What truths lurk behind traditions?
~~~
There was a small church just outside Tenby with a cemetery that had a shed behind a thicket of trees, a tasteful location for the aggrieved who did not desire to see where the shovels were stored which buried their loved ones. In that shed, for the time being, lived the local Sin-Eater.
Meanwhile in the heart of Tenby, in a shoddy house behind the baker, lived Sullivan Davies, a scrawny lad with brown eyes and black hair who was already pondering future occupations. His family spoke only Welsh, and every teacher in Wales spoke the King’s English in 1649, so he did not attend school. His father was a sailor who would come home occasionally to yell at his wife and produce more offspring and then leave again for a couple of months. Without much of a father around to apprentice them, Sully and the rest of his siblings grew up with no discernible skills except being especially good at running the rats out of the local hospital every Friday. A couple of his brothers got jobs on the docks, and his sisters found other men to yell at them. But Sully was clever, and noticed the easiest job in the town required no formal education, and did not come with the heavy lifting of a dock aid. Sully at age twelve began following the town Sin-Eater.
Everyone in Tenby looked the other way when the Sin-Eater came around. No one asked him questions. No one greeted him. The Sin-Eater was a pale old man with long gray hair and crinkly skin. His eyes were always puffy and his teeth had mostly fallen away from decay. He wore a gray coat with holes which exposed a dirtier coat underneath. He wore gloves and old boots no matter the weather.
The only job of the Sin-Eater was to eat sin. This occurred during funerals. A plate was placed on the lap of the deceased, which was then covered with a bed of salt, and some old marm would find a stale loaf of bread to put on the salt. Before the casket was lowered by a group of red-faced men holding heavy ropes, the Sin-Eater would come and eat the bread. The salt, it was said, absorbed the sin. The salt would send the sin to the bread, then the bread would be consumed, giving the Sin-Eater the sin. Thus the dead would be absolved by the Grace of God through the great sacrifice of the Sin-Eater.
All of this, Sully knew, was ridiculous. But people treated the Sin-Eater with the respect due someone who at least had enough of the Devil in him to be left alone. There was a magic about the Sin-Eater. Sully figured the man was probably a drunk who’d stumbled onto easy work, but as long as he and the town kept up the ritual and followed certain, arbitrary rules, they’d all keep up the mystique. No one in Tenby even knew the man’s name. Sully watched the Sin-Eater come to the local pub every night at dusk and order a pint. Then Sully followed him to the alleyways where the Sin-Eater would knock on a door and ask the local seamstress for scrap food. All of this was paid for with coins from a dingy sack. The sack would get less and less full over the month, and then someone would die of a fever or be lost at sea or some such, and the bag would get full again because when the Sin-Eater came to the funeral everyone would give him a coin for his services. And the Sin-Eater would solemnly take the money and do his service while friends of the dead would sob quietly, stifling their sniffles in honor of the sacred ritual. There was an air of awe and gratitude about it. And Sully noticed all the Sin-Eater had to do was eat part of a loaf of bread once every couple of weeks. It was a lot less work than clearing the rats.
Sully deduced the Sin-Eater lived in the shed, probably for free. One evening, at dusk, Sully approached the Sin-Eater on his walk from the cemetery to the pub. The Sin-Eater looked at him warily, eyes still glassy from sleep, and growled at the lad to be on his way. Undeterred, Sully approached the Sin-Eater the next night. Then the next. Sully got decked on the fourth night. On the fifth night, the Sin-Eater tried to kill him with a rusty hoe. Sully watched from the shadows after that.
Sully, through all his careful observation, knew the man had died before anyone else.
It was a bitterly cold January evening in 1650 when the Sin-Eater developed pneumonia. The illness took him the next morning, hacking and spewing until light finally broke across the horizon, virgin beams gracing the westerly sides of the shed just as the Sin-Eater took his last breath, and hacked it back up. Sully was among the few who noticed the Sin-Eater’s absence from the pub. Nobody in the back alley who sold him old bread noticed he stopped coming, probably, Sully reasoned, because he never went to the same backdoor two nights in the room. Sully went to the shed late in the night with an oil lamp and his father’s pistol and felt the hairy, cold forearm of the old Sin-Eater. Sully felt for a pulse on the already unyielding neck muscles.
