So much has happened since last I wrote in this journal. Good heavens, I swear the parish is growing by leaps and bounds since Fr. Eamon took up his post as elder priest. And for the first time in many weeks, despite the darker events that have shadowed the church of late, I start to feel real hope that the parish and its people will survive intact. It is not only the Catwalkers now who watch over us (although many of them continue to guard the church, like furry angels standing sentinel in the dark). There are others now as well--some of them strange and fell souls, almost as nervewracking as the villains who continue their attempts to harm the parish--but their grim and determined loyalty to the Church seems so very genuine, and despite the occasional unease I feel in their presence, I couldn't be happier they are here.

The father has restored the office of the Templar Swords, a small gathering within the parish itself that exists by special dispensation from our bishop--their purpose to provide additional protection to the parish, its clergy and congregation. It is currently being headed by a new arrival to Midian, a retired police officer from Chicago named Matthew O'Keeffe. He is an older gentleman, but hale, and so very kind to everyone who has come to the parish for help. And he has been such an incredible boon to the parish! It seems Matthew owns both a construction company and an importing business. And bless the man, he saw to acquiring the supplies we needed for repairing the church! The pews, carpet, and windows have all been replaced, and the church looks more beautiful than ever.

Poor Matthew, though--his health is not the best. I keep him in my prayers, and hope he will quickly heal, but Midian is not known for being kind. He is such a great and kindly soul--I pray God will keep him safe. Matthew has also joined our tiny choir as our organist; I had the opportunity to hear him play yesterday, and his talent is truly extraordinary. We are so very lucky to have him!

Yesterday's repairs to the church went surprisingly well. It is true, what they say, that many hands make light work! We were joined by a rather interesting woman--a biomech, I believe--named Samantha Han, whose strength was truly amazing. She was able to go to the docks, to Matthew's ship, and bring all the stained glass panels back to the church in a single trip. Then between Matthew, Sam, Guin, and a pretty neko named Tae (I think? oh, I am so bad at remembering names!), they were able to remove all the wood that Fr. Eamon put up to cover the empty windows and replace them with the brand new glass. The church is so lovely now! (I'm afraid I didn't do much myself, other than hold the doors for Sam when she returned with the panels. If the church looks beautiful now, it is because of them! God bless them all!) The conversation I had with the neko was an interesting one. She seems such an innocent where the Church is concerned--trying to explain the nature of my position and the priests of the parish was an exercise in comedy and misunderstanding. But I found our conversation enjoyable, and I hope she will return.

Unfortunately, she does seem to be terribly skittish, bless her heart. Sammy seemed to set the neko on edge more than once, and Matthew's organ playing, while very beautiful to me (and I would imagine Sam as well, as she seemed very taken with the music while Matthew was playing) appeared to be making the neko nervous. To her credit, however, she did remain, and her nimbleness and skill at scaling the church's old stone no doubt eased the difficulty of replacing the stained glass windows. I hope she comes again, as I would love to talk with her more about the Church. Perhaps it would be in vain, but one never knows. The Lord works in mysterious ways. I take heart in this, our brief moment of brightness, and hope it will continue. There is such darkness surrounding the parish of late, with rumors and whispers of terrible things waiting to strike against us, but the continued determination of the father, and now the stalwart presence of Matthew and our new friends, leave me hope that we will weather this too and be stronger for it in the end.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me...

"The mouth of a righteous man is a well of life: but violence covereth the mouth of the wicked."
~ Proverbs 10:11

I returned to the church this evening to find an abattoir.

I'm not sure which frightened me more: the long trail of blood drying on the runner down the center aisle, or the blood I could still smell on Fr. Eamon as he approached me from the altar. His coat and shirt were stiff with it; I could feel it beneath my fingers, tacky and revolting, when I reached out with shaking hands to touch him and convince myself that he was truly all right. Some of it had even marked his collar, drying like a tiny maroon flower against that square of former white. But it was not his, thank God in His mercy. The blood did not even belong to the same person. There was apparently a shooting at Mass today. Two women were shot, one unknown to us, the other a catwalker we know only on sight. The woman was quickly carried to the medical center, while Johnny and Elise, catwalkers of the parish, tended to the injured neko.

