'Forgive me father'

“Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It has been…a life time since my last confession”

She closed her eyes and remembered her life; her mother was Catholic and firmly believed in the confessional. She never had, not until now. She had only confessed once in her whole life, the first and last time was when she was eleven years old. She had broken her mother’s favourite vase and had lied to her about who had done it. She had felt bad, and it had been drummed in to her that only God could forgive sins. It was the last time because when she left the wooden box, her footsteps echoing around her, she didn’t feel a weight being lifted off her, she didn’t feel forgiven for lying and getting her kid brother in trouble. But that wasn’t why she stopped going, there was something else.

The church that her family frequently visited was old and dusty, and many of the younger children often when missing for whole mornings while playing hide and go seek. The church was attached to the vicar’s house, or what was the vicar’s house about 150 years ago. Now it was a rat infested, cobweb covered tomb, full of sunken passageways and doorways hidden in shadows. It was a creepy place, and something had always scared Sam and kept her as far away from it. But for some reason she was curious this time. Her mother Cassandra was at the Hairdressers and Sam was told to entertain herself for and hour or so.

There was a swish of one of the veils that covered the entrance to the house, she only saw it out of the corner of her eye and was about to dismiss it when it happened again. She thought that it may have been her brother playing a practical joke on her and so decided to creep up on him. The plan was to pull away the veil and shout boo, that would teach him. She moved silently towards it as it continued to swish and sway about. She reached the edge of it, and pulled it away. There was nothing, not even a hint of a breeze. In fact the air was stale and warm. Most of the time she would have walked around and ignored it, but the veil was still moving, now against her ankles, as if it was trying to push her forward. Not thinking anything she moved down the corridor.  

The walls creaked and squeaked at her, the rats in the wall crevice were munching their way through the wood, and above her head she could hear the gentle cooing of the birds that resided in the beams of the ceiling. She passed the many stained oak doors the lined the walkway, each with an identical knob, except for a tiny design in the middle of them, they all seemed to mean something, but she didn’t know what. Her feet where being drawn down the corridor, her feet compressing the ancient dark wood beans on the floor that were lifting a little. She was being drawn to the huge double door that was at the end of the corridor… The knobs where bigger and the insignia on them was larger and easier to make out. It was what looked like a bat on one, and a scorpion on the other. Neither of the designs made any sense to her, and she got down on her knees to take a closer look at them.

The designs were totally different from what she knew; she had definitely never seen them before. She brought her small finger to trace the grooves in the cold metal, her nail scrapping over the dulling material. The pressure was enough to open the door, and with a small creek, it swung open. It was dark, so dark she couldn’t see inside, but there was something in the darkness calling to her, whispering he name in the darkness. She stepped inside, the fear that she always had of the unknown dark spaces had vanished in to the shadows. Moving slowly, she walked in to the room, tip toeing on the dust covered floor. Behind her, the door silently closed, loosing the squeak that it had previously had.

There was a light in the room, coming from a window that must have been blacked out during the war, the curtain that was used to cover it had slipped a little, shinning light onto the room. Furniture was covered in sheets that were thick with the grey dust that Sam could taste in the air. There was a fireplace, now in disuse, the charred bricks that surrounded it filled the room with an interesting smell, but there was something else, a smell that Sam didn’t know, musty and sweet. She walked around the room, careful to follow her child footprints, just to make sure she didn’t loose her way, and careful not to disturb any of the white lumps in the room.

Out of the corner of her eye, there was something that called to her, interested her mind greatly, a shape hidden behind the largest of the dust covers. It, to her mind, didn’t fit and anger in her grew at its presence. She slowly walked towards it, like the cat stalking its prey. Softy she circled the dust sheet and stepped out in front of the shape…

And here, lying in front of her was the end of her childhood. Before her eyes in a pool of blood was a man. She knew that it was fresh and she knew she should run out and call for help or cry in fear, but there nothing inside of her.

“It’s ok my child, I know, the first is always the hardest”