Chapter Four: The Mysterious Fate of Father Donovan

“Why are you friends with her?” I accused Eliza later.

“She’s fun. And she’s deeper than you think.”

“Well so was the kiddie pool at Lena’s house when we were little but I still never dove into it.”

I shook my head. “Why do guys like her? What does she have that I don’t?”

“A push-up bra.”

After returning home with my younger sisters after trick-or-treating we all enjoyed some apple cider and a rendition of my mother’s favorite Halloween anecdote, a tale including a seven-year-old version of me almost drowning in my attempt to bob for apples.

As planned, Eliza and I pretended to get ready for bed and, after saying goodnight to everyone and closing our door, we crept out the window.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

Eliza rolled her eyes. “Micah had better hurry the hell up. And you’d better quit bitching or you may as well go home.”

“Oh my God, I can’t believe we’re actually doing this!” Cassidy squealed as we made our way across town.

“Funny, I was just saying that,” I muttered.

“D’you think we’ll see the ghost of Father Donovan?”

“Doubt it.”

“I bet he stalks the halls of his house with that lamp.”

“Ooh, I bet he whips people with the cord!” Eliza exclaimed.

“What are they talking about?” Aaron asked me. Sure enough, he, “the new kid” had come along and no one had seemed to think he needed to know much about why everyone thought the Donovan house was haunted.

“Well, a priest died there.”

“So?”

I took a deep breath. “So, about twenty years ago a priest at Sacred Hearts named Father Donovan lived at the edge of Fey Street. Everybody thought he was a great priest. He gave great sermons, you know, did all the stuff he should. Anyway though, one cold November day something strange happened. Father Donovan didn’t show up for mass. Now you know nobody would have noticed this except for the fact that he kinda ran the mass. So when he didn’t answer his phone the police were called. They found his body half out the backyard facing window of his bedroom. Glass was broken, some of it stabbed right through his body.”

“So wait, did he fall, or did someone push him?”

“Well, that’s the question isn’t it? It’s hard to tell because the police found the cord of a lamp wrapped tight around his neck.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“No kidding.”

“Did they catch the murderer?”

“Well, nobody really knows if there was a murderer. Some think it was suicide.”

“Yeah but, why would a priest kill himself? Isn’t that like, the first rule of Catholicism, suicide equals hell?”

I laughed. “Yeah well, nobody really thought seriously about suicide until Lonny Joe Carson came along.”

“Who’s Lonny Joe Carson?”

“He was this kid in Sacred Heart’s parish. After Father Donovan died Lonny Joe said he was glad because he didn’t like Father Donovan. The kid said he touched him, you know. Well, after the parents pried some more details out it was pretty obvious that Father Donovan had molested the kid.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yes it was.”

“Did they question the kid? The cops I mean.”

“Well yeah, but Lonny Joe was six at the time. How many six year olds do you know who can strangle someone? Besides, he and his parents had been at the church waiting for mass to start.”

“That rules out the parents too.”

“Yeah. Besides, it didn’t add up. Why would the parents have killed him? Lonny Joe didn’t tell them about, you know, till after he was dead.”

“What happened to the Carsons?”

“Moved. Not sure where. You know, and it’s weird, for some odd reason I’ve always wanted to meet Lonny Joe. I never got to of course, all this shit happened before Eliza was even born.”

“So… nobody knows? No one knows what happened?”

“Nobody knows.”

“What do you think happened?”

I thought about that for a moment. I wasn’t sure. I’d tried never to think about it much.

“I dunno. My dad says ‘the old perv probably couldn’t stand to live with himself, strangled himself and fell through the window.’ But my mom’s a nurse at the hospital and she said the autopsy showed he’d been dead before the glass stabbed him. Not for long, only for a moment, but he was dead. If he’d tried for suicide he would’ve passed out before he died and the glass would have killed him. But if he died beforehand… well.”

“Yeah…”

“Yeah. Everybody knows the story still ‘cause, well, it’s the most news our town got in twenty years.”

“Do you think it’s haunted?”

“I sure hope not,” I said, looking up at the narrow, three-story mass of rotting wood.