Most horrible of all, however--it seems the woman who did the shooting was one of our regular parishioners. The father would tell me no more than that, and indeed, when I left him, he was on his way to the MPD to give his statement to the police. But things have come to a troubling pass indeed when our parishioners take to attacking each other even during the Mass.

That explained the blood on the carpet. As for the blood on the father himself, it seems my strange visitor from days before, Hilda, arrived again at the end of Mass, after all the other madness had died down. In the process of scaring the remaining parishioners, she... well, she apparently died. Right there, in the rear foyer of the church, vomiting a stream of blood on Fr. Eamon as she did so. Only to... well, it sounds fantastic, I know, but she came back to life immediately after. I have heard of such things, of course--the biomechs, for instance, can apparently be "brought back" as long as there is technology to do so (I will not get into my feelings on that here. Not now, not tonight, with the scent of blood still hanging so heavy inside the church). But Fr. Eamon also said he thought she'd been a neko once.

*shudders and crosses herself before continuing to write*

I asked what had become of her, and he said she'd fled the church shortly after... coming back, or whatever it was. Truth be told, the good father seems troubled and distracted, and I did not have the heart to pry further. Instead, I waited until Luci arrived from wherever she goes when she's not in the church, and the two of us busied ourselves with cleaning the blood from the floors.

And now I wait for news.

"Compassion is the only one of the human emotions the Lord permitted Himself, and it has carried the divine flavor ever since."
~ Dagobert D. Runes

While praying the rosary this morning in the candlelit silence of the church, I heard the front doors open, and the hesitant, dragging step of some person making their way up the aisle. I did not look up at first, content to be pleased that I was sharing the church with another soul, but the wretched sound of its twisted limbs as it entered the space before a pew, and knelt on the cold stone floor, caused me to lift my head and seek out our visitor in the shadows. And what I saw both shocked and humbled me with horror.

A woman knelt there--or what might have been a whole woman once, or even a girl, as her age was impossible to determine, but what had once been mortal flesh was ravaged and ruined beyond my ability to comprehend. Her skin was pale and fleshy, ridged with lines and deep wrinkles, pouches of tumorous swellings and wounds that healed and opened, wept blood and then healed again. Some sort of scarf was wrapped around her neck, soaked with blood that dripped against her torso and left smears of dark crimson with her every swaying movement. That she was some sort of biomech, I had no doubt, as her limbs and the bald curve of her skull were augmented with cybernetic devices, the latter in the form of swaying, snake-like cables in a mockery of hair. They erupted from the reddened, oozing sores that dotted her scalp, scraping against the wooden pew at her back as she bowed her head and rubbed fretfully at her temples.

But her eyes... God in heaven. When I spoke to her, rising from my pew to approach and offer what trembling help I could, she turned eyes of black and fiery blue on mine... and for a moment, it was like staring into the pit of the eternally damned.

I thought perhaps that she might have been one of the terrible experiments I'd heard tell of since arriving in this city--or worse, an escaped project of the Legion. Father Eamon told me with quiet fury in his eyes of what happened to the Catwalker's Matron. (He hides his anger well, and the Lord teaches us to forgive, but in my heart I know the UAC has made a bitter enemy of Fr. Eamon and the Parish.) The Legion's experiments seem to be of an altogether different nature, but who's to say what horrific new project those monsters have concocted now?! But no... with halting words and fractured speech, the girl told me her name was Hilda, and that she came from a ship--I'm assuming one on the ocean somewhere between Midian and the mainland,

but even my best efforts at comforting this poor, tortured creature could coax forth no further information--or at least no information that made sense. She did not accept my offer of getting her to a doctor, and in truth, upon observation it seems her wounds have the uncanny ability to close on their own, although they reopen again from time to time, leaking blood as sluggish as syrup. But I hope and pray I see her again, and that somehow this tormented soul finds a place, and peace, in the shadowed streets of this haunted city. I will not sleep well tonight--I cannot stop thinking about her, or the horror that's been inflicted. And God forgive me, but my heart cannot help but cry out, Why? Are there truly no limits to the depth of our inhumanity? We create monsters... and so become monsters ourselves.

