through the door. "It's me ... Rosita. I'm hurt."

Instinctively, Carole reached for the handle, but Bernadette grabbed her arm.

"Wait! It could be a trick!"

She's right, Carole thought. Then she glanced down and saw blood leaking across the threshold from the other side.

She gasped and pointed at the crimson puddle. "That's no trick."

She unlocked the door and pulled it open. Rosita huddled on the welcome mat in a pool of blood.

"Dear sweet Jesus!" Carole cried. "Help me, Bern!"

"What if she's a vampire?" Bernadette said, standing frozen. "They can't cross the threshold unless you ask them in."

"Stop that silliness! She's hurt!"

Bernadette's good heart won out over her fear. She threw off the blanket, revealing a faded blue, ankle-length flannel nightgown that swirled just above the floppy slippers she wore. Together they dragged Rosita inside. Bernadette closed and relocked the door immediately.

"Call 9-1-1!" Carole told her.

Bernadette hurried down the hall to the phone.

Rosita lay moaning on her side on the foyer tiles, clutching her bleeding abdomen. Carole saw a piece of metal, coated with rust and blood, protruding from the area of her navel. From the faint fecal smell of the gore Carole guessed that her intestines had been pierced.

"Oh, you poor child!" Carole knelt beside her and cradled her head in her lap. She arranged Bernadette's blanket over Rosita's trembling body. "Who did this to you?"

"Accident," Rosita gasped. Real tears had run her black eye makeup over her tattooed tears. "I was running ... fell."

"Running from what?"

"From them. God ... terrible. We searched for them, Carmilla's Lords of the Night. Just after sundown we found one. Looked just like we always knew he would ... you know, tall and regal and graceful and seductive and cool. Standing by one of those big trailers that came through town. My friends approached him but I sorta stayed back. Wasn't too sure I was really into having my blood sucked. But Carmilla goes right up to him, pulling off her top and baring her throat, offering herself to him."

Rosita coughed and groaned as a spasm of pain shook her.

"Don't talk," Carole said. "Save your strength."

No," she said in a weaker voice when it eased. "You got to know. This Lord guy just smiles at Carmilla, then he signals his helpers who pull open the back doors of the trailer." Rosita sobbed. "Horrible! Truck's filled with these ... things'. Look human but they're dirty and naked and act like beasts.

They like pour out the truck and right off a bunch of them jump Carmiila.

They start biting and ripping at her throat. I see her go down and hear her screaming and I start backing up. My other friends try to run but they're pulled down too. And then I see one of the things hold up Carmilla's head and hear the Lord guy say, 'That's right, children. Take their heads. Always take their heads. There are enough of us now.' And that's when I turned and ran. I was running through a vacant lot when I fell on ... this."

Bernadette rushed back into the foyer. Her face was drawn with fear. "911 doesn't answer! I can't raise anyone!"

"They're all over town." Rosita said after another spasm of coughing. Carole could barely hear her. She touched her throat—so cold. "They've been setting fires and attacking the cops and firemen when they arrive. Their human helpers break into houses and drive the people outside where they're attacked. And after the things drain the blood, they rip the heads off."

"Dear God, why?" Bernadette said, crouching beside Carole.

"My guess ... don't want any more undead. Maybe only so much blood to go around and—"

She moaned with another spasm, then lay still. Carole patted her cheeks and called her name, but Rosita Hernandez's dull, staring eyes told it all.

"Is she ... ?" Bernadette said.

Carole nodded as tears filled her eyes. You poor misguided child, she thought, closing Rosita's eyelids.

"She's died in sin," Bernadette said. "She needs anointing immediately! I'll get Father."

"No, Bern," Carole said. "Father Palmeri won't come."

"Of course he will. He's a priest and this poor lost soul needs him."

"Trust me. He won't leave that church basement for anything."

"But he must!" she said almost childishly, her voice rising. "He's a priest."

"Just be calm, Bernadette, and we'll pray for her ourselves."

"We can't do what a priest can do," she said, springing to her feet. "It's not the same."

"Where are you going?"

"To ... to get a robe. It's cold."

My poor, dear, frightened Bernadette, Carole thought as she watched her scurry up the steps. I know exactly how you feel.

"Bring my prayer book back with you," she called after her.

Carole pulled the blanket over Rosita's face and gently lowered her head to the floor.

She waited for Bernadette to return ... and waited. What was taking her so long? She called her name but got no answer.

Uneasy, Carole returned to the second floor. The hallway was empty and dark except for a pale shaft of moonlight slanting through the window at its far end. Carole hurried to Bern's room. The door was closed. She knocked.

"Bern? Bern, are you in there?"

Silence.

Carole opened the door and peered inside. More moonlight, more emptiness.

Where could—?

Down on the first floor, almost directly under Carole's feet, the convent's back door slammed. How could that be? Carole had locked it herself—dead-bolted it at sunset.

Unless Bernadette had gone down the back stairs and ...

She darted to the window and stared down at the grassy area between the convent and the church. The high, bright moon had made a black-and-white photo of the world outside, bleaching the lawn below with its stark glow, etching deep ebony wells around the shrubs and foundation plantings. It glared from St. Anthony's slate roof, stretching a long wedge of night behind its Gothic spire.

And scurrying across the lawn toward the church was a slim figure wrapped in a long raincoat, the moon picking out the white band of her wimple, its black veil a fluttering shadow along her neck and upper back— Bernadette was too old-country to approach the church with her head uncovered.