It had been a long time since I had been in a church. Well, at least a church I wasn’t shooting up.
I was a little surprised to find the door unlocked. The whole country had gone to shit and flown the coop, literally or figuratively. Priests were only human, flesh and blood with all the same flaws as everyone else. I figured any priest with half a brain would either hunker down in the parish house and pray for it all to end or hit the road in search of all the forbidden fruit he could find.
St. Mark’s Church smelled like candle wax and wood polish, scents I always associated with well-being and peace. The silence in the small church was as calming as it was unnerving. A little sign in the narthex listed the daily mass schedule. There should have been a mass going on right now. If my altar boy memories were correct, the priest would be on to the gospel reading, if there were anyone to read to.
“Hello,” I called out.
A crucified Jesus, hung behind the altar, stared back at me. As a kid, I used to feel such sorrow, such intense awe when I looked at the face of Jesus on the cross. Now I felt like the accused. Did his eyes narrow, just a bit?
I sat in the last pew, avoiding Jesus’s gaze. I contemplated kneeling, maybe saying some prayers, but that wasn’t why I had come here.
The wood cracked as I got up. I walked down the red runner in the center aisle. A little table had been set up for the holy gifts, the wine and the unconsecrated Eucharist. I brushed a layer of dust off the empty tabletop as I passed. I started to make the sign of the cross when I got to the altar, stopping midway. Who was I to bless myself? I didn’t deserve it.
“Is anyone here?”
There was a half-empty glass of water on the pulpit. There wouldn’t be readings here any time soon, if ever.
The sound of a door opening made me jump. A bald, portly man wearing a black shirt and wrinkled slacks came in through the door to my left. He peeked out from beside a statue of Mary standing on a pedestal.
“Can I help you?” he said. He looked nervous, as if my presence could only be a bad omen. If only he knew who had come to visit.
“Are you a priest?” I asked.
He nodded. “I’m Father Brendan. If you’ve come for mass, I wasn’t planning on it today. Perhaps Sunday, if…”
His voice and gaze trailed off to a place of wishful thinking.
“I’m not here for mass.”
“Oh.”
I stayed perfectly still, letting him see my hands were empty. I was sure the news of the church massacre weighed heavily on him. I was a stranger in a strange time. He had every right to be wary.
“Father, would you be able to hear my confession?”
His shoulders sagged with relief.
“Yes, of course I would. You’re the first person to come to me and ask. I prefer to think that my congregation is too afraid to leave their homes. Strange, to be consoled thinking that the people I hold dear are paralyzed in fear. It’s too disheartening to think they’ve all lost their faith when they need it most.”
I nodded. “I’m sure they’re hunkered down. Things aren’t good out there.”
Father Brendan motioned toward a pew. “Please, have a seat. I can hear your confession here.”
I couldn’t imagine facing the man, telling him what I’d done. It was going to be hard enough just to say the words.
“I’d prefer the confessional, if that’s okay with you,” I said. A lone confessional was tucked away in the back corner of the church. Both doors were open.
“I understand.”
“It’s just that it’s been a long time, and that’s the way I grew up doing it,” I explained, but I could see in his eyes that there was no need.
“You take a seat. Let me get my clerical collar so we do this the right way. It’s not as if I have anything else pressing to do for the rest of the day.”
He left the church in a hurry, his legs carrying his round body faster and more surefooted than I would have expected. I took a deep breath and walked to the confessional, closing the door behind me. Inside was dark and silent, like being in the womb of the church itself.
Alone with my thoughts, I almost bolted. What the hell was I thinking? Father Brendan seemed like a nice enough guy. Why burden him with my guilt? Just so I could feel better about myself? Was absolution so important that I had to destroy another man in the process? There was no way he could hear my confession and not come out a changed man. Would it destroy him, knowing who the monster of Maine was and not be able to tell another soul?
I was about to get out, run from the church, when I heard the door on the other side of the confessional close. Neither of us spoke. I had forgotten what I was supposed to say. Father slid the tiny door open in the window separating us. The window was screened with black lattice so I couldn’t see him. He was just a vague, dark shape.
Meager light from his side bled through the partition. I looked down, seeing a laminated card taped to a narrow shelf. It had the words and order of confession. It was hard to see, but I read them as best I could.
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It’s been…I don’t know, fifteen years since my last confession.”
Father Brendan replied, “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
I mumbled the same, waiting for him to give me some kid of cue. There was so much I needed to say, so much I hated myself for, I didn’t know where to start.
Father Brendan, I’m the guy who murdered over fifty people over the past week. How many Hail Marys is that gonna cost?
I thought, maybe he’s having second thoughts about this. Maybe he’s lost the faith, just like the members of his church.
Fuck it.
“Father, I’ve committed some very serious sins.”
My hands clasped together and I kneeled. A tremor ran through my body.
“Go on,” he urged, his voice low and gravelly.
“I…I’ve killed.”
There was no inward hiss of shock on the other side of the partition. He didn’t shout at me, threatening to call the cops. No, he stayed perfectly quiet.
“It all started when I was let go from my job. Something came over me and I killed my boss right outside his house. And…and when I was done, I went home to my family and acted as if nothing had happened.”
“Did you tell anyone what you had done?”
I choked back a sob. “No. But he wasn’t the only one. Days later, I murdered a man who was molesting his son. The boy saw me do it, but I think it traumatized him so much, he wasn’t able to properly describe me to the police. And it didn’t stop there.”
Telling him about the school shooter and his mom came out a little easier. Each confessed crime made me lighter. My breathing steadied. I had to pause before going into the church shootings, knowing this would really hit home with him. But I did it anyway, finishing with the massacre at the synagogue. When I was done, I was weak. My bones felt as if they’d morphed into overdone pasta. I leaned my head against the confessional wall. I’d never run a marathon, but I suspected this is what it felt like when you crossed the finish line.
