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Holy Devil

Kassandra Heit

    “Bless me, Father, for I believe I have sinned.” Sister Lucia whispered into the screen. She kneeled in the small confessional, making the sign of the cross as her eyes slipped shut. “It has been one day since my last confession.”
    “My Child, what do you believe you have done?” The Priest asked. His silhouette flickered behind the screen divider that blocked his view of the nun he knew so well.
    Sister Lucia bowed her head and clutched onto the rosary usually hidden underneath her habit. “I’m not entirely sure. But, bad things have happened since I was a child.”

    I was five the first time Mother took me to church. All the other girls in my class went. I wanted to go to. Mother hadn’t been to church since I was baptized, and I begged for a month before she finally agreed to take me. That next Sunday morning, we walked hand in hand down the gravel road to the local church.
    It was beautiful. A large wooden cross hung high above the alter. Row after row of pews were filled with parishioners in their finest clothes. Pillars stood two stories tall, arching into the ceiling where stained glass chandeliers hung by black iron chains. It was picturesque. I could have stayed there forever.
    That was until all the children were called up to be escorted to their religion classes. With a reminder to be good, Mother let me leave with my friends. We played games and sang songs and listened to stories out of the Bible. I couldn’t wait to do it all over again the next Sunday. But as we were leaving, our teacher told us that we needed to bless ourselves before leaving the classroom.
    Never having done it before, I studied my friends as they performed the simple task with ease. They would slip their fingers into the holy water held by a figurine of Holy Mary and make the sign of the cross. I watched over and over. Then, it was my turn. I reached out just as they did, but, when my fingers got close to the water, it started to boil.
    The water bubbled and sizzled. A drop even popped into my hand when a bubble burst. When the water touched my hand, it turned as scarlet as blood. But, it didn’t burn me. It absorbed into my skin like a sponge. I made the sign of the cross and stepped outside before the little boy behind me screeched in pain. Unlike what happened to me, the water scalded his fingers and created instant blisters.

    No one ever figured out how it all happened, but Mother and I fled when the rumors started flying about some Devil Child. We never did go back to that church, or any church for that matter.
    It wasn’t until years later when I stepped foot in another church. I was old enough to go by myself, and I had to lie to Mother. I told her I was going to a friend’s house to study. If I had told her the truth, she would have locked me in my room.
    I sat in the back pew and did as everyone else did. I listened to the priest’s homily and sang the songs out of the hymn booklet. I was even asked to help bring up the Eucharistic gifts. I was redeeming myself. No one there knew me or what had happened, but I had to have my own salvation.
    At least, I thought I did.
    You see, I carried up the chalice with the Body of Christ inside. I had returned to my pew, and the mass continued just as it should. It was when the chalice was opened that everything went terribly, terribly wrong. The priest lifted up the cover and gasped in horror. His microphone made the noise echo off the walls and shake the handcrafted windows. It felt like the whole church was rattling in anger.
    The cover fell from the priest’s hand before he collapsed into a pile of holy garments. People of the clergy rushed to help him. They performed CPR, attempted to cool him down with a damp cloth, called and escorted first responders to the alter. It was all useless.
    The mass had been cancelled for obvious reasons. At the hospital, doctors confirmed the priest had suffered a major stroke. His quality of life would become of just existing. When the word of what happened spread, it spread like wildfire. The Vatican even sent an investigator. When that priest opened the chalice, he didn’t find the Body of Christ. It was filled with ashes.

    I stayed away from the church for decades after that. I felt cursed, like I wasn’t a child of God. I continued to read the Bible though. I thought it would be my only saving grace. . .even if I was killing myself. The wrong things in life came too easy to me. I drank like an alcoholic, smoked like a chimney. I spent more nights in the arms of strangers than in my own bed and four walls. I’d wake up with needles in my arms or even in undiscovered crime scenes.
    For the amount of trouble I put myself through, I always found a way to escape it. Not on purpose though. It was as if some outside power was shielding me from the consequences of my bad actions. There were a dozen times I should have died, but something – someone – was keeping me alive. Lord knows I didn’t deserve it.
    I befriended a cop after my many run-ins with the law. Despite my history, he wanted to help me get back on the right path. He drove me to a convent to meet Mother Jude. They let me sit with them for dinner and tour the building. They even allowed me to pray with them in the chapel. I felt like I belonged there. Although, I didn’t dare touch anything with religious meaning behind it.
    When my friend came back to pick me up, Mother Jude handed me a black rosary. It’s the one I still wear today. At first, I was hesitant to touch it, afraid it would burst into flames if it even grazed my skin. She put it on me anyway.
    My fears disappeared. When I felt the cross of the rosary on my skin, I saw myself in a habit, kneeling before the alter. I got my calling. My cop friend laughed when I told him I wanted to become a nun. I couldn’t blame him. In fact, I probably laughed with him, but it didn’t deter me.
    With my rosary, I could sit through a whole mass. I tasted the Body of Christ. My fingers could wade in the pools of holy water without it turning red. I was reborn. My fate was sealed when I took my vows and received my ring, signifying my life devotion to Christ.

    “I’ve been in this convent for ten years without incident, five years in the convent before. I’ve been to the Vatican and shaken the Pope’s hand. I’ve been free, Father. I have been nothing but faithful to our Savior.”
    “Then,” the priest said, breaking his silence, “why are you here for confession, Sister?”
    Sister Lucia licked her dry lips, resisting the urge to wipe her sweaty hands on her habit. “Last night, the thread of my rosary gave way. I left it on my dresser to fix in the morning.”
    “I woke this morning the in chapel, on the alter, covered in blood. The holy water in the baptismal bath boiled like a pot on a hot stove beside me. I assumed I had gotten into the water, but it wasn’t absorbing into my skin like it had done before. When I looked up, I found the source.”
    “It was Christ. The statue of Jesus hanging on the cross was bleeding as if the wounds inflicted the day of his death had just been executed. From his hands to his feet. The thorns thrust into his skull. The gashes in his belly from the spears. They bled the blood of Christ this morning.”
    “I was so scared. I ran back to my room and fixed my rosary. Everything has been as it should since then.” Sister Lucia said in a sigh of relief.
    The priest cleared his throat. “As frightening as that all is, I haven’t heard anything that would constitute as a sin, Sister. God has chosen you for this journey. It may not be clear now, but there is a reason behind all of this.”
    “I’m afraid this isn’t God’s doing,” Sister Lucia admitted just barely above a whisper. Her hands trembled around the cross of her rosary. The knot she tied that morning came loose and the beads slid down her neck. The separated strands of black beads swung back and forth on either side of her hands. Her eyes filled with tears when the cross started to bleed in her hands, drop of the red substance dripping from her hands and streaming down the beads.
    “What do you make of all this, Sister? If not God’s work, then who?”
    “Mother once told me my father was Satan. The Devil himself came to her in flesh,” Sister Lucia explained. Her tears fled down her cheeks like the blood from her fingertips. “I think she might have been right.”

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