The Seance

“You say she wrote up this document at a séance and you wish me to publish it, is that it?”
“If you would be so kind. I need to warn my parishioners about this matter. I realize that this might be received with controversy, but it must be done.”
Aaron Wringard, the printer and publisher of Viceroy Press who published small documents as a hobby winced and looked mildly irritated. “How will you explain this to your Bishop, Father Michaels? Won’t this not sit well with him and the Church in general? Isn’t this against church doctrine? To publish this sort of thing, I mean? Are you sure you want to do this. You realize there may be consequences? I say this only out of concern for you and your position.”
“I realize the consequences and am ready to be responsible for them. I’ve already thought about this extensively and have made up my mind. We’ve experienced marked paranormal phenomena at our church and visitors to the churchyard have experienced things that can’t be explained by men such as I whom are trained in church doctrine, not in the supernatural. This publication is merely a way of reaching out to the community. To warn them of imminent danger should they venture to St Anne’s Cemetary alone. I must send out a warning to them. Here’s the document. I want five thousand copies as soon as you can print them. I and my volunteers will do the rest. I’ll pay whatever the cost may be for it.”
“As you wish, Father. I’ll have them ready in about three days.”
“Alright. See you then.”
Aaron Wringard brushed the length of his black beard with one hand and held up the document with the other. He, then, pulled his spectacles out of his shirt pocket and squinted at the several pages of printed material the good pastor had provided. The following is the text of what he read.
###
A Reading Done by The Medium, Anne Howard
As Transcribed by Father Michaels of St.Anne’s Church.

