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SHE COMES TO PRAY EVERY DAY NOW.  Though when the weather gets cold, like it will inevitably, I fear her visits will become less frequent.  When the ground becomes impenetrable to the farmer’s spade, his knuckles aching with wintry solidity, blood eases its way down fingers stiffened by the wind’s frigid touch, and is frozen to wrists no longer able to bend, forming a stream of crimson trickling down a forearm well-built from years of labor, as if trying to mimic the structured flow of the veins within.  It is this time that people are few to worship in the house of the Lord, willfully held captive in the warmth of their own homes, a fire blazing in the stove laden several inches deep with soot and ashes from such continuous use.  There they stay—warm and comfortable—and pray for forgiveness.
          I dare not ask her name, dare not noticeably discern her from the others who come to pray in the daytime.  My uncle, Adrian Corbin, my overseer, although in the latter portion of his days, still holds fast to the ordinance of the Church as he has always in the times that I can recall, thus the crossing of the boundaries of my position is looked down upon with an accusatory and unmerciful eye.  Nevertheless, surely eyeing her from a distance, from the balcony, cannot be in any way punishable, unless observing her from afar is some sort of a buried and forbidden precept, a fabled Eleventh Commandment.  And I indulge myself in her beauty from across the cavernous halls and atop the balcony.
          Some day I may find the courage to behold her beauty up close, concealing myself behind one of the many solid stone columns or pillars that seem to reach forever into the sky, but in fact are only high enough to support the beautifully painted ceiling.
          This very ceiling, seemingly high enough to be called the upper limit of the heavens, is painted so intricately, depicting the graciousness of God and all that He has touched with His gracious hand which forms beauty with every gentle movement and every caressing touch.  Above the congregation, the eyes of the saints and the Lord Himself look down upon all from a portrayed beautiful view of the heavens, and glowing with an ethereal and misty light they illuminate the reverberant church with many hues of blue, white, and gold—serenity being accompanied and confirmed by the looming presence of open arms, open minds, open hearts.
          From above they watch over all whom come to pray and worship, seeking for and insisting only the acknowledgement and divulgence of the sins that possess the souls of the people.
          And now every day what they seek and insist from on high is given to them by the lady fair who possesses my own soul with the intoxication of a forbidden love.
          Occasionally she started coming to worship every Sabbath, then increased her comings to that of four days a week, then five, and now every day I am privileged to behold her beauty, although from afar.  And I am curious as to why she has increased her comings.  Is there something that she is seeking? . . .  Or is it a matter of something that she has found?
          As a young priest this should be my concern, but I find it is of little to no concern at all, to me.  As a follower in the footsteps of both my uncle, Corbin, and my head elder, Killian Mallory, I am greatly compelled and urged by them to choose the path exactly as they chose it.
          Corbin, though in the earlier part of his latter days, is still a significant number of years younger than Killian Mallory.  Mallory’s age has brought him great wisdom and leadership, and when I was a child, it was Mallory who looked after me when I was lost in the throes and shock of the abrupt and startling death of my parents, who were taken away from me in such a sudden and unanticipated manner, that I admit that, after I was old enough to be told of my parents' passing, it took many years for the fact of my loss to totally penetrate the surface of my bewildered mind and become saturated by disbelief, dejection, and then grievance.  And it was Mallory who, after watching it all happen, took me and embraced me in the comforting folds of the Church.
          I was not witness to my parents’ demise, but Mallory, being their preacher and their comforter and the ambassador, the one whom connects the humble civilians to the grace of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,  through song and praise, was at my mother’s bedside when she was, after many years of struggle, conquered by the disease.  At the bedside, also, was my father, Nicolae, whose name was bestowed unto me at the moment of my birth—it was Mallory who named me; while my grandmother comforted my mother, my father, his head down, his hands folded, in a prayer of thanksgiving, it was my father’s longtime friend and advisor, Killian Mallory, who named me after my father, whom, he said, I looked so much like at birth—neither shed a tear, nor made a sound, just gazed blankly into both our mothers’ eyes, our own two dark irises reflected even the dimmest of  light.
          But no more than a year later, at the bedside, my mother’s earthly light and life gone from her body, my father, Nicolae, whom Mallory said was so overcome and defeated by the anguish of losing his new bride, unsheathed his dagger and buried it in his heart before Mallory could say or do anything to convince him otherwise.
          With my mother deathly ill, I was in my grandmother’s care.  A long week passed after the death of my mother, I am told by Mallory, and with it my grandmother followed her daughter and son-in-law to the grave, giving in to the insistence of old age knocking down her door to life.  I was then left without anyone to raise me, but out of the love of the Church, Killian Mallory took me in and raised me as he would his own.
