44 Chapter 44: Fishers of Men, Part 2

I walked back to the church with slow, dazed steps. I made my way back to the confessional, but it was empty. Its door stood wide open, a forgotten refrigerator letting all of the cold repentance out. I walked back and forth between the pews, my hand on my raw and tender arm, but no one else was there. My secular friend had disappeared.

I shook. What could I do? Sirens wailed in the distance, their cries growing louder. Whatever phenomenon I had just witnessed, it was over now. The hooked and reeled-in pedestrians had just vanished in a billowing wall of smoke. Nothing could be done to help them. I opened the front doors, and kicked down their stoppers. If people needed a place to feel safe, they could come inside.

"Excuse me, Father?" asked a raspy voice that sounded as if it had just swum up from the gutter.