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Her Face, All Teeth

by Greg Stolze

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Denny did not want to spy on the confessional, but at the same time, he did. He wanted what he did not want, or he did not want to want what he wanted. As a Catholic, he should have been well-equipped to deal with this.

Unfortunately, he was also well-equipped to spy on the confessional.

Denny had a quiet body. He could sit very still for a long time. He’d gone hunting as a child, and impressed his dad by watching, over the rifle barrel, until a deer revealed itself. Denny’s little brother Bart always got excited when a deer appeared. Bart shot too soon, scaring the prey away. 

In the war, Denny’s still body had let him set up somewhere and wait, and watch. He was mistaken for part of the landscape until someone or something came into view, and became a good shot, and caught a bullet. When he took those shots, his face didn’t change but he felt it. He really didn’t like seeing people die, even enemies. But, as his father had said when Bart got upset about his bad shots, there was no point being a big baby about it.

---

“Forgive me father, for I have sinned. It has been two weeks since my last confession.”

“Hello my son.”

“That you, Father Pete?”

“Eh?”

“Is that you, Father Pete?” Denny repeated, louder.

“Yes, it is I.”

In some ways, the confessional reminded Denny of those childhood hunting blinds. It was dim and enclosed and uncomfortable. But it was oppressive in a way the blinds never were. There, you looked out onto a wider world, waiting for a part of it to offer itself. In the confessional, you saw nothing but the dark, the vague movements behind the screen, or your own knees as you looked down and considered your transgressions.

“Tell me your sins.”

“OK, well, impure thoughts. Always with the, you know.”

“There are temptations to which the flesh is heir,” Father Pete intoned. “Are you acting on them?”

“Uh, well, you know. I kinda… take care of business sometimes, on my own.”

Father Pete sighed. “Try to break that habit. I mean, however, you’re not… going where you’re unwelcome, er, visiting professionals, permitting temptations to escalate?”

There were hookers at the bar where Denny worked, but Denny didn’t want to go with them. 

“It’s not, er, no. I’m not following anyone or anything just… just the thoughts.”

“Eh?” Vague movement behind the screen, as Father Pete leaned his less-bad ear closer.

“Just the thoughts.”

“Sins, when normalized, have a way of becoming worse. We must remain vigilant.”

“I’m not going to go off and, like… pester or molest anybody.”

“That is a good impulse, my son. Pray and meditate upon that, on your nature’s better angels.”

“Sure, um… so let’s see, I told some lies.”

“Why?”

“Uh… to make things easier on myself, I guess. To not be embarrassed. You know, someone who’s a boss or in authority over you? And you don’t want them to think you’re, uhm, a creep or a bad person or whatever, so you cover some things up.”

“I think I know who you mean. Mr. Bloch was your officer in the war, yes? The man you work for now?”

“Uh, yeah. He gave me a job when we got back. You know.”

“You want his respect.”

Denny had complicated feelings about his boss, Ted. In the war, as Sargent Bloch, Ted had done some terrible stuff. Unnecessary cruelties, and he’d smiled while doing them. But now, at home, he seemed like a different person, a good man. In the war he had always been kind to Denny, and protective. 

“It’s tough,” Denny finally said. 

“Well, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, you know. Maybe not everything is everyone else’s business. Do you think he would care?”

“I dunno father.” Denny shifted in his uncomfortable seat. Was letting Father Pete continue with his misunderstanding OK, or was it another lie? It wasn’t Ted’s respect Denny wanted as much as the priest’s.

“These sins all seem quite mild. You’re not hurting anyone but yourself.”

“No, I guess not. I haven’t, like, stolen anything or killed anyone.”

Father Pete was quiet for a while. “There are many parishioners who saw combat,” he said at last. “It troubles them still.”

“I think I’m OK.”

“Are you?”

“That was another time. They were the enemy.”

“Do you ever have… nightmares? Bad moods over it?”

Denny thought back about the war, but that was so different, so far overseas. It might as well be another life.

“Honestly no,” he said.

---

“She’s lying, you know? Mostly lying,” Irish John (a bar patron distinct from Scottish John) said. He had his chin in his hand and was staring out into space over a beer-and-whiskey-back.

“Yeah?” Denny said, slowly slicing up a lime. It wasn’t all that fresh, its rind had patches that looked a little like snakeskin. 