           Years passed and with them came my meeting of my uncle, Adrian Corbin.  He was housed in a different wing of the church because of his occasional aggressive behavior and therefore I wasn’t aloud to meet him until some years after I was able to speak.  Now he insists his recovery and is allowed to walk the halls of the voluminous church and talk with me his mad thoughts.
           Years of solidarity from being forced into the confines of the Church since early boyhood by my grandfather, long since deceased, who sensed in him a bad omen since his infancy, contributed to his bitterness.  My grandfather’s intuition was fulfilled one day when my uncle, as a young boy, was solely involved in the killing of one of his friends.  Years after the meeting, Mallory told me of how he found Adrian Corbin, a young child then, with blood on the palms of his hands.  Mallory questioned him very suspiciously and very urgently about this.  Corbin refused to answer, until he said under his breath, of how he was in the woods and got in a fight with a rabid, stray dog, which, without provocation, attacked him, the boy having to kill it with his father’s dagger.
             Later that day when the woods were searched to recover the body of the dog and possibly discover any more rabid dogs, concealed in the darkness and mystery of the forest, a small boy, young Corbin’s age, was found hidden under leaves and branches and brush cut free from the ground, with his throat cut from ear to ear, eyes lying several feet from the body, pupils dilated, empty sockets gaping at the sky, eight deep punctures to the chest where the blade penetrated the skin, flesh under his fingernails.
             The boy’s name was Octavius.  It seems as though he died for the seven brothers and sisters whom were born before him, a wound for each and one for himself.  There was no thought that this was an accident; the killing was disturbingly ritualistic.
             Mallory, the earthly bridge to Jesus Christ, of the town, was notified shortly thereafter of the gruesome discovery, but it was my grandfather who seemed to know who the killer was after word had circulated through the grapevine, through the blasphemous gossipers of the town, and it was my grandfather who spoke: “Check my son!  Adrian!  Check my son!”
              It was Killian Mallory, a man of peace and of the Church, who was appointed to the task of confronting the boy.  “Adrian,” such a steady and melodic voice was that of the preacher, so young at the time.  “Adrian you must tell me and you must tell me the truth.  God is watching now, his eyes are never turned from you or me, or anyone.  He watches all and never blinks, never even for a second.  Do you believe me when I say this, Adrian?”
              “Yes, Father,” replied Adrian with a nearly undetectable and clever smile, “I believe you.  God is always watching.  He is watching us right now.”
              “Yes, Adrian, that is true.  But you must tell the truth so that God can never catch you in a lie.  If you get caught in a lie then that is a sin.  You know this.  Don’t you?”
               “Yes, Father,” his grin is becoming more noticeable, “Satin created lies.  Satin also created sin.”
               “That is true, my child.  But since God knows all and sees all he is watching us right now, as we speak.  No matter how high you climb, how far you go, you can never escape the ever watching eye of the Lord, our God.”  The priest waits for a reply.  He gets none.  All melody and steadiness is lost in the preacher’s voice.  There is no more serenity, and with his voice now a shaking roar, he loses his compassion for the boy: “Do you know what I am saying to you?!  No matter how high you climb, no matter how far you go, you can never escape the ever watching, all seeing eye and the never failing, unyielding wrath of the Lord, your God!  If I never can know what you did, believe me, son, the Lord will still always know and always see, and you will have a seat in hell on the right side of Lucifer!”
               The preacher crosses himself: Father, Son, Holy—and with a sudden thought, with his left holy hand, he takes an unrelenting grip on the boy’s small wrist, and with the cloth  that is held with a firm grasp in his other hand, he jerks the boy’s sleeve up above his elbow, to reveal four parallel scratches, some fading and some becoming more bold from the different degrees of pressure, but all traced with the telltale burgundy that is the mark of dried and clotted blood. “He was unholy,” replied Adrian, under his breath, as if, by this simple answer, all would be understood and forgotten.  When he glanced up in to Mallory’s eyes that looked back at him with the entire and unrelenting wrath of God at his own fingertips, Adrian knew that what he had done was not acceptable, at least to the others, “Let go of me!  He was unholy!  He was unholy!”
               Raphael, Adrian’s Father, knew the truth before he saw it and somewhere in his heart Mallory knew it too.  When the dagger was taken from the boy it was clean, so it was assumed that after the killing, little Adrian had washed it clean in the bay of the Black Sea nearby.
                I didn’t believe what Mallory told me at first, but thinking back on the years how hysterical Adrian Corbin was, if I witnessed the even it would not surprise me to find out that Adrian was indeed the killer.  Like my father, my name has been Nicolae, but telling me how I, too, just like himself, have been taken hold of by the Church since boyhood, he gave me a second name: Carcer -- prisoner.