I am a priest, and people have been coming to confession 3:07 a.m.

I’ve been the only priest at St. Agnes for nearly one year. It’s a small gray-stone church. The kind that looks like it grew out of the ground. The town around it used to make steel. Now it mostly makes problems.

I put a line in the bulletin when I first got here.    

“Confessions anytime, just enter the confessional and put light on, I will be there in a few minutes.”

 I meant it. Still mean it. 

So when the confessional light clicked on and the old buzzer woke me up at 3:07 a.m. last Monday, it didn’t seem weird. I figured it was somebody in trouble, maybe one of the old widows who couldn’t sleep. I pulled my stole on, crossed the nave in the dark, and slid open the screen.

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned.”

Dorothy Kowalski’s voice. The soft, quavery Midwest lilt.

“I’m here to tell you sins I missed before, father.”

This is a strange way to start your confession when you confess just few weeks before. But I just listened.

“Since my husband Harold got on pension my life has become a nightmare. Seeing him every morning in the house reading newspapers and drinking coffee without a care becomes a hell for me. I liked him when he was away all the time. But there was no space for us in that house 24/7. He always said my cooking tasted like nothing, so I thought, well. Why not give him something to complain about. At first it was just my urine. In his coffee and tee. Every morning while he read the news. Then I moved to rat poison. Little pinches in the meatloaf. 

Nobody suspected nothing. I held his hand the whole time he was dying and I kept thinking, finally. Last month I went to the grave and I said, ‘I win, you miserable bastard.’ Out loud. I said it out loud and I mean it. It is so much better now, just me and my dogs.”

This confession took me by surprise, cannot believe it.

I’d seen Dorothy the day before. She always spoke nice about her dead husband. This must be a kind of bad joke. When I spoke back I didn’t get any response. I didn’t hear when she exited the confessional, but there was nobody anymore.

I got back into my bed, but could not close my eyes that night. 

Night Two. The same buzzing woke me up. My table clock says again 3:07. I didn’t like it, this felt like a sick prank.

I pulled on my stole and crossed the nave, the old floorboards creaking under my weight like they were complaining. The confessional light glowed  in the darkness.

I slid open the screen.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

It was Tommy Ruiz’s voice, nineteen years old, polite, always refusing anything more than ten dollars for mowing the lawn no matter how long it took.

“I’ve been stealing from the poor box every Sunday after Mass. I wait until the church empties, then I take whatever’s there. After that  I go behind the altar. On the carpet where the kids kneel for First Communion. I film myself. I need to do it, Father. If I don’t, the big cross on the wall will lose her meaning. The cross needs me to do it.”

His voice stayed calm the whole time. Almost bored.

 “Tommy,  you have to stop this. There’s no absolution without true contrition. You need to….”

He cut me off with a soft laugh.

 “I’m not asking for forgiveness, Father. I’m just telling you. Because you said anytime. And the light was on.”

Then silence.I waited a long moment.

 “Tommy?”

No answer. No sound of the door opening, no footsteps on the floor. When I finally stepped out of my side and checked the other booth, it was empty. The church felt colder than it should.

I didn’t sleep again that night. I kept seeing Tommy’s face, and wondering how someone so quiet could carry something so ugly.

It crossed my mind that day to lock the church and to cut off the buzzer. But I didn’t. I took a few naps during the day in my office, and good I did.

The buzzer came at 3:07 a.m. sharp. By now I was half-expecting it. I lay there for almost a minute, staring at the ceiling, before forcing myself up. My stole felt heavier than usual.

The voice this time belonged to Margaret Hensley, one of our most devoted parishioners. She is only thirty-seven, but she has the gentle, slightly nasal tone of someone much older.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

 

Her voice was calm and quiet, but I was horrified already. Chills on my spine and cold air hit my face.

“Nineteen years ago I had a daughter. Nobody knew. I was eighteen, scared, and the father was a boy who left town soon after. I carried her to term in secret, gave birth alone in the basement of my parents house. Then I wrapped her in a plastic bag and buried her under the rose bushes in the backyard. When I got married and moved with my husband, I dug her out and took her with me. She is under my window. Every spring I plant new roses there. They bloom so beautifully, Father. Redder than blood. I visit her every night and tell her how sorry I am. But I’m not. She would have ruined everything.”

I see those roses every time I pass her street, it is impossible not to. She’d beamed with pride, talking about how well they grew. Her babies!

I tried to speak, but my mouth was dry. These confessions start to affect me so much, they are so dark and sincere.

“I still hear her sometimes Father. Little cooing sounds when the house is quiet. Sometimes she’s crying, but she understands. I was young.”

Then she stopped. 

Same as other nights, no sound of movement when she finished. The booth was empty.

I spent the rest of the night in the pews with every light in the church blazing. 

In the morning I checked the booth. No speakers or something of that kind. Then I checked the cameras. Nobody entered or exited the church during the night, only me. This is not a prank anymore.

Later I drove to the older pastor’s house. He lives a few miles away, in Torin. I explained everything that was happening but no names. He was the pastor there before me for 42 years.

“When I gave you the key to the church I told you two thing. Close the church after 21:00 and don’t enter the crypt at night.”

“I know father, It was my way to make people more confident to come to church. The door into God’s house should never be locked.”

“Not on that one son. You open the door to something that should not be in.”

He was pretty aggravated by the events.

“What do you think is happening there Father? 

The old pastor leaned back in his creaky armchair. For a long moment he just stared at the floor, jaw working silently, as if tasting something bitter.

Finally he spoke, voice low and rough from decades of sermons and whiskey.

“Son,  I never told you the full reason I left St. Agnes after forty-two years. Thought maybe if I kept quiet, it would stay quiet too.

Those lights, the buzzer at 3:07, they’ve been going off since the 50s, long before my time. Different priests, same hour. Always the same pattern, three, four nights. Then a few weeks or months nothing.

The voices ain’t liars. They’re worse. The ones who smiled at potlucks, taught Sunday school, held hands at funerals  while carrying graves in their hearts. The church didn’t just grow out of that ground, boy. It was built on it. Steel mills brought the money, but from deep into those mines something else came out. And sin that heavy don’t just vanish when the sinner dies.

You opened the door. You invited them to speak. And now they’re confessing. They don’t want forgiveness. They want a witness. They want you to know how really evil and wicked we all are. They want you to see that there is no difference between demons and us.

Lock the doors at nine like I told you. Turn off that damn buzzer. And whatever you do,  do not go into the crypt at night. You don’t know what is waiting for you down there.”

 

“But what is so bad down the crypt?” 

He looked up, eyes tired.

“I don’t know son. I was just smart enough to break only one rule. You still have time to leave. I stayed until the voices started sounding like people I buried with my own hands. Don’t make my mistake.”

I drove back to St. Agnes in silence. His warning echoed with every mile: Lock the doors at nine. Turn off that damn buzzer. And whatever you do, do not enter the crypt at night.

By 8:45 I was moving through the church like a man putting his house in order before a storm. I killed the lights one by one, locked the big wooden doors. The buzzer, I hesitated only a second then reached behind the panel and flipped the switch. The little red indicator light died. Silence swallowed the nave.

I told myself it was over. Three nights. Whatever walked these hours had made its point.

Sleep came hard, but it came. Until 3:07 a.m.

The buzzer sounded.

I sat bolt upright, heart hammering against my ribs. The switch was off. Yet the sound cut through the dark exactly as before. 

I’m just a  fool who thought the darkness would behave if I left the light on. And tonight I’m scared.

I put on my clothes, took my crucifix, and walked the nave.

Please pray.

Pray for me.

Pray for  St. Agnes.