Chapter 07

Chapter 07

Confessions of the Undead

The church reopened three days later.

Broken glass was replaced, blood scrubbed from the stone, and official reports blamed “inter-gang violence.” The city accepted the lie easily. It always did. But something had changed in the air around St. Michael’s Basilica—a tension that made even the faithful whisper their prayers more softly.

Detective Naa Adjeley did not leave.

The Local Investigative Department decided to cover up the carnage and keep tabs on the matter. The office needed to find a way to work with the priest in solving the sharp rise in ritual-related cases, with Naa Adjeley as lead detective.

She attended Mass every morning, sitting in the same pew, watching Father Sampson as if expecting him to vanish or bare fangs at any moment. She had not reported what she saw. Not the blood. Not the impossible man.

Yet.

“You should be afraid of me,” Sampson said to her one evening as she lingered near the altar.

“I am,” Naa replied. “That’s why I’m still here.”

Sampson understood. Fear, when sharpened by duty, became loyalty.

Confessions resumed.

Men and women entered the booth unaware that the priest listening had lived long enough to see their sins reborn a thousand times over. Sampson heard of murder ordered by text message, of children sold across borders, of cult initiations masked as prayer.

Each confession tore at him.

By night, the beast urged him to act. By day, the priest urged restraint.

He fasted. He prayed longer. He slept less.

And the chest beneath the altar beat harder with each passing night.

One afternoon, an old woman arrived, leaning on a carved wooden cane. Her eyes clouded with age—but when they met Sampson’s, they sharpened.

“You have walked a long road,” she said.

Sampson stiffened. “Do I know you?”

“No,” she replied. “But my grandmother did. She sang songs of a king who would not die.”

Her name was Ama Nyarkoa, a traditional healer who had come not to expose him—but to warn him.

“There are others like you,” she said quietly. “Not all of them regret what they’ve become.”

Sampson’s jaw tightened. “One has already found me.”

Ama Nyarkoa nodded. “Then the night has begun organizing itself.”

That night, Sampson sensed movement beyond the city—a gathering of forces, coordinated, intentional. Not gangs. Not cults.

A hierarchy.

Meanwhile, Detective Naa followed a trail of shell companies and charities linked to Mr. K. Each led to another dead end—or another body.

“You’re not just cleaning the streets,” she told Sampson. “You’re stepping on a throne.”

“I was born to one,” Sampson replied bitterly.

An orphan child who was in training to become a priest had developed an unnatural gift while praying at the same altar. The child began to dream of shadowy beasts.

He drew pictures of a man with no shadow standing beside a black throne. When Sampson saw them, the beast growled in recognition.

The mastermind was no longer hiding.

One night, Sampson found a confession waiting for him—written, not spoken.

You kneel, but you rule.
Come and see what you truly are.

It was signed with a single symbol: a crowned bat.

Sampson crushed the paper in his fist.

He stood alone in the sanctuary, rosary heavy around his neck, the weight of centuries pressing down.

“I will not become him,” he whispered.

But the night answered with silence.

And silence, Sampson knew, was never empty.

It was waiting.