Quite unceremoniously, Sully used the tools in the shed (a wheelbarrow and some rakes for leverage) to dump the Sin-Eater’s body in the nearby lake.
Three nights later it was William McBride’s funeral and a Sin-Eater’s presence was expected. The plate was placed on the coffin, with a thin film of salt and just a couple chunks of old bread. But by this point it wasn’t just Sully who’d noticed the Sin-Eater’s absences. There were pockets of speculation that no Sin-Eater would come. William’s mother was beside herself. She said she hoped her boy would be absolved anyway. William’s father loudly proclaimed in the pub the night before the funeral that it was his opinion that the boy was sinless; the lad had fought for King and Country and had died amidst the greatest baptism a man could receive.
William McBride had been buried overseas in a mass grave on the battleground where he’d died. At the funeral, a box had been prepared with all of William’s favorite childhood toys. His mother was heaving with sobs and his father was sitting perfectly erect with one delicate hand placed on the bumping shoulders of the crying woman. And a plate had been prepared to sit atop the box before it was gently placed into the ground by the local undertaker, a surprisingly puny man with wispy gray hair and a face with rosacea.
The men at the funeral began to stand up and dust off their coats as though to say it was time to place what was left of the boy’s spirit in the earth and move one with their lives when a gasp and a commotion came in from the front rows of pews in the local church.
Sully had approached the box and taken a small, experimental morsel of bread. Most people gaped as he placed it on his tongue and chewed. Sully had an iron-clad belief that nothing would be different once he consumed the bread, but he still flinched during that first bite, as though God or whomever might make an example of his arrogance. But nothing happened, so Sully took a large chunk and ate it slowly. It tasted stale and unappetizing but he kept his face impassive and his head slumped toward his shoulders as he arduously chewed.
Sully’s mother had emerged from the throng of incredulous women. She too gaped as he consumed the bread, and when he turned round upon finishing the bread to face the congregation, the enormity of losing her son, if he would truly choose this path and become an outcast, hit her and she too like William’s mum sunk to the floor and began wailing.
With the plate half-finished and the funeral goers unsure what to do, Sully felt it was time to leave. He needed to keep up the mystique of Sin-Eating, and if some adult came and pulled on his ear and dragged him to his mum, the work he’d done thus far would be compromised and lost forever. He went slow, as though moving to a dirge himself. He knew the coins were in people’s pockets. He knew most families wouldn’t dare show up to that church unprepared. And sure enough, Sully had only made it to the third row of pews before Matty Lewis stepped in front of him, and placed out a firm hand. Sully looked up, making his face as innocent as he could manage. Sully had brought a bag, but he suddenly realized he should keep it shoved back in his jacket. It wouldn’t do to make it look like he’d come expecting anything. Mr. Lewis held out a single coin, tears brimming in his eyes. Sully took it, holding it out as though unsure what to do with it, and gently placed it in a pocket.
Then another family came with a coin. Then another. After ten minutes, Sully’s mother was still wailing, a gaggle of women shushing her, telling her what a grand service her son had just performed, what an important role he’d decided to undertake, and Sully for his part was now weighed down with more coins than he’d ever seen at once. He could barely keep the corners of his lips from twisting up in triumph. Hands folded and walking slowly, Sully made it out of the stuffy church and into the cold air of the January twilight.
Sullivan Davies spent that night in the shed outside the cemetery. He’d stolen a couple of coals from his parents’ house, along with some matches, and set a few up in a pile, like a small cairn, with a larger pile of brush and twigs set on top. Sully then went back to the shed where he’d begun rearranging the tools so he’d have a better walking path to the back, where he’d set the dozen sheets he’d stolen from the hospital. The old Sin-Eater, Sully noted, slept with a single blanket on a pile of shovels. When Sully had dragged his body out of the shed, the pile had crashed and spread all over the floor, which was covered in grime.
Sully swept up with a moldy broom found in the shed itself, and moved things around to his liking, clearing out the back for where he wanted to sleep. He then took a broken bed warmer he’d found in a pile of rubbish outside the loading docks, which he’d mended carefully using a scrap of metal from a broken shovel which fit almost perfectly over the hole, asking the blacksmith to take a look at it, paying him in coins he’d earned from the last ever time he’d help clear out the hospital. The moon was gibbous that night, plenty for the young man to see by as he happily walked a sloshing pale (filled with water from the nearby lake) back to the orange coals. A wide trail of white smoke was puffing from the shed, and Sully envisioned himself holding the bags of coins he’d earned as he slept soundly.
