Father Gaetano's Puppet Catechism - By Christopher Golden Page 0,44

as he studied her. “No? You don’t even know what I was—”

He still held his mug in both hands, and now she covered them with her own. Her touch silenced him.

“Do you think I’m blind?” she asked, her voice a sigh. “Do you think I don’t feel, that I’m carved from stone? I have promised myself to God, taken vows to my Lord and to my order. If you speak the things that are in your heart, I fear you may destroy us both.”

She sat back, withdrawing her touch, and his hands felt cold without hers upon them.

“Hold your tongue, Father,” she said. “For God’s sake, and for mine, if not for your own. Hold your tongue.”

Her sadness only made her more beautiful. The conflict in her eyes broke his heart, even as he steeled himself against such feelings. He might have been willing to compromise himself, to destroy the life he had made and the dreams that his mother had had for him, but he would not be so selfish as to do the same to her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I feel I ought to be,” she said, “and yet I can’t bring myself to regret feeling this way. It’s innocent enough. Human enough. And I will cherish the memory of it. Anything more would be…”

She tilted her head, looking to him for something—understanding, perhaps.

“Yes,” he said, and that was all. He felt somehow deflated, his chest hollow. Tomorrow or the next day, he suspected he would feel differently, that he could bolster his spirits with faith and let God fill the empty spaces inside of him.

But not tonight.

“A strange conversation to be having in the small hours of the morning, in the aftermath of something so … incredible,” she said.

“Insidious,” he replied. “Evil or not, it is insidious.”

“I have always believed in the power of God, and I have felt the influence of evil in the world around us, but I never thought that magic—the sort that could be wielded by men—existed outside of storybooks.”

Father Gaetano sipped his coffee. It had turned cold and bitter.

“Funny,” he said. “I’ve always been convinced that tales from storybooks exist to warn us, to put us on our guard against the horrors that can result from man attempting to tap into powers we are not meant to hold, or peer into shadows we should never behold.”

“It all seems so surreal,” Sister Teresa said.

Father Gaetano gave that a moment’s thought. “Everything about this night seems surreal.”

Sister Teresa slid her chair back and went to grab the coffee pot, but she paused at the counter and looked back at him.

“Do you think Sebastiano is sleeping yet?” she asked. “It makes me uneasy, knowing those things are here in the building.”

“He may have had a difficult time dozing,” Father Gaetano said. “I know I would have. Have another cup if you’d like, and then I’ll go down and stoke the furnace with those damned puppets.”

She held the coffee pot toward him. “And you? Another?”

Father Gaetano still had the cold, bitter taste in his mouth. He slid his cup away from him.

“No, thank you. I’ve had enough. But I’ll keep you company for a few more minutes,” he said as he tapped a cigarette from the pack that Sister Franca had given him. He put it to his lips, lit a match, and fired the tip of the cigarette, then stared at the burning match as he drew in his first lungful of smoke.

“Then I’ll go down and put them in the furnace, and hope that they don’t scream while they burn.”

18

SEBASTIANO SLID HIS HAND along the wall at the top of the basement steps until he found a switch that turned on a single, dim yellow bulb that hung in a cage overhead. The bulb crackled a bit and then fell silent as the boy debated whether to leave the door open or pull it shut. Closed, it would arouse no suspicions. But if he left it open he would not feel quite so alone down there.

He left it open just a few inches and started down, taking the first few steps gingerly, and then picking up his pace. The cellar below him was dark; there was nobody to hear him if he made the stairs creak.

But wasn’t there?

No. They’re in the box. They’re sleeping, he told himself, just so he would keep going. And even if the puppets could hear him, they would know he meant them no harm. All he wanted was Pagliaccio.

As he