*unedited

Sleep had eluded Marion for days. In the weeks since he'd recovered from David LeBlanc's shooting, confronted the wolf in his kitchen, fallen into the swamps, since Glory had accosted him in such a shocking manner, he'd been not exactly terrorized but plagued by dreams. They weren't nightmares, not quite, and yet when they fell upon his mind he struggled to know reality from delusion, desire from fear, and perhaps there was no opposing continuum of sensation at all because everything ultimately spiraled toward one crystal clear sentiment: urgency.

His waking hours were spent hastily and perfunctorily going through the motions of his vocation—masses, confession, a wedding and a baptism. He was sure the congregation must recognize a shift in his behaviors, the brevity of his homilies and the disinclination to converse with congregants. Once his obligations were completed, Marion returned to the rectory to think, to worry, to wait, and though he had no real understanding why he waited, the heaviness of what he was sure was coming pressed upon him so that his body physically ached. He took no visitors, answered no knocks or phone calls. Facing such certain uncertainty, he couldn't sit, couldn't be still, so he walked the empty rooms and halls of the rectory. The brick walls echoed with his footfalls; his skull echoed with his half-formed pleas for understanding. To whom did he plead, now? God? No. God had abandoned him. Or perhaps God had never been there at all.

Chiefmost of his concerns was the creeping suspicion that everything he thought he knew as life and memory was somehow . . . inaccurate. His parents? They'd been such nice people, from what he recalled, raising him, their only child, placing him in all the most expensive Catholic schools, leading him toward the path of religious life. And he'd always been a good boy, never rebelled, never argued, never questioned their guidance. He'd gone to seminary where he'd buried himself in his studies. No friends, ever—he couldn't recall a single friend. And then somehow he'd been sent here, to St. Basilio's, when there'd been no real explanation of how or why he'd been chosen to lead this particular parish. This background was what he felt, now, but it wasn't what he remembered. The more time passed, the more Marion became unsure any of his childhood and youth and in fact anything prior to arriving at St. Basilio's had even happened.

And then, of course, there were the dreams. Falling into the bayou had done something to him. Crawling out of that murk and watery filth onto the bank, the sound of distant howling, the blinking of two red fireflies through the shrouding mist . . .

The tea kettle steamed its desperate scream, and the priest recalled himself. He quickly switched off the burner and drew a mug down from one of the kitchen cabinets. Then he retrieved a carton of milk from the refrigerator and poured a bit into the mug before adding the hot water. Once the liquids had mingled, Marion filled a narrow strainer with a few pinches of loose tea before closing and submerging it into the hot concoction. Tea helped calm his thoughts less and less, these days, and yet he was still too attached to his vow of abstemiousness to indulge in anything stronger.

He stirred the strainer for a moment, allowing the tea to diffuse. Had he even taken vows?

But he must have! How could he be a priest, otherwise? He wore the garb; he knew the sacraments; he said Masses and transubstantiated wine and bread into the very blood and flesh of Christ, for God's sake! What other rationale could there be than that he'd been taught and ordained?

And yet . . . he couldnt' remember . . . not in the riht way . . .

Marion picked up his mug and headed to the sitting room in which he felt most comfortable. It was furnished with a Persian rug of red hues, a nearly-black console table flanked by two blue wingback chairs, and a gorgeous Tiffany-shade floor lamp. A fireplace sat dormant in one wall, and across from the chairs were two large windows looking out onto a street, the other side of which was lined with houses. His Bible rested on the console table, and alongside it were a few other books on various Christian topics. Father had used to enjoy reading during these quiet moments, but lately, he'd been unable to focus on much. He hadn't stopped thinking, either, about the passage the wolf in his kitchen had pointed to, that day the little St. James boys had broken his window. Isaiah. It told of one despised, afflicted, taking upon him the transgressions of mankind, sacrificing himself. The passage referred to Jesus, of course, and yet Marion's confessor, the one who'd so terrified him in the days before the LeBlanc children disappeared and all Hell had come to that poor family—that penitent had twisted those words to suit himself. And why not? Perhaps that person, whoever it'd been, had felt as if he bore undeserved suffering, was somehow carrying the weight of a burden he hadn't earned to make up for something he'd had no part in.

