Read Online Haunted Legends by Ellen Datlow, Nick Mamatas - Free Book Online Page B

Ruth. She cowers, covering her head with her hands instinctively, but he leaps again at the last and soars away into the night sky. The dreadful wind washes over her. She can taste its smell and hear its colour.
    Ruth sits panting upon the ground.
    •  •  •
    There’s always confession in the church on Wednesdays. Basil says absolving sins midweek gives Father Thomas Sunday afternoons off. Lass clings to his arm, gazes up at him and nods.
    “You’re so clever, Basil,” she says. “You know everything.”
    Ruth hesitates by the confessional booth. She’s never seen anything to believe in with the supernatural, on either side for good or evil. It’s always seemed to her to be Ruth and
the world,
and in such a titanic struggle between both there seemed little room for higher powers and greater wonders. But when the devil displays on the darkest of nights, when he dances just for her and her alone, when his stench grips her throat and burns her nose, then to where does she turn?
    “I’ve got nothing to confess,” says The Runt. “Fuckin’ pure, me, pure as the driven slush.”
    Basil grips Ruth’s arm. “Are you sure you want to do this, old thing?I mean, Mad Maud went to confession and it lasted a week. She came out all drained and disjointed, like it was only her sins holding her together.”
    Basil offers Ruth brandy and she takes a swig. She doesn’t do neat alcohol and it sears her throat. Homeless, barely destitute, it’s hard enough to stay clean to attract punters as it is without stinking of spirits. Without that barest of self-control Ruth knows she’ll be dead in a gutter by Thursday.
    “I have to talk to someone,” says Ruth. “Someone in the church. Someone who knows about these things.”
    “Father Thomas will want to soap your tits,” says Lass.
    The Runt grins. “Aye, and I could do that for you without all the Christian mumbo-jumbo.”
    “I have to find out if it’s the devil,” says Ruth. “I have to learn what it wants from me.”
    •  •  •
    Ruth steps through, into the confessional booth. It’s calm inside, serene such that it takes her breath away. It’s an alien landscape and she’s disorientated, as if she’s stepped through onto the moon. A single candle flickers briefly and settles. At first Ruth thinks she’s alone, but in the stillness she hears Father Thomas shuffle behind the thick, velvet curtain.
    “Well, child?” he says at last.
    Ruth is shaking. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
    “You’ve never confessed your sins before?”
    “I don’t know what my sins are.”
    “We all know what our sins are, child, if we’re really true to ourselves in looking.”
    Ruth sighs. “I’ve seen the devil, Father. It came leaping at me from the darkness. I breathed its fetid breath.”
    There’s a pause before Father Thomas draws back the curtain. He looks flushed of face. “In a metaphorical sense, of course?”
    “It knocked me to the ground, and flew off laughing, and the smell, well, I can still taste it now.”
    Father Thomas shakes his head. He stares down at Ruth’s lap, and she covers herself with a palm. Slowly, nervously, she raises and lowers the hem of her skirt.
    “I need help, Father, quickly.”
    “Come through and I’ll run a bath.” Father Thomas stands briskly. Hisears are pink warm. “Cleanliness is next to godliness. You’ll need your sins washing away. We’ll get you from those dirty clothes and the devil will soon seem far, far away.”
    •  •  •
    Ruth doesn’t work that night. She lingers at the edge of the park, closer to the main road traffic and the late-night revellers that she can leap toward should the demon return.
    “When will we see the devil?” says The Runt.
    “I told you he’d want to get you undressed,” says Lass. As usual she’s lodged on Basil’s arm, but he’s well fried on vodka and gin, and it’s no longer certain who is holding whom. “Though it’s what he’s doing