Charles Babington was the priest of the local church of St. Paul, in Massachusetts. He was a venerated and esteemed member of the local community of C..., and he was deemed a model, as clergyman and as citizen.
Every Sunday Father B, as they used to call him, gave a celestial sermon, full of advice, and holy, serene severity, especially for the teenagers of the town; to save them from falling in "mistakes of youth", as he used to say.
He had particular zeal in keeping a community where, the family, and the perfect marital harmony, were true basis for the general development into a christian and honourable way to be.
Father B knew every municipal infidelity, and everyone -belonging to the congregation- who was cheating on his or her consort; and he never doubted in using hard invectives about it, even proclaiming publicly names and details of such lack of chastity and decorum:
"The family..." -he used to say- "it is the motor and fuel of America; the family and the democracy, sacred source of all our liberties! But sons...liberty doesn't mean libertinage...and we know that the Evil One wants to take you apart from the road of the familiar and christian morality; but you have to resist the vice of the flesh; resist the calling of the flesh and the vice, my sons: and if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched..."
In the secret, Babington used to abuse of minors, some of them, boys of primary school, who were constantly threatened and harassed to avoid they'd reveal what happened inside that parish.
Time went by; and the community didn't know anything about all this, for them, Father Babington was the epitome of the morals, and the living example of a christian life, clean from any dishonest or shameful behaviour.
The sermons went by as well, same as time.
Some members of the congregation died, as it happens in small towns, everybody knows everything about everyone.
But some things are occult.
As occult was the disappearance of Father B.
Because one day, he simply, disappeared.
The kids never revealed a word.
Everybody considered Father B. a saint of virtue and chastity until his last day.
And still today they think this way.
The disappearance it's a mystery.
Just a detail: the day when he disappeared, the skin of a face was found in a chair in the parish.
It was the whole skin of a man's face, cut off.
Without the least trace of blood.
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