Looking in a Mirror

I feel that I must apologize. I have entered the story without really telling what it is about. For all you know it could be the story of my life from beginning to end, however, this is not the case. This is the story of three different people, three people that I have killed. These three people will haunt me to the grave...and beyond it I fear. The died by my hand, upon my cross. Three upon the cross. I have engraved there names around the barrel of the gun at its head and I will never forget them.

Three gunshots cut through the continues rumble of my motorcycle. As I said whether by some trick of nature or providence I heard then and altered my course. I was nearly 300 iles from December, which meant that if I stopped I would not get home tonight. There were a million reasons why I shouldn't stop. First of all was that I was no longer an assassin. I was now an ordained priest. My cross was still with me, as always, and I still had the skills that I had learned from Chapel so I knew that I would be safe from any threats to my person. So without much thought I turned my bike to the south and found my past waiting for me.

The town was very small, no more than 700 people living in it. As you entered one end of town you could look down the dusty street and see the other end of town only a little more than two miles away. The first bar I saw I parked my bike and went in. I was greeted with little more than a look from the bartender. The other people paid me no mind and continued with there drinks and whores. There was an old record player setting on an unused piano playing a warped record of The Entertainer. I took a seat at the bar and got strait to the point. "What's the trouble in this town?"

"Trouble?" the bartender said with a perplexed look about him.

"About ten minutes ago I heard three gunshots come from this town."

"Mister," he looked at me square in the eye, "we mind our own business in this town, but if you must know it's nothing more than a little family dispute." He turned away from me and began cleaning a glass. "By the way of prying into others business: what's that?" He said, indicating my cross.

"I'm a traveling priest." Was my reply, it was not the first time I had used that phrase and little did I know that it would not be the last.

"Oh, good." He turned and looked me up and down for the first time taking in who I really was. "We may need you before the day is out. I'm glad you stopped by." He turned and began washing another glass and without looking in my direction again he asked "Are you any good with funerals?"

"I have had some experience in that area before." I tried not to smile but I couldn't help it faced with the irony of that question. I got up and left the bar for a brief stroll downtown. Since I knew that I would be staying the night here I looked for a hotel to stay in and after and hour of searching I found the only one in town. After retrieving my bike from the front of the bar I returned and checked in, went to my room, ordered some whisky, and drank myself to sleep.

I awoke at midnight in a cold sweat. I didn't know at the time what woke me, then I felt it...someone else was in the room with me. There was no light, I could barely see two feet in front of me. I sat up, my back against the wall, and started to survey the room. Somewhere in front of me I heard the door open and then I saw what appeared to be two red circles floating where a man's eyes should be. Then it was gone and the door was closed, but I didn't have time to stop and think about what it might have been for just as the door closed BOOM! the sound of a gunshot rang out in the night. It seemed very close and at first I thought that it was in the room with me. Then there came another one. It pierced the silence of the night like a knife through flesh and I realized that it was coming from downstairs. Almost instinctively I jumped from the bed and grabbed the canvas-covered cross that was leaning against the wall and raced downstairs. The darkness was complete. i could see nothing of the room when I entered and it wasn't until I slipped in a warm pool of blood on the floor that I even knew someone had been killed.

Tracking bloody footprints I stumbled to the door and found my way out onto the street. The moon was out and it cast a blue light over the town and the desert. I turned and looked back through the now moonlit door. What I saw caused me to turn away in horror and disgust. The clerk was laying on the floor in a pool of his own blood. He was soaked in it, but this was not what caused me to turn away. The man's eyes had been removed from his head and placed in his left had and the back of his head had been cut cleanly open. This was not an assassination, this was a brutality. A murder, for lack of a better word. The target was not chosen out of training or hate. I went directly to the Sheriff's office and reported the incident.

"Well, Father Wolfwood, we've done everything we can do for the time being." The Sheriff told me, but I wasn't really listening. The sun was shinning bright and I was trying to remove last nights brutality from my mind. "...you might pray for his soul. I don't know what faith he was, but I'm sure that it couldn't hurt."

"Yes." I said, "I'll do that." I looked back at the sky. I remember it well because it was the bluest I had seen it in longer than I could remember. "You could to one thing for me, Sheriff."

"What's that?" he said looking up from the paperwork he had started.

"I would like to see the body...if I could. It's been moved to the morgue, right?"

"Yeah, that shouldn't be a problem...but do you mind if I ask why?"

"I may be able to help in any investigation. Before I became a priest I was a..." I paused. I had almost said my first occupation, but I managed to catch myself in time.

The Sheriff noticed the hesitation. "A what?"

"a...uh...medical examiner...examiners assistant." I covered with a brief, but very sheepish laugh.