***
Sully slept warm and happy in the shed that night. And for hundreds of nights thereafter. Sin-Eating business was good. A child died of scarlet fever or some such disease that preyed on the weak every month at least. And whoever held the title of Tenby’s oldest resident would always eventually die, though they seemed to hang on for long periods of time out of spite. In the skimpier times, Sully would get work every two months, the coins from which he could make last because, as Sully noticed, more people showed up to a funeral if no one had died in a while. Sully would buy a pint every other night, just to be scrupulous, and when times were good he’d travel to another town and get a warm meal at a pub and pretend he wasn’t shunned by everyone he knew. He even stumbled upon the other Sin-Eaters in other villages, whom he would at least learn a little about, in case he ever had use of them.
For the most part, Sully still lived the life of the old Sin-Eater- buying stale bread left over from the hospital or the pub, being left in solitude, sleeping in a shed. Sully would walk alone in the woods or fish or steal things left for the dead in the cemetery. Over the course of a few years, Sully built up quite a collection of jewelry, books, and other trinkets left in coffins, things that by nicking only one, it was hard to notice. He even took knives and once got a vial of hemlock, which he carefully stashed away in case of an emergency.
Sully always left the shed when the undertaker needed it. The graves were mostly dug during the day. Each night mostly he was left alone.
The only oddity which troubled his comfortable life came a few days after his mother died. It was about five years after he’d begun Sin-Eating. When Sully had been told in the pub that his mother had fallen ill and she might not have much time, he had a few sloshes left of ale, and he drained it and wiped his wet mouth. He looked around, and saw all eyes were fixed on him, wondering what he’d do. Sully wondered too.
The problem was, Sully made it a point to never associate with the people of the village. He feared it would hinder his mystique and thereby bring in less coinage. He told himself, at that most exterior level of his mind, the part of the mind constantly protected from ugly and dangerous thoughts, that his aloofness was best for the simple people of Tenby, that their mourning would be easier if their Sin-Eater was of a magic and an ability they knew not, and that this would be upheld if they assumed he was just a lad from Tenby who’d absorbed the spirit of the last Sin-Eater. That way of thinking was important to Sully. He’d convinced himself, across his psyche, that the service he provided Tenby was important, and that to do it he needed to sever all connections from Tenby’s residents, even his own family.
And he decided, as the soft parts of his heart were further eroded, that this image was even more important than seeing his mother before she died.
Of course, two nights later when his mother’s funeral was held, Sully was there. Some had wondered whether Sully would show up to his own mother’s funeral to perform his duty. But many in Tenby had already forgotten Sully was her child. Still, a dead silence fell as Sully strode in. Sully had decided to not accept payment that night, in honor of the one person on Earth who’d ever taken care of him. He walked slowly to the stiff form, the corpse who had the shape and size of a person but none of its life or essence, his eyes becoming cloudy with tears he had not anticipated. He fought them back, swallowing hard and blinking rapidly. His lip quivered, so he decided to wait at the edge of his mother’s coffin for a moment and gather himself.
Slowly, deliberately, Sully ate the bread. It was freshly baked; probably only came out of the oven two days ago. His mother had many friends and sisters who would surely have baked a fresh loaf upon hearing the news. Still, it crunched and clung to his molars in the way of a piece that had been left outside on a dead woman’s lap for a day. It tasted sweet, with a smooth texture and a note of salt.
And then suddenly Sully almost wretched. It had come from nowhere, as though the bread refused to move down into his stomach. His body immediately rejected the grain, and Sully was at the mercy of his own convulsions. He composed himself with just some minor coughing, and waved away one man who wasn’t sure whether he should help him. Sully pounded his chest, and kept down the bread momentarily.
Fortunately, no one ever expected him to finish. In fact, most people didn't want the services interrupted to watch a man eat an entire loaf. Sully usually just took a few bites, pretending to determine whether he had absorbed enough sin. For sailors and drunkards, he took a long time in order to keep up the idea that he was discriminate. For children and good wives, he barely nibbled. It was all part of displaying the magic of it, the mystique that justified his payment from the people of Tenby.
