I am fully aware that my words have ceased to have any value within the Christian sector, that when I begin to pronounce the truths that I witnessed with my soul I am branded as a liar, strange, insane, and perhaps depraved; however, hearsay is carried away by the wind, but truths are perennial and oblivious to time. With this as a premise, whoever is willing to listen to the experiences of what was once a young priest optimistic about God, and who, with the passing of time and the reflection of the events that happened, stopped following him, should read carefully, and understand well that my testimony comes from the purest sincerity, that without malice or greater pretension than to leave a record of our real position within the cosmos.
It happened when I was twenty-five years old, in the now somewhat distant November of 1998. I was then wandering in deep Europe, far from the Mediterranean and its hotly bitter climate, staying instead in a modest rented flat in Bucharest, near the Biserica Italiană Church, where I was assisting the ecclesiastical staff in whatever tasks I was required to do; which is common when you are a priest in apprenticeship and quite young.
Now, it is necessary to explain that Father Ranieri was the one who was mostly in charge of the confessionals because even outside of all the Catholic mysticism, he was someone highly qualified in the task without a doubt; he had studied for some indeterminate time the human mind, so that added to the faith proper to his dogmas he was able to guide lost souls to God. That day, however, Ranieri fell ill, which was worrying for a man of his age, who had been in the clergy almost all his life. At that time I was given the task of the confessional, in which I tried to be very careful and maintain the utmost discretion, which I succeeded in doing satisfactorily for some time.
On the Sunday morning on which the events took place, there were predictions of a snowstorm, not too severe, but noticeable and which was going to hamper aspects of the routine that day; the streets were icy, and although my mackintosh and reefer were warm enough to withstand the bitter cold accompanied by its best friend the snow, I could not help feeling a little uneasy about how, apparently spontaneously, such weather had formed. I felt, and sometimes still feel, that it was some kind of precedent for what was to come.
I arrived early, and Father Messineo and I conducted the appropriate mass, with nothing out of the ordinary really. After the collection of alms and some rest, I made my way to the confessional booth at a leisurely pace, pausing to gaze among the careful and curious decorations of the sacred edifice, visually enjoying the display of decorative skill that had gone into its construction by including vaguely Arabic-like elements in its aesthetics. I then opened the door and for what I estimated at the time to be forty minutes, there was nothing new beyond the usual rumors and doubts regarding sexuality which I, frankly, disliked having to help guide due to the mainly phobic nature of our flock.
It was then that one of the daughters of our most active members suddenly entered. I prefer to omit the details concerning her person and call her by the pseudonym of Marta, as I am well aware that she has now fled her family and the country also for entirely respectable reasons concerning safety issues. The important thing is, in short, the very detailed confession she gave me, the nature of which, from the point of view of someone who blindly believes in her faith, made me shudder to the core. Marta told me exactly how her friends, during the Halloween celebration they had been having, were participants in what one of her friends later recognized as an esoteric rite whose origins, having been a scholar on the subject myself, went back to ancient times in the present day, being, in general, an appeal to all kinds of entities of demonic origin.
Initially, I wanted to remain skeptical, however, as despite my faith I had certain conjectures about demons and their supposed invocations. However, during the moments when Marta spoke to me in a brittle voice about how overnight she began to have increasingly strange and cryptic dreams, I couldn’t help but feel that something had approached the girl; something bigger than all of us and whose presence made my skin crawl in a completely different way than the cold did.
My final advice was, however, one that I partly regretted, as it prolonged the girl’s sickness and how she felt that those night visions would last forever. Visions of pentagrams, solid monoliths reaching up to the heavens, plagued by as many eyes as Metatron has, and the simplest but most disturbing at the same time; her falling from the skies, while in the distance a desolate chorus sounded diffuse.
As the weeks went by and Marta’s absence from the masses, I began to reflect on the matter and ended up considering the idea of going through some old books in the church’s archives. I looked up some rites performed in Transylvania by noble families of mysterious and mostly contradictory roots and origins, and in one concerning a family long forgotten by time and whose records were destroyed after my expulsion from the body, I found a rite with similar characteristics to the one described to me by the young emerald-eyed girl.