“I never laid a finger on her,” Irish John mumbled, now looking down into his lap.

“Listen,” Denny said. “You’ve heard me talk about my brother Bartholomew, right?”

For just a second, Irish John tried to smile. “The impatient deer hunter?”

“That’s the one. He’s a lawyer now.”

“Ooh! A lawyer!” Irish John had been born in the US, but sometimes he put on an accent as part of a joke. Not very often these days, but he did it this time to make it sound like he was saying “liar.”

“You know when Andy had his thing?”

“This is nothing like that!”

“Sure, no, of course not,” Denny said, but he fumbled one of his brother’s cards out from his wallet. “Still though, you know what they say. The worst time to get a lawyer is when you need one real bad.”

He put the card on the bar and Irish John looked at it like it was going to bite him. 

“We’re going to work it out. She’s going to calm down.”

“Sure. Absolutely. Another?” Denny said, gesturing.

“Well… all right, but only because it’s whiskey.” This, too, was a well-practiced joke.

“I hope you work it out with her,” he said as he handed over the drink. “If you do, you won’t need that card at all. But it’s just a piece of paper. Doesn’t weigh much. Why not take it?”

“Things are confusing,” Irish John muttered. “It’s not all clean cut and obvious, things are messy. It’s not like what Andy did to that girl.”

Then he drank, fast, and picked up the card.

---

During Mass, Denny liked watching people go up to receive communion. Partly it was just that he liked seeing people—what they were wearing, how they moved, how they’d done their hair. But some of the people were women and he’d look at one and consider if she was pretty or beautiful, what he liked about her. Sometimes, men from the bar would come and pray. Sometimes, terrible men, or at least, men he’d heard say terrible things. Way worse than Irish John’s problems.

(Denny listened at the bar, too, but it was different. It was hard to tell if they were being honest, as they spoke about vile acts, or plans, or desires.) 

After Mass, after confession, after saying aloud the few prayers his few sins warranted, Denny would stay in church and be still. Perhaps this was “contemplation,” which he’d heard discussed but not really explained. At the same time, it was impossible for him to miss that other people were going into the confessional—when he’d gone into the military, they’d said his eye test was in the top five percent. His hearing, too, was very good. As a teen and a child he’d never put the radio on loud, like Bart did. Denny had never liked music much. He preferred quiet.

Church, outside of the services, was quiet, except when people spoke in the confessional, especially to Father Pete. Father Pete was a little deaf, so he spoke loudly and said “Eh?” to congregants who didn’t also speak loudly. 

“…just got so mad…”

Denny frowned and tilted his head. 

“Husband and wife are one flesh.” That was Father Pete’s voice, clearer, but then it dropped off except for the words “self-control” and “Lord teaches.” The tones of reply that followed were whiny and irritated. Denny couldn’t make out words, but he had the sense of it. These were sounds of self-justification, but spoken by someone who, himself, knew he was full of shit. When the curtain twitched aside and the man emerged, Denny could read it all on him, even from the perspective of a sideways glance. The clenched face of anger at war with guilt. The hung head. And, oh yes, the hand with bandaged knuckles. Denny didn’t know the wife beater by name, but he was sure that’s just what the man was. He’d recognize him the next time he was in the bar.

After him came a girl, probably fourteen, rail-thin with a glossy, swinging ponytail. He heard the hesitant pace as she began and he frowned—this felt wrong—but he stayed seated once he heard Father Pete’s “Eh?”

The girl’s voice rose in volume, but was no clearer. There was a quality to it though. Not the reluctant notes of an early teen talking to her priest because her mama made her. This was anguished. 

“Child, your body is yours, a gift from the Lord. You mustn’t permit anyone to steal from you what the Lord has given.”

That was it, Denny stood. His impassive face flushed and he turned toward the sunlight streaming, tinted, from the windows over the front door. 

He was out the door before he registered that someone else had been sitting in the church, just like him. Someone with a still body, easy to ignore. A woman.

---

The next night, at work, Ted was behind the bar, glowering at the TV when Denny got in. 

“Look at these stupid pricks in Washington,” he said. “Can’t wait to beat on the war drum some more.”

Denny glanced up and shrugged. “I don’t even know where that is.”

