The Last Sin-Eater of Harfolk County
by Grace F. Hopkins
Creed despised the lot of them. He sat outside on an overturned feed trough, his back up against the wooden siding, hat on his knee, sweaty hair mussed in a way Mama’d hate if she saw him.
It was a breathless day, the air still and suffocating with omens of a coming storm—a slow-moving rumbler that’d drop its burden over the swamp first, then sweep over the top of the stumpy southern mountains, then finally shed its last tears over this little holler at the corner of Harfolk County.
Creed wished he was at home. He’d even rake out the sow’s pen if it meant he didn’t have to sweat in this black suit that’d grown a bit too small, or shake hands and exchange pleasantries with the old folk of this town. But Mama said they oughta show up for their neighbors, especially when someone died, and so she’d dragged him along. Even though Widow Abernathy lived a few miles too far and too deep into the wood to be considered a proper neighbor.
He’d lasted only a half hour, sweating and swaying in the cramped confines of the house, sneaking glimpses at the waxen corpse and trying not to think about how they’d stuffed its mouth with cotton. Now he sat alone, picking muddied stones out of the ground and trying to hit the squat lump of a bullfrog poised on a log at the edge of the yard.
“What you doin’, boy?” a voice asked. “’Sides terrorizing God’s good creatures?”
Creed started and turned to see a man shamble around the corner of the house and settle himself up against the wall, sitting his britches straight onto the muddy ground.
He’d never seen a tramp, at least not a proper one. But they had stories about them, the strangers that wandered into town and killed families in cold blood with axes, or had magic glass eyes and weird, ominous powers, who came to small towns in even smaller hollers and then disappeared into the swamp, never to be seen again.
If he had to guess what a proper tramp looked like, this man would certainly qualify. He wore no shoes, and the soles of his feet were dark and leathery; his britches, once likely a brownish color, were frayed, ragged and faded to a muddy sort of grey. He wore a button-down shirt and suspenders, the top buttons missing, revealing a patch of greying chest hair. His skin was tan and lined, like old, cracked leather, and his wiry grey beard nearly reached the middle of his chest. Whether he had hair on his head to match, Creed couldn’t tell; an old straw hat, brim tipped low, shadowed his face from the slow descent of the late afternoon sun.
“Dunno,” Creed said, shrugging. His Mama wouldn’t like him talking to a stranger, least of all a tramp. But Creed reckoned he’d met just about everyone there was to meet in Harfolk County (’cept for those that belonged to that Roman Church up past the creek, whose last names all ended in z’s and ski’s and who hardly spoke English), and the allure of a stranger was too much to bear. “But it’s better than being in there. You know they got a dead man layin’ in the parlor? Dunno how long it’s gonna take him to smell, but I don’t wanna be here when he do.”
“You know why they ain’t doing a funeral?” the tramp asked.
Creed shrugged. “Dunno.” He bit back the “don’t care”, rising from the swallow of his throat. He just aimed another pebble at the bullfrog and said, “The preacher’s out of town on account of his Pa bein’ sick, and the widow reckons we don’t need a funeral to return to God since we didn’t need a ritual to come from him in the first place. She said she was fine just puttin’ him in the ground. God would sort out the rest.”
The tramp nodded, as if he expected this response. He fiddled with a pack he’d set at his feet and pulled out a corn cob pipe and loaded it with a pinch of tobacco from his pocket. “You know what they’s waitin’ for to put him in the ground?”
Creed shrugged again. If the tramp really wanted to know anything he should go inside and talk to one of the adults who actually cared. As it was, the thrill of meeting a stranger was starting to wear thin. He could only hope the tramp had something strange in that lumpy sack of his. But he just produced his matchbox and lit his pipe.
“They’s waitin’ for a sin-eater,” the tramp said. His voice held a touch of reverence to it, and a knowing little smirk flattened his mouth, even as he puffed.
Creed sat up a little straighter. “A what?” He’d heard the adults whispering in the kitchen. Silas Downing had dialed the rotary, calling for somebody. Is that what they’d been talking about?
“A sin-eater,” the tramp said, as if the name itself were explanatory. “You ever met one before?”
“No sir.”
The tramp gave a wet chuckle. “Well, figures, there ain’t many left.”
“What does a… a sin-eater do?” A morbid curiosity had overtaken him now and he wanted to milk the tramp for all the information he could. Out here there was no one to tell him it wasn’t polite to ask the real questions.
“He eats sins, of course.” The tramp grinned and blew out some smoke in the gap between his teeth, but sobered at Creed’s look of annoyance.
“Your people church-goin’?” he asked.
“I been saved, if that’s what you mean,” Creed said. It was a reflexive answer, like saying his age, or what his Pa’s name was, lest anyone have any reason to scorn him.
“I mean, when one of your’n dies, do you bring ’em to church and have a proper funeral?”
Creed scrunched his eyebrows. He’d have to think on it. Nobody’d died in a while, not since Great Aunt Edna when he wasn’t no more than five. But he did remember sitting in their usual Sunday pew wearing new shoes that left blisters. “Yeah,” he said.
“Good,” the tramp nodded. “Good.”
The tramp didn’t seem like the type who’d care about the Good Book or any of the things they talked about at Rolling Creek Christian. But even if he wasn’t a churchgoer, Creed had never met anyone in these parts that didn’t know their way around the Lord’s Prayer or a verse or two if pressed. Religion was in the water; even if you never swam in it yourself, some of it lingered in your lungs all the same.