It was a rather general rite, yet I realized that those who performed the ritual did such in an absolutely desperate manner; for the aromas of plants were intermingled with each other with a final predominance, however, by the scent of lavender. After that short two-hour session, I decided that I would continue to investigate in case of Marta, even though she had gone to health experts, was still having problems.
After five weeks of not knowing anything and with December already having begun, I had partly given up on the matter. However, when I watched as Marta and her family hurried into the chapel with her father, mother, and herself with noticeable dark circles under their eyes, I knew that this was far from over. The mass seemed to go on forever, almost as if time had frozen and the words of the mass faded more easily. And I swear that, from moment to moment, I thought I heard whispers as all the mouths of those present were closed.
Once the rite was over, I skipped my break and went straight to the family, distressed at how she seemed to be in a state of constant nervousness. The head of the family told me directly to speak to her and to please do so as discreetly as possible; I agreed, saying that to confirm my vow of silence on the matter to outsiders I should enter the cabin.
As we both entered our respective cubicles, he began to narrate in half-whispers his most recent experiences. As gradually and distantly, within the dream plane, he had begun to make out a figure of thick blackness and piercing gaze; always in the background and out of a direct angle of vision, almost in the distance, watching. The dreams now showed images of ice, of a lake of capital dimensions, completely frozen. The latter made me feel a shiver, provoked both by the description of it and by Bucharest’s own distressing cold.
I stammered a little as I gave him my answer, and no wonder; even after giving myself about seven seconds to process what I could give him in reply, the words hardly managed to slip past my lips. I advised him to say several Our Fathers before bed for a few days. The reality was that this would hardly solve the situation, so I said it was a temporary measure while I carried out the relevant studies to determine more precisely what course of action to take without making fatal mistakes.
Once we left the cubicle, the young woman looked at me with some suspicion, almost embarrassed by everything that was happening, and with a hint of guilt in her eyes. I didn’t say anything to her, I didn’t have to, as the situation was undoubtedly strange, because according to what her mother informed me when I went to her husband, none of the doctors and professionals who had treated her could explained her disorders, which didn’t stop even with the psychiatrists’ best-tested drugs.
Once they left, but not before I gave them a crucifix and some holy water to see if it would calm his psyche, I went to Father Messineo, who knew about the case anecdotally from what I told him. When I arrived at his office in the back rooms of the sacred building itself, he looked at me inquisitively, almost analytically; and then, with some perturbation in his voice, he spoke to me.
“The girl hasn’t improved, has she?”
I shook my head from side to side in token that indeed, she had not improved. Messineo nodded with his breathing somewhat ragged and paced around the room a few times probably pondering what exactly to do in such a hairy situation. He threw a few questions at me, which I answered with what his parents had given me, and with that, he fixed his gaze on me, sighed, and then told me to follow him, which I did carefully.
We walked through some corridors reserved exclusively for Father Messineo and Father Ranieri, for these led to rooms whose objects were of such a sacred character that they could only be touched by them; as well as various knowledge not intended for newly initiated priests like myself.
At a certain point, we came to a wooden gate, which contrasted sharply with the general decoration of the structure. It was very old, the wood itself creaking in a groaning way that gave away how long it had been here. Messineo pointed it out to me, uttering the following words.
“Take what you need, everything you do from here on is unofficial and at your own risk.
My right leg trembled a little at such a statement, however, for the sake of my fellow man and Marta, I decided to nod and simply go inside. I will not mention what knowledge I found there, nor what books were there, however, I can confirm that there was a strange atmosphere in that room, befitting of keeping such ancient tomes and occult knowledge concerning Christian mythology; knowledge that for the common good and that of Father Messineo, I do not intend to address.