“You will, if calmer heads don’t prevail. Why we do this over and over? I ask you. I don’t think it even works any more.”

“What doesn’t?”

“War. What was the last country that had a war and came out of it saying ‘Wow, that went even better than I expected? I met all my goals and then some!’?”

Denny got his apron on and took Ted’s place by the taps. “You a pacifist now?”

“Dennis, kid, you know I’m way too far gone for that. But… shit. It’s like the barflies, you know?”

“How you figure?”

Ted was now out by the barstools. He looked left and right and lowered his voice.

“Someone like Jan, you remember her? Used to be, she’d come in feeling OK, have a few, laugh her ass off and get everyone else all jolly too, right? After the divorce though, she comes in glum, drinks… gets numb. Like she’s running to stay still.” Ted leaned on the bar and glared at the television. “It doesn’t make anything better, but you do it because it’s what you know.”

“Maybe it stops things getting worse,” Denny said.

“Maybe.”

---

The following Sunday, following Mass, Denny sat and listened. He hadn’t really planned to, but he hadn’t planned to avoid it either.

“I know father, but I can’t… it’s like this one little bright spot in my life, and everything else is just dull gray.” Whoever she was, her voice seemed to pierce straight through the wooden walls of the confessional. It wasn’t loud, but in the quiet of the church, it was clear, like birdsong in a still forest.

“My child, you know this is a transgression of your marriage vows, and an unnatural one at that.”

“We’re not hurting anyone, are we?” 

“Wouldn’t your husband be hurt, if he found out?”

“I guess but… we haven’t really had a marriage worth the name for years, father. He doesn’t care about me. He’d just be embarrassed.”

“That’s not for you to judge. You made an oath before God, as did he, and if he has failed you as a husband, it does not justify a failure as a wife. I would suggest the two of you come in for counseling…” Father Pete’s voice dipped below audibility, becoming a rumbling murmur, like distant thunder.

The quiet woman was there. She had olive skin and a large hat with a floppy brim, pulled low. The collar on her coat was up, straight black hair flowing out over it. She sat perfectly still, so much that it was as if Denny’s eyes tried to slide off her, however much his curiosity and interest forced them back. 

Surely she was hearing the confession as well. She had to. 

Denny dropped his head when he saw the curtain move. He didn’t want to see who it was, didn’t want to recognize her. He closed his eyes and mouthed prayers over folded hands, trying to mean his Hail Mary, his Act of Contrition.

He heard footsteps pad past and looked up, not at the woman going, but at the other. He saw only a brief profile as she glided into the confessional, in no hurry but with no hesitation. There was a glimpse of ankle in high heels, a voluptuous body partly hidden by a belted coat’s contours, partly emphasized by them. He couldn’t see her face, not past hat and hair and collar. He wanted to.

“Yes?”

Denny glanced around. The church was empty except for him and a portly woman in an ugly dress, kneeling in front of a statue of the Blessed Virgin, lighting votive candles. He got up and moved closer—right behind where the mystery had been. He’d have sat where she had, seen if the thin cushion was still warm, had he not worried about being noticed.

“Atulka, I don’t care what…” Father Pete’s voice lowered in pitch and volume, until it was just noise. He sounded defensive, reminding Denny of the wife beater from the week previous. 

The woman must have spoken, but Denny heard nothing. He strained, making his ears crackle as he flexed tiny muscles, the ones swimmers and air travelers work to equalize pressure. All he caught were the vaguest whimpers from the woman by the Mary statue as she pulled rosary beads through her fingers.

“This is not the agreement we had,” Father Pete said.

Again, he was answered by only silence. Denny gritted his teeth and moved closer, right where she’d sat.

“I don’t care what your ridiculous beliefs about guilt and mortal attention are, we have a very simple exchange. You do what I… mustn’t, and I provide you with the—!” Father Pete stopped, Denny tilted towards the confessional, but when the priest spoke again, his voice had once more dropped too much to be anything but a rumble, an angry and peevish mutter. But this time, Denny could hear the woman’s response. It was low, quiet, nearly inaudible, but more—it seemed to lack the reverb of sound in space, the vibrations of real noise aloud. It was as if he heard it only in his own mind.

we are useful to each other. if you decide to cease your usefulness, i can proceed as i did before. the choice is yours.