“Well.” The tramp took one of his large-knuckled hands in the other and popped his fingers, each of the joints clicking loud enough to sound like a pellet gun. “When you don’t have a funeral in these parts, you call a sin-eater. He eats all the sin from the dead man so it don’t go into the ground with him and pollute the land. These hills are already too full of dead men’s bones, and ancient, restless things. We don’t need their sin going down into the grave with ’em.”
Creed’s ears heated. He stood up, his hat tumbling from his knee. “Now, just wait a minute. You can’t just pull my leg like that. I know I’m small, but I turn twelve this summer and I know when somebody’s tellin’ me a tale—”
“Nah, nah.” The tramp waved for him to sit back down. “I ain’t yanking your leg, boy. Not many people call for a sin-eater much anymore, but that’s what they’s for—what they’ve always been for.”
“Then why ain’t I never heard of one?” Creed consented to sitting back on the overturned trough, but the metal was unpleasantly hot and slick with his sweat.
“I’m tellin’ you boy, being a sin-eater is a tough job. A lonely job. But a necessary job. A sacred job.” The tramp drew in a long drag of his pipe and an ember flared in the bowl, casting his shadowed face in a brief glow of orange light. “It’s only him who can reckon with the sins of this land. That can keep all them waiting shadows at bay.”
With a click of his knees, the tramp stood and stretched. He grabbed his pack and its contents shifted with a clank like the sound of dishes rattling. The flap opened and a plum rolled out toward Creed’s feet.
Creed picked it up, and moved to hand it back, but the tramp was already opening the cottage door and stepping inside.
“You called?” he asked the assembled crowd.
Not but a quarter hour later, the mourners congregated on Widow Abernathy’s lawn as snarls and growls erupted from the parlor. The sin-eater moaned and screamed while the mourners fretted and whispered. Mama’d gone pale and tight, and she grabbed Creed’s elbow and pulled him toward the road home. “C’mon, let’s go home. We shouldn’t be here for this part.”
“No, I want—” Creed began to protest. He wanted to know what was happening, he longed for a peek through the shuttered window. But even if not that, he wanted to know what would happen when—
The front door banged open, and the sin-eater appeared, eyes wide and wild, mouth ringed with sticky red. The crowd gasped, stepped back as if he might fling himself on them next. But he didn’t. With a cry akin to a howl, the sin-eater pushed past them all and ran as if the devil himself were chasing him into the waiting wood.
Creed never saw him again.
By the time Credence Carrigan was sixteen, he knew better than to be caught out after dark.
He rushed along the old and rutted cobbled path at the forest’s edge, sweat clinging to his neck, breaths raspy, feet slapping the uneven ground. The muscles in his legs were tight and strained, but he dared not slow.
He’d lost track of time down at the creek, and now the sun was sinking with alarming speed. He’d gone to look for morels and catalogue the spring blooms, but he’d stayed with the hope that Sarah Downing would show up with her friends (or maybe even alone) to look for crawdads. That hope had kept him rooted to the creek bed far longer than it should’ve.
He hadn’t meant to be gone for so long, and so he hadn’t even brought a gun. It’d been a fool’s gamble, and now he was rushing, sketchbook clamped under his sweaty arm, stiffening at every noise that wasn’t the wind or twigs breaking underfoot.
Once he made it to Second Street, he could cut through the center of town. There was no guarantee that’d keep him safe, but it was better than running along the edge of the wood. The horizon clung to a thin line of orange, even as the bloated and reddish moon rose over the tops of the trees.
The turn for Second Street came into view, and he angled himself toward it. A howl stopped him cold.
It rose from the trees to his right, high, and keening, and horrible. Gooseflesh rose on his skin. He froze, like a rabbit crouched in high grass. A chorus of howls answered—closer. Close enough to send chills scampering down his spine, to tighten his stomach in a fist of dread.
Had he been anywhere other than Harfolk County, he could’ve mistaken the calls as a pack of coyotes. But he was in Harfolk County, and there were worse things than coyotes here.
He sprinted. The howls redoubled, and there, up ahead and to his right, two glowing eyes appeared amidst the dusky trees, blue and bright as car headlights.
Creed jarred to a halt again, fear locking his legs. What was he to do? All his Pa had ever taught him to do was shoot and run. But he had no way to defend himself.
A spate of images flashed through his mind—news clippings of gored and dismembered bodies strewn across the railroad tracks, bloodstained cobblestones in the town square, his 4-H calf, entrails spilling across the lawn. He was going to end up like that. And there was nothing he could do.
A whistle split the air behind him. He turned.
Tucked into a wooded inlet around a bend was a little house, porch-light flaring to life. And standing on the steps, shotgun leveled against his shoulder, was an old man, looking at Creed with a deadly seriousness.
“Boy! I need you to walk slowly and get in here. Do not run. It’ll only provoke them.”
Creed didn’t have to be told twice. He turned back toward the glowing eyes, but they were closer now, and Oh God there was more of them. A whole pack was gathering at the edge of the treeline a hundred yards away, and every inch of him stiffened in fear. He’d only seen eyes in the trees, glimpses of shadow, the wreckage they’d left behind. Never had he fallen prey to them. Never had they been this close. He could see their hulking mass, hunched backs brushing the low hanging tree branches, a stench like stagnant water and the deep places of the earth. Of something ancient and toxic and rotten.
Creed walked backward, hands raised, step by step toward the old man’s porch. At first the eyes stayed exactly where they were.
Then he blinked.