Except there was no joy, no sense of accomplishment. I felt bare, exposed, sick with the anticipation of judgment.
Finally, Father Brendan said, “What drove you to commit these acts?”
I wanted to say “insanity!” That sounded better than telling him the texts on my computer and phone, the voice in the car and my head. But I had gone this far. There was no sense holding back now.
“I’m not sure,” I said, wiping tears from my cheeks. “Someone or something that calls himself AO has been telling me what to do, providing the tools I need, punishing me when I disobey him. I don’t know who he is or how he’s found a way to control me, to torture me.”
The seat creaked on the other side, as if the priest were moving closer to the partition.
“I think you do know who this AO is,” he said.
My head dropped down until my forehead touched my clasped hands.
“If he’s real, how is he doing this to me? How can he get inside my head?”
“Because he is AO.”
Something in Father Brendan’s tone changed. My head jerked up.
“What does that mean?”
Father chuckled, chilling my blood. “It has been too long for you. All that religious education out the door, traded for earthly desires and possessions.” There was a long pause. All I could hear was my own labored breathing. “AO. He is the Alpha and the Omega, Peter.”
How did he know my name? I was pretty sure I hadn’t told him. I got up from my knees, sitting back on the padded chair.
“No,” I croaked, feeling the confessional spin around me.
It wasn’t possible.
“You remember Revelation, don’t you, Peter? ‘When the lamb broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come.” And another, a red horse, went out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him.’”
Standing up, I fumbled for the knob. I had to get out.
“The red horseman is a harbinger of war and destruction. You’ve been chosen, Peter! Chosen to herald the end of corruption and the beginning of eternal peace! Listen to the Alpha and the Omega. Your soul rests in the bosom of the Lord God!”
“Noooo!”
I kicked the door open so hard, it came off its hinges. My body ignited. It was as if I’d been doused in melted iron. Father Brendan continued spouting quotes from Revelation.
“God wouldn’t do this to me!” I shouted back.
I was overcome by a desire to make the priest shut up in the most violent way possible. I found a heavy candle stand and grabbed it. I was going to put it in places that weren’t meant to be explored.
Father Brendan, still inside the confessional, said, “Those worthy will drink from the water of life. Without you, Peter, they would not be able to testify, ‘Yea, I am coming soon.’”
The air shook with the sound of a towering foghorn, an otherworldly rumble that came from the sky and buried itself into the earth. I stumbled backward, using the candle stand to keep from falling.
What the hell was that?
It should have terrified me, but my anger was far greater than my fear.
Grabbing the handle to the confessional, I yanked it open with a primal scream.
The candle stand dropped from my hand, clattering on the tiled floor.
It was empty.
How?
“Father Brendan?” I shouted.
He’d just been inside, screeching his insane holy words. I checked for any hidden ways out. My rage was so ebullient, I tore the wooden confessional to pieces with my bare hands. Hunks of wood clattered everywhere, smoking from where I’d touched them.
“Where are you, Father? I am not the red horseman! You hear me! I will not kill for God.”
The words struck me, stopping me in my rage.
Wasn’t I about to kill Father Brendan? In just a few days, killing had become easy, something I had yearned to do. I couldn’t get it up for Candy, but given the chance to bury the scimitar in someone’s flesh and I was in porn star territory. And now I was the human torch, tearing up a church, desperate to rip a priest to pieces just because I didn’t like what he had to say.
My hands glowed red. My eyes burned, but I could see perfectly.
AO. The Alpha and the Omega. The Greek term for Christ, for God, the deliverer of the end times in the Book of Revelation.
I didn’t want it to make sense.
I stormed down the main aisle, walking past the altar, to the door where Father Brendan had come from earlier.
He was hanging by a white cassock in the sacristy. His swollen tongue filled his open mouth. The flesh of his face was blue, his eyeballs gray and bulging. His hanging wasn’t fresh. Father Brendan had been dead for days. The stench of his fruiting body made me gag. I turned and ran.
The fresh air outside stung my burning body like nettles. I stopped on the top step.
Who had I been speaking to in the church if Father Brendan was dead?
AO.
The Alpha and the Omega. God.
What seemed impossible just minutes ago now felt all too real. I’d never been much for the book of Revelation—that was hyperbolic claptrap for half-mad Bible thumpers. I was a lapsed Catholic with a capital L. I was no horseman.
And yet, somehow, I was.
Father Brendan’s voice called out behind me. “’How long, O Lord, must I call for your help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’, but you do not save?’”
I turned, but he was not there. He couldn’t be. The man who had been Father Brendan was rotting at the end of a noose.
“‘Look at the nations and watch—and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your day that you would not believe, even if you were told.’”
The horn sounded again. The trees swayed from the soul-shaking bellow.
A strong wind battered the church, and within the wind, I heard the cries of men, women, and children.
My car was gone.
The red Mustang was in its place, the motor running, smoke belching from the tailpipe.
Get in!
It was the voice of AO. I clenched my fists.
“Just let me die!” I shouted.
You know who I am. Do you trust in me?
“Trust in you? How can I trust in a god who turns an innocent man into a killer? I’m not one of your horsemen. They come from heaven, or hell, I don’t know! They don’t come from here.”
A part of me wanted to collapse and weep before the church, but a growing part wanted to obey AO, to let him take me wherever he desired.
Shots popped in the near distance. The smell of smoke drifted on the breeze.
You have places far to go, with many days and nights without rest. Follow my words, and you will be saved.
I couldn’t reconcile the God I had prayed to as a child offering salvation for my soul through the act of murder. My legs walked to the car against my will. The concrete sizzled with each step.
Sitting in the car, I looked at myself in the rearview mirror.
My heart froze.