The Sheriff gave me the suspicious look that I was oh so used to by now and said: "Ok, follow me." We walked out of the office and took a right down the street. Now I noticed that it was not only bright out, but very hot! The makeshift morgue was about ten building down the street and when we entered I was amazed at how cool they were able to keep it considering the closest plant was in December. "It's only temporary," he said as we walked into the building, "until we can ship the body off to December." The body was setting on a table in the middle of the room, or rather, it was sitting on what appeared to be a table. As I lifted the cloth I discovered that it was actually a large block of ice. I could see that it was slowly melting, but it managed to keep the body cool for now. As I pulled back the sheet I grimaced once more at the sight of the eyeless face, but I had to look, to prove what I suspected to be the truth. There was no head wound. He had not been shot in the head. The thought of further removing the sheet disturbed me even more, but I had to know. I pulled the sheet down to the man's waistline. I counted to bullet-holes. One in the stomach. The other a few inches above it, just bellow the heart. It was obvious to me that it was done at close range, but I knew that even before the Sheriff gave me his report. It was a large caliber bullet, looked like a .45, that was enough to convince me. To shots the middle-lower torso with a .45; that what I was instructed to do by Chapel almost ten years ago. I knew now that my past had caught up with me and that it would very soon become my future.

I covered the body once more, thanked the Sheriff for his time and left. He stopped me just before I closed the door and asked: "Did you find anything?"

"No, but thank you again for your time. May you go with God's protection."

"Thank you, Father." And with that I left and returned hotel.

I stayed a week in that little town, it was a nightmarish time for I knew that somewhere in the same town was the man known as Chapel. My old master. The man who taught me everything that I knew. There were two more killing that week. Both done in the same style as the hotel clerk. Each time however a different part of the body was removed and placed into the victims left hand. I had returned to the bar that I first entered when I arrived at this town and eventually became friends with the bartender. Soon I was able to find out much more information than I ever wanted to know about the "family dispute" that first brought me to this town.

"Carlson is their name. If there is a rich family in this town it's them." He said to me once as I was drinking my whisky and reading my Bible.

"Carlson?" I said very confused, for I had not thought of the incident since I arrived and especially not after that first hellish night here.

"It's the name of the family. You said that you came here because you heard gunshots." He looked at me as if to say 'Come on, have you forgotten already?' I gave a brief nod in reply. "This sort of thing had been going on with them for the past two years." he continued, "They've got a son, nine or ten years old, who loves guns more than life itself. They buy him every gun he so much as touches and about every six months he'll get really pissed off and start shooting random objects."

"Are there ever any people involved...I mean, does he ever use people as an 'object'?"

"Only once. Years ago he shot his sister in the foot. That's all the more violent toward other people he has ever been." He looked at me and smiled. "After that his parents threatened to take away his guns for a whole year. You can bet that he'd never be stupid enough to do that again."

"Let's hope not." I took a drink of my whisky and read another verse or two. "Where is the house at?"

"Hmm?" He muttered, eyeing me with real suspicion for the first time since I first walked into this bar.

"The Carlson House. You said they were rich so I assume that they have a pretty nice house. I'd like to go for a visit. Maybe spread some of His good word."

Give me one final look he said: "They're on the north side of town. You can't miss the house, it's the biggest one around." I got up and headed for the door. Carrying my cross with one hand and my Bible with the other. "Give my regards to Mr. Carlson, Father Wolfwood!" I gave a final wave of my hand and vanished out the door.

The Carlson House was gigantic when compared to the one or two room houses that surrounded it and abounded in the town. In reality it was nothing more than a small mansion, only three stories high with what looked like a small enclosed garden off to the right of the house. Just from looking at it from the outside I guessed twenty-five rooms, maybe thirty. I walked calmly up the path to the front door and rang the bell. I heard other bells ring throughout the house, but after three minutes no one answered. I rang again, this time waiting longer. After what I guessed was another five minutes I tried the door; it was open. "Hello?" I said to nothing but darkness as I stepped across the threshold. "My name is Nicholas D. Wolfwood, I'm a traveling priest and I would just like to talk to you and your son for a few moments." No answer. I continued further into the house. I knew not what to expect, but as I walked through the house it felt as if something was guiding me through the rooms. I had never been there before but I seemed to know where everything was. It felt like I had been there before, yet I knew that I never had. I knew that as I walked through the Great Room to the Main Hall I would find the Kitchen on the left and the Dinning Room on the right.

The hall was in the Shape of a large cross. As I reached the branch of the arms I turned and saw that these led to separate staircases that lead upstairs. But none of the rooms in this hall were my destination. I knew that I would find what I was looking for in the garden. In the same strange way that I had known everything about the house I knew exactly which door led to the garden. It was the last door on the left. That struck me as odd, because I knew that the garden was on the right side of the house; how could the door to the garden be on the left? Even though my brain was screaming the logical thing, go through the door on the right, I followed what I knew to be true. The door on the left. Instantly I found myself in darkness, the darkness was more complete than even that first night in the hotel, but I continued to walk forward. Shortly, I was aware of the sensation of downward motion. Ever so gently the path had begun to slope downwards. I continued a few more steps before I ran into the wall. "Owch! Dammit! Son of a -" I caught myself there and said a brief prayer of forgiveness then felt my way through the darkness. I soon discovered that I had not entered a room as I had first believed upon running into the wall, but that the passage had simply turned. To the right.

