Midnight Mass (Camren)

PROLOGUE

Sometimes I think I'm haunted by the ghosts of my former selves.

There's the small girl who used to run into her sister's room after having a nightmare. There's the teenager who pulled that same sister from a rafter in her parents' garage. There's the college student who drowned her pain in aggressive sex and whiskey.

And then there's the parish priest who couldn't stop herself from falling in love.

I feel them crowding behind me as I walk across Princeton's tree-filled campus. I hear them whispering as I make love to my wife.

I see them behind my eyelids when I kneel to pray.

Of all the ghosts that haunt me, it is the priest who stays the closest, who dogs my steps from dawn until dusk. It's the priest who reminds me of my sins, of everything I've left behind, of every part of secular life that is flat and colorless and petty.

It is the priest who tells me to be afraid of being punished.

Like I'm not already afraid.

But I never expected my punishment to come so soon.