He was almost halfway across the lawn when he realized that the security lights weren't working. They had three powerful motion-sensor spotlights--one over the back door of the rectory, one on the back wall of the church and another over the sacristy door--and not one of them had come on when Mike moved into the darkness of the garden.
He stopped. The dark was complete. No light reached back here from the street or from the windows of the rectory.
He started to pick his way carefully across the damp grass again.
What was that?
Something had moved in the darkness.
He squinted into the depths of the garden, trying to make out what looked like a darker shadow than the others.
"Who's there?"
No reply.
"What do you want?"
Nothing.
His imagination?
No! He saw it again, a slight, shifting movement in the shadows.
"Okay, come on out of there!"
As he moved toward the deeper darkness, Mike was brought up short again, this time by an unfamiliar noise. At first he thought it was the sound of his own footsteps in the grass, a shushing, like light wind in a wheat field. But then he realized it was behind him. He looked over his shoulder.
The sound stopped
He could see nothing.
Had one of the local gangs decided that this was a good time to rob the church? How many were there?
He moved and the air behind him began to rustle.
Mike wanted to give in to his fear and head back to the rectory where he had been sitting just a few minutes earlier.
"Don't you find it ironic," Mike asked Father Larry Chin, "that as priests we have less time to pray than we would like?"
Chin laughed and prodded a potato in the bowl of stew from the pot their housekeeper, Bridget McClusky, had left warming on the stove.
"G. E. Lessing said: 'One single grateful thought raised to heaven is the most perfect prayer,'" Chin quoted.
"G. E. Lessing was full of shit," Mike said. "You can't tell me that some eighteenth century aesthetic had the faintest idea what kind of life a twenty-first century priest would have to live."
Chin laughed and shook his head. "Callahan is right, you've got the makings of a first class heretic."
"Callahan is full of shit too. If he hadn't decided to get out of here and go to Mondran's funeral in the Philippines, I would have started to salt his cereal with Prozac or something."
Chin smiled. "Can't say I blame you there. He's been acting pretty strange the last couple of months. In fact, he didn't even say good-bye or leave final instructions when he left for the airport. Did you drive him?"
"Me! Can you imagine the two of us in the same car together for an hour. I don't know how he got to the plane. One minute his bags were sitting by the door of the rectory, and the next they were gone."
"Maybe," Chin suggested, "he got some parishioner to give him a lift. He's too damn cheap to take a cab."
"If you ask me, our good pastor is having a nervous breakdown," Mike said. And he's been trying his best to share it with the rest of us."
"He's just stressed out. And now, with Ray dead in Manila, we're facing a real shortage of manpower."
"As if we weren't running lean before! That's what I meant when I said, there's barely time to pray."
"You want to pray?" Chin asked. "Here, you lock up the church tonight." The Chinese-American priest reached in his pocket and threw his keys on the kitchen table. "You can go over to the church and take all the time to pray you want."
"See what I mean," Mike chortled. "Now you want me to do your job too."
"Just trying to help out a confrere in need."
Chin reached for his keys, but Mike grabbed them before he could pull them back.
"No, that's okay. I'll take your offer."
Mike pocketed the keys and pushed his perpetually tousled brown hair out of his eyes before going back to his late meal.
"How old are you Mike? Thirty-four or five?"
"Thirty-six."
"And you've been a priest for ten years, right?"
"Uh-huh." Mike savored the thick Irish broth and chunky vegetables. Here it was after nine o'clock, and it was his first chance to eat since breakfast thirteen hours earlier.
"I'd think you'd have learned by now that as priests we live for others. Not ourselves."
Mike nodded. "I don't need a lecture, Larr. I'm just tired and frustrated tonight."
"Tonight?"
Mike laughed. "Especially tonight. Not only was my day as full as yours, doing our best to cover for both Callahan and Mondran, but I had to finish up at a meeting with Manuel Salinas and The Sodality of the Blood of Jesus."
"Ouch! No wonder you're down in the dumps. That would be enough to try the patience of a saint."
"And I'm no saint, right?"
