Radu’s father rounds on them. "He cannot hang there like slaughtered cattle," he snaps. "Have you no shame?"
He strides toward the steps. For a breath, it seems he will go alone, until a few men finally step forward, though their feet drag against the stone as if pulled by reluctance. Their faces are pale, mouths set hard as though approaching a wild beast rather than a body.
Just as he reaches for the priest’s arm, the young assistant bursts from the church’s side entrance, face drained of all colour. He carries folded cloth in trembling hands.
"Wrap them," he says urgently. "Do not touch him bare."
The men hesitate, then take the strips and bind them clumsily around their palms. The fabric soaks red almost immediately when it brushes against the blood.
The first man—Mihai, the miller, grips the nail through the priest’s left wrist, testing it. The iron is thick, hammered deep into wood and bone alike. He pulls, but it does not budge. He braces one foot against the door and tugs harder, teeth bared with effort. The wood creaks. The metal shrieks faintly against bone.
"Pull it out straight!" Radu’s father urges.
Mihai grits his teeth and yanks with all his strength, until we hear a sickening, wet sound.
The nail remains lodged deep in the wood.
The hand does not.
It tears free.
The body slumps to one side as the wrist gives way, flesh parting with a grotesque softness. What remains of the priest’s hand stays pinned to the door, torn and limp around the iron spike, fingers slightly curled as though in mid-blessing.
A scream erupts from somewhere in the crowd as the men stagger back, horror plain on their faces. The body hangs grotesquely by the remaining nails, arm jagged and ruined, skin split and raw where bone shows pale beneath.
The church doors are no longer merely stained. They are dressed in him.
Mihai stumbles back, the severed arm hanging grotesquely from the body by skin and sinew before the rest of it gives way and the priest’s weight collapses downward, his hollow sockets tilting toward the sky. Radu's father catches him awkwardly, slipping in blood that has smeared across the stone.
The weight of the body gives way all at once, collapsing into the arms of the men beneath. They stagger under it, boots scraping against earth. The church doors, no longer held shut by the nailed limbs, groan inward with a long, hollow creak that seems to rise from the throat of the building itself.
The priest’s assistant rushes forward, snatching a length of linen from his bundle and throwing it over the priest’s torso, then another over the ruined face. The cloth darkens instantly where it touches the sockets. "Cover him," his voice urges. "Cover him—bring him inside."
The men hesitate.
Their feet do not move, not even Radu's father's. Their eyes flick toward the dark interior of the church, where the altar waits in shadow. For a moment, the open doorway feels less like sanctuary and more like a mouth.
"What are you doing?" the assistant snaps, desperation roughening his tone. "Do you think whatever did this stands within the house of God?" His voice trembles, but he forces strength into it. "The doors were closed. It left him here. It did not enter. It cannot enter."
He gestures toward the open threshold as though it is proof enough. "Carry him to the altar."
Reluctantly, the men adjust their grips. The priest’s body shifts under the linen, one arm hanging wrong, the severed wrist wrapped clumsily in cloth that is already soaking through. A dark line trails from the edge of the sheet and drips to the floor.
They lift him. No one speaks. No one crosses themselves now. The only sounds are the shuffle of boots and the faint, sickening drag of fabric against skin as they carry him across the threshold.
The interior of the church swallows them, cool and dim. The morning mist coils into the doorway but does not cross further, as though uncertain.
My breath comes shallow. The cold has seeped through my shawl, through my dress, into bone. The square feels suspended, as though time itself has thinned.
I watch the linen-covered form disappear toward the altar. I watch the way the men avoid looking directly at what they carry. I watch the door stand open, the wood still stained where his body had been nailed.
The altar stands at the far end of the nave, pale in the dim light. The men lay him there carefully, as though he might wake if jostled too roughly. The linen shifts slightly as his weight settles, and for an instant I glimpse the edge of his mouth beneath it.
Empty.
Bile rises in my throat.
The image fractures against another memory—hands that rested lightly at my waist, fingers that traced my throat with reverence rather than force. A voice that had murmured enchantress against my skin. The warmth of his mouth, the careful pause before he bit.
