Page 43 of Of Faith and Fangs

Father O’Malley waited at the door, a ritual that had become our nightly custom. His weathered face showed more fatigue than usual, the lines around his eyes deeper.

“You look tired, Father,” I said as I approached.

“Old bones,” he replied with a dismissive wave. “They protest the cold.” He held out the small vial of holy water, another part of our ritual. “Shall we?”

I extended my hand. The water fell onto my palm—a single drop that sizzled against my skin. The pain was sharp but brief, like touching a hot stove rather than being engulfed in flames. Progress, of a sort.

Inside, the church was empty save for the elderly sexton lighting candles at the altar. The sexton nodded at us without curiosity—Father O’Malley had explained my presence as spiritual counseling for a troubled young woman, not entirely untrue.

We took our usual places in the back pew. No mass tonight—Father O’Malley had suggested a different form of healing.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said quietly, “that you might be ready for confession.”

I stiffened beside him. “Catholics confess to priests,” I said, falling back on Daddy’s teachings. “Puritans confess directly to God.”

Father O’Malley smiled slightly. “And how has that been working for you?”

The question hung between us, gentle but pointed. I’d tried praying since my transformation—the words burning my tongue, my skin smoking where I clasped my hands together. God’s silence had been my only answer.

“I was taught that confession to another person is unnecessary,” I said, softening my objection. “That it puts a mediator between the sinner and God.”

“Scripture suggests otherwise,” Father O’Malley replied. “In James 5:16, we’re instructed to ‘confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.’” He turned slightly to face me. “And in John 20, Christ breathes on the apostles and says, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.’”

I’d read those passages before, but Daddy had always explained them away—contexts, metaphors, temporary instructions for the early church. Hearing them now, in this place, they carried a different weight.

“Confession isn’t a burden, Alice,” Father O’Malley continued. “It’s healing. There’s something powerful about speaking our sins aloud, about naming the darkness within us so it loses its power over us.”

I thought about the secrets I carried—the people Silas made me hurt, and worse. The weight of those deaths pressed on me daily.

“How could saying words change any of that?” I asked, genuinely curious rather than defiant.

“Words have power,” he replied. “God spoke the world into existence. Christ is called the Word made flesh. The words we speak shape the reality we inhabit.” He gestured toward the confessional, a small wooden booth near the side of the church. “In confession, we speak truth about ourselves and hear truth in return—that we are forgiven, that redemption is possible.”

I studied the confessional with trepidation. “And you believe this would help someone like me? Someone who can’t even say God’s name without pain?”

“I believe it might be the final step to removing that pain,” he said carefully. “The sacraments work through the barriers we construct around ourselves. Your guilt, the sorrow you feel over the things you’ve done for Silas, it’s eating away at you. It’s clinging to the darkness that the pain is trying to purge. It continues to hurt when you pray, when we apply the holy water, because you are holding on to that darkness like a life raft. Confession is about letting it go, and letting grace take its place.”

We sat in silence for several minutes, the only sounds the soft footsteps of the sexton as he finished his duties and the occasional crack of candle wax. Outside, snow began to fall, tiny flakes visible through the stained-glass windows as they caught the light.

“What would I have to do?” I asked finally.

Relief flashed across Father O’Malley’s face. “Enter the confessional. I’ll sit on the other side of the screen. Begin with ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned’ and tell me how long it’s been since your last confession.”

“I’ve never made a confession,” I pointed out.

“Then say that,” he replied with a gentle smile. “The formula isn’t what matters—it’s the honesty behind it.”

I rose slowly, my body suddenly feeling heavy with the prospect of what lay ahead. Father O’Malley led the way to the confessional, pointing to one side of the wooden booth.

“Take your time,” he said. “I’ll be waiting when you’re ready.”

The interior of the confessional was small and dark, with a wooden kneeler facing a screen that separated it from the priest’s side. The space smelled of old wood and decades of whispered sins. I knelt, feeling strangely vulnerable in this tiny, enclosed space. Through the screen, I could see Father O’Malley’s silhouette as he settled on his side, head bowed slightly.

“Bless me, Father,” I began, the words feeling foreign on my tongue, “for I have sinned. I’ve never made a confession before because Daddy said it’s sacrilege.”

“Go on,” he encouraged when I fell silent.

Where to begin? With the killings? With my transformation? With the doubt that had plagued me even before Mercy Brown had turned me?

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