Completely nauseated, Sully walked briskly from the little church. Men and women held out small coins and treats, but Sully shook his head, nodding politely. Confused, the simple people of Tenby put away their money, grateful but anxious. If there was a problem with the Sin-Eater, did that mean a nasty spirit had descended on their town?
Fortunately, the people of Tenby need not worry. Only Sully was affected.
Sully vomited out every morsel from his stomach that night, including some bile. He laid there heaving, breathing heavily on the grass of the cemetery, careful to keep his sick downwind from the shed so he wouldn’t have to smell it later. When he felt he was done, though his muscles ached furiously, Sully hauled himself up and went to the door.
But something caught his eye, and he gasped.
A pale figure stood, staring at him. It looked, from a distance, like his mother. It stood about thirty yards down the line of graves, in a dress and cap like his mother had worn, arms at their sides, staring at him intently. He couldn’t make out a face or eyes or any distinct features. His nerves bristled at the site, and his blood ran cold. The bleating and hissing of the forest died away, and it became like a night in winter, no sound, and now not even the scraping of branches against one another. Just a dull roar in his ears as something like a ghost peered into the depths of his soul in the form of his dead mother. His eyes became wet again, and he ran into his shed, throwing his blankets over himself before even setting the coals in his makeshift bed warmer. He fought hard to go to sleep, and he eventually did.
In the morning and within nightfall of the next day, the spirit did not return.
*** And Sully would have lived out this peaceful life of tranquility until the day he too passed away from boredom and old age in that shed if it hadn’t been for the 1661 arrival of Pastor Lucas.
Pastor Lucas was a paunchy, short man with beady eyes, one of which always hid behind the thin frame of a cheap monocle. His red face perpetually carried the air of someone who wanted nothing more than to strangle the sin out of you like a wet washcloth. And strangle out sin from Tenby he did. He’d been sent by Richard III himself (or so claimed Pastor Lucas) to stamp out the Catholics and the Gentiles and usher in a new era of Methodism to the town.
To Sully’s growing dismay, the people of Tenby generally loved Pastor Lucas. More accurately, the old ladies and the newish housewives and the middle-aged men looking for the bone with which they could pick and thereby attack the world with their sharp words and clean fists loved Pastor Lucas for all that Pastor Lucas was, which was vain and violent and stupid. Pastor Lucas believed in a Church which attacked evil with a fervor that only God could ordain. Pastor Lucas sneered at the filth and wickedness of Tenby and demanded the population drop everything and take up arms against sloth and pride. Pastor Lucas gave sermons letting the children know, in no uncertain terms, that masturbation and theft would lead only to the subsequent removal of limbs during an eternity in Hell. Pastor Lucas told Tenby from the pulpit that God looked down on them all with shame, and would massacre each and every one of them unless they purged their lives of frivolity. And people loved him for it.
Sully knew it would only be a short time before Pastor Lucas put a stop to Sin-Eating. Sully wondered what tactic the small man would take. Would he act shocked at the first funeral he oversaw when Sullivan Davies brazenly ate food off a dead man’s crotch? Would the good pastor turn to the old women who actually ran Tenby and whisper that no one pay Sully lest they feel the wrath of a jealous God.
The pastor began the latter strategy shortly after his arrival. He side-eyed anyone who paid Sully, and would openly deride the practice of Sin-Eating when he made his visits to the houses of spinsters and widows. He implored his parishioners to keep their coinage away from funeral services. He even asked the barman to stop serving Sully, arguing that surely if Sully drank from a tankard it could become infected with leftover sin.
The last straw came when Pastor Lucas came to Sully’s shed.
It was a bright August morning, the air sticky with dew and vapor from the lake, the bugs already raising a cacophony in the local vegetation, and the shadows from the trees gliding across the grass from the already high sun. Sully was asleep, as per usual until at least lunchtime, when an angry creaking had him tangled in tossed blankets, his eyes fuzzy as they adjusted. Someone was yelling.
“I say, man! What in the devil are you doing here?!” a voice roared.
Sully, though confused, remained lying down. “Just what the hell…” he began before his voice trailed off. His face turned red as he recognized the beady eyes. He pushed his hands against the grimy floor and let the tattered blankets slip swiftly off his back as he rose to full height. “You,” Sullivan Davies whispered to Pastor Lucas.
“Yes, me. What in the name of all that is good in this world are you doing in our shed?” Pastor Lucas asked, waving his stubby little hands in the air.