And suddenly their hulking forms pooled like shadows on the path before him, massive bristling hackles like those of wild boars, slavering jaws, long and lupine noses, stocky legs and sinuous bodies.
He was too surprised to scream. They were but three yards away now, and they’d moved that distance on silent feet in the time it took him to breathe. The pool of light from the porch had just touched his back, but he wasn’t going to make it now. All it would take was another second—less than that, and they’d have him.
“Alright boy,” the old man said. His voice was level, low, calm. “On the count of three you’re gonna run as fast as you can and not look back. Don’t stop ’til you’re inside.”
Creed nodded, his eyes fixed on the silhouettes scenting the air. The ones in the background crept closer, as if forming a united front before a charge.
“One…”
Creed’s legs tensed.
“Two…”
He clenched his sketchbook tighter.
“Three—”
He whirled. And then he was running—panic hot as moonshine in his gullet. Two shotgun blasts rang out. A sound like a train whistle blared.
Creed waited for claws to sink into his back, waited for pain and blood, but instead he reached the steps, bounded up them in one leap. He hooked his fingers around the door and wrenched it open. Two more shots rang out, and a second before the door clattered closed, the old man slipped in and threw his weight against it.
The whole door rattled in its frame. “C’mon!” the old man barked. Creed threw his weight against it too. The hinges groaned, claws scraped against the wood on the other side.
The old man pumped his shotgun again, raised it, and loosed a shell toward the ceiling. The kitchen light blew out, and bits of plaster rained down. Footsteps scampered down the porch and away.
All fell silent. The door relaxed back into its frame. Creed’s legs turned to water, and he slid to the floor, gasping and shuddering. Underneath the door frame, a snake of black tar worked its way over the floorboards.
The air smelt heavy, an unpleasant mixture of rotting meat, petrichor, and the moment before lightning strikes. Somewhere in the back of the house, a clock ticked, and both the man and Creed listened to it for a minute, panting.
“What the hell were you thinking?” the man asked, in a hoarse whisper. “You askin’ to get kill’t?”
“No sir.” Creed pulled himself to his feet, legs shaking in protest. “Lost track of time, was trying to make it home.”
A match flared. The old man lit a kerosene lamp on the kitchen table, its soft yellow light filling the space. The shards of glass and bits of plaster from the ceiling glimmered on the floor like snow. “Now that they know you’re here, they might come back. But I reckon we lay low and pretend we ain’t here. Maybe they’ll stay away. We can hope.”
The old man limped, favoring one leg over the other, to a hallway toward the back of the house. “What’s your phone number, boy?” he asked. “You better call your Mama and tell her you’re here. One of your’n can come pick you up if they’ve got a vehicle, or you can spend the night. But ain’t no way you’re walking home now.”
Creed followed him to the hall, reciting his number, while the man dialed it into the phone on the wall. He handed the corded receiver to Creed.
His Mama was angry, but relieved. And she was sending Pa, the truck, and his rifle over straight away. Creed made his way back to the kitchen table and slumped his way into a chair. His legs felt leaden and tense with the burst of speed he’d employed to get to the house, and the rest of his body was shaky with spent adrenaline.
The man took the chair opposite.
They stayed in silence until the man reached his hand across the table. “Theobold Roth.” He was missing two of his fingers, and the skin of his palm was blackened, almost charred. It took Creed a moment to realize he should shake it.
“Credence Carrigan,” he said as he pumped it.
Theobold looked toward the door and nodded at Creed’s sketchbook discarded by its threshold. “You better get that before their filth gets on it.”
At first he didn’t know what Theobold meant, but then he saw the tar-like substance groping toward his sketchbook across the floorboards. He fetched it, and the muck continued to spread, the wood blackening and steaming under its touch, making Creed’s stomach turn.
“Thank you,” he said as he sat back at the table. “For saving me back there. You didn’t have to.”
Theobold huffed out a laugh. “What? And let you get tore to pieces on my lawn?”
Creed swallowed hard, his mouth still curiously dry. He wanted to ask for a glass of water, but he didn’t want to make Theobold get up. And his screaming legs compelled him to stay seated. “That was the closest call I’ve ever had.”
“And let’s pray it’s the closest you ever do have. But I reckon if you stay in this county
’til you’re grown, it won’t be.” There was a bowl of sunflower seeds in the middle of the table and Theobold took a handful and began cracking off the shells. “I’m lucky. When I was a boy, we didn’t have them critters. If we had, I would’ve been a goner ages ago. I was always too reckless.”
It was laughable to hear Theobold refer to the monsters as “them critters” as if they were some intrusive possums or burrowing moles. Creed’s Pa complained about the monsters plenty too, and Creed now pulled out a phrase from his lexicon and spat it down at the table. “Damn feds.”
Theobold’s eyebrow arched and for a second Creed feared he’d give him a lickin’ for his tongue, but all Theobold said was, “What’s that?”
“I mean, if it wasn’t for the feds and their experiments and all those chemicals they let all the companies dump in the swamp, we wouldn’t have these monsters in the first place. They keep sayin’ they’re trying to fix the problem, but they’re the ones who—”
Theobold’s brow furrowed. “That’s what they’s teaching you in school these days, is it? That it’s the feds that made them critters? That it’s their fault?”
“Well, yeah,” Creed said. Surely Theobold had read the papers, surely he knew what the government had said, what the scientists were still saying.
