I’m a priest, for Christ’s sake – how can this be happening to me?

He had noticed the empty socket where the light bulb was missing but had thought nothing of it. However, when he was halfway along the corridor, where the darkness was deepest, something seized him by the left shoulder, some sort of animal, it seemed, or a large heavy bird, that drove a single talon deep into the right side of his neck just above the rim of his collar. All he felt was the quick, stabbing blow, then his arm went numb all the way down to his fingertips.

Grunting, he stumbled away from his assailant. There was a taste at the back of his throat, of bile and whiskey mixed, and of something else, harsh and coppery, that was the taste of terror itself. A hot stickiness was spreading down his right side, and he wondered for a moment if the creature had vomited on him. He went on, reeling, and came to the landing, where a single lamp glowed. In the lamplight, the blood on his hands looked almost black.

His arm was still numb. He lurched to the head of the stairs. His head swam, and he was afraid he would fall, but with his left hand he clutched the banister and managed to negotiate his way down the sweeping curve of the staircase to the hall. There he stopped, swaying and panting, like a wounded bull. No sound now, only a dull slow drumming in his temples.

A door. He wrenched it open, desperate for sanctuary. His toecap caught the edge of a rug and he pitched headlong, slack and heavy, and, falling, struck his forehead on the parquet floor. 

He lay still in the dimness. The wood, smelling of wax polish and old dust, was smooth and cool against his cheek.

The fan of light on the floor beyond his feet folded abruptly as someone came in and pushed the door shut. He flopped over on to his back. A creature, the same or another, leaned over him, breathing. Fingernails, or claws, he didn’t know which, scrabbled at his lap. Sticky there, too, but not from blood. He saw the flash of the blade, felt it slice coldly, deeply, into his flesh.

He would have screamed, but his lungs failed him. No strength, any more. As he faded, so did the pain, until there was nothing except a steadily creeping cold. Confiteor Deo … He released a rattling sigh, and a bubble of blood swelled between his parted lips, swelled and swelled, and burst with a little pop that sounded comical in the silence, although by now he was beyond hearing it.

The last thing he saw, or seemed to see, was a faint flare of light that yellowed the darkness briefly.