Apricot Press

The Ministering of Souls

By JP Relph

My church is full of ghosts. They displaced the few ancient ones from Before, who’d lingered here long after their corpses were dust. These are the restless spectres of those whose who died inside. Had sheltered here as if a lifetime of faith and their rosary ligature-twisted around their fingers could stop the apocalypse. That the walls would act like a shield. Be repelled devil sickness! Viruses have no interest in faith – the people screamed out their prayers in sprays of blood, asking their Father why why why while they died in the pews and I retreated to my office, drank communion
wine, and waited for nature’s latest demon to take me.

My church is full of ghosts. When it became clear I wasn’t joining them in death – an immunity, I guessed – I dragged their corpses outside. Started digging graves but there were too many, so I set a pyre and fed it stained pews for days. When only ash and stink remained, the ghosts came. Rising up in a grotesque cacophony – a shattered worship full of torment and pain. I begged them to stop, to find their way to Heaven, but their belief was ash too. So, I locked the doors, kept my smoke-smudged clerical collar in place and stayed with them. Believing that must be what He wanted from me: to minister to the dead.

*

My church is full of ghosts and survivors. They came with the last breath of summer, seeking shelter, the peeling spire like a beacon. First, a family of three, shredded and filthy, the child with eyes like abandoned pits. The basement had been a food bank; I had eaten little. They wept over bowls of beans and tuna. There was a well in the grounds, cots and blankets in the storeroom: I settled them in. By early winter, the church rang with chatter and laughter. Candlelight sent the ghosts of the dead to pulse at the edges, rage dimming to envy, then to melancholy that made the air chillier and night-terrors spread like disease. We had plenty of blankets, and warm words.

My church is full of ghosts and life. As winter breaks, scavenging trips are planned, the earth outside is prepared for seed. Children brighten the church with the smell of handpicked flowers. Hope springs. The lingering dead hover around me, seeking my counsel, my enduring love. They don’t ask why anymore, accepting their place in this new world. As have I.

Photo credit: Kevin Mueller