"Right. What are those fanatics up to now."
Mike shrugged. "Who knows. I stopped in for five minutes and then blew it off."
"You shouldn't do that, Mike. Those conservative loonies can be a lot of trouble."
"I wasn't in the mood for their nonsense tonight."
"I hear that. Just watch your back around Salinas and his buddies."
* * *
A sound came from above.
Mike looked up into the night sky. It wasn't overcast, but he couldn't see any stars.
Sound suffused the darkness, moving rapidly toward him.
Wings? Was that the sound of flapping wings filling the air.
The owl!
The old palm tree in the corner of the garden harbored a large owl which had recently claimed the yard as its own. Not only had it picked the surrounding neighborhood clean of vermin, but it had recently taken to swooping down after small pets and the bare heads of unwary parishioners.
Beating the darkness into a frightening froth of cold air, the sound thumped against the night. Louder and louder.
Instinctively, Mike ducked. Crouching, he threw his hands over his head in an attempt to protect himself from sharp, hooked talons that could tear his eyes out.
Larry's going to hear about this, he fumed. Monsignor Callahan's last order before leaving for the Philippines had been for Chin to get rid of the damn bird. Evidently, Chin hadn't done it.
Freezing air buffeted Mike. He hadn't realized the bird was so big, but he'd only seen it once. How could it stir up so much wind? The night around him filled with the stench of rotting meat as the sound swooped closer.
Mike sprang up, flailing his arms to fend off the invisible bird as he ran toward the dark doorway of the sacristy. The sound had cut him off from the rectory and he had no choice now but to find refuge in the church, where he had been headed in the first place. He had already forgotten about the possibility of intruders.
The back door of the sacristy was locked. Mike fumbled through Chin's key ring. He seemed to find a key to everything but the sacristy.
Behind him he could hear a steady thrumming in the air a few feet from his head. The all-pervasive odor of rotting offal made him gag. Visions of hunting-honed talons tearing into him filled him with terror.
Finally the right key!
Pushing his way into the sacristy, he slammed the door behind him before the claws could reach him, before the powerful beak ripped flesh from his unprotected neck.
Mike's fear was immediately replaced by anger. He grabbed the phone and dialed the three digits for the kitchen.
"Good evening, honey-baked kosher hams. How May I help you?"
Mike knew Chin would see that it was an internal call, and could only be from him, but he was in no mood for their old familiar joke.
"The security lights are out and that damn owl came after me before I could get in here and it's your responsibility to see that the lights are working properly because Callahan told you to get rid of that freakin' owl and if you'd done what you were supposed to do I w
ouldn't almost have gotten the shit torn out of the back of my head."
Mike was out of breath.
Chin was silent on the other end of the line, evidently amazed at this endless flow of accusations.
"You've got a vivid imagination, Mikey. The lights were working just fine a little while ago. And if you'd been around yesterday, you'd've seen the Animal Control people take the owl away."
"Maybe the bird escaped. Or it has a mate or something."
"Then I'll get the animal control people back first thing in the morning. If we've got to, we'll trim the palm tree down to a toothpick so nothing can live up there except a few sparrows."
Mike was suddenly mollified. He felt foolish, yelling at his friend.
"I'm sorry, Larr. I'm just blowing off steam."
"Steam away, buddy. I've got broad shoulders."
"I'll leave your keys on the secretary's desk."
"Okay. I'm turning in. Don't call me unless it's the second coming."
Mike laughed as he hung up. He could always count on Larry Chin to diffuse his frustrated anger, which seemed to happen more and frequently lately.
Mike turned to stare out across the long, dark chancel. The huge cathedral-like church was dark. Candles flickered in crevices and corners and at small shrines, islands of twinkling stars in the darkness. Distant exit lights glowed like green eyes watching from a jungle.
Mike thought he saw movement in the darkness--shadows within shadows, wispy black wraiths creeping between the dark pews, slithering toward the altar. He shivered, remembering what had just happened in the garden.
He opened the master panel to turn on a few more lights and the dark phantoms dissolved.