Father certainly felt that way, himself, stuck in an insular community, with a people unfeeling enough to watch an entire extended family vanish in increasingly brutal ways. He'd literally taken a bullet, almost died, undergone weeks of physical therapy, prayed like he'd never prayed before—and for what? He'd asked for understanding, for wisdom, but he'd received none of it. The confessor had said something similar, hadn't he? That he'd asked for God's help, begged for it! But instead the darkness within had only spread.

A low groan escaped Marion's dry lips, the edges of it mimicking a growl. With a start Father Hugh spilled a bit of tea on himself. Fortunately his layers of clothing deterred a burn, but he found himself rising to go in search of a towel all the same.

Something within him felt so wrong. With each step, he felt a rising nausea, a heightening vertigo. He reached his hands to clutch either side of the door frame and closed his eyes. Everything began to spin within, to hum. The taste of tea on Marion's tongue turned terribly bitter, and he found himself beginning to heave . Had he not been gripping the doorframe, he would've thought he'd spun away from the very world, that he'd been sucked into a terrible void. Was this a heart attack? A panic attack? Something howled somewhere in the vacuum of his skull, and he stupidly let go of the door to raise a hand to his head; when he did, he lost his balance and fell backward, hitting the console table.

The sound of the teacup breaking upon the floor was the last thing he recalled before darkness consumed him.

*

Running, running, running . . .

The strands of Spanish moss whipped at his face as he darted through them; he saw forward only: green and black and gray and deep deep brown, mud and lichen, bark and stone, fern and still waters. The sounds of the forest were everywhere, heightened to a surround sound his ears seemed suddenly capable of perceiving. There were cooing birds and hooting owls, trilling insects whose little electric bodies he could hear blinking on and off, tint popping bubbles and crackling foliage, and the plants themselves were humming and whispering. He ran . . . no, he galloped. And the smells—oh! The smells of the forest! It'd been so, so long since he'd known them properly! The rich earthiness, the gently releasing gasses trapped beneath the muddy waters, the decay and rot of so many forms of life, the stink of feral animal musk.

Run, run, run . . .

And he had a sense of where to, though no solid image of the destination in his mind.

His mind?

Whose mind?

Or, really, what's mind?

He didn't know what he was, now, only that it fit, it was right.

Something pricked his mind, like an insect sting or a sliver of glass, though it was a flash of knowledge, of information. He was a priest! Or more rightly, he'd been a priest, and not a very good one. An unholy holy man, a sinner who'd failed in nearly every aspect of his obligations long, oh so, so long ago. They'd come from across the sea; he'd been with them. They'd wanted to teach the native peoples the faith. Missionaries. He'd been with them! Over four hundred years ago!

Faster, faster—not much longer now . . .

More needles in his bestial brain, stabbing little bits of remembrance.

Lost, at night, late . . . he'd somehow become enmeshed in muck and mire, wandered away from the encampment, and something deeper and older than his faith had found him, then, something foul and feral. It'd crept from beneath the weed and water and taken hold of his broken soul, seeped in through the cracks, bent him into submission, until he'd become what it wanted him to be—a thing of this primeval swamp, absorbed into its fabric.

TIme hadn't existed, then. He'd been no longer subject to the human calendar. All he'd known were the savage and unrestrained ways of his newfound animalism. Sating hunger, slaking thirst, moving through bramble and earth and swale, shredding with tooth and claw whatever living things crossed his paths, plucking the muscle and meat from around whatever beating hearts he could find. Eternal twilight, the silent flashing will o'the wisps his candles, the canopy of limb and tangled vine his cathedral, the chanting of predator and prey his Gregorian choir, the musk of pelt and sweat his incense. The bayou was his church, then and now. The stoic, antediluvian trees and moss his congregants. The flesh and blood of other life—sometimes human life—his communion.

Closer, closer . . . so close, now!

In the vast infinity of his subsequent comprehension, where moments did not occur chronologically but as stars peeking out in the otherwise dark cosmos of his existence, one bright planet shimmered ever closer to the forefront of his memory.

A human child. Alone. Until she wasn't. Crying, hurt, damaged, and left.