“I have no one for you.” If Denny hadn’t been so close, if his attention had been less keen or focused, he wouldn’t have heard it.

so be it. perhaps next week we can once more assist one another.

The voice had no accent, barely any inflection. Its only distinctness was a tiny hiss in words like “assist” and “perhaps”—that and its freakish lack of echo. 

Denny realized she was moving and hastily propelled himself down the pew towards its far end, sliding desperately, hoping to be settled before anyone might see. He raised folded hands right in front of his face but cut his eyes to the right as she emerged. He caught a glimpse of eyeglasses, an aquiline nose above that turned up collar, and tiny elegant hands in black gloves. Then she glided off towards the door with the same smooth tread that seemed gradual and dignified, while somehow covering the distance faster than if she hurried. 

“Forgive me father, for I have sinned,” he said, when it was his turn inside.

“Eh?”

---

Denny left immediately after his incomplete confession—vague admissions of impure thoughts, voyeurism and, again, lying. For these he was gently scolded and assigned Our Fathers and Apostles’ Creeds. He did not specifically say his voyeurism was happening in the church directly before his confession, nor that his lies took place during it. 

He was thinking about his childhood, when he’d feel light after confession, freed and unburdened. Now it didn’t help, but if he skipped Mass he’d feel worse, he knew it. He thought about Jan, about Ted and war as he stepped towards his car.

The day had clouded over, and he hunched his shoulders, pulling out his keys. He flinched violently when a small hand in a black glove fell, light as a kitten, on his shoulder.

don’t turn around.

It was her voice, the mystery.

“Why not?” Denny asked, heart thudding hard.

you were watching me.

“What? No!”

i saw myself in your eyes.

Despite her command—or did it feel more like a warning?—Denny spun to look at her.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Her face was blank, smooth, and beautiful of course. He’d known it had to be. Dark sunglasses eclipsed eyes, despite the day’s gloom. She tilted her face down just a touch, to keep her hat brim over her forehead, and her chin tucked into her turned-up collar. He was almost startled that her lips, full and wide and deep red, moved when she spoke.

i am atulka.

“What kind of name is ‘Atulka’?”

it is my name.

Denny tried to snicker, but it didn’t feel like a joke.

why do you go to confession? you do not feel guilt, do you?

“I do, of course I do.”

Her head tilted. Her mouth moved so little he could see nothing beyond her lips, a dark flicker that might be a tongue, a flash of white that could be teeth. 

if you feel guilt, why do you do the same things over and over? do you like to feel guilty about them?

“Of course not, nobody likes to feel guilt.”

oh?

“Listen, would you like to…” Denny swallowed hard, face red, feeling hot and prickly despite the day’s chill. “It’s cold out here, you want to go get a cup of coffee?”

i don’t drink coffee.

“Tea then.”

goodbye for now, dennis.

“Grab a drink?”

She backed away, stepping so smoothly her shoulders neither rose nor fell as she moved. He watched her retreat until he had to look away, had to turn and skitter to his car, cold, feeling like a broken man.

---

“Bless me father, for I have sinned,” Denny said.

“Eh?” Father Pete sounded irritated. Tired, too. He’d just been giving counsel to Mary Cate. Her dad, Phillip, he came to Denny’s bar and one time she’d been sent to get him. He hadn’t left.

Mary Cate was a young sixteen and was having something done to her. Denny wasn’t sure what, but it had to be bad, to give her voice those sounds, to make Father Pete say words like “pollution” and talk, again, about the body as a precious gift from God. Despite the cold of the chapel, Denny was covered in sweat.

“It’s me, it’s Denny. It’s been a week since my last confession.”

He heard the priest’s deep breath. “Yes, of course. How are you, my son?”

“Uh, OK I guess.” Denny fidgeted.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“Well, I, um… you know…”

“Impure thoughts?”

“More than that.”

Father Pete sighed. “Self-pollution?” he asked, but he didn’t sound accusing or even sad. His voice sounded… nostalgic? As if, after a series of confounding puzzles, he’d been offered something simple, something he knew how to solve.

“No—well, not just, but…” Denny hissed in frustration. “You know how I tell you I’ve been lying? I’ve been lying to you. Here. I’ve been lying in church.”

“Oh my son. That’s… you see how self-defeating that is?”

“Yes, it is, but it’s worse I… I’ve been eavesdropping on confession.”