“And just what would you know about what good is in this world, me’ lad?” asked Sully, knowing the moniker would irritate the Pastor, considering the Pastor was still at least ten years his elder.
The pastor began waving his finger angrily at Sully. “Now you listen here! This cemetery is being run by the church. And that’s me now, right? It sickens me to think that this shed, meant to aid the poor dead souls onto their next stage in the Good Lord’s plan, and to mourn those we’ve lost, is being used as a home to some heathen too simple-minded and lazy to pay rent in a decent home. Away with you!” The Pastor screeched, in a high enough octave that it hurt Sully’s ears.
It was the moment he’d been called simple-minded. Not lazy. Not godless. Not all the other insinuations in his character. But simple-minded, which Sully knew he was not, that he decided he’d had enough of Pastor Lucas, and that it was time to do something about him.
But that morning, in the heat of the shed, all Sully said to the good pastor was, “Nah ‘en gonna help ya drag me oot ‘a this shed. Though I must say, I’d like ta see ya try, laddie.”
Pastor Lucas left in a huff, and did not in fact return with anyone to drag Sully out of the shed that day. But Sully knew it was only a matter of time.
***
Sully brewed in his shed for all of the day and through that evening, doing what he did best, thinking of the quickest and easiest way to get rid of a problem. Sully wondered if he should undercut the pastor’s greatest strength, or leverage his greatest weakness. The former would involve sucking up to the pastor, taking advantage of his vanity, and poisoning him. The latter would require asking some other equally seedy character from the depths of Tenby’s shadows (Lord knew there were plenty of those people hanging around the docks whenever a shipment came in) to take care of the pastor. But each of these methods would require coordination with others, and Sully didn’t trust other people. And he couldn’t just kill the pastor the next time he came by the shed, or he'd be the prime suspect.
Instead, Sully learned, by following him in his nightly strolls, where the pastor bought his fish. So it became a simple matter of bribing the least scrupulous shiphand to deliver a particular fish one evening, already laced with the hemlock Sully had tucked away years ago. Sully asked a child who was afraid of him (and who had a terrible memory) to do it, so the shiphand wouldn't know who actually killed the pastor.
And the next night, the good Pastor Lucas was found dead in his bathroom.
Sully went to the funeral, to the surprise of many. More people had shown up with coinage than ever before in the history of Tenby, at least that Sully knew.
Sully had planned on eating the entire loaf of bread that, against the Pastor’s wishes, had been placed in his lap. He planned on making the entire gullible congregation watch him devour the endless sins of the good pastor. But, just like that night many years ago, right after his mother had died, Sully was pained in the stomach as he ate the bread, and he had to fight back the vomit trying to come up his throat. He once again kept down the bread long enough to leave the church in peace, this time collecting as much money as could fit in his bag.
He managed to keep the sick in so long that he did not vomit that night. But he slept fitfully.
***
The sun had gone down but still allowed a hazy orange horizon to keep the shadows from crawling over the land the next evening. To the east, the stars were gathering to light the nearly naked sky but for the few clouds overhead. Sully wasn’t going to the pub that night. It was cooler than a usual August evening, and he wanted to get some sleep. He had gotten little the night before, and he’d heard earlier that the O’Toole lad had died that afternoon, so he'd need to be fresh tomorrow. So Sully was outside his shed beating the dust off his sheets grumpily when he noticed something or someone staring at him. It was a person, Sully gathered after a minute, short and stout and pale.
Sully stopped what he was doing and sneered at the pale form, standing erect, looking directly at him from many yards away amidst the tombstones. Sully dropped the sheet and began stomping over toward it, prepared to tell whoever it was to leave him bloody well alone.
As Sully walked, he found he could not get closer to the figure. It stayed standing, and remained the same distance away. By the time Sully was himself among the graves of the cemetery, the figure, though it hadn’t moved its legs once, was now standing at the back of the graveyard. Sully rubbed his eyes, knowing it must be a trick of some kind, but the figure remained, looking hauntingly like Pastor Lucas, staring at him, judging him, but keeping far away.
Sully gave up as the night got darker, the pale figure becoming harder and harder to see. He shook off the goose pimples on his arms and legs, blaming it on a chill air that wasn’t there, the inside of his shed proving musty and stale with dust. He left the beaten sheet outside, flung what was left of his scratchy blankets over himself, and succumbed to a restless sleep. When he awoke the next morning, the figure was gone.
