Night Visions by Thomas Fahy

Samantha finds this comforting. As the choir starts singing William Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus, she notices an elderly Hispanic woman sitting at the end of her row, holding a rosary in her lace-gloved hands and rocking slightly back and forth.
    One Sunday morning with her mother, Samantha remembers, a gray-haired woman walked on her knees from the back of the church to the altar. As she got closer to the front, the organist stopped playing, men and women looked up from their prayers, and the church became still. The priest watched in disbelief, subtly motioning her to stand, but she didn’t. Not until she reached his feet did she stand up and take a seat in the front row.
    Watching the Hispanic woman and thinking about the one who walked the length of the church on her knees, Samantha envies the power of their faith. She longs to feel the kind of comfort that must come with such devotion. She wraps her fingers gently around the frog, closes her eyes, and listens to the voices of the choir as if they’re speaking her own silent prayer.
    Â 
    Truly you have suffered on the cross for mankind…
    May we have tasted of you at the hour of our death…
    O gentle, loving Jesus, Son of Mary, have mercy upon me…
    O gentle, loving Jesus, Son of Mary, have mercy upon me….

Parasomnia
    DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
NOVEMBER 15, 1986
7:20 P.M.
    A woman wrapped in a black leather jacket and scarf sits in a pew at the back of Saint Peter’s Church. Her face appears to shift in the flickering candlelight, and her tired eyes seem to weep without tears. She stares down at the cover of the weekly bulletin. It’s a black-and-white print of Caravaggio’s The Crucifixion of Saint Peter. Peter’s face cries out with fear and anguish as three shadowy men lift and push his cross. Humiliated and wretched, he waits for death.
    Putting down the picture, she walks slowly to the confessional. A choir is rehearsing Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. Violins accompany the somber voices of two women as they sing about a weeping mother who stands beside the cross of her son. “Stabat Mater dolorosa iuxta crucem lacrimosa…” She understands the words without knowing what they mean.
    â€œBless me, Father, for I am a sinner.”
    â€œWe’re all sinners.”
    â€œNot like me.”
    Father Murphy pauses. The music sounds muffled in the confessional. “What do you want to confess?”
    â€œI think I’ve killed two people.”
    â€œExcuse me?”
    â€œI’m not sure. I don’t remember much, but I have visions of things I’ve done.”
    â€œI don’t understand.”
    â€œI can see what I’m about to do and can’t stop it, Father.”
    â€œYou’re wrong.” He leans back, startled. “It can stop right here. If you’ve hurt someone, we’ll get help. We’ll go to the police. Together. You can ask God’s forgiveness—”
    â€œI need sleep more than forgiveness.”
    Father Murphy hears the curtains pulled apart on the other side of the grille, and he opens the confessional door. Quick footsteps. A figure in black darts into the vestibule. He hurries after her.
    The small room is dark and smells of the pine trees outside. To his left, a circular stairway leads up to the balcony, and the shadow of a swaying tree appears through a stained-glass window halfway up the wall. A stack of bulletins has been spilled across the floor, leaving dozens of Saint Peters staring up at him.
    Maybe it was some sort of prank, he thinks, looking around the empty room.
    Suddenly, the music starts again: “Quando corpus morietur.” Father Murphy translates the words as he stoops to pick up the bulletins. “When my body dies…”
    There is a sound behind him. He turns quickly. Nothing. “…let my soul be granted the glory of Paradise.”
    Then a burning in his neck.
    She flings herself at him, driving two knives into