Chapter Text
Chapter: Prologue
— A new priest? Are you serious? — my hand freezes midair, the coffee cup halfway to my mouth. — And Wicks allowed that?
— Monsignor Wicks — my uncle corrects, giving me a flat look. — Well, I don’t think he had much of a choice. The kid must’ve done some shit to get sent here. — He chuckles softly. — He’s pretty chill, though.
— He’s going to make him leave in a month. Get inside his head, drive him insane — I snap. Uncle Samson only shakes his head, the same way he does every time I say something negative about Wicks; which is, admittedly, every time his name comes up.
— I truly don’t understand why you have this image of Monsignor Wicks. The kid’s pretty young. I think he could actually benefit from him — he retorts. He finishes his breakfast and stands up, brushing the crumbs off the table.
— What’s his name again? — I ask.
— Didn’t really catch it. John? Jude? Something like that — he shrugs, indifferent.
— I'm going to the church later to help clean the entrance, the night winds are bringing a bunch of leaves and sticks lately. I may see him then — I tried to sound just as indifferent, but I could feel a quiet frenzy starting to spring inside me, somewhere I couldn't reach, so green I couldn't identify it yet. Maybe I could finally make a friend?
Uncle Samson kisses the top of my head before putting his coat on, grabbing his tools and leaving me alone in the sunlit kitchen.
I’ve been living with Uncle Samson for almost a year now. He offered to let me stay when he heard I’d decided to take a sabbatical year after finishing college, before applying to some kind of master’s program. We were very close when I was a kid and I’ve always liked him, which makes sense, considering he’s my godfather and used to live near my childhood home back then.
He’s always been an active man, so even after retiring, the idea of doing nothing all day sounded like torture to him. So much so that he took up a job as a groundskeeper at the Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude and moved away from everyone and everything.
So yeah; spending a year away from society on another country after living in London my entire life, after four years of college and constant conditioning to worry about things like the job market, internships and the close immediate future sounded marvelous. I truly thought nothing could go wrong. Or at least, nothing could be that bad.
That was before I actually came here. Before meeting Monsignor Wicks and his way of running the church.
Listen, I’m not Catholic. My parents were never particularly religious when I was growing up — we only went to church on special occasions, and when I told them I didn’t want to attend Sunday school anymore, they simply accepted it. They knew they couldn’t talk me out of it.
Later, when I lived with my very religious grandmother during my final teenage years, I gained a much clearer insight on Catholicism. She was deeply involved in the church activities: teaching Sunday school, serving at the altar, waking up at four in the morning for her prayers, she did everything. Sometimes I’d go with her to Sunday Mass just to make her happy. I’m sure my name came up often in her prayers; she never lost hope for my conversion. She was a good woman. And from my experiences back then, I never had anything against the Church or the religion itself. But the way Monsignor Wicks ran that church, the things he said in his sermons, and how everyone, including my uncle, seemed to sink deeper and deeper into an unwavering belief in everything he preached in the “name of God”… it was all deeply eerie.
I began to seclude myself from the tight circle of Wicks’s followers. Talking to them became genuinely frightening, they just believed in him with such blind devotion, following every word without question.
Before I realized it, I had become an outcast.
I still helped my uncle with his daily chores and occasionally assisted Martha with small tasks, like filing archives or helping keep the church clean, but that was the extent of my involvement. I couldn’t gather enough courage to tell my uncle that I wanted to leave.
In truth, I was afraid of leaving him alone in that place, with those people, and yet I had no idea how to get us both out. I feared that soon enough, it would be too late.
I knew something bad was about to happen. An inexorable feeling settled in my chest, urging me to act, to stop it, and it had to be quickly.
And that’s when I met Jud.
Father Jud Duplenticy.