Theobold laughed a humorless laugh. “A nice cover story, ain’t it? Convenient, don’tcha think? Clever.” Theobold’s eyes met Creed’s, then dropped back to the sunflower seeds in his hand. He gave a heavy sigh. “The government didn’t make them critters, intentional or otherwise—we did.” He chewed a handful of seeds before he spoke again. The kerosene lamp threw strange shadows against the darkened window glass. “We ain’t had a sin-eater in five years. Those fancy politicians can talk all they want, but it’s easier to give a cover story to explain them critters than admit they have no clue what they’s dealing with.”
Creed’s eyebrows creased. “You don’t mean… you can’t mean…” But even as he said it, by the look in Theobold’s eyes, Creed knew he did mean it.
Nevermind that the government had explanations about underground mines and nuclear contamination and soil erosion and outlawed pesticides. Nevermind that the State Conservation Society had relocated here to study the peculiarities of Harfolk County’s agriculture and ecosystem.
Sin.
That’s what it came down to, at least in Theobold’s eyes. Creed couldn’t help but scoff and wonder whether the old man was commendable for the strength of his belief or foolish in it.
“So… it’s because we don’t have anyone to eat our sins?” Creed asked. “That’s why the monsters are here?” He couldn’t keep the incredulous sneer out of his voice. But even so, his mind flickered back—
To a tramp sitting underneath the eaves of a house, smoking a corn cob pipe. Isn’t that what he had said—that sin-eaters were the only things keeping the “waiting shadows at bay”? Creed had thought it was a metaphor. He’d never thought—
Theobold leaned forward, elbows bent, chair creaking beneath him. “You listen to me, boy. Ain’t nothing been the same since that sin-eater died. They didn’t replace him, and ain’t no one learned the old ways. And ’fore you know it, the first monsters came. And they ain’t stopped comin’ since.”
Creed leaned back. “What, do you think the monsters would just… go away if we had another sin-eater? Just crawl back to wherever they came and disappear?” He waggled his fingers like a magician about to pull a rabbit from his hat, and Theobold narrowed his eyes.
“I’m sure it ain’t that simple. It’s never that simple. But, if we gonna set things right, we gotta start believin’ in something again, and sin would be a good place to start.”
“If you think having another sin-eater around would make a difference, why haven’t y’all elected one yet?” The words came out sharper than he’d intended. For some reason all of this talk made him uncomfortable in a way he couldn’t define.
Theobold shook his head. “It ain’t that simple as ‘electing’ one. A sin-eater’s always an outcast. Once a sin-eater, always a sin-eater. Once you cross that line, there’s no coming back. You ain’t a part of things no more, not like you used to be. You tasted the dark that’s in these hills, you know the people’s sins and you must walk between the worlds. I don’t know about you, but I reckon it’s damn hard to find someone who wants a job like that.”
If possible, the story was taking on an even more fantastical tone, and Creed couldn’t help but imagine a sin-eater wearing a mask and cape like the superheroes in his comic books. But the sin-eater he’d seen was just a tramp, a dirty and rumpled tramp. There were plenty of those around, even if they weren’t sin-eaters. How hard could it be to convince one of them to come calling each time they had a wake?
“Well, until we get a new sin-eater,” Creed said, “at least we know bullets work.”
Theobold merely humphed and ran his misshapen hand across his brow. His hand landed back on the table atop Creed’s sketchbook. He cracked open the front cover and thumbed quickly through the pages. Creed’s hands twitched, longing to snatch it back. But Theobold just nodded appraisingly. “These’re nice,” he said.
A blush heated his neck. Even though Theobold seemed impressed, Creed couldn’t help but feel a flash of shame. Shame pressed deep in him by the boys at school who considered his fascination with botany a strange and feminine hobby.
“Thanks,” he murmured. And then, as if to excuse himself, or at least provide a justification, he said, “Do you know Harfolk County has some of the rarest and most under-studied plant mutations in all of North America?”
Theobold thumped the sketchbook closed. “Not sure that’s something to be proud of.” His chair creaked as he sat back. “Another way this land is tainted. Another way we’ve fallen.”
Something stirred outside and every muscle in Creed’s body stiffened. Theobold half-rose from his chair and put a finger to his lips. But after a moment of listening, it was only the sound of tires on a dirt road. Headlights slid along the back wall.
Creed rushed to the window and looked out, and sure enough, his Pa’s truck was parked close enough to the front porch that it’d nearly run the front step over.
He turned to Theobold. “Thanks, sir, for saving me back there.”
“The least I could do,” Theobold said with a nod. “Now get on home, and don’t stay out after dark no more. I pray in your lifetime these haints will die out or move on.”
Creed nodded, snatched his sketchbook, opened the door, and, leaping over the pool of black blood, he rushed to his father’s truck.
As they drove away, Theobold stood silhouetted behind the screen door under the porchlight, one hand raised in a gesture of farewell. Deep gouges rent the steps and porch.
As they drove away, glowing eyes watched them from the trees.
By the time Credence Carrigan was thirty-five, he’d tasted enough of sin to heed Theobold Roth’s theories.
One particular Sunday he sat on Theobold’s front porch, in the rocking chair opposite him, holding but not drinking a warming glass of sweet tea. Theobold had been reading from Scripture, Jeremiah.
He’d come to enjoy, depend even, on Theobold’s Sunday Scripture recitations. He reckoned he was more a part of the church of Theobold Roth than Rolling Creek Christian these days. But when Theobold finished his reading today, instead of his usual, perfunctory sermon, he closed his weathered Bible with a sigh and leaned back in his chair.
