The knock on the door shook the woman awake from sleep. The sun had just begun to press its dark red fingers through the black clouds on the horizon. She looked through her kitchen window to the sky before heading to the front door. Dirty glasses in the sink reflected her nervous walk over tiles yellowed with age. Her eyes caught the clock in the living room as she approached the front door. He didn’t come home last night, like he said he would. There was a second knock. She already had a speech prepared, a punishment to give out for his disobedience. The purple curtains that covered every window were stained with smoke. Her bare feet hobbled over the wood floors, making anxious creaks. She slowly unlocked the door and opened it. The thin man was there, dressed in a white suit, neatly creased. The crimson sun began to tear a hole in the darkness in the distance.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he said.
The woman looked him up and down.
“Who are you?” she took a step back to ask.
“Just a traveler,” he said.
“Sometimes, a messenger.”
“Can I help you?” she asked.
A strong blast of wind threw sand in both their faces. The man closed his eyes and let nature run its course. The wind continued to push them. The woman kept her hands on the door to try and stop a mess from getting inside. His suit was covered with stains of sand. Once the wind died down, she opened the door to try and not be too rude. The sounds of wind and sand rattled the other houses that surrounded them. Weathered white picket fences shook with each gust of air. The woman looked around to the covered windows in those neighboring houses. She still didn’t let him inside. The woman paused to look at the thin man. Blonde hair shaped by old razors covered the top of his head. His skin was a pale white. A white blazer was draped over his broad shoulders. A black dress shirt and pants were tailored to fit his form. A white line ran across his neck. She understood what it meant.
“Priest?”
The man nodded his head.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“New in town?”
He spoke softly, respectfully.
“I am. The men guarding the front gates were gracious enough to let me in.”
The woman nodded and said nothing.
“I must say, those gentlemen were very hard to convince. They don’t like visitors from out of town, do they?” he asked.
The woman scoffed.
“They don’t like anyone, period,” she said.
His suit was hit again with another shot of sand and wind.
“Do you need to come inside? The winds are bad right now.”
The man bowed his head.
“If I could, please,” he said.
She welcomed him inside. She made him wait at the front door while she took a broom from the closet to push the sand back outside onto the porch.
The priest took a step back to give her room.
“Skylines here are beautiful,” he said.
“Oh, please. It looks like the damn end of the world out there,” she spat.
The woman froze for a moment and then caught herself.
“I’m sorry. Please come in.”
The priest followed her through the living room into the kitchen. The walls had started to lose their white shimmer years ago. His eyes moved around the corners of the house. The old plaid couch was covered in plastic. The dining table was shoved into the corner of the room with a bible placed in its center. Plates and glasses kept scraps of food and marks of lips. There was a smell of trash that hit his nose. The kitchen pathway held several open bags of garbage yet to be thrown out. The woman went through her drawers until she found two clean glasses.
“Would you like anything to drink?” she asked.
He stayed quiet for a moment.
“Water is fine, ma’am,” he said.
“Willa,” she said.
She shook her head and got to work pouring water from a bucket into each glass. She placed them down at opposite sides of the table and took a seat.
“Forgive me. The water from the wells have some sand in them too.”
The woman held her glass to the light of the kitchen and frowned as she studied the grains at the bottom of her glass. The priest took the glass and swallowed half the water inside.
“Then I suppose this will be my breakfast as well,” he said.
“It’s storms like this. We can’t keep it from getting in.”
“Isn’t that how it always goes?” he asked.
The woman stared at him for a moment, unsure what he meant.
“As hard as we try to keep things clean, there’s always a bit of dirt. A clean house until you open the door for a stranger and here comes a gust of wind, a pile of sand. There’s some darkness that sneaks in. We have to do our best to brush it to the side and make due with what we have.”
“That’s quite the priestly thing to say,” said Willa.
“If you are thinking I’m here to sell you something, you can relax,” he said.
The woman took a small sip from her glass and put it down on the table.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
The priest finished his glass of water and sand and placed it down next to hers.
“I’m here to establish my church.”
He reached into his blazer pocket and produced a black card. She couldn’t make out the cursive writing on the front side as he flipped it and placed it down on the table next to her glass. On the back of the card was a drawing of a white cross.
“I think we need a little more than a church around here, father,” she said.
“Besides, we already have one on the east end of town. Didn’t you see it coming in?”
“I did, but it’s clear there’s no one in there taking care of it.”
The priest folded his hands on the table.
