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SUMMARY: Father Bedford is a partial witness to a battle between evil and…possibly other evil. This is another incident that strikes close to home for him.

Father Bedford is awakened in the middle of the night by the echoing chant of a strange language. It is coming from downstairs. At first, as his mind sorts through the dreams and the darkness, he thinks he understands it – at least understands that it is dangerous.

The fuzziness of thought dissipates after a few moments. Clarity only brings a higher sense of dread. He listens intently. "Not Latin," he says to himself as he reaches for his housecoat. "Not Aramaic. What is that?"

He makes his way along the hall. The rectory feels eerie tonight. A silent vibration fills the dark spaces, changing their shapes. A shadow moves - maybe, but he is not sure of it. And the chanting continues. "I know that word."

He goes down the wide main stairs, rather than the more narrow kitchen stairs. The thin murmurs seem to come from this end, but even though he can hear the flow of words clearer here, he still sees nothing but shadow.

Just as he steps onto the main floor he hears a loud snap overhead. One of the panes of the stained-glass window above the entryway has cracked. It cracks again, raining down splinters of glass.

He looks up to where the snaps came from protecting his face with his forearm. The small round windows that repeat all the way around the half turret of the entryway each depict the good works of saints. They are all as old as the building, dating back at least a hundred years. But he has never heard of this happening before.

In an effort to deal with the crisis at hand, he changes direction and goes to the large double doors, unlocking one and pulling it open. He needs to prove there was a strong wind, just now. He needs to see running vandals giggling over their daring. But outside, the black night is as still as death. It is quiet and empty. The heaviness it conveys is only enough to push him back into the building to face the real culprit, something that is inside with him.

The wide hall of the main floor is also dark. It is reverberating with the low sounds of the chanting he can now tell emanates from the cellar. It is still too indistinct to make out. Every so often, however, he catches a word. This is the speech of the damned. He holds open the door to the cellar stairs. There is only blackness at first, then a creak of door and a sliver of light from down the long hall.

At the bottom of the stairs he steps onto the cold floor with some timidity. He can almost feel a presence near him. The shadows move again. They press around him. There is evil here, nearly corporeal and very powerful. It pushes at him from all directions. At the same time it prickles along his skin like sucking tentacles sapping his strength.

He must move forward. There is a lit storeroom at the end of the hall. Before he makes his first step something shuffles out of it. Its profile is hideous. There is a sharp, brief command around the corner in the perpendicular hall that leads to the old tunnels between the rectory and the other buildings on the grounds. The creature heads toward this rather than down the hall toward him.

A howling, scrambling noise ensues.