His eyes were scrunched closed, and he breathed in deeply for a moment. Creed leaned forward, about to ask after his wellbeing, when Theobold looked to Creed, his eyes wet and glassy. “I have half a mind to ask a favor of you,” he murmured, his voice low and husky. “But I reckon it ain’t right of me. It ain’t right.”
Creed set his tea on the porch. “What’re you talking about, Theo?”
Theobold wiped a hand over his face, fingers lingering over his eyes before he cleared his throat and spoke again. His hair had grown pure white in the last year or so and he’d become bird-boned, something Creed would never have guessed would happen to the likes of him. He looked so fragile now that Creed could hardly stand it.
“Just the ramblings of an old man,” he said, and waved a hand, attempting to divert from anything else he might’ve said.
“Theo,” Creed’s voice was low, firm. Despite pushing eighty years old, Theobold didn’t ramble. He wasn’t an absent-minded old man, and if he brought something up, he had a damn good reason for it. “What is it?”
Theobold sighed again and looked out toward the road. Not many lived near the edge of town anymore. Theobold’s house, always further than the rest, was an island unto itself these days. “I wonder how much time I have left,” he murmured.
While it was true that age had caught up to Theobold Roth, he was still, in Creed’s eyes, fairly hearty. He still had a bad leg from a farming accident in his youth, and he was a fall risk, something that prompted Creed to check on him daily. But besides the cane leaning against Theobold’s rocking chair, few other changes had occurred. But perhaps there were things Creed didn’t know.
“And I… when I go, I dunno if my kids will give me a proper funeral. I was the only reason their Mama had one,” Theobold said.
He had two grown children, Mark and… Isobel, Creed recalled. They’d moved out of the county and rarely visited now. In Theobold’s estimation, they’d taken after the ways of the world, steeped in a Christianity that was more niceties than creeds and beliefs.
“If they don’t… please…”
And Creed held his breath, waiting for Theobold to make an impossible request. But a request that was only right of him to ask. After all, Creed was the only one who understood— who even believed—Theobold’s theory… and if not him, then who—
“Beg them for me,” Theobold finished. “Please step in and see that it’s done.”
Creed let out a low chuckle of relief. Without realizing it, he’d gripped the arm rests of his rocking chair, as if bracing for impact. Theobold’s eyes flickered to him, and he admitted, “I honestly thought you were going to ask me to do a sin-eating.”
Theobold’s brow set heavy, and he shook his head. “I couldn’t ask it of you. Not even as a friend. It would change everything—probably for the better. Here in the county, I mean. But I couldn’t ask you to take on that life. If I wasn’t willing to do it myself, I… I couldn’t ask it of you.”
It had never occurred to Creed that Theobold had ever considered taking the mantle of sin-eater upon himself. He viewed Theobold more as a diagnostician, but never the physician. Someone who could explain the ills, but was powerless to treat.
“I been a coward,” Theobold breathed. “Always gave excuses, felt I had too much to lose. Maybe I weren’t cut out for it. Maybe I ignored the Spirit. But it’s too late for me to be one now.” He looked down at his arthritic hands, a grimace pulling at his mouth. “But I couldn’t ask it of you. I’m not God. And unless He were to put it on your heart… I couldn’t be the one to impose it. Not when I lacked the conviction myself.” He reached over and thumbed the cover of his Bible. “Not sure Jeremiah could’ve withstood it,” he breathed. “’Lest the Lord called him to it. A prophet’s life ain’t for the faint of heart.”
“No,” Creed agreed. That much he was sure of.
But for some reason, his heart pulsed painfully behind his ribs. A lump sat in the back of his throat, and he took a drink of tea to dispel it.
“But you’ll make sure I get a funeral, won’t you?” Theobold asked.
“Yes,” Creed said, with conviction. “I will.”
“Good.” Theobold stood up, his chair creaking backward. He grabbed his cane. “Now, I could use some more tea, you?”
By the time Credence Carrigan was forty, Harfolk County was a shell of what it had been. Nothing more than a few dozen inhabitants still clinging to a rotting husk.
Even though his house was deep in the center of town, that did not keep the monsters from roaming near his property lines each night. Come twilight, the town was full of more monsters than people. They slunk the streets that no longer made use of streetlamps, partly to cut costs, partly to deter anyone from going out after dark.
And dark it was.
The houses on either side of Creed’s had been vacated for close to a year now, the occupants finally taking the government up on their offer of relocation. Now, without the shine of his neighbors’ window lights cutting through the skeletal boughs of the early spring trees, without the faint sounds of their truck motors and the occasional sight of them out on the lawn—the days were long, the nights black and deep. Sometimes, he sat on the roof, looking out over the vacant houses, the empty streets, the overgrown fields, the open pastures and gutted storefronts. He was king of a hollow kingdom. The lord of an empty wasteland.
In those quiet nights on the roof, he could almost believe the entire world had stopped existing beyond Harfolk County, and all that was left was him, the stars, and the dark things that paced below, eager for his blood.
And he couldn’t help but feel guilty. Like he was the cause of its ruin.
Tonight would not be a quiet night. He knew that much for certain.
Today, his house looked more spotless than it had in years.
Everything was in place, dishes stowed in the cupboards, all laundry folded and clean. Even as he clattered around the kitchen, shoving supplies into his pack, he felt a sense of relief that his week of cleaning, of preparing, hadn’t gone to waste.
He sat at the kitchen table to catch his breath. He’d been moving quickly, and it had tired him out. An itch stirred in his chest, and he breathed in slowly, trying to forego a cough. Papering the kitchen table (rarely used now that this house was the domain of a divorcee instead of a family of three) were piles of junk mail and other sundries.