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
~Isaiah 14:12

Snow is falling on Midian. I woke last night to an unusual silence outside the walls of our cloister. I slipped into a robe and padded quietly through the night-darkened sanctuary, to open the great doors and peep past them into the empty street. It was snowing--fat white flakes that fell so beautifully to melt upon the ground. It did my heart good to see them; snow has a way of covering ugliness, making everything pure and new. In this city, the white will not last long, but I will enjoy it while it does. It has now been snowing for an entire day, and the streets are dusted with white, while long icicles hang from the storefronts and the great buttresses of the church.

It has been two weeks since I came to the city, and I am settling into my duties. Much of my time is spent in the church itself, where I have met many interesting people already. There are strange people in this city, far stranger than any of the rumors could have prepared me for--a small, lithe people, both cat and human, who perch atop the walls of the cemetery and hide in the shadows of the church, mewing softly, sometimes wandering down to speak with me, as if they were just as curious about me as I am of them. They speak with beautiful voices, these mysterious feline spirits, and so far they have all been very kind to me. They are not impervious to danger, though. I saw one of them in the street, missing two of his fingers, the stitches bloodied and seeping. Something preys on the catwalkers. I pray that God will protect them and keep them safe in their labyrinth above the city.

There are others even stranger. Here in Midian, there are men and women who are both flesh and machine, most of them injured in terrible battles or as the result of ungodly experiments, their damaged parts replaced with engines and steam and steel. I met one on the side porch of the cathedral, a man who might have been sinister in his black cloak, with one red eye watching me from the shadows of his hood. But his terrible voice, harsh and rasping as a death rattle, was nonetheless gentle when he spoke with me, and my heart went out to that strange man with tenderness and pity. I would have spoken with him longer, but he retreated at the sudden approach of another of his kind. In the second, I was able to find out more about these "biomechanoids," but the first man vanished into the shadows before I could speak with him further. I hope he returns, and I will remember him in my prayers.

I have made the acquaintance of several others. Many people visit the church, either passing through from the community center, or to find sanctuary, and some out of simple curiosity. I have found small children hiding in the choir loft, and have indeed come to use that place as somewhere to study my Bible, in the hopes that I might find more of these orphans and lead them to the safety and shelter of the community center. There is a man who sometimes comes there as well, a tall and brooding soldier-type I shall call W. He seems to be a godly man, and we have had several interesting conversations. It is odd, but I feel somehow safer when he is there. I have met an officer of the MPD--the Midian Police Department. That one I believe I shall have to watch. I blush to think of him as I write this, but he brings out the most terrible thoughts in me. He even--I burn with shame to remember--coaxed me into removing my veil for a time, and... and I believe he was flirting with me. I am not sure what to think, but I resolve to be stronger hereafter.

Note to self: I must speak to Father Eamon about giving my confession. Ohhh, may God forgive me!

There are many others within the city as well. Zoe, the owner of a local cafe, came and spoke with me at length, as did one of her employees. They, like so many others I have encountered within the city, seem genuinely surprised and concerned to find a religious sister in their midst, and the warnings for my safety come from every side. But so far I have been treated kindly, if sometimes with reserve, and no one has laid a hand on me (not counting my all-too-friendly officer, and even he was respectful of my wishes). Whatever horrors lie in this city, so far God has seen fit to protect me, and I can only hope and pray that He continues to do so as my time in this city unfolds.

Of all the people I have met, however, one in particular haunts my heart. I met a pale man in the sanctuary, a man who spoke to me of the strangest, darkest things... things I am not sure I want to believe, so terrifying were they. That there are things living beneath the church's cemetery, things that drink the blood of the living. Unholy creations, he claims... but he was one of their kind, and a more gentle, tormented soul I have never encountered. He had once been a child of God himself, but now he feels cut off from the Church because of the nature of his condition, and while I can understand that belief, I do not believe it myself. He has become the creature through no fault of his own, and God would not abandon him for that. He is another I hope to see again... but I dare not write more about him. They are a secretive race, and his life would be forfeit if I named him and this book fell into the wrong hands.

But now, I must return to my studies, here in the choir loft of the church. Outside, the gunshots and screams continue, chilling me to the bone, but God's grace falls with the snow, soft and white, and covers us all anew. I pray God's blessings on all my new friends. Keep them safe, oh Lord, in this den of sin. And lead them back to Mother Church.