“How long have you lived here?” he asked.
“A couple of years,” she said with a small gulp of sand.
“I want to tell you, like I will tell everyone here in this town that my church is not like many others.”
The woman snickered.
“Oh? How so?” she asked.
“Many churches ask for money and mine does not,” he said. The woman perked up.
“They ask for donations to strengthen themselves in exchange for giving those who need to practice their faith a space to do so. My church already has all the money it needs,” said the priest.
“So, what are you looking for?” she asked.
The man took a breath and sat up.
“Good, honest people,” he continued.
“It’s funny you mentioned the end of the world earlier. It’s been about five years since the world did end in a way, am I right?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“The rapture,” he said plainly. She took a long breath.
“So, you are one of those priests,” she muttered.
The man smiled.
“One of those?” he pressed.
Willa said nothing.
“Tell me, who are these? Who am I?” he asked.
The woman leaned forward.
“You think that God willed those things out there. You think that it was by design that all those people died.”
“All across our world, holes opened up with no warning,” he interrupted.
“I know what happened,” she shot back.
“What emerged were monstrous creatures. Some called them demons. In many places, the police were overpowered. The local, state governments were confused. Even with all the strength of our armed forces, we could not handle this flood. Our government, who swore to protect us, could not stop this overwhelming presence of evil.”
Willa looked down at her feet.
“In some ways, I’m glad it happened,” he said.
She looked at him in disgust.
“Aren’t you?” he asked.
“Absolutely not,” she said.
“Humans were united on that day for the first time in a long time. Do you know why?” he asked.
She said nothing in return.
“We were united by fear. The people who ran this world were forced to reckon with something unexplainable. They were forced to deal with something that couldn’t be bought. Us little people didn’t have the option to spectate, to worry about ourselves. Everyone ran. Everyone together moved with the same, singular purpose. Everyone hid in fear. Am I wrong?”
Willa took a drink.
“No, you’re not.”
“I saw the bible on your dining room table. I already know you’re a believer. I imagine no one else in these townhouses are willing to come to church, or come sit and pray with you. I also think that this house is not yours. Perhaps everyone in these townhouses happened to find them and you all planted your flag on the front door and never came back outside to greet your neighbors.”
The woman stared back at him with widened eyes.
“I know that ever since that day, your faith has been shaken. Everything you were taught to believe was proven false. I won’t say it was a lie. We just learned from a group of faithful who didn’t know, the same as so many others. Ever since that day, people have hidden under rocks and abandoned houses, afraid to have faith. You’re all afraid to step into that church because of those things. You won’t allow yourself to believe in God because you have seen the face of the Devil and God has been nothing but silent these past five years.”
“You don’t know a thing about me,” she said.
The priest leaned forward. The woman backed up and clenched her hands.
“My family is mostly gone now but was always deep in faith. My home, my school and my church were underground. I didn’t grow up like you,” he said.
“I’m sorry?” she asked, confused.
“I was raised in the darkness. I didn’t see the beauty of God’s blue sky until that same day five years ago. I guess I share something in common with those things. From the very beginning, I trained, I read, and all of us children dreamed.”
She looked back at him.
“The darkness cradled us. We were raised with the hope that when the time is right, the stones that kept us safe would open. The day I turned eighteen years old, the stones broke apart and we felt something new. What we felt, was heat. We felt the sun. We were free to walk on the soil. Soon after we saw the sky, we saw the holes and the devastation.”
“I don’t understand,” Willa said.
“You grew up underground?” she asked.
“It was a small convent, established in the mountains. A cave was discovered there many years before and people settled there.”
“Why?”
“They found what they believed to be the remains of an angel. My family and others made the cave their home. They shut themselves inside and waited. Where I am from, we studied the Books of Enoch. Are you familiar?”
“No,” Willa said. Her face became stone.
“Enoch’s books were not considered part of the faith’s canon. He wrote of angels falling from heaven to earth to bore children with human women. They would teach them the secrets of Heaven, their knowledge of weapons and skills passed down through generations.”
The woman grimaced.
“He believed that the flood of Genesis was God’s decision to bring us to a state of chaos in order to remake our world. The flood reset our world and it was the ark that carried us through that ordeal and allowed us to start again clean. The books it was morally necessary to reset our world, to remove the remnants of sin from the land.”
“You think losing my husband was necessary?” she asked.
The priest was unmoved.
“I don’t know your husband.”
“That’s right. You don’t. He was a good man.”