Most of the junk mail was years old now, from when local businesses still had enough of a populace to advertise to. At the bottom of one stack was a letter from Rolling Creek, now long moved to greener evangelical pastures.
The picture of the pastor, still young and clean-cut and hopeful before a decade in Harfolk County had turned him greying and paunchy and cynical, was yellowed on the inside fold. It was a tithing letter, from a few Easters ago, before Creed was taken off the mailing list. Printed was the pastor’s note about the Resurrection and God’s love for mankind.
There was no mention of Good Friday.
Creed took the letter and tore it neatly in two. He set it aside and combed through the other papers.
There wasn’t anything for Sarah or Elaine here—it seemed after a decade the post office had finally got the message to forward their mail elsewhere. And he was thankful for that. At the bottom of the stack was his folder with all of the notes from his doctor, printed, stapled, categorized. The latest test results were still creased and stuck in the inside pocket. He set the folder on top. It felt like an admission of guilt.
He knew Elaine would be mad at him for not telling her. But he set an envelope on top of everything else, her name penned as neat as he could manage across it. He hoped she would read this first. Then, he prayed, she would understand. None of this was what he would have chosen, either. But he prayed she knew it didn’t come from a lack of love, but from a desire to give the only thing he had left.
The sun was sinking outside, and time was of the essence. He took the stack of junk mail and threw it in the bin under the sink.
He counted and recounted his supplies in his head. But he was as certain as he could be. He had everything he needed. Tent. Rations. Water filter. Clothes. Cooking supplies. Gun. More salt, holy water, and stone fruit than he could count. He wouldn’t need to come back here for a month or more if he could help it. If he was still around to come back.
He picked up his bag from the kitchen table and slung it over his shoulder. He locked the door behind him. His legs were stiff and his ankles swollen, but he did not take the truck. Evening was fast approaching, but it wasn’t far to the Roth house.
He didn’t look back as he started across his lawn, but he did cast a look upward at the boughs of the plum trees waving in the wind, bowed down with their fruit. His feet crunched over the salt circle that ringed his yard, and soon he was out on the gravel road that cut across town.
He never knew if it was the blessed salt he’d gotten from the Roman Church in the next township over, or if it really was the plums as Theobold had always reckoned—but no monster had set foot in his yard in over ten years.
That had never been a comfort to Sarah, though. She still couldn’t abide living in the county when she had known that the creatures were out there, especially with Elaine to think of. Creed couldn’t abide leaving the county, when it had been the only place he’d ever called home. He couldn’t stand abandoning it to crumble, to rot, to ruin.
And he supposed it was that reason, more than any other, that sent him walking to Theobold Roth’s house that evening.
The sun was low, the rooftops eclipsing its dying rays. The town was dark and empty as he walked—the lone pedestrian on disused streets. He felt, in some way, like the hero of a Western, riding into a ghost town to face off against the rival posse, guns drawn with nothing to lose. He held onto that feeling, letting it soak deep.
Out here it was deadly quiet, and the air hung heavy and fraught with anticipation. His footsteps were unusually loud. He paused at Second Street to catch his breath, to rub the stitch in his side and swallow another cough. He tasted blood at the back of his throat, dry and shuddering. He sniffed it down.
Theobold Roth’s house was all alight. In the driveway were parked two cars, both with out of state license plates. Ruts in the dirt spoke of many more cars that’d already come and gone. Good. Fewer to disturb. Fewer to persuade.
He paused again to catch his breath at the foot of the porch steps. This house had changed so little in the twenty-five years since Theobold had first saved him. And standing here now, Creed’s stomach swooped and dipped with nerves in the same way it had that night, locked in a glowing, blue-eyed gaze. He hefted his pack, the silver inside clanking together, and strode up the porch steps.
The front door was open, but the screen door rested back in its frame. Inside, under the soft glow of lamplight, murmurs and shifting furniture. Creed knocked on the doorframe, but didn’t wait on an answer before he opened it, an old habit that’d never truly left him.
He hovered at the threshold between the kitchen and the parlor. He took off his hat and held it in his hand.
A woman, in a nice black dress and heels, and a man in a suit, sans tie, sleeves rolled up, were busy rearranging chairs that’d been pushed to the perimeter of the room. They both startled at his entrance. The woman turned and caught his eye.
She was Theobold’s daughter, no doubt about it. The eyes that looked at him out of her face were a longer-lashed version of his. She straightened up and smoothed down her dress, her red-lipped mouth opening in a silent question. But behind her, pushed up against the wall, Creed was pleased to see a casket, set up on a white-clothed table.
Good. They had honored Theobold’s wishes. At least on this score.
“Hello ma’am,” Creed said. “I know it’s late, but I came to pay my respects.”
It was the man—Theobold’s son, Mark, he reckoned—that seemed to remember hospitality. He stepped forward, hand held out. “Yes, yes, come in. We already put the food away but—” His accent, if he had ever had one, had flattened out. There was nothing that marked him as a former resident of the county anymore.
“That won’t be necessary,” Creed said, taking a few steps in. He didn’t set his bag down, but reached instead for the sealed envelope tucked in his pocket. He pulled it out and passed it to Mark and attempted a smile. “Theo was a good friend of mine.” His throat was unexpectedly thick.
They had both seen this day coming, he and Theobold. It had stopped being abstract or scary long ago. And yet, it hadn’t occurred to Creed until he stood in the same room as Theobold’s corpse, that Theo was really dead.