“Oh no.”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m… that’s why I’m last, today.”

“Dennis…”

“Father… who is Atulka?”

Of all the answers Father Pete might have made, Denny had expected to be told it was none of his business, or that she was just a parishioner, or even that there was no such person, that she was some trick of a sick and suffering mind.

He did not anticipate the priest to leaning close to the lattice, so near that Denny could smell the cigarettes on his breath, and saying, “You see her too?”

---

The two of them stumbled through the remainder of the sacrament, with Father Pete giving him the penance of telling a full Rosary. That took a while, and Denny almost left, but he saw the light on in the rectory and walked over.

“Father?”

“Dennis.” Wordlessly, the priest motioned him inside and offered him coffee. As it percolated on the stovetop, Dennis glanced over at a small sideboard with Bushmills and Four Roses on it. Father Pete nodded.

After putting a strong pour in two mugs, Denny said, “Are you in trouble, Father Pete?”

“I don’t know. I… probably.” He drank and winced.

“With this ‘Atulka’?”

“I first saw it in the sacristy,” he said, leading Denny into a small sitting room.

“It?” Denny asked.

“Her. Atulka. Whatever her nature might be.”

“You think she’s something… holy?”

Father Pete’s look was a mix of exhaustion and contempt. “No.”

Denny took a deep sip. “Where did she come from?”

“When I asked, she said she was from the church. That she’s always been here. But such a creature, who could trust it?”

“‘Creature,’ Father?”

“Dennis, if you are here hoping I tell you your fears are foolish superstition, let that hope die. You have heard her voice? Looked into her face?”

“Yes,” Denny whispered.

“Then you know her eyes do not blink, that her voice, at its lowest whisper, can reach my feeble ears. I’m not sure she is even flesh.”

“She touched me with her hand and I felt it.”

“Oh my son!” Father Pete’s face went gray. “How have you come to her attention?”

“Spying on confession,” Denny said.

“What has she asked of you?”

“Nothing.” Denny set down his cup so he could face the other man directly and look into his eyes. “What about you?”

Father Pete was silent for a long time.

“The sacred bond of absolution is a difficult burden to carry,” he said at last. “Sometimes, a heavy one to weigh, as well. I hear things that haunt me. I listen as the best of people share their worst. Much bleaker than your petty lusts and deceptions, Dennis. I have heard the confessions of killers, admissions that were partially boasts. I have heard such filth pouring out, the details, the enthusiasm of it I… I’m forced to think they are somehow enjoying, again, the thrill of their transgression. As if a drunk recaptured his giddy buzz while throwing up the morning after.”

Denny bit his lip.

“There are provisions for breaking the confessional seal, if I think a crime is going to be committed again, but you know how the police are around here. Should I gamble the people’s trust in the church on bullies and drunks? Do not forget, I hear their confessions too.”

“Where does Atulka fit into this?”

“She claims she is a creature of guilt. A child of it. Like all children, she must nurse from her parent. Or so she says.”

“Nurse? What does that even mean?”

The priest shrugged and sat down, looking away. Denny let the silence stretch until Father Pete took another swig, then said, “What did you do?”

“I knew a woman who did something despicable, something only God could forgive, a crime against a child that could not be proved to the police, but one I fear she would commit again if circumstances were right. Atulka said that… that…”

“What?”

“That it could be made right in this world,” the priest said, sagging in his chair. “I only needed to give her a name and let her into the church. Into the confessional. I thought, then, that she was just a troubled woman! Human as you or I, and to whom can I deny entry? The church is, and must be, the last safe place! No matter your ills, you can come to us, and confess, and with true repentance know peace! What priest would deny that, to anyone? To the coldest killer, the cruelest rapist? God has entrusted me with ministry, I must give it freely to all who ask!”

“So when you let her in, what happened?”

Father Pete hugged himself, even though the radiator was, for Denny, uncomfortably high. “She attended confession, though not services. She said she could not be there then, but the way she said it made it sound like she did not exist during Mass. Does that make sense?”

Denny shrugged, as if to dismiss the idea that any of this did. 

“The woman who had… enacted such a terrible crime upon her child… she perished.” Father Pete couldn’t meet Denny’s eyes.

“Atulka killed her?”