Carefully edging my way along the wall I soon found another right turn and what's more, I found light. About fifty feet away there was an opening to the outside. From where I was standing I could see a little green against the white light that was pouring through the darkness. It was the garden. Once I saw the light I hated the darkness. I sprinted the rest of the way down the passage and into the light. I felt the warm air on my face and saw the green of a carefully kept garden (probably the source of the families wealth), but as I looked down at my feet I realized that there were several patches of brown grass. Apparently at random intervals in a fairly straight line. My eyes followed it some twenty feet into the garden, then I found the family.

A father, a mother, a sister; no son, laying on the ground surrounded by dead grass. It looked as if they had left the world many days before in a great struggle. There bodies were decaying rapidly in the summer heat. Sand flies were already making nests in their bodies I walked over to them and though I could not smell them where I had first entered the garden, the smell became almost unbearable by the time I reached the bodies. There were three of them. The though went off in my mind like a gun. A gun...gunshots. Three gunshots are what drew me to this town, and now I had found the damage that they had done. I began to pray a frantic prayer for there souls and mine and...

A noise behind me tour my mind away from my words. The sound was one that I knew all to well. It was the sound of a .45 being cocked, made ready for firing. I turned to face the sound and found myself staring down the barrel of a gun. One the other side of it was a boy, almost ten years of age would've been my guess at the time. He was wearing gray shorts and a black t-shirt, and he had a shaggy bunch of matted black hair on his head. "I'm sorry you had to see this, Father." He said to me as emotionless as a doll. "He didn't want you to find this. He hoped to scare you out of town, but he said to kill you if you found anything. Goodbye." In that instant I saw myself in him. The boy I described was me, I will never know what that boy truly looked like, only that I saw myself in him. The great potential for good...but the greater potential for evil.

With one quick motion of my hand my cross came unclothed and was raided to a firing position. Before I even knew what had happened the boy fell to the ground, blood pouring onto the green grass, dead. I stared in shock and disbelief at what I had just done. I had killed a child without so much as a thought, when I hadn't killed a man in three years. Tears weld up in my eyes and began streaming down my face. That was the first time I had cried since I was locked in that room by Chapel as a boy, and it would be the last time for many, many more years.

I made my way back through the house; I hadn't touched the bodies...any of them. I had just left them to rot in the sun, and, since I never returned to that town after I left, as far as I know they are still laying in that garden to this very day. Once again I needed no one to guide me, I knew the house like I had lived in it for year and soon I found myself standing on the front steps, staring into the depthless, empty eyes of Chapel the Evergreen. "What...what have you done!" I demanded.

"Nicholas, I'm so glad to see you alive." He said with a smile, ignoring my remark.

"That's bullshit!" I screamed, almost before he could finish the sentence. "That boy was going to kill me, under you orders."

"We are, none of us, under our own orders now, Nicholas."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It does not matter. You hesitated, not in your actions, but in your mind. Remember, ever hesitation is another moment gone of life. Always remember that." He said, completely ignoring my question. "I knew that only one of you could come out of that house alive. You have my me proud, Nicholas. My prize student, and I thank God that your alive."

I couldn't control myself after that. With a series of swift moves, that he had taught me, I lunged at him, knocking him to the ground with the but-end of my cross. "Don't you ever mention the name of God again, you obsessive little shit! I swear I will kill you someday." I stopped yelling and turned toward the rest of the town. "I've killed so many," I said in almost a whisper, "what's one more. Sin is sin in God's eyes, no matter what the act."

"You've grownup, Nicholas. You're just the sort of man he needs."

"What?"

"Go to Augusta. A man of great power is waiting for you there. I know that you will see things his way once you talk to him; after talking to him, everyone sees things his way." A brief pause, and then to himself: "We are all pawns to him."

I left Chapel standing at the foot of the Carlson House, and that was the last time I saw him for nearly ten more years. To me he was a demon. I did not know the man who I was to meet, but I decided that I would go. At the time I knew what he wanted to talk to me about. If he had seen Chapel then he would no about me, and he probably would have a hit-list ready when I got there. If I had known what a terrible net of lies my life would become after meeting him I would never have gone to Augusta. At the time, however, I was not in my right mind. I was a priest, Father Wolfwood, I had just killed a child, someone who might have been saved. A stray lamb returned.

I went to the nearest general store and bought my first pack of cigarettes. I had never even smoked before this, but I knew it had a calming effect on the body, and that was all I wanted. Returning quickly to my room I locked the, lit a cigarette, sat down on the bed, and thought. About life and death. Heaven and hell. God and Chapel.