“Keep your word,” he said, backing away until he hit the door. “I need to go.”

Emil rose and approached Adam with hands in his pockets. “Take the shortcut. Looks like it’s gonna rain. Strange.”

As if Adam’s heart wasn’t rattling enough already. He barely choked out a goodbye and ran.

He burst out of the house to harsh wind that tried to force him back into Emil’s home, but he sped up, dedicating all his strength to trudging on. He broke into a jog as soon as he left Emil’s property behind, straight toward the heavy layers of clouds that turned the day into evening, despite it being still early.

He tried to convince himself that Emil had tried to prank him, like he had before, but Adam’s heart knew. It knew something wasn’t quite right. Lightning tore through the sky ahead, beyond the church that appeared so small in the face of the angry sky. He tried to tell himself the rhythmic thud behind him was thunder, but his heart wouldn’t be fooled.

It was hoof beats.

He sped up without looking back.

Chapter 8 - Adam

Adam picked up the bowl Mrs. Janina had hidden behind the besom and tossed its contents into the trash. The stuffed magpie, which had been moved to the tool shed, went there as well. The world spun around Adam as he stormed through the parsonage on a frantic search for items that were pagan in nature. There was a thin line between folklore and idolatry, and Adam had looked the other way far too long.

There were two more of those damn offerings of fresh produce cut up as if they’d been lovingly prepared for a child. Such blasphemy, and on church grounds at that!

Each window was like a portal to hell, so he obscured them all with curtains, expecting to hear that insistent clomping again. His mind kept telling him that Emil had freaked him out, that the hoof beats following him all the way to the parsonage must have been an auditory hallucination, brought upon by a suggestive atmosphere and too much advocaat, but his heart disagreed, and he found himself walking around the empty building with holy water and blessing each dark room.

He wished the pastor wasn’t away for the evening. His down-to-earth attitude would have helped Adam regain his composure, but the quiet walls offered no comfort, and he didn’t feel any less lost or confused by the time he put the holy water back into the cupboard.

Shame crept under his skin when he realized he’d used a religious rite to deal with what surely was just an anxiety attack. For so many years, Adam had struggled with desires he didn’t dare speak of, but Emil had seen right through him and used that knowledge to unsettle Adam’s spiritual equilibrium as if it were a game.

But as immoral as Emil’s behavior was, responsibility still lay in Adam’s choices, and he kept failing in his conviction of staying chaste in body and mind. What force had compelled him to participate in a divination, even if it was done for fun? He must have been out of his mind to agree to something that invited unseen powers into this world, something so much worse than the painful need for Emil’s flesh that Adam had wrestled with since he first came to Dybukowo.

Shadows followed him with invisible eyes, and he cursed his decision not to install Internet at his own cost. If he only had social media to scroll through, he could so easily switch off from the outside world and forget Emil’s grip. Forget how the day had turned into night within the span of just five minutes.

He couldn’t bear reading right now, and in a moment of absolute weakness, he left his bedroom and stormed to the rooms at the front of the house, wanting nothing more than to hear his Mom’s voice. He picked up the handset of the only working telephone on the premises and rested his hand on the cool side table, soothed by the steady beep in his ear. Adam used to know his home number by heart, but years of relying on the contact list in his cell phone had muddled his memory. As a consequence, he accidentally called a perfect stranger first, but as he started typing in the number he believed to be correct, the signal died.

Adam froze, his gaze meeting that of Jesus, who watched him from a picture on the wall. Adam’s head pulsed, as if his blood vessels were about to burst from shame, but when all lights went out, he dropped the handset as if it were a piece of hot iron.

Each piece of furniture was a creeping monster about to get him, and he frantically backed into the wall. His heart froze when a door opened somewhere in the house, but before he could have stopped breathing altogether, Mrs. Janina’s voice became the beacon of normality in a world of demons disguised as everyday items.

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