God forgive me  I think that I baptised the Devil last night.
Channel: Scary Stories
Date: 2022-11-22

God forgive me: I think that I baptised the Devil last night.

It was late when he came to me; I'm not sure of the time, only that I was weary, and keen to find my bed. The church floors had been swept, all the candles put out, and there was nothing left to do but lock the doors and go home, at long last.


Truthfully, I was glad of it. Some of these autumn nights are of a dank, humid condition, and yet the stone walls render them cold, and bitterly so.


Shivering, I pushed the doors apart to leave, but as I did so a hand came up between them— at least, I think it was a hand, for even at close quarters I saw it indistinctly, like the shadows that move only at the periphery of vision.


"No," a voice said, in a soft, musical cadence that reminded me of Welsh, yet wasn't; somehow I knew that without comprehending how, or why. "No, Father, don't close up yet. I wish to be baptised."


For a moment I was rigid with a helpless terror, for as I looked at the hand it seemed evermore a silhouette that seethed with formless motion.


I felt in my bones that it was evil, yet surely evil could not touch this door. Could not come close.


In a fragile stutter I asked, "Who— who are you?"


"A sinner," the voice replied, "yearning to be made clean again, like all others that come here. Why do you ask this of me?"


I knew better than to admit my fear, and so I said, in as brisk a tone as I could muster, "I was just about to leave for the night. Couldn't you possibly come back tomorrow?"


"I'm desperate, Father," the shadow replied, and its hand parted the doors further still as if the heavy oak weight naught. "I want to go to Heaven. Why won't you help me?"


Desperate, it said, but I heard nothing in its voice but an awful breed of humour.


My stare discerned a face, out there, embedded in the night, the hollow smears of eyes and mouth like holes in a dim fog.


Horror compelled me into stillness again. I only stood, regarding the thing in quivering silence.


Until that moment I'd always believed the supernatural visitations detailed in the bible to be solely metaphor, ciphers of God's great lesson. That I'd been so starkly wrong appalled me, and it was only the frantic thought that this was some test of faith that prevented me from fainting listlessly away against the wall.


"Will you turn me from your door?" asked the shadow, quietly. 


Its mouth didn't move as it spoke, holding a formless grin. It put me in mind of the paper angels local children decorate their classrooms with at Christmas, frail chains with snipped-out features, flat and quite without dimension. 


"Are— are you a child of God?" I stammered, and the figure laughed.


I wish I could forget that sound: soft, and harsh at once, it was, a blighted winter of mirth.


It sickened me.


"A child of God," the shadow repeated. "Yes, Father. I am."


It paused, and it occured to me that perhaps the quickest way to be rid of this creature was to do as it had asked.


"Come in," I said, stumbling back from the doorway. "I'll baptise you. But then you have to leave, do you understand?"


"Of course. Both of us have our homes to return to."


The shadow slipped between the doors into the chill gloom of the church, becoming almost one with it, but for the sense of a far greater darkness within it.


It seemed I couldn't look directly at the creature as it followed me, or else my own self-preservation kept me from such foolishness. I only saw its edges flutter like cinders about some fire, and still I hoped it to be an illusion, poised to fall away when I touched the Holy Water to its forehead.


"Here," I said, to the shadow. "Come to the font. I'll lead you back to the Lord."


"I'm sure you will, Father," the figure replied, almost merrily. "I'm sure you will."


I can barely describe the particular dread that came over me as I stood beside the creature, the fear such as when one wakes in the night to some figment of half-dream stooping over one's mantle. It wasn't that I expected the spirit to injure me, or take my life—I had the sense that it would not, but that the ease with which it might do so amused the being greatly.


I wondered what it meant by toying with me so, dandling my terror as it might some hapless infant.


"Wouldn't you like someone to witness?" I asked, my eyes turned ahead, to the font, like a soldier trained to hold his form regardless of distraction. "There's no one I can call at this time, so—"


"Oh, I have my witnesses," assured the creature, and at once I seemed aware of every shape and shadow about the room, each of them tendrilous and vivid with malign.


My own church had become a trap, a prison whose many inmates roamed free at the beckon of the thing that stood beside me.


With a juddering hand I reached into the font and raised a dripping palmful of holy water. How cold it was, so cold it was like the sear of fire, numbing me to the elbow in its claim.


I raised my arm towards the figure vaguely, not wanting to look at