After making a careful selection of the materials and having arranged in advance with the family for my visit on the 20th of December, once the date arrived, I walked through the streets of Bucharest in the direction of Jeane Monette Street. The streets were desolate that day, most likely due to the precipitous increase of snowfall in the city; however, I had no time to take notice of how I felt my feet sinking into the abundant layer of snow on the pavement and getting cold in the process, as my mind was on a more serious matter, and that is that ever since I left my house, I heard footsteps behind me.
I looked brazenly behind me several times along the way, but never caught sight of anyone. While this event had a rational explanation initially, and I might have thought it was a mere suggestion, the nature of the following events forced me to think otherwise once the affair was over.
I arrived at the home of those affected just after lunchtime. Initially, silence fell upon us, as I was unable to ignore the terrified look on the mother’s face when she realized that my suitcase contained a large load. The father, with a certain regret and depression palpable in his every movement, looked at me avoiding eye contact, and led me to Marta’s room.
When I entered, I was left alone with her; she was in a feverish but conscious state. I tried to cheer her up with words of calm, and although they had a decent effect, it didn’t take away the fact that it was unsettling to be told that everything would be fine while she began to make strange circles and symbols in graphite on her floor; interspersed in some cases with salt.
Once I had finished lighting the candles, from my suitcase I took out a copy of a fragment of King Solomon’s work; this work, it should be mentioned, is only available to the clergy, and at present, its existence is completely unknown to the general public for not very reassuring reasons that are obvious once read.
And so, after saying the words left by that king, I began to go through the motions; up and down, down and up, and not focusing on the sides, closing my eyes when looking at the ceiling so as not to encounter the purest of Yahweh’s truths. I refuse to detail the process further, as it is not necessary.
It was while he was repentantly carrying out all this, that I began to listen to him; his walk was distinguished by the elegance of the most beautiful, but accompanied by the very sounds that the goat’s legs emitted as he walked. His presence was remarkable, matchless to say the truth, and it was not necessary to look at him to understand your position in the order of things and how you should address him.
It was then that I subtly tried to make out his figure, and my heart felt a void of enormous dread. To my retinas came the image of material darkness itself, and my gaze was met with a white, terrifying stare.
I closed my eyes with surplus strength and finished uttering Solomon’s words to finish what I had started. As detailed in the ritual I was performing, once I finished, I continued to keep my eyes closed and awaited the response of the one who fell from Heaven. The words he spoke, however, made me feel dazed to the point that the fear was partially silenced.
“Only that which punishes you for invoking it improperly should be feared. And it is not below where they are. Open your eyes.”
I was frozen, I felt the temptation run through my entire body all the way to my brain to scream itself out in the face of my terror, which made my heartbeat rise moving the entirety of the adrenaline in my system. And, in a moment of lucidity, I simply decided to open my eyes to look at him, to see what Luzbel was really like.
He was beautiful, with a face whose marble outline was both ambiguous and perfect, his figure marked yet seemingly androgynous, with vaguely reddish hair and a gaze that inspired in me every possible sensation except terror. There was Promethean compassion in his eyes and not a hint of ulterior motives. I watched him, to my shame at the time; being absolutely spellbound. I, a shepherd of the flock, had realized to my horror that there never was any wolf.
I did not need to utter a word, and even if I had needed to, I could not have done so because of the confused state I was in, all fear of suggestion had gone out of me. Nevertheless, he continued to speak.
“I understand the reasons for your presence and don’t think it will take me long to comply. The words have been just right, it was reversed as it should be.”
I moved a little to try to speak to him, and the moment I noticed him, he shook his head.
“You don’t want to, you’ll understand when you should understand, we’ll see each other again sometime..”
And then, everything went dark for a moment; as if the lights of my being went out for a few brief moments as well. It sufficed then only a blink of an eye, and he was gone; the room was just as before, and Martha, on the bed, behind where he had been laying in a state of surprise as well as tears.
“Father, was it God?”
I paused for a moment, breathless; and pondered my answer for a few seconds.
She knows what she ought to know. Neither of us ever set foot in a church again; I because I caught every monstrous implication in all His words, and she because she stopped believing everything I told her and tied up the ends alone.
From that day on I understood that history is written by the winners and that it is not unique to mankind.