The additional lights did little to dispel Mike's feeling of unease. The old building was quiet. Nothing moved except the few shadows still thrown by the candles against old wood, cold stone, and polished tile. Behind the altar, on either side of the tabernacle, two wavering red lights glowed, testimony that Christ was present in the form of the Eucharist.
It looks different, Mike thought. He couldn't put his finger on it, but in a subtle way the old church no longer seemed like a familiar refuge from the chaotic world outside.
Mike walked across the marble sanctuary, listening to his own footsteps echo through the church and bounce off the walls within the altar rail.
The odor that had assailed him in the garden seemed to have followed him into the church, sweeter, more sickly, stronger.
Mike suddenly realized that he had been smelling vestiges of that odor for the past few days, whenever he said Mass. It had seemed to hover around the altar, but now it permeated the entire sanctuary.
He slipped into the first pew and made the sign of the cross. His eyes sought out the altar, the site of consecration and prayer, the place where he found the greatest peace, requite for anger and frustration, respite from doubt and skepticism.
For a moment he couldn't believe what he saw.
The plaster Christus from the life-sized crucifix that hung high above the tabernacle lay on the altar, in its crotch, the head from a statue of the Virgin Mary nestled in simulated fellatio.
Shocked, Mike sprang to his feet, his gaze moving to the cross from which the crucified Christ had come.
Now it wasn't Christ on the rough wooden cross, it was the naked body of Monsignor Frank Callahan.
The odor of putrefaction grew stronger as Mike moved back toward the sanctuary. Just as he was overwhelmed by the stench, he saw see the dark blotch of dried blood between Callahan's legs where his genitals had been removed.
Mike staggered back and turned to vomit. He banged his head against the altar rail as he fell, his stomach heaving over and over until there was nothing left of Bridget McClusky's Irish stew but bitter bile.
And then, fear filled the new emptiness in his belly as the body began to move.
Two Cats In The House
One day when the rain came down so hard
That I couldn't refrain, and lowered my guard,
My daughter whispered in my ear
A simple word I'd learned to fear.
She said she wanted a brand new pet,
Something to keep within the house.
3
It wouldn't be a marmoset,
And certainly not a mouse.
But what she wanted, my little brat,
Was nothing less than a pussycat!
"Oh no!" I cried, with a desperate gasp,
Losing the place in the book I held.
It fell to the floor and out of my grasp.
4
All thoughts of my rest were gone, dispelled.
Out in the backyard, sitting in his house,
Our little dog, Joe, was quiet and asleep.
"One animal is enough," I growled with a grouse.
"I won't hear any more. Oh no, not a peep!
"I don't need a pussycat, sitting in my chair;
I don't need my clothes all covered with hair.
And, I'll tell you this:
5
It's something certain,
I don't want a cat hanging from the curtain.
"I've never had a cat, and I won't start now.
The same thing goes for a skunk or a cow!
I've always had dogs as pets, my dear,
And I won't change now in my thirty-third year.
6
There's something about cats I fear and dread."
That's what I told my daughter.
That’s what I said.
“I've never touched a cat, not even a stroke.”
I'm afraid of the critters, and that's no joke.
"Oh, silly Daddy! Your head's like stone.
Like so many others, you fear the unknown.
Just take some time, and give it a chance,
7
You'd find that a cat's much like a new spice.
Just taste it a bit; on your tongue let it dance,
And you might discover that it's pretty nice."
Such a clever child I'd raised, this girl
With sparkling eye and golden curl.
And here she was, at the age of ten,
Teaching her Dad a lesson again!
My little daughter pouted and cried
8
As she claimed her love of such critters with pride.
And then my son soon added his voice,
So I almost felt I had no choice.
The child, my daughter, ran to her room.
Returned with her bank, chock-full of money.
"You see, Daddy dear,
What I've got here.
Don't be crabby and full of gloom,
We'll buy a cat that's fat and funny."
9
Before you knew it, my firm resolve,
Now broken to dust began to dissolve.
And I let those foolish children dear
Lead me to a pet store near.