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The monsters come out at night. John sees them rise outside the windows and in the corners of the rooms he inhabits.
He suspects they’re demons, coming to take him away.
They’ve already started, he thinks, plucking parts of him out of his own mind, piece by piece. It happened to his father, his grandfather, and now here he is, aware enough to know that the mist in his mind is more than just the normal forward march of time.
Aware enough to know that soon awareness will escape him.
He considers going to a doctor on the mainland, but he’s afraid of getting lost. What if he can’t make his way back home?
John has lived here for so many years. He likes to believe he’d always find his way back, but he worries, and he doesn’t want to know what he already knows, as if putting off a diagnosis will put off the inevitable. Beverly steps in, a constant, a great help, but he’s known her a long time, and there’s always been a cruelty in her, something sharp and poisonous, so he tells himself, be careful of her, but she’s good at organizing and doesn’t mention his confusion.
John leads the congregation in hymns and prayers, and the words and the melodies come to him easily, vibrant in his mind. He’s begun to lose his way, sometimes, when trying to reach the pulpit, years of deterioration and renovation rendering the church unfamiliar, but once he’s there he knows what to do. It’s the only safe place in the world, these days, looking out on his remaining congregation, and he even remembers the ones who aren’t there anymore. He asks after them. His scattered flock.
Mildred.
He looks for her when he goes up to the pulpit, he has for decades, but she’s not there these days. She can’t go to church anymore. She isn’t well.
He brings her communion, for a time, but then he gets too old for house calls, or to remember where she lives.
When he sees her daughter (their daughter, but he tries not to think of her that way, fearing he’ll forget to deny reality as he has done so devotedly for so long), he asks after her mother (his Millie), and Sarah looks so tired.
Her mother is somewhere else now, Sarah says once, and John struggles to understand what she means, but when he lies awake at night, having turned the lights on, too fearful to sleep, he grasps it, and he cries. She’s somewhere else now, right on this island, halfway through the journey John’s begun.
John wonders if he’ll be able to find her, when he’s as far gone, or if they’ll float separately in the same dark sea, unaware of what they had or the meaning of what remains.
He thinks about her all the time. Oh, he burned for her, once. As the years passed, the fire’s rage settled, but now it rekindles as his youth gets closer each day and the present subsides into nightmarish confusion.
He was so much younger then, when they loved each other body and soul, but it’s something he remembers with much more intensity than what he ate for breakfast or how he got to where he’s standing.
He’s standing at the pulpit.
At least here he knows what to do.
+
His congregation gifts him a trip to Jerusalem. He’s told it’s something he’s always wanted, and he believes it, because for a moment he feels joy.
Beverly helps him get ready for his trip, and he wonders out loud what he’d do without her.
By the time he’s on the airplane, he feels as though he’s going to die, completely lost in the turbulence.
He closes his eyes and prays.
That’s all he does for a long time, prays and prays among profoundly unfamiliar surroundings, unsure of what else to do. Prayer is all that’s left of him, a stranger in a strange land.
He wanders.
Fate catches up to him.
That, or the grace of God.
+
First there’s pain and fear, but the outcome is worth it all.
Recognition dawns on his soul. A clarity of thought shines upon him like a ray of sunshine. It more than makes up for what will be the loss of sunlight from his life.
He thanks the Angel with reverence, though he doesn’t know how much the Angel understands.
“Anything you need,” John promises the Angel. “It’s yours. I am your faithful servant.”
The Angel bares his teeth in what John likes to think is a smile.
It’s a journey, getting home, but it’s much easier than it was getting to Jerusalem, in spite of all the complications. John can handle complications again, and secrets and half-truths.
He can even change his name without forgetting who he is.
He recognizes himself.
+
Mildred recognizes him. Of course she does.
Sarah thinks she’s just confused, but John knows. Like this, he’s closer than he’s been to her in years, now that he can see her in full, see everyone.
Sarah thinks Millie’s lost to her, but John knows it’s not true. In his mind’s eye he sees, in intense color, Millie in her youth, their youth, holding Sarah. The love in her eyes. The bittersweetness in her smile when she let him hold her baby, their baby, supposedly born from sin, but neither of them ever agreed with that verdict for a moment.
He has seen firsthand how deeply Millie loves. He’s felt it.
That’s not something that goes away.
He knows, because he knows her and probably has a better idea of where she is now than anyone else in the world, that she’s still here.
“I love you,” he whispers once he’s done with the sacrament, a promise to return soon. “I would do anything for you.”
She says, “Is that you, John?”
“It is,” he tells her, ecstatic joy in his voice. “Oh, Millie, it’s me.”
She puts her soft, wrinkled hand to his cheek. “John, is that you?” she asks again, as though she didn’t hear.
He says, “Don’t worry. We’re going to be together again.”
He puts the blood to her lips to pull her closer.
+
“I was so afraid,” he confides in Millie, once she fully returns to him, after he tells his story, after he explains and she believes because she’s felt the miracle as deeply as he has and there’s nothing to do but accept what God’s granted them, supposed sinners that they are.
“So was I,” she says, tone troubled with memories even more degraded than his.
“Are you still afraid?” he asks.
She strokes his face, moving thin fingers down his smooth cheek. “I still love you,” she sighs out, a rueful wonder in her voice.
It is not at all an answer, but it’s all the answer he needs.
+
Before the Angel saved him, John was terrified of his own shadow.
Now he is free of fear, of guilt. He wasn’t given the greatest gift anyone could ever be presented with so that he could feel grief, not when blessed blood settles in him, in his beloved congregation, in his beloved Millie, bringing them back to life. Salvation.
He has never felt closer to God than when there is blood thick and warm on his tongue, running down his throat like a holy remedy.
All of the parts of himself that were thrashing in the dark ocean of illness rise, red-drenched, and he welcomes them with euphoric relief, never mind the mess.
+
John wasn’t wrong.
The monsters do come out at night.
He’s just not afraid of them anymore.
He’s one of them.
Thank God.