“There was no mark of violence. They thought it must be a heart attack.” Father Pete looked out the window and drank. “I think about how commonplace heart attacks are, and how many Catholic churches there are, and I wonder about Atulka and… others like her. But surely that’s nonsense. Surely this is unique and if such beings were about, we would know. In the church, if not the world at large.”

“What should we do?” Denny asked.

nothing.

Father Pete twitched so violently that brown coffee spattered his black shirt and trousers. He clutched his chest and made a terrible keening noise. Not Denny though. He remained still.

“Where are you?”

right here.

She was. She stood in the arch that led from the rectory parlor to its dining room. There was no sense of movement, or arrival.

“Begone from my home!” Father Pete stood, shouting.

is this not my home too? Her coat was off, and her dress was demure. Her hat, too, was gone, leaving her face visible—so pretty, so blank.

“This is my place! I let you into the church, not my private residence!”

i belong where guilt resides.

“He’s a priest, he’s not guilty,” Denny said.

is that what he told you? he is. he carries it. She stepped gracefully forward, her hand, bare and perfect, rising to touch the priest’s cheek. He stumbled back, jittery and wide-eyed.

the issue is, you think guilt is real. you think it can be measured and fitted for prayers of penance. you expect your imaginary god to weigh and survey it, and pay for it in punishment. it is not real that way, any more than god is. god is dead, though i think he will live again presently. guilt is a feeling. it is only real when you look at it.

“Guilt is for God alone to judge,” Father Pete cried out.

Denny stepped between Atulka and the priest. “What is it you do?” he said, and looked into her eyes.

i put an end to the guilt. 

“You kill.”

of course. i would be of no use to the church if i did not. 

“The church has no need of monsters!” Father Pete had edged behind a sofa, keeping it between himself and Atulka.

men of the church, then. you have a great meal of guilt within you, father. for all the times you were helpless to stop them. for all the times you heard of their treasured, monstrous acts, and told them which prayers to say. for the times you told them not to, and they did it anyway, and then told you. the way this one does.

Watching her closely, Denny could see that her eyes didn’t move. They didn’t blink, or shift, or dilate. They were wet and bright, as if she lived, and her eyelashes trembled gently as the room’s air moved, but beneath their shine, they were as still as if painted on a doll’s face.

“Leave the father alone and take me,” Denny said. As a Catholic, he was well-equipped to make this offer.

1. i don’t think you have the feeling in you. you shot men and thought it was too bad, but it was not your guilt. you carried nothing.

“It was a war.”

even in war, were they not men? but you sleep well while this priest with clean hands tosses and turns. he directs me to those who reject the actions they long to take again. he is the first of their number.

She didn’t move, but she was by Father Pete again. She didn’t change, but those false eyes were gone, her nose disappeared, Denny could see her head had no ears and it had all been a mirage, a delusion. Now he could see her face, all teeth.

“No!” Denny cried.

“Phillip Kemp!” Father Pete shrieked.

Atulka stopped.

“Phillip Kemp,” the priest repeated. “He lives… he lives on Stoker, in that red brick building with the dormers. He is doing unspeakable things to his daughter.”

is he a good enough man to regret it?

“I don’t know!”

then i suppose i shall find out. we will speak again in a week.

Her face came back. She turned and left with steps, moving as if perfectly natural.

Denny helped Father Pete to his feet but couldn’t look in his eye.

“Before me, she would pick… at random. Just anyone, I think,” the older man said.

“Is that what she told you?” Denny asked.

The priest groaned as Denny helped him sit. “Anything that creature says could be a lie.”

“And if you don’t tell her someone to kill, then it’s you?”

Father Pete didn’t answer, just stared at the floor.

“I should go,” Denny said. Both of them understood, somehow, that he wouldn’t be back.

---

She was leaving the red building on Stoker when Denny caught up with her.

“Come on,” he said, opening his car door.

where are we going?

“I don’t know. Away from Father Pete.”

why would i come with you?

“I’ll be a better provider.”

how?

Denny thought about his brother, the lawyer. He thought about the bar, about Ted and Andy, about men bragging and crying. 

“I can find them. But I don’t have the guilt, so I’m safe.”

what is that to me?

“I don’t have the guilt,” he repeated. “I’ll give them to you and feel nothing.”

A light, cold rain started to fall. 

She got in beside him, and they drove away.