It was late when he came to me; I'm not sure of the time, only that I was weary, and keen to find my bed. The church floors had been swept, all the candles put out, and there was nothing left to do but lock the doors and go home, at long last.

Truthfully, I was glad of it. Some of these autumn nights are of a dank, humid condition, and yet the stone walls render them cold, and bitterly so.

Shivering, I pushed the doors apart to leave, but as I did so a hand came up between them— at least, I think it was a hand, for even at close quarters I saw it indistinctly, like the shadows that move only at the periphery of vision.

"No," a voice said, in a soft, musical cadence that reminded me of Welsh, yet wasn't; somehow I knew that without comprehending how, or why. "No, Father, don't close up yet. I wish to be baptised."

For a moment I was rigid with a helpless terror, for as I looked at the hand it seemed evermore a silhouette that seethed with formless motion.

I felt in my bones that it was evil, yet surely evil could not touch this door. Could not come close.

In a fragile stutter I asked, "Who— who are you?"

"A sinner," the voice replied, "yearning to be made clean again, like all others that come here. Why do you ask this of me?"

I knew better than to admit my fear, and so I said, in as brisk a tone as I could muster, "I was just about to leave for the night. Couldn't you possibly come back tomorrow?"

"I'm desperate, Father," the shadow replied, and its hand parted the doors further still as if the heavy oak weight naught. "I want to go to Heaven. Why won't you help me?"

Desperate, it said, but I heard nothing in its voice but an awful breed of humour.

My stare discerned a face, out there, embedded in the night, the hollow smears of eyes and mouth like holes in a dim fog.

Horror compelled me into stillness again. I only stood, regarding the thing in quivering silence.

Until that moment I'd always believed the supernatural visitations detailed in the bible to be solely metaphor, ciphers of God's great lesson. That I'd been so starkly wrong appalled me, and it was only the frantic thought that this was some test of faith that prevented me from fainting listlessly away against the wall.

"Will you turn me from your door?" asked the shadow, quietly.

Its mouth didn't move as it spoke, holding a formless grin. It put me in mind of the paper angels local children decorate their classrooms with at Christmas, frail chains with snipped-out features, flat and quite without dimension.

"Are— are you a child of God?" I stammered, and the figure laughed.

I wish I could forget that sound: soft, and harsh at once, it was, a blighted winter of mirth.

It sickened me.

"A child of God," the shadow repeated. "Yes, Father. I am."

It paused, and it occured to me that perhaps the quickest way to be rid of this creature was to do as it had asked.

"Come in," I said, stumbling back from the doorway. "I'll baptise you. But then you have to leave, do you understand?"

"Of course. Both of us have our homes to return to."

The shadow slipped between the doors into the chill gloom of the church, becoming almost one with it, but for the sense of a far greater darkness within it.

It seemed I couldn't look directly at the creature as it followed me, or else my own self-preservation kept me from such foolishness. I only saw its edges flutter like cinders about some fire, and still I hoped it to be an illusion, poised to fall away when I touched the Holy Water to its forehead.

"Here," I said, to the shadow. "Come to the font. I'll lead you back to the Lord."

"I'm sure you will, Father," the figure replied, almost merrily. "I'm sure you will."

I can barely describe the particular dread that came over me as I stood beside the creature, the fear such as when one wakes in the night to some figment of half-dream stooping over one's mantle. It wasn't that I expected the spirit to injure me, or take my life—I had the sense that it would not, but that the ease with which it might do so amused the being greatly.

I wondered what it meant by toying with me so, dandling my terror as it might some hapless infant.

"Wouldn't you like someone to witness?" I asked, my eyes turned ahead, to the font, like a soldier trained to hold his form regardless of distraction. "There's no one I can call at this time, so—"

"Oh, I have my witnesses," assured the creature, and at once I seemed aware of every shape and shadow about the room, each of them tendrilous and vivid with malign.

My own church had become a trap, a prison whose many inmates roamed free at the beckon of the thing that stood beside me.

With a juddering hand I reached into the font and raised a dripping palmful of holy water. How cold it was, so cold it was like the sear of fire, numbing me to the elbow in its claim.

I raised my arm towards the figure vaguely, not wanting to look at it to find its forehead. The spirit gave a shuddering laugh, and I felt what must have been a hand about my wrist, guiding me, only it felt more like a cluster of feathers in its repulsive softness.

"I baptise you in the name of the Father," I managed to choke out, as water trickled through my fingers, "and of the Son—"

Regret was already upon me in in its swathes, but it was too late by far to draw back the sacrament. It had taken me great courage to extend my hand at all, and I still held fast to hope that the very act might rid me of the intruder, and its hoarde.

The shadow moaned beneath the water, a sound of filth, and pleasure, and yet disgust, the cry of the self flagellant in reverence of the whip. I felt the creature shake its face under the stream like a dog, and wondered that I still held my arm so steady.

"—And of the Holy Spirit," I said, in a rush, and at last pulled back my fist, holding it limply, as though in serving the creature I had broken the bone. "There. It's done. I hope it brings you... peace."

The spirit drew a long breath, another exertion of joy.

"Not that, Father," it whispered. "Never that."

A weird light seemed to come from my left, where the shadow remained; I couldn't help but turn to it, although my eyes could little comprehend what was before them. I can only say now that it was like glimpsing a man through a frosted window at night, only not a man, for the shape of it shivered and changed and thrashed about like many ribbons in the wind.

"You can go now, Father," said the shadow. "You may close the doors behind you. I'll find my own way out, I'm sure."

I made briskly for the exit, not daring to run lest, like a pack of hounds, the creature and its followers might be triggered by instinct to come after me across the churchyard.

Thankfully my house was not far off, merely down the street; I was locked within it in under five minutes, little though such measures would matter to such a being as was after me.

I couldn't sleep, of course, not that I tried. The idea of closing my eyes in the darkness was discarded at once, for had I done so I would have only imagined the fluttering of winged beasts, observing me from every corner.

Instead I sat up on my knees and prayed, prayed to be forgiven for what I'd done, that my mistake would not bring about some deathly consequence.

Yet, as I prayed, I felt an emptiness, which as the hours passed I became convinced was the very absence of God Himself listening to me, whether through His disappointment in my failure or His ceasing to exist I didn't know.

I was definite, however, in that I had opened the gates of Heaven to a great danger. As my frantic abjection deepened I came to the further conclusion that my visitor could only have been the favourite child that God Himself had once cast down. Lucifer, Satan, the Devil— likely he had made vague his appearance so that I wouldn't know him, but I well recalled his beautiful voice, soft and lovely with the silk of evil.

I could have wept, so aghast was I at what I'd done, but sombre dread kept me dry-eyed and grave until red sunrise thumbed its way up the horizon.

The quiet of an absentee God persisted.

Baptised and, thus, returned to his birth place what had the Devil done? Already he might have torn havoc across Heaven, sullying an endless number of innocent souls with his cruelty, recruited angels to his black cause—

And what of God, his greatest enemy?

I should believe the Father to be omnipotent, invulnerable to even Lucifer's warfare, but the longer I pray I cannot help but feel that I am shouting into an open grave.

Now, as I regard my clasped hands, I am apalled that I dared hope I might be cleansed of my mistake. It was my cowardice, after all, that so condemned the God I've served for all my life; I'd known the intruder to be of ill intent, and still I gave him what he asked for, without resistance, without complaint.

Lord, I was an idiot. I know now what I have done.