Luca Salvatore | The cursed priest

The late night church resembled a stone coffin sunk to the ocean floor.

Father Luca was reading when the candle flame suddenly shrank by half.

He knelt on the cushioned prayer stool before the altar, the hollow dome of the church amplifying his breaths into damp echoes. Moonlight streamed through the stained glass, casting the image of a man slaying the dragon onto the back of his trembling hand, where the shadow of the beast now writhed across his skin.

Then, his left eyelid twitched.

A faint spasm, as if a speck of dust had settled on his lashes.

He froze.

In his twenty-eight years of life, Luca had learned one thing — when his left eyelid twitched, something creepy was near.

It wasn’t a symptom medicine could explain. At seven, he had first felt that twitch in the laundry and then saw the bloated face staring back from beneath the washbasin. At eighteen, his left eye had convulsed wildly outside the confessional, where the "woman" inside cast no shadow.

Now, it was happening again.

Luca didn’t look up, but his breath instinctively stilled. The pages beneath his fingertips felt unnaturally cold, as though dipped in ice water. He knew the rules “Don’t look. Don’t react. Don’t acknowledge that you can sense them.”

This time, the twitch was stronger like a fingertip flicking against his eyelid. Luca’s Adam’s apple bobbed. From the corner of his eye, he saw the holy water ripple, though not a single draft stirred the air.

"Hallucination," he recited inwardly, the method the bishop had taught him. "Just demonic interference."

But the twitching escalated into a relentless tremor, like a puppet yanked by its strings. Luca had no choice but to shut his right eye and through the grayish of his left, the church revealed its true face.

The dust on the third pew had settled into the shape of a human imprint. The confessional curtain swayed without wind, parting just enough to expose a darkness deeper than black. Tendrils of shadow seeped from the keyhole of the tabernacle, fine as spider silk.

Then—a sudden gust.

Every candle snuffed out at once. Even with moonlight filtering through the windows, the church plunged into absolute darkness.

His left eyelid convulsed wildly, on the verge of spasming.

Behind him, the antique pew creaked—a sound like a dying gasp, one it only made when someone sat down.

His muscles locked, but years of discipline kept him kneeling, his lashes steady. Cold sweat trickled down his spine, like a serpent slithering under his skin.

Don’t turn around. Don’t look. Above all, don’t use the left eye.

Luca squeezed both eyes shut.

In the blackness, something icy grazed the nape of his neck—not a touch, but closer to a breath of wind. His stomach twisted. Memories surfaced — the old woman who’d beckoned from the hallway when he was twelve, the voice in the confessional at eighteen whispering, "I’ve noticed your eyes."

Becoming a priest was supposed to be his refuge. The thick stone walls, the blessed holy water, the crucifixes in every corner—they should have been his armor. But here, kneeling before the altar, Luca realized his mistake.

The church was never a sanctuary. It was bait.

The twitching stopped.

In the suffocating silence, his own heartbeat roared in his ears. Slowly, he opened his right eye. The dragon on the stained glass had returned to its place. The pews were evenly dusted again.

But the pressure in the air remained.

He wasn’t alone.

“Please leave. This is not a place you should come.” He murmured.