Aven #2
My apartment is on the third floor of a building that was built when people still believed in structural integrity as a suggestion.
I climb the stairs, my keys shaking in my hand, and let myself into a space that is less a home and more a staging ground for my own decline.
There are piles of laundry on the floor, seminary textbooks stacked on the kitchen table, and a glass of water on the nightstand that’s been there long enough to grow its own ecosystem.
I don't turn on the lights. I don't need to. I can see the outline of the spirit standing in the corner of my living room, a tall, thin man who died of a heart attack in 1974 and still thinks he’s waiting for his wife to come home from the grocery store.
He doesn't move, just stands there staring at the door with a patience that only the dead can afford.
"If you're staying, you're paying half the rent, Bill," I mutter, tossing my keys onto the counter. "And for the love of God, stop staring at the door. She’s not coming back, and you’re making the hallway look crowded."
Bill doesn't respond. He never does. I head into the bedroom, my body feeling like it’s made of lead and bad intentions.
I sit on the edge of the bed, the mattress groaning under my weight, and look at the nightstand.
The drawer is closed, but I can feel what’s inside it.
It has a presence, a weight that pulls at the air around it like a magnet.
I open the drawer. The cross is lying there on a tangled silver chain, a standard-issue priest’s cross that Ezra gave me three years ago.
It’s supposed to be a tool of protection, a symbol of the divine authority I’m training to hold.
Instead, it looks like a weapon and feels even worse when I hold it.
I reach out and touch it anyway, the reaction instantaneous. A sharp, localized heat lances through my palm, a wrong-feeling burn that makes my breath hitch, a physical rejection that makes my skin crawl. I pull my hand back, my heart thudding against my ribs like a trapped bird.
"Dammit," I whisper, staring at my hand. There’s no mark, no redness, just the lingering throb of a pain that feels spiritual rather than physical. I’m a seminarian.
I’m supposed to be comforted by this. I’m supposed to find peace in the geometry of the divine.
Instead, I feel like I’m holding a live wire.
I pick it up again, forcing my fingers to close around the cold silver. If I’m going to be a priest, I have to be able to hold a piece of jewelry. The pain spreads, moving up my wrist and into my forearm, a heavy, sinking heat that makes the spirits in the room go suddenly, terrifyingly still.
Bill has stopped staring at the door. He’s looking at me now, his translucent eyes wide with a fear that shouldn't be possible for someone who’s already passed.
The humming in the walls stops. The city noise outside vanishes.
It’s a vacuum of sound, a silence so absolute it feels like it’s pressing against my eardrums.
Needing something to ground myself, I close my eyes and reach for the Latin I’ve memorized, the words that are supposed to anchor me to the light. Pater noster, qui es in caelis...
The words thin out in my throat, turning to ash before I can finish them.
Beneath the prayer, beneath the fear, something deep inside me answers.
It’s a pressure, a door straining against hinges that were never meant to hold.
It’s not God. It’s not Bill. It’s something older, something made of amber light and raw authority that doesn't care about my Latin or my seminary degrees.
The cross burns hotter, a white-hot needle of agony in the center of my palm, and I hiss as I drop it back into the drawer.
I slam the wood shut, the sound echoing through the quiet apartment.
The silence breaks instantly, replaced by a cacophony of whispers from the hallway, the kitchen, and the walls.
They’re all talking at once now, a frantic, overlapping mess of voices that I can’t turn off.
"Shut up!" I yell at the empty room, my voice sounding thin and desperate. "Just... just shut up and let me sleep!"
No one shuts up. Bill goes back to staring at the door.
The woman in the kitchen starts crying again.
I head into the kitchen and grab the bottle of whiskey I keep under the sink, pouring a glass large enough to be considered a meal.
I take it back to bed and sit there in the dark, the glass cold against my hand, feeling the ghost of the cross still etched into my palm.
Ellis’ words run through my head again, something about a hunter. I have no idea what he was talking about and I’m not sure I want to.
Fuck, I mutter to myself before I down the whiskey, watching the shadows move on the ceiling until the edges of the room start to blur.
I tell myself I’m just tired. I’m dramatic.
I’m a failed priest who’s spending his twenty-sixth year losing his mind in a very boring, very predictable way.
It’s a comforting lie, one I’ve been telling myself since the day my mother died, but tonight it’s a lie I can no longer make myself believe.
The last thing I see before I finally close my eyes is the drawer beside my bed.
It’s closed, the cross safely tucked away behind the wood, but the room still feels like it’s waiting.
The spirits are pressing close, their cold breath stirring the hair on my neck, and somewhere in the back of my mind, a door is still rattling on its hinges.
I’m not praying for silence anymore. I’m just praying that whatever is coming next doesn't expect me to be ready for it.