Willa got up and put the empty glasses into her sink. He waited for the sounds of scrubbing glasses to settle.
“Tell me about that day for you,” said the priest.
“I was at work. My husband was too. I made it home to get our son. My husband never did. There was so much screaming. I couldn’t hear anything else. The cars stopped in the roads because there were so many people running. They were running from those things. Some nights, I wake up still hearing the screams of the people and the screams of the monsters. When I close my eyes, I can picture my feet running over red streets.”
The priest looked out towards the crimson sky.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“We’ve been running ever since that day,” she said.
“We all have. In my travels, I’ve met many people like you,” he said.
“Like me?” she asked.
“I’ve heard every version of that same story. Good people in the middle of their normal lives, completely torn apart by an unexplained abomination. Our people became complacent. We were unprepared for such an attack. We scrambled and we failed to save so many of our brothers and sisters.”
The priest took a step towards her.
“You have seen the evidence of evil in this world, yes? I have seen the evidence of angels who once walked this land; bones that were scattered and when assembled displayed a figure over ten feet tall, their weapons even larger, sitting at their sides. You and I have seen evidence of a flood that has come to wash our world clean. You and your son, however, you survived. You found a way to swim in that flood. You made it here to this place. Ever since that day, we have lived in that same fear. Afraid to open our hands and our borders, so much so that you have a gang of thugs stalking this city like wild horses. The flood never stopped. Did it?”
Willa was silent. Her eyes stared miles beyond the dark sky and sand outside her window. Her hands let go of soap stained glasses.
“Do those creatures still walk these lands?” he asked.
“We hear stories all the time about those…’demons’. But we don’t go past the city limits. They keep us here. They say it’s for our protection but I know the truth. We’re trapped,” she said.
The priest stopped for a moment and then stood up. Willa turned from her kitchen window and looked outside to the darkness.
“Your son, is he here now with you?” he asked.
She hesitated.
“He’s out there,” she pointed to the dark.
“With them?”
She quickly turned back.
“You didn’t speak to them, did you?”
The priest shook his head.
“How did you get past?”
The priest clasped his hands together.
“I have trained a long time to stay hidden, and to defend myself, when necessary,” he said.
“I think you need to leave,” she said.
“This doesn’t have to remain a trap. This can be a sanctuary.”
“Is that what you’re asking for? Followers?” she huffed.
“I don’t need anyone to follow me. I need more people like me willing to follow him.”
The priest pointed his finger up. She knew he was pointing past the ceiling, through the shadows of the sky beyond them.
“I’ll speak with everyone, at least everyone willing to listen, like you. My story will not change. I don’t wish for money or endless loyalty. I’m here to build. I want people to trust each other again. I’m fearful for my people who remain after the flood. I believe that this rapture has not ended.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“We are meant to rebuild. The flood, these demons, are to be cleared away by those who remain, the ones remaking the world in His image,” said the priest.
He took a small step towards the woman.
“I’m fearful of false prophets,” he said.
“Like who?”
“Those who come in hopes of gaining control. There will be those who come here with the face of a hero, yet what they bring is misery and destruction.”
The woman bit her lip.
“You know what I speak of. You’ve already seen some, I can tell. They will say they’re doing their best, or that they’re trying to protect you. You will look at all their effort and see people terrified and more divided. False prophets will look at all the wrong they have caused and will say it’s not their fault. They will blame circumstances, bad luck and everything or everyone around them when their own intentions bring pain to those undeserving.”
Willa no longer felt the fear of a stranger in her home.
“I’m here, asking for your trust. You know the false prophets already. I’m here to tell you there will be more.”
“Can you save my son?” she asked.
The priest stepped forward and took her hand.
“United. We can save anyone,” he said.
The priest bowed his head.
“Will you pray with me? He asked.
Willa wiped a tear from her eye and took his hands.
“What are you going to do? There’s so many of them. They have guns.”
He was not shaken.
“My congregation is waiting for my signal. Soon, so will we,” he whispered.
“Will you kill them? For us?” she pleaded.
His face was still.
“We will speak to them, the same as I have done here. We will speak to them the same as everyone else. No lives will be lost. Those who have drifted from God’s love will be returned.”
“Thank you, Father. What’s your name?” she asked.
The priest simply smiled.
“…And the Lord sent his glorious ones, the archangel Gabriel…”
He took her hand and clasped it tight.
“…And he said to me, ‘Be brave, Enoch! Don’t be frightened…”
shadowart 