Free Embracing Darkness by Christopher D. Roe

was not being able to decide from which side of the bed to get up.
    The moon lost. He got out of bed and shuffled toward the door. The light switch was just to the right of it. He hit the door sooner than he expected, hurting his knuckle. “Ouch!” he exclaimed as the pain registered a split second later. Father Poole switched the light on and immediately squeezed his eyes shut, as they were still accustomed to the dark. His right eye opened slowly. “Two thirty-six in the morning,” he sighed.
    Father Poole had never been so wide awake this late at night. As he switched off the light and made his way back to bed, he thought about going down to the kitchen for a glass of warm milk. Then he figured it wouldn’t do much good since he’d had it with dinner, and it hadn’t made him sleepy at all.
    With the light off and only a dim glow of moonlight shining through his window, Father Poole was almost back to his bed when he slammed a big toe into one of the legs. “Ouch! Mother f… .” The priest stopped, remembering where he was and wondering who might be sleeping nearby. He knew that his criticism of foul language among his staff would sound sanctimonious at best and hypocritical at worst if he were caught by Sister Ignatius using such words. After all, he was a man of the cloth, and even though some vices within the priesthood were acceptable, such as alcohol and cigarettes, swearing was not.
    The young Father thought for a second as he bent down to rub his aching toe. He had screamed at the top of his lungs just that afternoon in the dining room when he hit his head underneath the table. He refrained a bit from rubbing his toe so that he could remember exactly what he’d shouted. Damn? Hell? he thought. Well, whatever it was, Sister Ignatius must have heard it .
    He once again began to caress his aching toe along the nail, feeling a dull pain as he pressed on it. As he did this, he remembered the Sister’s telling him earlier, “And since you’ve come down from your room, I’ve been watching you.”
    He exhaled deeply, put his foot with the sore toe to the floor, and walked slowly over to the window, following the moon’s faint blue light. He felt warm. While most June nights in southern New Hampshire were cool, that day had been hot and sticky. He went to open his window, which he did to his amazement with ease.
    “So light and flimsy this window is,” he said, and hummed in approval as he waited for a cool wind to pass through the window. None came, however. After more than ten seconds of expecting some sort of breeze, he gave up, put his hands into his pajama pockets, and peered out into the darkness.
    Father Poole surveyed the moonlit grounds below. After his arrival at the church, he had spent the afternoon and entire evening inside the rectory. Now by his tiny window, he could see the town of Holly. Aside from some faint lights in the distance, the town was as dead at two in the morning as the dearly departed buried in Eternal Rest Cemetery on the outskirts of Holly, where the priest could detect the dull blotches of white crosses and gravestones.
    His eyes moved from the town and its environs to the top of Holly Hill itself. The first thing Father Poole noticed was that he had the highest vantage point in all of Holly. The rectory’s top floor seemed to be the tallest point on the hill other than St. Andrew’s steeple, which reached another twenty or so feet into the sky, and certainly the uppermost branches of the great maple tree behind the rectory. He could even see part of the façade of the church to his right as he stuck his head out the window. Father Poole then turned his head to the left. There wasn’t much else on the hill, but he remembered that in addition to the church, rectory, and maple there were two private houses, one of which still had its porch lights blazing.
    It was the Benson porch. Father Poole quickly skimmed the front lawn again and realized he’d have better light in the