Mark was now looking at the envelope in his hand, seeming to realize this wasn’t just a customary condolence card. Isobel abandoned her chair rearranging project and looked at him with a tight-lipped smile. “I’m glad to hear it, Mr.…”
“Carrigan,” Creed said. “Credence Carrigan.”
She nodded.
“Wait,” Mark said, eyes combing over the contents of the letter. “Wait… I…”
“It was Theo’s last wish that I give this to you,” Creed said. “In the event that his kin didn’t have a funeral for him… and am I correct to assume there won’t be a funeral?”
Isobel shifted uncomfortably. “Well… with the rest of us living out of state, we figured it’d be easier if―”
“There’ll be a celebration of life,” Mark cut in hurriedly. “We figured that would be the best way to honor—”
“But no funeral?”
He held both of their gazes, until Isobel looked at the floor. “No,” she said, her voice small. “No funeral. At least not in the traditional sense.”
Creed nodded. “Right. I think that letter applies, then.”
And he crossed over toward the casket and set his bag on the floor. The top flap came loose, and a plum dropped to the floorboards.
Mark’s brow raised in shock. “You can’t be serious? You can’t actually mean to—”
They’ll put up a fuss, Theobold had warned him. But if you really mean to do this, you have to stand firm—
“My father,” Mark continued, “was a good, Christian man. He would—”
“—be thankful someone is honoring his wishes, I should think,” Creed said.
Isobel looked between them, as Creed and Mark locked eyes in a stalemate of wills. “What’s—”
“This man,” Mark said, gesturing to Creed, letter flapping in his hand. “Intends to eat food off our father’s corpse.”
Isobel’s hand flew to her mouth in a look of horrified disgust. If she were wearing pearls, Creed was certain she’d have clutched them. But the words out of her mouth were soft, nearly a whisper. “A sin-eating.”
Both Creed’s and Mark’s eyes swiveled to her, and she swallowed hard, as if collecting herself. “I didn’t think there were any sin-eatings still done in the county.”
“There haven’t been,” Creed said. “Not for over thirty years. But it was your father’s dying wish that if there was no funeral, that a sin-eating should be done. And done by me.”
A long moment passed. Theo’s children had a silent conversation consisting of looks and the relative tightness of their jaws, but finally, it was Mark who spat, “You can’t actually be considering this.”
“I know it’s morbid… and strange,” Isobel said. “But it’s a tradition that’s been in these hills longer than the two of us, longer than Dad. If this is what he really wanted—”
“Yeah,” Mark scoffed. “He wanted a lot of things that weren’t good for him.”
He turned back to Creed, his eyes sharp and suspicious. “If you dare defile my father’s body, I will call the police.”
Had he really forgotten what it was like out here? Creed couldn’t help but inwardly laugh. The sheriff was a good thirty miles away, and it was a rare thing to call him even before this side of the county had been gutted.
Isobel sidled closer, her eyes fixed on the letter. “If it really was his last wish—”
Mark gave a caustic, barking laugh. “Don’t tell me you’re as superstitious as the rest of them—”
“—I don’t think it’s superstitious to honor Dad’s wishes, especially when this is the way things have been done in this county for—”
Mark threw his hands up. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation! That’s it, I’m calling someone―” and he walked toward the front porch.
“I’ll talk to him,” Isobel promised with a nod. “Go ahead and pay your respects.” And the click of her heels followed him out, the screen door banging.
While Creed was certain by “pay respects” she meant “say a prayer by the coffin or speak some parting words and then be on your way”—he couldn’t pass up this opportunity.
Their footsteps paced the porch, but he locked the screen door behind them.
Then, crossing over to the casket, he got to work. He emptied out his pack first, arranging all the supplies on the low coffee table, lighting the candles and setting them at the foot and the head of the casket.
He felt strangely nervous. He had never done this before. Not in its entirety. He had practiced, of course, “dry runs” as Theobold called them.
Both he and Creed had spent these last months like archaeologists, unearthing the sin-eating ritual from scraps of memory and any bits of written record they could glean. Thankfully Theobold had seen a handful of sin-eatings throughout his youth, but Creed had only ever witnessed the one at Old Man Abernathy’s, and the windows had been shuttered then.
We’ve lost our way, Theo’d once said. Thinking funerals are for the living. Thinking a man’s sin is just between him and God. But I don’t want my sin going down into the dirt with me. I don’t want to be the reason there’s more of them critters roaming these hills.
In the last year of his life, Theobold spoke these sentiments often. But he still didn’t ask Creed to do the sin-eating. That was before Creed got his scan results back. That was before he volunteered.
He could have undergone treatment. He could have told Sarah and Elaine and let the terrible prognosis bring them back to him. He could have enjoyed his twilight days, however long medicine could buy him, with them at his side, helping him slide gently into the long dark. But… no. He’d already been worn down by guilt. Guilt and a growing, bitter certitude. The Lord hadn’t sent an angel with tongs and a glowing coal, but these circumstances were a call all the same.
Theobold’s children were still arguing on the porch, their voices rising and falling like a tide. Creed hooked his fingers around the edges of the casket, and pulled it open.
Theobold looked so small nestled in red velvet. So unlike himself, in a solemn suit and neatly combed hair. And though the undertaker had done a good job with the makeup—Creed could commend him for that—he couldn’t hide how frail and thin Theo’d become in these last months.
Picking up the dishes from the floor, Creed laid them onto Theobold’s body, one at the head, one at the feet, the biggest, silver platter taking up his chest and stomach. And then he gathered the food. Plums. Peaches. Almonds. Cherries. The bread he set on the center platter.
