And that scared him. Piotr had done terrible things and had remained a hateful human being, but maybe he had been a good partner to his wife and a good father? Those were the things he knew he should have been thinking about, but deep down, a voice told Adam that Piotr would have infected his children with the ideology that made him brutalise Emil all those years ago. That maybe society was better off without this apple that seemed so shiny on the outside yet had a rotten core.

He provided Mrs. Dyzma with words of comfort but didn’t promise to keep the dead farmer in his prayers.

Thoughts raced in his head, but Adam didn’t get to consider if the murder was somehow Emil’s doing, because he was familiar with the voice of the next man in line and remembered it all too clearly since they’d spoken just hours ago.

“Blessed be Jesus Christ.”

Adam mumbled his answer, sinking deeper into the uncomfortable seat in the middle of the confessional as Koterski went on.

“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I was reluctant to talk about this to any priest here, where I intend to start a family, but I have a feeling that you will understand. I’ve been tempted, and I am only human, so I gave in.”

Adam’s heart stilled. Had he and Koterski… done something last night? The thought of a different pair of hands than Emil’s touching his body made him mildly nauseous, as if it were sacrilege, and he didn’t dare look at the man’s face, staying still in the dusky interior of the confessional.

“You need to be more specific than that,” he said in the end, angry at how faint his voice sounded. At once, the fresh scars on his hands pulsed, as if his blood wanted to leave his body where the skin was thinnest.

Koterski huffed. “I can be very specific, Father. Emil, that spawn of Satan, coerced me into gay sex. It’s his fault. It happened out of nowhere, as if something unnatural directed me straight to him. I’ve never even thought about things like that before, but I have… impure thoughts about it. I thought that now that I’m married, these urges would pass, but I tell you, Father, that man somehow put a spell on me and lured me into his house.”

Adam’s ears thudded with the sound of his heartbeat, head light as he tried to cling to the sharp edges of reality, because otherwise he’d fall and never climb up again.

This couldn’t be. Couldn’t.

But as he struggled to rein in emotions that already squeezed hot tears into his eyes, Koterski went on, “I want to bite into him as if he was the crispest fruit.”

The seat sank under Adam, and he plummeted with it, all the way to the pit of hell where the man he’d put so much trust in would spend an eternity taunting him for his stupidity and naïveté.

He wasn’t even a real priest anymore, incapable of offering true absolution after what he’d done last night. He was a fraud, but so was Emil.

Koterski took a deep breath that trembled through the wooden lattice keeping them separated. “And the worst thing is, Father, that while I feel sorry for him now that his house burned down, I also have these dark thoughts. That he deserved it. I try to stay virtuous, but he tainted my thoughts. Every time I wish to see him hurt, I end up regretting it, like I’m trapped in this vicious circle of anger and lust. How can one man be both so vile and so alluring?”

Adam bit the insides of his cheeks, struggling to control his breath when Koterski gradually revealed a side of Emil Adam hadn’t expected. His infidelity hurt a thousand times more than the fact that he might have put a spell on Adam too, ultimately causing the traumatic possession. Adam was not special, and his company, the summer that had been so life-changing for Adam, meant very little to Emil. He’d been just another conquest. Another notch on the bedpost, appeased by confessions of love and gentle touch.

“You should stay away from him, then.”

“I try, Father, I really do, but there’s something evil going on with that man. I find myself waking up at his door some nights ever since I found this weird doll under my bed. I swear he’s behind it!”

Icicles sank into Adam’s flesh, but he kept his cool as best he could. “We are all responsible for our lives and our relationship with God and others. Try doing something you enjoy whenever those thoughts come back,” Adam said automatically and cringed at how much his own advice infuriated him. No amount of television, Internet, or books could possibly purge his mind of the feelings he harbored for Emil, the first and only man he’d let into his heart and body. Even if Emil had lied, Adam’s feelings for him were true, and that made everything all the more terrible.

Tags: K.A. Merikan Folk Lore Paranormal
Source: readsnovelonline.net