Beware & Behold

The Confessional

Shawn Grimwood peered down at his diary and its strange gold-like inscriptions the night before the ball of the twenty-four. Save him. The monster nears. He carries the memories. Nothing is the way it seems. Someone scribbled a message on every page. The ink absorbed the pages so deeply that the faster Shawn flipped them, the more obvious they became.

Strange, he thought, and continued turning the diary until his buttery fingers let go of the spine and it landed between his legs, releasing a loud thud and lifting the dust off the floorboards.

That's when the brass chapel doorknob rattled, making his hairs prick on end.

George Cromwell lowered his fingers into a bronze vessel of holy water at the entrance of the chapel. He flinched as the water began to burn his skin, evaporating into the incense- flavored air. As he walked closer to the altar, leaving a trail of walnut benches at his sides, dark shadows raced across the ceil- ing, down to the floor, and out of all the windows. The uniform that he changed into before he came to the chapel felt tight against his skin and the shoes were giving him blisters. He must have worn a dozen different garments throughout his life, but in the chapel, he was in a black shirt fringed by a black tie that fell onto a pair of black trousers, always followed by a mist that didn't have a face. The devil himself walking on a holy ground.

Surrounded by the mosaic glass, saints, flower composi- tions and all the gold, there stood a confessional with carved wooden columns and angels carved into the door frames. George saw the curtain slowly rise and fall before he realized that someone had been waiting for him on the other side of the rhombus-decorated wall.

George stepped into confessional and took a seat close to the separator when he felt soft breathing coming from the opposite wall. A silhouette of a man slowly moved out of the shadows.

"It's not a secret, I am a sinner," George Cromwell's voice echoed. "My heart is a stone; my soul had left me. I feel no compassion, I feel no love. I have been deprived of all human feelings. I am a husk, and I like it that way. In fact, I love it that way. I am not looking for forgiveness. I came here because of my brother who makes too many wrong choices, and I need to make it right for him before his little minion drags him away from me."

George heard a deep cough from the other side of the wall: "Where has your heart gone? Don't you miss a lurch, or a fluttering inside of your chest? Can't you see that the world is not as dark as you are willing to see it? Maybe your brother is not meant for the dark to carry him. Maybe he is the one to bring you to the light."

There was a chuckle. White teeth stood out in the dark. "The only light I see is the flame of the fire. Derek is in my Hell, not the other way around. I only need to convince him that the dark is as prevalent in him as it is in me. He needs to know that the world, as you speak of it, does not exist. If you really lived in it, you would have known what it took to be its resident."

"Why don't you tell me what it took? So that I can draw a clear picture in my head." The voice on the other side of the confessional was very steady and calm.

"What's the point? You wish for us to cry together over the holy alter? Search for redemption for my lost soul?" George's sharp eyes glittered. "Only I am not lost. I know exactly where I belong. All those years of cutting people open on my tables, saving lives when I was better off taking them. They wasted every droplet of my life."

He fell silent before speaking again. "When they dragged me into the river for believing in the veil between the living and the dead, that's when I realized that they were not heartless. They fought for what they believed in. Well, so do I, after years of being hurt. The killings, they don't give me redemption, they are my only solace. They console me when it's impossible for me to sleep at night."

The benches they sat on trembled. The voice whispered: "That's the solace you want Derek to see? To take every human emotion that makes him good? He is your brother."

George pushed his lips together: "Exactly. He doesn't need to suffer like I did. The sooner he realizes it, the better. Every kill he makes will take a part of his soul until, one day, he doesn't have any parts to give. He will finally be free."

There was a clatter of coins against the floor. The man leaned forward to pick up the coins. "What if Derek is not like you? What if everything you know about him is a lie? What if his love overshadows the dark? What if you can never have his soul?"

George's demeanor became darker. A dark mist rose around him and slipped through the confessional. "There is nothing I can't have. This time he doesn't even know she existed. Rebecca Grimwood has faded in his memory like everything else that has ever happened to him. Without her, he is just a puppet. And I am the puppeteer," George said and chuckled.

"Then I can't bless your way, because you have paved your road to Hell," the voice said coldly.

"I will burn you and your little chapel to the ground," George stated as casually as possible. He was truly heartless.

"Then none of it would reach the crowds, and we both know it's not what you want."

George smiled his eerie, cold smile. "You are right. Nothing would give me more satisfaction than seeing your face, but we will keep our secret tonight. After all, it's the ball of the twenty-four. I want you to remember that you don't get to die today because of one of my graces," he said and exited the confessional, shaking the benches and rattling the windows. "Farewell. Until we meet again."

The wind cried outside, and its song was all too familiar.

Shawn Grimwood exited the confessional. The palms of his hands were sweaty, and he could feel his heart bounce inside his ribcage. His legs were shaky. He couldn't believe he picked this night for a prayer.

The evil had finally shown its face to him, and there was no doubt that face was ugly.