Something had given his otherwise impartial nature pause, and he'd let her remains be, until the one who'd loved her most had found what was left and sat, howling his lament. Hearing those cries, he'd recalled a grain of his former humanity, the sensations of love and loyalty and goodness, and in that shadow-creature's eyes, he saw himself reflected.

He was no animal. He was no human. He was some impossible reconciling of the two.

Continuing toward the destination to which his senses oriented him, he discerned the solid ground spongify, seep with moisture. He was nearly upon the bayou proper, now, nearly where he knew he needed to be.

Home.

In the cover of night, he'd drawn nearer and nearer the human settlements. Always before he'd come across them when they'd wandered his way, but something had changed, something had reversed the course of his brutishness . . . recalled him to himself. He'd little understood the ways of the people, anymore, and yet observation kindled a sense of mourning, though what exactly he mourned, he was now too inhuman to know. For he'd become of the water and the mud, the moss and the weeds. He'd become of the trees and their limbs, the shadow and the night. He was older than the deepest murk and mist, and it was his eyes the men saw at night in the bayou, blinking their reddish light.

He stopped. The winds of his motion, confused, blew around him, ruffling his thick black fur before moving upward and into the trees. Before and below him shimmered dark, weed-crusted waters. Cypress knees rose up on either side of him like gnomish, woody sentinels, silent and serious, and festoons of hairy moss draped down in large swathes at his sides. Between bits of duckweed, an image of a thing both powerful and terrible reflected back at him, purplish tongue drooping between glittering teeth, eyes smoldering rubies of impenetrable depth. But even as he pondered this strange mirror, paying little heed to the sloshing at varying distances as reptilian creatures moved away, a ripple broke the surface of the waters beneath his nose and the tiny bits of duckweed began to part as something slowly began to rise from the muck of the bog: the top of a head, a skull patched with decayed skin here and there, dripping with bits of indefinable vegetation and crawling with flies, followed by a stern brow and the punishing whites of two eyes, the irises of which looked directly up at him from their new position above the water.

For a moment, the figure ceased rising, did not break its stare, and he felt those eyes boring into him; he knew those eyes . . . the eyes of the one who'd made him this, what he'd had to become.

The head lifted more, waters rippling away from its cheeks and chin, its neck and shoulders, its skeletal frame, until it was submerged only from the waist down. The buzzing of the insects swarming across it rose and lulled, and then it spoke to him without words, for words were not necessary between a god and his handiwork.

Do you know what I am? it asked.

He knew.

And do you know what you are?

He did, now. He did.

And do you know your task, this night?

That . . . he struggled to answer.

Then I will show you, my friend. And you shall know.

A claw with the flesh of human fingers wherever bone did not peek through reached up out of the mire and placed itself on him.

A curse. A heavy, heavy curse. A bloodprice as vengeance for the little girl and for all the others. Her father had exacted a deal—her brothers and her father—with a spirit dark and lewd, whose help never came free of cost. He was a part of it, wrapped up in the execution of it all, given new flesh again and again, reminded of his obligations. And for what? Why did he help? For freedom. Freedom from himself and from it all, the eternal monotony and bleakness of his condition. An end had been promised him. When the price was paid in full, he'd be free, no longer punished for the transgressions of long, long ago, his failure as a religious, as a man.

For their children shall be taken, it told him, not removing its hand from his head, as was theirs. And Death shall walk among them.

Remember.

And with that, the claw tightened around his angular head and tore him downward, into the swamp. He knew no fear, no panic, as he sank into the cavernous, murky oblivion, and there'd been no need for concern, for within some immeasurable moments, he stood on solid ground.

They circled him, now, small frames perpetually petrificatied, little wolves in every shape and kind, gathered over years of reaping what their families once sowed, the little ones on the verge of losing their innocence forever, taken for the sins of their fathers. Here they were, in his den, his sanctuary. Their sanctuary. Bandaged knees and freckles, pigtails and boots, this one a darling little nose and that one rather hefty in shape and those two—! Those two . . .

Twins, familiar to him. Though all were familiar, now, and he knew it was he—he who'd begged for God's mercy and guidance, he whose prayers had not only gone unanswered but whose desires had intensified, and now he understood why.

His desires had not been his own. He was the tool of his maker, and he'd been praying to the wrong god.