TH02 - The Priest of Evil by Matti Joensuu

displayed, but you might guess that the photograph had been taken by the Hubble Telescope.
    All in all, looking around that southern room, it contained everything that an ascetic person needed to live their modest life. That person’s spirituality must surely have been far richer. For without a doubt this nook was someone’s home, a gnome’s perhaps or an earth sprite’s, a cosy little nest of their own.
11. Command
    ‘Faustus dies ,’ he puffed each time he grabbed hold of another rung. He climbed upwards with the agility of an animal: hand, foot, other hand, other foot. This did not present him with the slightest difficulty as he was used to lots of walking. Besides, there was not a gram of excess fat on him; just bones, tough muscles and skin.
    ‘ Faustus dies ,’ he panted for the last time, as his head and shoulders finally appeared above the grille at the top of the shaft. He stopped there for a moment, listening. Or rather, he was taking the scent, as he put it. He could make out the rumble of traffic in the afternoon gloaming, the wail of the wheels of a freight train, and somewhere on the station yard an engine gave him a short signal: hu-huu!
    Nothing closer could be heard, which meant that there was no one on The Brocken or anywhere near it. He clambered up on to the grille and although a dim light still shone through from above, like the dusk of early evening, enough that you could just about see, he did not switch off his head-lamp yet. He stepped up to the right-hand opening, his very own front door, pulled the tarpaulin aside and moved his head slowly in both directions, the lamp’s yellowish light caressing the walls and boxes in the room. He had scented correctly: no one had been inside his home. It would have been a miracle indeed if someone had managed to find it: not only because of its location, but because he had protected it with holy triangles painted in pigeon’s blood.
    He drew the tarpaulin shut behind him, lit the storm lantern and switched off his lamp. Though it had been a long day, the excitement within him had not yet abated. He could not sit still, nor could he lie down on the mattress; he could only pace the floor, back and forth, from the pilesof books to the tarpaulin, then back towards the sleeping bag, all the while the hem of his skirt trailing like a flag torn in harsh winds.
    The swirl was incredible! He had never seen anything like it before. That man’s spirit had contained a phenomenal amount of particles, perhaps even one and a half times as many as other human spirits, and on top of that they had been large, almost the size of sugar crystals. And they had come together to form a swirl that was an unfathomably deep shade of red. In his mind’s eye he could still see it. He could even hear it – it had given off a faint hum before disappearing completely. It had been sucked into the wall of the underground tunnel with such rage and power that rubble had almost flown out from the rock face.
    ‘ Carboratum nexi datum ,’ he sighed and removed the beret pulled down almost to his eyes. He then strode up to his bedside table, reached behind the storm lantern and picked up an aluminium mug containing his teeth, both the upper and the lower dentures. He popped them into his mouth and moved them into place with his tongue. His face changed dramatically. It was no longer the face of a sharp-chinned old biddy, but of someone considerably younger – and of a man. With both hands he flattened his hair back across his head towards his neck and dexterously tied it into a ponytail with a rubber band, making him look even less like the old woman who had just clambered up the rungs of the shaft.
    He stood still and rested his hands thoughtfully on his hips. He had hesitated for a split second, and it had almost proved fateful: the whole sacrifice had very nearly failed. The mouth of the Orange Apostle – indeed, this time it had been Advocatus Mamillus himself – had already sped