Veiled (Ada Palomino 1)

The nun’s cold fingers rest on my arm. I jump, a yelp mercifully muffled in my throat.

“Are you well?” she asks again, seeming genuinely concerned.

I glance across the street to where the dark form is, only now it’s standing in front of the dumpster. It could be a man dressed in black, it could be a demon. With the rain it’s impossible to tell. I can’t even tell if it’s facing me or not, even though I swear I can feel its gaze.

“I’m well,” I say softly, afraid to take my eyes off of it. “I’m good. I’m just . . .”

“I understand,” the nun says, removing her fingers. It’s only then I realize that my arm was going numb from cold while she was touching me, the heat and feeling coming back with a fury. As soon as this weather clears, I’m heading straight home, making a pot of tea and getting into bed. This is what I get for trying to go outside and be social. I lose my best friend, get caught in a thunderstorm, and have to deal with a nosy nun, not to mention the weirdness across the street.

“Sometimes it’s easy to turn inward. Toward the darkness,” she muses, her voice chipper. “Sometimes the darkness is our friend.”

I keep my eyes on the figure—still not moving—even though I want to look at the nun and see just where she’s going with this.

“Do you believe in the Devil?” she asks sharply.

Somehow I’m not surprised she asked that.

I might be staring at him right now, I think to myself. I clear my throat. “I do.”

“Have you felt him?” her words take on a hiss, reminding me of a snake or something crawling out from a swamp.

I finally look at her, expecting the worst. But she’s grinning at me. Her teeth are all missing, just black and blue gums, something I hadn’t noticed before. In fact she looks like she’s aged even more, her skin yellow and papery thin, the lines on her face like greying canyons.

“Felt who?”

She looks away to the road and if she sees the dark figure standing there, she doesn’t let on. “The rain will stop soon. You will be on your merry way. Tell me how the darkness sings to you. Do you have God’s grace to ignore the siren song? Or are you like so many others, wanting more, demanding fairness in their tiny little lives?”

Okay, now I’m really getting uneasy, wondering if heading out into the downpour, near the shadowy figure, is a better bet than my present company. I sigh and start scratching at my arms, the creepy crawling in my skin feeling intensifying.

“I’m not . . . sure what you’re talking about,” I say, stumbling over my words, my tongue feeling foreign.

“Never you mind,” she says, bright again, like all is well with the world. “I know how weak humanity is, how they crawl on their knees, begging for salvation, for escape and hope. But God never responds to them. So they turn to the one who does. Why else do you think the world is turning into vile shit?”

Now I’m shocked. I stare at her with wide eyes, trying to come up with something in response, maybe along the lines of “I wasn’t aware you were allowed to swear,” but my tongue still doesn’t want to obey.

She eyes my arm where I’m scratching. “You have them don’t you? The sensation of ants crawling under your skin.”

I still. Attempt to swallow and can’t. How do you know that? I try to ask but the words don’t come.

“Because,” she says, taking a step closer to me. A whiff of something musty and sour, like the earth and rotten fruit, comes flowing over me. “That’s what it feels like when he is near.”

It gets worse, suddenly, sharply. I shake out my arms again, my nails now drawing blood, wishing I could rip off my skin and shed them all out.

“When who is near?” Somehow the words come out of my mouth, my tongue finally working again. Every part of me trembles. “God?”

Her eyes widen. She now has cataracts, milky, yet I know she sees me more clearly than ever. “No, not God,” she hisses. “Never God.” She crooks a bony finger toward the hazy figure on the other side of the road. “Him.”

My blood runs cold. My eyes dart between her and the shadow, still standing across the street.

“There is no escape, only surrender,” the woman says, her voice unnaturally low, like it’s coming from another place. Then she drops her arm and starts scratching at her neck. “I have the feeling too.” Scratch, scratch. I watch, horrified, mesmerized. “Beautifully unbearable.”

The figure across the street begins to move through the rain, and even though the deluge isn’t letting up, the closer he comes, the less clear he is. And that’s when I know he can’t be human.