But unlike when Sully saw his mother all those years ago, this figure persisted every night for the next five nights. It was always the same, short, staring figure. It never said anything. On the second night Sully called to it. No answer. On the third night he tried chasing it. On the fourth night he tried ignoring it. But the presence of the spirit and its insistence on remaining ever off in the distance gnawed at him. Sully yearned to know why and how he could stop it. It took over his thoughts during the day. It gave him shudders at night when he’d shake out of that fuzzy state between sleeping and waking; the horrifying thought of the ghost of Pastor Lucas out there, watching Sully slowly descend to a much-deserved psychosis.
Sully tried sleeping out in the deep woods, but he couldn’t with all the bugs and animals and high winds. He tried pretending the ghost was of his mother, watching over him kindly. He’d stay at the pub until well past closing so he wouldn't have to walk past it before going to bed. Not that his staying mattered. Whether it was dusk or deep into a cloudy night, the figure waited for him every night before he went to bed, and was gone when he awoke.
He tried staying up on the sixth night. He didn't make it long, and fell asleep next to his own mother’s grave as the sun pinched his eyes open the next morning. The figure had watched him fall asleep.
***
On a moonlit night a week later Sully took a well trod path through the forest to the next town over, Lydstep. The path was mired with brambles and gashes in the dirt. The night air was muggy and laced with fog, but would otherwise have made for a pleasant stroll under different circumstances.
Sullivan Davies was walking to the Sin-Eater of Lydstep. He did not know his name. Sin-Eaters did not share names, only pubs and stories. Sully didn’t even know where the man lived. But on a quiet Friday night Sully could guess where the man might be providing there wasn’t a funeral. And even so, it probably meant the Lydstep Sin-Eater would just get to draining his pint later in the evening.
Sure enough, upon opening the door to Lydstep’s favorite watering hole, Sully found the man huddled in a corner of the pub, halfway through a pint. The Lydstep man was of medium height, balding, with shoulder length, greasy blond hair jutting rudely from the back of his head. Most of his teeth were gone and he had warts on his nose and chin. One eye was missing, and the other was a pale green that shimmered in the firelight. He gave Sully a rude glare as he sat down.
“Aye,” the man said, and drank some more.
A bar maiden, with red hair and a brown dress asked Sully if he wanted anything, or rather, she walked by and coughed enough in his direction that he knew she was asking. He waved her away.
“I got a question fer ye,” said Sully.
“Aye,” the Lydstep man said, not looking up.
“Do ye believe in spirits?” asked Sully. The green eye caught Sully’s, and he shivered. “Kinda question is tha’?”
The response confirmed what Sully suspected. The answer wasn’t no. It was possible this Sin-Eater could help him. But Sully wanted to ensure the Lydstep man would actually want to help him.
“Let me get ye another pint,” he said, and called over to the barman.
This made the Lydstep man raise a suspicious eyebrow.
After two more pints, and the pair of Sin-Eaters being asked to leave, the Lydstep man begrudgingly allowed Sully to walk with him back to his hovel. As they wandered through the light of a sinking moon, Sully told the Lydstep man about the spirit in his graveyard, citing it as an annoyance, as though Sully, as the Tenby Sin-Eater, was in charge of he graveyard, and it was his job to get rid of it. He asked the Lydstep man if he knew of any rituals which would rid him of spirits.
“Oh, aye. I know a’ one. You ken is a spirit?”
“Aye,” said Sully.
They agreed to meet in two weeks’ time, Sully gave him a small bag of coins and said the next bag would be waiting when the ritual was done, and they departed.
***
The night was lit only by stars from a cloudless sky. It was difficult to see, as the Lystep man had told Sully they had to wait for a new moon. Sully stood outside his shed while a breeze swept the humidity from under the shirt sticking to his skin. He was sweating. He had not gotten very much sleep in the last few days. He’d prepared a bag of coins for his newfound exorcist, and had cleared out the shed of tools and blankets, leaving two arms’ length of space, as requested. It was a Sunday.
Sully was jumpy, and every crack of a twig and every toss of the leaves from the willows in the distance caused his skin to crawl. He was worried that due to his fatigue he was beginning to hallucinate. He thought, then, of his brothers, who used to hide under beds and cabinets and grab his ankle to scare him when he was younger. Sully had learned quickly to place a bent nail in the deep sole of his shoe, and wear the shoes around the house, just in case.