I hastened towards the crypts that day. Around my neck hung a crucifix; in my pocket rested a vial of Holy Water and a small Bible.
A steady moan droned through the gnarled trees; loud rustlings stirred in the thicket. Ivy sprawled, snake-like, across the wasteland of the tombs. And in the trees nameless birds squeaked and rattled in the forbidding night.
I have said that I hastened onward, but not without making the Sign of our Blessed Savior, Jesus Christ. For there were legends that brooded upon this landscape, legends, which, should they be heard, would drive a man to the knife’s edge of madness.
The horror of recalling this memory brings deathly shivers to my hand so that I can scarce pen this manuscript. I am but mortal. And certain things I cannot call to mind without a wordless gasp. Yet I must continue with this reading through the medium, Anne Howard, so that none may venture to St. Anne’s Cemetery alone and unguarded against the evil presences that abound there. My intention in going there was to free my father from the grip of their evil so that he might be released to ascend to a higher spiritual level. Otherwise, I should not have gone there at all, such was the place’s reputation.
As I stepped onto the unhallowed ground of the cemetery, a sudden whirlwind of dust sprouted from amidst the tombs and swirled towards me. It was a sign; a warning. The spirits knew my intentions! I could sense a brooding presence in the dusk of the cemetery, a presence so resonant with evil that I crossed myself repeatedly to ward off its influence. As I approached my father’s grave, the atmosphere of utter evil became suffocating.
Suddenly, a strange, sad, mournful cry echoed behind me in the thicket. I turned as I’d been gripped on the shoulder. A root caught my heel and sent me reeling towards the earth. Again, the cry sounded from a darker part of the cemetery, closer and more frightening in its wake.
I rose quickly and commenced with the Rite of Exorcism, gasping and shuddering as I did so. The cries of the disturbed dead echoed, hauntingly, around me. It was only with the greatest of effort that I finished the recitation. I took a deep spasmodic breath and looked wildly around me but could see nothing.
A sudden gust of wind, dry with the breath of the dead, startled me to renew my efforts. I began the Mass for the Dead. Again, odd sounds issued forth from the graves: strange, harsh breathing; vague voices that cursed and screamed hatred; the maddening scraping of bone against wood; stirrings in the thicket.
I had vague sensations of talking outside myself as if I were witnessing my own funeral. Tactile sensations touched my skin. Then, suddenly, instead of saying the mass I appeared to be thinking it as if I were some vague spectral bystander at some mundane event. They were trying to drive me away, I knew, the spirits were. It was as if my words were being pushed out and away from me; as if the very life were being pushed from my body, the life of Christ that saves. With spasmodic jerks of my hand and arm I saw myself splashing Holy Water upon my father’s vault. A noxious stench issued from the tomb below as if some evil had been rebuked from the stone of his grave.
A scream such as I’ve never heard echoed from the vault. I staggered back and collapsed, spilling the Holy Water upon my chest and forehead.
When I awoke, I was looking up at my associate, Father O’Donnel, and was surprised to see that we had not yet left the cemetery. “Father, why haven’t you had me taken to the hospital? Can’t you see that I was knocked out and unable to help myself? Why in the world are you standing there, staring at me? Help me up, for crying out loud!”
Father O’Donnel didn’t say anything in return, but only stared with a disturbing intensity. He was garbed in his black vestments, wearing his holy cross about his neck. A shock of thin, grey hair clung to his scalp and he wore a pair of black spectacles that bore upon him the look of formality. Yet, there was a fire in his eyes that was not holy. He looked as if he wanted to kill me, but was held back by some hesitation that held him at bay. At once, I knew something was not right about this and instinctively fell silent. Several minutes passed in which nothing was said.
“Father Brandish,” he answered, finally, in a deep, raspy, gasping voice as if he were straining to make himself heard. “There is no way to leave this place now. We are here and there is no departing from here.”
Whispering voices started up from amidst the thickets surrounding the cemetery. Ungodly shrieks and cries resounded in the distance as if the dead had overtaken the earth and the living were far away. Gaunt, staggering shadows and vague, pallid shapes walked amidst the graves as if they had life in them, the life of the devil. With a gasp I cowered against the earth, wishing that the very ground would swallow me up and deliver me from this abomination.
Father O’Donnel gazed off towards them with indifference as if he saw naught of evil in them, but only what he thought to be natural.
The dead staggered and groped their way about the tombs, as if seeking some way out of the place of the undead in which they had been housed, a place that had become their curse rather than their place of rest. Their moaning and shrieking was like that of animals starved for blood and death. What they needed was God’s scripture. Instead, they had God’s curse upon them for their sins.
I turned again to Father O’Donnel who was still staring intently at me with the same fire of madness in his eyes. “Father O’Donnel, why can’t we leave here. Why won’t you help me out of here?”
“I can’t, my child. Look behind you and you will find your answer. You will see why we cannot leave. There, on that stone. Read what it says.”
I looked and beheld the hideous truth. For there on the gravestone behind me, next to that of my father’s, was an inscription that bore my name and my date of death.”
“But, how? How can I be dead? We drove here and parked outside the cemetery! Our car’s outside in the parking lot! How can I be dead and buried without knowing it?”
Father O’Donnel relaxed his intense stare and looked outside the cemetery gates. “That’s right, Father Brandish. Not only are you dead, but I also. We’re both dead. Don’t you see? We never made it through the cemetery gates. We were in a major auto accident just as we pulled in to the parking lot. We got smacked, head-on, by a huge truck. We were killed so instantaneously that we forgot that we had died. I didn’t realize it, at first, either. Then, when I saw you, I remembered and the entire scene flashed again before my eyes like a movie image.”
“Then, we’re both dead, you’re saying. We’re both trapped here with the very souls we sought to save! Trapped in limbo with no way out!”
“Yes, my son. Our only recourse is prayer and more prayer. We must be about our work, God’s work. So, let us begin.”
Suddenly, as if he were never there, he was gone. I was left alone with the undead and the accursed. But his last words to me brought home the truth of my plight. “So, let us begin.”
So I began.
###

Aaron Wringard finished reading the document with a sniff and set about his work. Meanwhile, God’s Work was being done in St. Anne’s Cemetary by a devoted man of prayer, the recently departed Father Brandish, soon to be known as such by his beloved community.