and just did what was expected of him.
“Does anyone else know?” he asked once again as the car sped down the muddy road between two fields, leaving the safety of the church behind.
Mrs. Janina glanced over her shoulder. “There’s four of us believers. But don’t worry, we’ll keep your secret, Father.”
Adam didn’t trust either of them to keep the gossip to themselves, but was now too far down this rabbit hole to protest, and watched Mrs. Golonko drive him off somewhere where all three of them would participate in a pagan ritual. With her big-brand bags, expensive clothes, and practical nature, she was the last person he’d have expected to be dabbling in the occult, yet here they all were.
As the SUV trembled on the uneven road, penetrating darkness with the sickly glow of its high-beam lights, Adam recognized faces and hands in the twisted shapes of branches ahead. He considered calling the whole thing off, but a shiver went down his spine as if an invisible finger traced his back when he inhaled to voice his thoughts.
“Can’t wait for all this to be over,” Mrs. Golonko said as if she were reading Adam’s mind.
Mrs. Janina scoffed. “It’s always the same with you. Maybe Chort grants you more patience when he’s back with us.”
Adam’s breath caught when he heard the demon’s name again. “The thing we’re supposed to do… what does it involve, exactly?”
He saw Mrs. Golonko’s eyes roll in the rear view mirror. “It’s better seen than described. But it has to happen tonight. It’s Fore—”
“I already told him.” Mrs. Janina complained. “It will be okay, Father Adam. We will get him out of you in no time.”
Adam swallowed hard, his palms sweating when he spotted the glimmer of water in the distance. The car slowed down and continued along the little lake where the Kupala Night celebrations had taken place. The glow of the headlights penetrated the line of the forest, slithering through the lattice of trunks and branches. Shadows crept behind the trees, faceless strangers eager to welcome Adam within their midst.
“Is this something that happens often? My mother… she told me she’d seen strange things when she visited here many years ago.”
Mrs. Janina shook her head. “Dybukowo is a perfectly normal village.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Mrs. Golonko mumbled.
“All I’m saying is that you’re safe, Father, as long as you follow instructions.”
That didn’t answer any of Adam’s questions, but he remained silent until the car came to a halt at the edge of the woods.
He took a deep breath, too stiff to move even when Mrs. Janina left the vehicle, deserting him to the company of Mrs. Golonko, who switched on the ceiling light and applied a fresh layer of lipstick. In her knee-length dress and a fur coat, she looked ready for a date, not to perform an ancient ritual in the woods.
He finally moved when she pulled off a pair of high heels with red bottoms and replaced them with black rubber boots. He found out why the moment his shoe sank into mud.
Mrs. Janina didn’t offer him any more time to think things through. As soon as the car locked with a beep, she switched on a large flashlight and led the way into the woods.
The forest whispered to Adam, but he remained mute to its call, hating every second of their trek. Each hooting owl, each snapping branch under his feet, made his insides twist with anticipation. The beam of the flashlight lengthened all shadows and made them crawl on the edges of Adam’s vision while an insistent scratching resonated inside his body, as if something writhed on the underside of his skin, awaiting the right moment to rip itself free.
He couldn’t take this demon back with him to Warsaw.
He needed to get rid of it. Tonight.
In the dark, Adam soon lost the sense of direction, but as he followed the two women, who hurried up a ridge in the vast emptiness of the beech forest, he couldn’t help but feel as if he’d been here before. Damp leaves felt soft and inviting like a red carpet under his feet, even though the silvery trunks and branches crooked like the hands of a witch were something straight out of a horror movie.
Memories of Kupala Night came rushing back in the form of deja vu. Back then, everything had been green and had emitted a fresh fragrance while the current landscape had been stripped of color by fall, but as his gaze caught