Sully jumped again as a figure moved beneath an oak on the north end of the cemetery before realizing it was the Lydstep man, and he relaxed. Soon he’d put this nonsense behind him.
The Lydstep grunted at Sully when he finally made his way up to him, moving with a limp. He did not carry a lantern, but had walked through near pitch-black. Sully was barely visible in the flickering orange light from a lamp he kept but barely used in the shed. The Lydstep man hoisted up his bag of trinkets for the ritual and bade Sully come inside.
Upon entering the shed the man asked where the money was. Sully told him curtly that he’d get it when the spirit was gone. The Lydstep man shouted at Sully that he needed to at least see it, and if he thought him a robber he’d just be done with it and be gone. Sully paused, and decided to take the bag of coins from the upper shelf, spiders already crawling on the bag, and handed it to the man. The man grunted again, and began setting up the ritual.
The Lydstep man had with him small candles, some flint, and other objects in a sack. He told Sully to go outside and find a rock. When Sully came back a minute later, the other Sin-Eater had already used the dim lamplight in the shed to place the candles and some other small silverware that looked as though they belonged in a church in strategic places around the candles. The man shouted again at Sully not to touch anything, that he’d placed all the objects very carefully, and took the rock from him.
As the Lydstep man lit the candles with the flint, Sully noted that there was one last object remaining in the bag. The Lydstep man stood after lighting all the candles, said some words in Latin that Sully didn’t know, and then took the last object out of the bag. It was a Bible.
The Lydstep man began reading loudly from the Book of Exodus. Sully recognized enough of what he’d heard of the Bible to know it was the part about God killing the firstborn sons of Egypt. The words made Sully uncomfortable, and he felt his neck get hot. He looked down, and saw that the flames in the candles were getting higher, brighter. The fumes were burning his nortils, and he was aware of the shed being lit brighter than he’d ever seen it.
He backed away as the Lydstep man’s voice grew louder and more distorted, like a spirit was speaking through the man. The flames in the candles grew higher, and Sully was drenched in sweat. Sully placed a hand on the rough door of the front of the shed, which was hot to his touch. He became worried the flames from the tiny candles would reach the ceiling, and he began yelling. In response, the Lydstep man merely turned as he read, the same strange voice emanating, and now the Lydstep man had use of both of his eyes, which were burning red in his pupils. Sully screamed, and the Lydstep man stopped talking. His eyes still flared red, and the flames of the candles still looked as though they’d burn Sully’s shed to a crisp.
It occurred to Sully that the Lydstep man looked as though he was waiting on him. The Bible glowed a soft blue in the man’s hand.
“What?” Sully managed, now bent against the door frame, terrified but unable to leave. His feet dare not move.
“I said,” the man had the same distorted voice. “Do you have a suggestion for the sacrifice?”
“I…what?”
“The ritual requires a human sacrifice,” the deep, echoey voice explained.
“Wha- You didn't say tha’ before.”
“If you ‘ave no suggestions…” the Lydestp said, stepping toward Sully.
An inhuman smile formed on the Lystep man’s face, looking as though it belonged to a horrible creature from Sully’s most vivid nightmares. The man’s teeth looked sharp and yellow. The eyes still glowed red. The nails on the hand were crooked and cracked, which Sully noticed as the man reached into his coat. He pulled out a rusty knife. Sully begged his feet to move. He began to cry as the man, with a movement swifter than Sully could have imagined, plunged the knife into Sully’s heart.
Sully’s side fell flat on the dirty floor of the shed. His breath, shorter with each rasp, was increasingly painful. The shed was on fire. Flames engulfed everything, floor, equipment, blankets, everything. The Lydstep man was laughing, shrieking with delight. It was the last thing Sullivan Davies heard, that laughing.
***
No one knew who started the fire in the shed in the cemetery. No one ever asked if Sullivan Davies was in there. Only Pastor Lucas had officially known he lived there, though half the town knew unofficially. Few noticed Sully never came to the pub again. Not one soul ever saw a pale figure standing out in the cemetery.
And not a single person in either Tenby or Lydstep put it together that it was the Sin-Eater from Lydstep taking over the duties in Tenby as well after Sullivan Davies died.
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