The gravel of the path crunched like broken glass under his shoes, a annoying sound in the suffocating silence that had settled over the cemetery after the Midnight Mass.
As he walked back to the rectory, the weight of the departed seemed to cling to the hem of his cassock. He couldn't shake the awkward, crawling sensation of being watched not by a single entity, but by the collective gaze of the forgotten souls for whom he had just offered the Eucharist. I guess you'd expect that, he thought , his breath warm in the cold, when the living work among the dead. A weary correction followed: Sorry, point of correction the living among the living. Though after tonight, the distinction feels thinner than parchment.
He pushed the iron of the rectory open, its groan a familiar complaint against the night. It was dark, but a faint, erratic light danced from the living room archway. He stepped inside to see the bulb on the cealing stuttering, casting long, leaping shadows that danced and died on the bookshelf walls like restless spirits. Yes, he was a man of spiritual importance, a keeper of souls, but he was also a man who believed in fuses and faulty wiring. "I'll have to change that bulb," he murmured, the words swallowed by the stillness of the house. This place was too large for one man, its emptiness had physical weight. Every sound he made seem amplified .
A low rumble, originated from his belly, followed by a familiar, sharp ache that bloomed beneath his breastbone. He pressed a hand to his chest, a gesture as habitual as the Sign of the Cross. He had been too weary to eat before his brief, fitful sleep earlier that evening. The gnawing emptiness, both physical and spiritual, demanded attention. He would need a snack.
His thoughts turned to the cook. Mrs. Albright was a creature of immutable habit, a anchor in the temporal world, but she had left this evening, a Thursday. Her routine was as fixed as the liturgy: she departed after Friday's supper and returned on Monday morning, her apron crisp and her cabinet stocked. She had never told him why she needed those two full days away, and he, respecting the private sorrows he suspected everyone carried, had never asked. It had always been fine. But now, on this unscripted Thursday turned Friday, her absence was slightly felt. The kitchen, usually holding the promise of a cold plate or a covered food, offered nothing.
He moved into the cool, tiled kitchen, the moonlight through the window painting a silver path across the floor a contrast to the crimson glow of the sanctuary lamp he had just left. There, on the vast, empty expanse of the marble countertop, stood a single, solitary sentinel: a glass bottle of peanuts. A sigh, part resignation, part gratitude, escaped him. It would have to do.
Carrying the bottle, he retreated to his small, wood paneled study, the very room where he recorded the names of the dead in his ledger. He sank into the worn leather armchair, the scent of old paper and beeswax a familiar comfort against the scent of grave dust that seemed to follow him. Pulling a thick, leather bound journal from the desk drawer, he uncapped his fountain pen. The nib scratched softly against the page, an intimate counterpoint to the profound silence.
He wrote, the entry a continuation of his endless vigil:
The bell woke me at 11:30. The vigil for the raising of the Body of Christ. The air in the mausoleum was cold, thick with the silence of centuries. As I elevated the host, I saw something a shift of shadow, a suggestion of movement in the distant gloom beyond the lamplight. And on the walk back… I heard them. Footsteps, light and swift, keeping pace just behind me. I did not turn. I dared not.
He closed the journal, the soft thud of the cover a final, solemn note. The weight of the night, of the names in his book, pressed down on him. He headed for his bedroom, where he divested himself of his cassock, the black garment sliding from his shoulders to pool like a shadow on a nearby chair. Exhausted, tired in a way that reached into his very soul, he fell into bed. The words were a whisper against his pillow, a childhood habit he could never break: "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you..."
As he drifted across the threshold into dreamland, the peace was shattered. This dreamland was not a haven but a landscape of terror, covered in a tapestry of screams that came from no human throat the echo of the "chorus of longing" from his Mass. He felt heavy, pinned, his spirit weak both in the dream and in his sleeping body, balancing the scales from which no soul can escape.
And then, in a snap, it was dawn. A pale, thin light bled through the shutters, bleaching the darkness from the room, offering a temporary reprieve from the endless cycle of his duty.