Echoes of Satan

The air in the sacristy always tasted of dust and secrets. It was a scent I’d come to associate with Father Michael, a perfumed decay clinging to his cassock like a second skin. Until that night, I’d thought the unease I felt around him, the prickle of a fear I couldn't name, was just my own childish apprehension. But the shadows that night were different. They clung to him, not just in the dim glow of the single bare bulb, but from within, seeping out like a miasma. It was in the way his eyes, usually so alight with that practiced, unctuous warmth, seemed to hold a glint of something ancient and hungry. Something that whispered of rites performed under a moonless sky, of pacts sealed not with blood, but with stolen innocence.

I remember the heavy velvet of the door closing behind us, the click echoing like a death knell in the sudden silence. He’d said something about needing help with the vestments, a task I’d performed countless times before, a small boy eager to please, to be useful in the hallowed halls of God. But this time, his voice was a low rumble, a vibration that seemed to travel through the floorboards and into my very bones. It was a voice that promised no comfort, no absolution, only a deepening dread.

The space felt smaller than usual, the shelves piled high with embroidered silks and stiffly starched linen suddenly claustrophobic. He moved too close, his hand, once a gentle pat on my head, now a heavy weight on my shoulder. It was the way he looked at me, not as a child, but as… something else. A vessel. A sacrifice. It was in that moment, bathed in the sickly yellow light, that the innocence I’d clung to, the faith I’d been taught, began to unravel. The stories of saints and martyrs, of divine love and eternal salvation, dissolved into a grotesque tableau. The sanctity of this place, the very walls that were supposed to protect me, became a cage.