The dream did not feel like a dream. It felt like a translation, as if his soul had been pulled from its mortal casing and deposited into a terrible truth. One moment, there was the blankness of exhausted sleep ,the next, he was standing in an endless void, a plane of existence composed of a white, transparent fire. It was a silence that roared, a cold heat that scoured without consuming, a place of profound and terrifying purification.
And there, right in front of him, was a man.
Father Bernard didn't recognise him, and he was absolutely sure they had never met. Yet, the feeling that they knew each other was a tangible force, lingering in the heated atmosphere, a sensation a hundred times more potent than the eerie familiarity he had felt in the cemetery. The mans eyes were completely black, like obsidian mirrors reflecting nothing, and from them, from the very core of his being, spewed the mysterious, silent fire. The man turned his head, his gaze locking with Bernard's. Upon seeing the priest, his lips curved into a smile. It was a smile of welcome, and grimace of shared.
His eyes, straining, adjusted to the overwhelming radiance. He saw they were not alone. There were countless others, a multitude of souls suspended in the endless void, each enduring a unique and terrible refinement. Each figure had a part of their body blackened a hand, a heart, a tongue, a mind and that specific, blackened part was the source of the transparent flames that wreathed them. It was a panorama of anguish, a gallery of silent, screaming icons.
Yet, within this world of torment, there existed a pervasive, paradoxical joy. It was not a human emotion, not something the mind could express or logic could contain. It was a spiritual atmosphere, a profound, resonant certainty that the pain was not punitive, but purgative. Agony and ecstasy coexisted, intertwined like the flames themselves, one scourging the dross of the soul, the other celebrating its impending purity.
A small, warm hand slipped into his. He jerked his gaze down to find a young girl beside him, her appearance as sudden as a thought. Her eyes, wide and clear, were filled with tears that traced clean paths through the luminous air. Her hand was warm, impossibly, comfortingly so in this place of searing fire. She looked up at him, sobbing, but her sobs were not of sorrow.
"Thank you," she whispered, her voice a bell like chime that cut through the oppressive silence. "Thank you."
Before he could form a question, before he could even grasp the reason for her gratitude, she began to fade, her form dissolving not into darkness, but into a light more brilliant than the fire around them. From the point of her departure, a new light emerged the radiance of twelve impossibly bright stars, arranged in a silent, cosmic crown. Their light was blinding, absolute, and it did not illuminate so much as it consume him. It rushed toward him, filling his vision, his mind, his soul, until there was nothing else.
He woke up gasping, his body jolting upright as if he had fallen from a great height. The familiar shadows of his bedroom seemed alien and menacing, the darkness a thick, velvety blackness exaggerated by the phantom glare still seared onto his retinas. His heart was a frantic, trapped bird beating against the cage of his ribs. Each pounding thud was a painful, percussive shock that radiated outwards, making his sternum ache with a deep, internal bruising. It felt like his chest was being stitched with fire from the inside out.
The pills, he thought. He remembered the bottle given to him earlier, For the pain, he'd said. When it gets bad.
Fumbling in the darkness, his hand knocked against the dresser, finding the familiar, rattling bottle. He didn't bother with water. He tore open the child-proof cap and dry-swallowed a single, chalky pill, the action feeling both desperate and pathetic. He then grabbed his sternum, his fingers pressing into the bone as if he could physically rip out this failed engine of a heart. Well, it deserved some compliment it kept him alive for 49 years. But now, it felt like a rusty, misfiring piston, threatening to shake his entire frame apart.
The next fifteen minutes were the longest wait for relief of his whole life. He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, waiting. He was waiting for the chemical tide to wash away the phantom fire in his chest and the very real, clinging terror of the dream. When the relief finally came, it was a subtle numbing, a slow retreat of the adrenaline from his limbs, leaving behind a profound and hollow exhaustion. He felt as if he had run a marathon through a desert of fire.
He paced the short length of his room, the wooden floorboards cold beneath his bare feet. The adrenaline was gone, but a corrosive fatigue had taken its place. Sleep was a luxury he desperately needed, but his body, thrumming with residual terror, now treated it as a threat. He lay back down, but could not keep his eyes closed for longer than ten minutes. The endless void of white transparent fire kept playing over and over in his mind, a celestial horror show on a relentless loop. The more he thought about it, the more frustrated and terrified he became. He was a man of faith, a shepherd of souls, and yet this vision felt like a raw, spiritual truth that bypassed all his learned defenses and struck directly at the primal core of his being.
Then, the light of dawn began to seep through the window and into his eyes. It was a grey, indifferent light that did nothing to dispel the shadows in his mind. He was tired and frail, and dawn had betrayed him; he wasn't able to get a good night's rest.
His eyes were dry and red, and his mind was in turmoil. He needed an anchor, a tether to the mundane rituals of his life. He picked up his phone, its screen glaring in the dim room, and called a fellow priest in a parish near by.
"Michael," he said, his voice a dry rasp. "It's Bernard. Could you… would you be able to cover my Masses today? For the parishioners."
There was a pause on the other end, but to Bernard's immense gratitude, no questions came. "Of course, Bernard. Consider it done. Get some rest."
"Thank you," Bernard whispered, the words heavy with unspoken gratitude. He hung up before his composure could crack.
Next, he scrolled through his contacts, his thumb hovering over a name. Beatrice. A widow, a pillar of the parish, kind and fiercely discreet. He pressed call.
The phone rang only once. "Good morning, Father," her voice was warm, laced with the gentle cadence of a lifelong faith.
"Good morning, Mama Beatrice," he began, his voice low and cracking, each word an effort. "Please, could you send Sarah over to the rectory today? I need her to cook something I can heat up and eat later. I'm… I'm not doing too well."
The pause that followed was filled with a mother's intuitive concern. He could almost hear her thoughts, the worry knitting her brow. "Of course, Father. No problem at all. I'll send her over this afternoon. You rest up now, you hear?"
"Thank you, ma'am. God bless you."
"No problem, Fr. Rest up."
He ended the call, the simple act of arranging practical help leaving him even more drained. He lay back down, begging his body for just an hour of dreamless sleep. But his nervous system was a plucked wire, humming with a terrified vigilance. He would drift for a few minutes, only to jerk violently awake at the creak of the old rectory's timbers or the distant chirp of a sparrow, his body terrified of the luxury it so desperately craved.
He was floating in this miserable state between waking and nightmare when a soft, tentative knock came at the front door. Sunlight was now streaming brightly through his window. Hours had passed.
"Good morning, Father," a faint, familiar voice called from the porch.
He dragged himself from the bed, his head pounding a dull, rhythmic ache. He shuffled to the door, the old oak groaning in protest as he pulled it open. Sarah stood there, a small basket over her arm, her young face a mixture of concern and respectful duty.
"Good morning, Father," she repeated softly. "My mom asked me to come and assist you today."
He simply nodded, his voice lost to the fatigue and the lingering dread. He stepped aside, letting her in without a second thought, the scent of fresh bread from her basket a small, earthly blessing in the haunted silence of the rectory. Then, without a word, he turned and retreated back toward his room, toward the bed that promised no peace, and the sleep that had become a new kind of torment.