He lit the candles from the matchbox in his pocket, lit a cigar from their flame and set it aside, letting it smolder. If he was doing this proper, maybe he should have gone up to the Roman Church and gotten some incense—but there wasn’t a lot about this that he reckoned was proper.
Theobold swore the bread ought to be eaten last. You have to leave it there a while, let it soak up the sin. And you say the prayers while you wait.
What the prayers were, neither of them knew. And there were no more sin-eaters to ask.
But it’s the intention that matters, Theobold had told him. We try to get the form and matter as close as we can. But it’s the intention and the act that counts most.
Creed had to believe his intentions counted for something. And he had to believe that the research, both his and Theobold’s, would pay off.
With the food laid out and the sweet smell of cigar smoke filling the cramped little parlor, Creed turned his eyes to the ceiling and prayed.
Once you cross that line, Theobold had warned, there’s no coming back.
Then he ate.
He ate the fruits, pits and all. He could leave nothing. So Creed swallowed them whole. Juice dribbled down his chin, dripped onto Theobold’s body, pocking his skin like red sores, staining the crisp whiteness of his button-up shirt. He used the bread to dab up the juice where he could find it. But on he ate.
The food sat heavy in his stomach. Scratched his throat on the way down, mingled with the taste of blood in his throat.
And maybe he was imagining it. Or maybe this was what all the sin-eaters before him had felt too—but as he ate a weight pressed down on him. The weight of unconfessed sins crying out to the Heavens. He could taste the regret, the half-contritions. The justified slights. The small impieties. The casual blasphemies. The food in his mouth tasted like ash. Tasted like blood. Tasted like sickly sweet indulgence.
Time stood still for him as he ate. And ate. And ate.
He mopped up the juices, he picked up the crumbs. He would wipe away all evidence that the food had been here. He would expunge all the hurts Theobold Roth had caused. All the wounds. All the consequences. All the lingering resentment and ills. Credence Carrigan would swallow them for him. They would not pollute this land. They would not go to the grave with him. All would be atoned for. All would be erased.
The screen door rattled behind him, perhaps it’d been rattling for a while.
“Please,” Mark called, panic in his voice. “Let us in. There’s—”
And a howl split the air from somewhere in the wood.
Creed’s beard was sticky. His fingers were bathed in red. Freckles of dried juice and crumbs lingered in the folds of Theobold’s clothes, on his beard. But the act was done.
Creed felt sick, almost dizzy. He gasped for breath, his chest burning, his legs aching. The reality of his situation caught up to him, and he fell to his knees. He cried, full-throated and unashamed, howling in grief and relief and anger and triumph.
The line had been crossed. The deed had been done. And there was only one thing left to do.
Out in the wood came another howl as if in answer to his. Theo’s children nearly pulled the locked screen door off its hinges.
Creed strode across the parlor and threw it open. Mark and his sister all but tumbled over the threshold.
Creed ignored Mark’s words, ignored Isobel’s tears. He shouldered his pack and strode down the porch steps. Walked up the drive and across the lawn.
The limbs of Theobold’s plum trees bowed toward him as he walked. Maybe in reverence, maybe in sorrow. The wind stirred the trees. The night was coming alive.
Creed did not pause at the salt line, he stepped over it with confidence and angled himself toward the wood. His stomach ached—perhaps with the weight of all of the sin.
In the earliest of days, sin-eaters had been sparing. A single loaf of bread was all that was needed. But Creed needed to make amends for years of neglect, and so he had brought a feast. And if there was anything that Creed’s studies had shown him over the past quarter century living in Harfolk County, it was that the monsters in these hills couldn’t stomach stone fruits.
He prayed they could smell the stone fruits in him, avoid him like they avoided his and Theo’s lawns. And he prayed that would be enough to keep him safe. That, and his gun. At least for now. One of these days he might find himself backed into a corner with nothing but a monster’s maw between him and the other side of eternity.
But he prayed he could salvage more time. He just needed a little more time. To do what should have been done years ago. To take up the task he’d been given.
As he stepped over the threshold toward the wood, blue eyes blinked into existence somewhere deeper in the trees. Like a nightmare from his childhood, they multiplied. But Creed was ready to face them.
Gun in his hand, salt in his pockets, stone fruit in his stomach, and fire in his heart, Credence Carrigan walked through the outer darkness and further into the heart of Harfolk County.
Grace has been collecting myths and urban legends since she “wasted” (as her critics claim) her undergraduate degree studying Latin, Anglo-Saxon, and folklore. Though fantasy will always be her first love, she writes (and reads) across genres, craving stories that are emotionally devastating and hauntingly beautiful. She flavors her fiction with both the eldritch and the transcendental and thinks the best art is the most truthful, and the best Truths are both arresting and strange. She is a co-founder of an online writing community for Christian genre fiction writers, Inkwells & Anvils. Her most ardent goal as a writer is to make Flannery O’Connor proud.
Her short fiction has appeared in The Crow’s Quill, Horrorsmith, Quills & Tales literary magazines and in anthologies by Inkwells & Anvils. She posts about writing @graceswritesalt on X and blogs about folklore at inkwellsandanvils.com. Her other short fiction can be found on the website for the Catholic Artist Network of St. Louis. She’s always looking to connect with other writers who share her peculiar interests, especially other writers from the disabled and chronically ill communities.
“The Last Sin-Eater of Harfolk County” by Grace F. Hopkins. Copyright © 2025 by Grace F. Hopkins.
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