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The old priest sat on the far end of the first pew. He had never sat in any one of the pews at the church. The feeling disoriented him. This is like sitting in the passenger seat of your own car. He didn’t actually drive anymore, didn’t need to. He had assistants at the rectory that did his errands, and he walked a great deal.
Life had assumed a familiar pattern for Father Donnelly in the last forty years, but that had all recently changed. All his life, he had been a devout Christian. Religious, possibly fanatically religious, parents in the Deep South had raised him. He had gone to seminary school in Virginia, and liked what he had seen of the north. Being that he was from Mississippi, Virginia seemed like the north. He decided that he would seek assignment at a church a little farther north. When he finished seminary school, he got located to St. Michael’s, in Baltimore. He immediately fell in love with the city, the church and most importantly, the parish. The people all took to him like family, which was very important for any new priest. Even though he had come to the parish in 1960, he felt like he still had good advice and guidance for the youth he saw on a day-to-day basis, as he did for the young kids he saw in the sixties and seventies. Good morals and heartfelt concern don’t change from generation to generation.
Now, as the arthritis was trying to destroy his body, he found comfort in his mind, for it had not deteriorated in the least. Just as he had been at twenty-two, the age when he first came to Maryland, he was the same at sixty-three. His mind was still sharp as a tack. But, something new and evil had been troubling him and his parish as of late. He had dealt with three separate parents; each stating those there children was missing, only to turn up later, dead. The reports always said that it was a “drug or alcohol related” death, but the parent’s knew their children and they knew better. The children weren’t the types to be running the streets at night, looking for a high, or something worse. These were good kids, from good families. They would be missed, and they hadn’t been given justice in death.
Although Father Donnelly never tried to use his power as a priest to his benefit, he did use it to gain entrance into the morgue on the night the third victim was discovered. Immediately, he could tell the death was not from drugs or alcohol. The victim, a young girl named Tracey, had been found in an alley, half-naked, her skull crushed. She had no drugs in her system, but she had been drinking. The police had assumed that she had gotten drunk at the club, left with the wrong man, and wound up dead in an alley. The police saw about ten murders a year of this sort; three in one month was a high amount, but not enough to raise eyebrows. Father Donnelly would have believed the police findings more, had he not been from the south, and not had a superstitious grandmother that liked to tell the children stories on Sunday, after church.
Every Sunday, after the mass had ended, the families went to their patriarch’s homes for a late lunch/early dinner. The Donnelly family, was no exception? The adults would eat the prepared feast, and then retire to the living room to watch the races. The children, usually glad to be together, would run to Grandma Donnelly, for one of her fabled stories. Usually the stories were about life in the years before the turn of the century. These stories fascinated Father Donnelly. He wasn’t sure if it was the content of these stories, or if it was the way his grandmother’s eyes lit up when the children’s interest was peaked. Sometimes, her little hands, surrounded by skin so old and wrinkled that it looked like it was fragile and clear, would leave her knitting during the stories and wave about the room, adding to the passion of the story.
When Father Donnelly was eleven, he remembered a story so scary and shocking, that it had never left his mind. He had gone over to her house on a Saturday, instead of after church on Sunday. He was bored with playing baseball, and wanted to hear a story. He remembered thinking that he may hear a special story if he was the only child there. Looking back on that thought, he shuddered at how correct her really was.
His grandmother sat in her rocking chair, a white sweater covering her body like a blanket and told him the story she had heard from her grandmother. It was 1796; the Donnelly family still lived in the County of Cork, Ireland. Father Donnelley’s grandmother, a beautiful sixteen-year old girl name Rosella, was in charge of care taking the richest man in the land’s home. The home was a castle, far removed the rest of the shacks in the County, resting beside a lake. The castle was grand in stature and appearance, but it exuded a cold dread that made it seem cursed. The local clergy wouldn’t enter the castle to collect for the poor and the owner had never been seen in the town. But, the owner was reportedly wealthy beyond imagination, and it wasn’t uncommon for the wealthy in Cork to keep to themselves, and thus be subject to rumors and fables of their lives. The current rumor regarding the owner of the castle was that he was a Lord from Romania, and didn’t enjoy the daylight. The idea of a vampire wasn’t new to the townsfolk, but by 1796 the legends had become as unbelievable as they were today.
Rosella’s job was to go to the castle every morning to pick up a list of things needed from the town market and to tidy up any mess that had occurred. She too was filled with dread at the thought of entering the castle, but the pay was better than any other girl had at the time, and as she was unmarried and still living at home, her family needed the extra money.
She approached the castle slowly on the first morning. She wasn’t sure if she would need to see the castle owner before she went to work, or if he would leave a list. As luck would have it, he had left a list. The writing was beautiful and, since she couldn’t read, completely useless. Because of her illiteracy, a plight that affected all but a few of the townsfolk, she was forced to enter the castle, and see the nightmare.
