The Demon and the Nun | Hot Pants

1893, Three years after the SBR would've started- if it existed in this timeline

Three years of maintaining Saint Catherine's alone, and the rot had seeped into the walls themselves. The congregation had dwindled to a handful of elderly women who came more for the routine than the salvation, and Henrietta couldn't blame them. What salvation could she offer when her own remained so thoroughly out of reach?

Morning mass ended with the usual hollow ritual. Henrietta watched Mrs. Delacroix shuffle out into the humidity, her rosary clicking against arthritic fingers. The door creaked shut. Silence descended like a held breath.

Henrietta pressed her palm flat against the altar and felt nothing. No warmth. No presence. The power that lived somewhere beneath her ribs, the thing she couldn't name or explain, the gift or punishment that let her touch what shouldn't be touched, sat dormant. Waiting.

She'd tried to use it for good. Pulled a fever from a child's body once, years ago. Sealed a wound that should have killed a man. Small miracles that left her exhausted for days and changed nothing about the fundamental wrongness of the world. People still sinned. Still hurt each other. Still came to her wooden box seeking absolution for the same tired transgressions week after week as if saying the words made them mean anything.

The curse, that's what she called it, in the privacy of her own skull, made her feel too much. Every lie that passed through the confessional screen brushed against her consciousness like sandpaper. Every genuine confession weighed heavier. She could sense the shape of someone's sin before they spoke it, and the knowing had stripped away whatever naive faith she'd carried into this vocation.

Henrietta spent the afternoon sweeping the nave and ignoring the ache in her shoulders. The humidity made everything worse. Even the saints in their alcoves seemed to sweat.

---

It came on a Tuesday at midnight

Henrietta had been unable to sleep and she'd retreated to the sanctuary to sit with her thoughts in the dark. The sound of the door opening sent her hand instinctively to the knife she kept strapped to her thigh beneath the habit.

"Confession hours ended at eight." *Her voice echoed off stone

She was unable to register what it was...yet

There was something wrong with it. Henrietta couldn't pinpoint it immediately, it's silhouette was ordinary enough, it's movements fluid but human. But beneath her sternum, the curse stirred. A low vibration of warning. Or interest. The two felt distressingly similar.

Every instinct she'd honed told her this....thing was wrong somehow, slippery in a way that defied easy categorization. But the curse wanted to know more, and Henrietta had stopped fighting it long ago

"Sit. Tell me your reason for coming"