The drawbridge had been lowered, but that had not originally surprised Rosella. She was happy to walk high above the filthy moat that separated the castle walls from the land surrounding. At the end of the drawbridge, Rosella entered the castle. She walked into an empty area that was cornered by high walls and a grass floor. Normally, there would be piles of hay, or carts, even animals in the front part of the castle, but this castle was anything but normal. The front area was empty, and foreboding. With the note clutched in her hand, she walked deeper into the castle and towards a large door.
At the door, she stood motionless, contemplating whether or not to knock. The ideas to leave, turn to run and never come back, crossed her mind. But, Rosella knew that her family needed the money and she couldn’t leave.
“You see, in that era, the girls were married by fifteen. You kids today wait until you are in you twenties”, was what Father Donnelly’s grandmother had said.
She would have been shocked today to see marriages taking place in people’s thirties, and even older.
Rosella raised her hand to knock on the large wooden door, but she paused, noticing that it was already slightly open. She put her hand in the small opening and pushed the door open. She stole a quick peek inside, and saw darkness.
She used all of her might to push the door all the way open, hoping that light from outside would lighten the castle interior. It worked slightly. She entered the front room, and found it to be as empty as the grassy entrance she had left. There were three doorways, each going to different part of the castle from the look of them, in front of her. The way the light was shining into the room, only the middle passage was slightly illuminated. The middle passage became the only choice.
The passage was very long, possibly running through the entire castle. Rosella found several torches, hanging from the wall at ten-foot intervals. She ran back outside to the front grass area and found some sticks. She ran back to the cave and after five minutes of furious rubbing, a spark generated. A moment later, she had the first torch lit. As she walked through the passage, she lit all the torches she passed. The hallway was considerably brighter than the front room with all of the torches on the wall flaming.
Although she was happy that the passage was brighter, seeing her surroundings wasn’t very comforting. The hall was very long, farther than she could see, and even though she was inside and the flames were burning brightly, she felt a chill running through her body. Also, the passage was damp. It was indoors, and Rosella didn’t see any windows, or holes, but the walls, Rosella having made the unwise decision to touch them, were slick and damp. She was sure, or hoping that they were damp from rain, or something of that nature but a part of her mind told her differently. It is the castle. It is slick and sweaty with evil!
At the end of the passage, Rosella found herself inside an already well-lit chamber. The chamber was exactly like the passage, bricks that were windowless and slick with perspiration. In the middle of the room, she saw a large wooden crate, it’s lid closed, resting on the earth below. She entered the chamber and walked to the box. It’s a coffin; you know it is!
The box, (coffin) was new looking; the wood still a tan color and not splintered or water stained. She stood to the back of it, not wanting to keep her back to the passage. The deeper she had gotten into the passage, the farther apart each torch on the wall had been. By the time she was near the opening, she had been forced to walk in periods of darkness before she reached the next torch. That darkness was alive, her imagination working to create creatures that tried to grab at her and bring her to them. Her step had quickened and her pulse accelerated, but she made it through. But, she had no intention of turning her back to the creepy darkness of the passage.
She bent over the coffin, and stared at it. She started to lean in, ear first, trying to listen to the inside, figuring, and hoping, that she wouldn’t hear anything. She stopped. Rosella, what the hell are you doing? Get away from that coffin! Get out of this room, away from that passage. Get out of the castle!
She fought against her better senses and continued to lean in. Gingerly, she placed her ear against the coffin and heard nothing. Satisfied that the coffin was empty she decided to open it.
“Wait a minute! She looked inside the coffin? Is she crazy?”
Father Donnelly, a precocious young boy felt that he needed to interrupt his grandmother’s story to receive clarification. It just didn’t seem right that a girl, alone in a scary castle, would want to open a coffin lying on open concrete.
His grandmother didn’t deter from her story at all; instead, she shushed Father Donnelly and proceeded to tell the tale.
Rosella reached forward, placing her thin fingers in between the top of the wooden box’s edge and the bottom of the lid. She started to pull, hoping the lid would open without much effort. As soon as an inch had been lifted, it was if a cold breeze, which chilled her to the soul, blew out of the box. She slammed the lid back down and stepped away from the coffin.
An intense feeling of dread entered her, causing her to fully realize her surroundings. She began to get very scared; appalled that she had let her curiosity led her into the dark castle. Rosella went to the middle passage and decided to leave. But, she heard a noise from the other end. Someone was coming towards her!
Rosella backed out of the passage and went back into the room. She was alone with the coffin, again, a feeling of fear splashed over her like a powerful wave. She began to shiver and wanted to leave the room, the passage and the castle. I don’t need the money this badly! She knew that she didn’t want to be seen by whoever was coming down the passage, but the only place she could hide was in another passage. She chose the left and ran twenty feet inside. She stood in the darkness, listening to the sound of heavy feet, numerous pairs, walking towards the chamber. She had to extinguish her torch, knowing that a light shining in a bright passage would attract attention, and waited for the intruders to appear.
She could see the light from their torches illuminating the darkened chamber as they walked closer. The room, previously engulfed in darkness, was fully lit up when the strangers entered. They appeared to be a scary group, but, as Rosella would soon learn, it was their purpose that was truly frightening.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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