Dead 💀 Man visiting Photios kontoglou

One evening, on Easter Monday in 1964, just past midnight before I went to sleep, I went out into the little garden behind our house and stood for a while, looking up at the dark, star-filled sky. A holy elder once told me that at this hour, the heavens open. I would stand there alone until dawn, feeling as though I had no body and no connection to the earth. Sometimes, I wondered if someone in the house might wake up and worry that I was gone, so I returned inside and lay down. Yet I wasn't very sleepy. I don’t know if I was awake or asleep when I saw, before me, a man with a blank face.

He was as pale as death, his eyes wide and staring at me in fear. His face was like a mask, like a mummy’s—skin black-yellow, shiny, and clinging to his skull, showing every hollow. He was gasping for breath. In one hand, he held a strange object I could not identify; with the other, he pressed his chest as if in pain. The sight of him made me shudder. I looked at him, and he looked at me without speaking, as if we had been destined to meet. And although he was silent, it was as if a voice in my head told me, "It’s so-and-so." As soon as I heard that voice, I knew who he was. Then he opened his mouth and gasped, but his voice seemed to come from far away, echoing from the depths of a well. It was obvious he was in great distress—his hands, legs, eyes, everything showed he was being tortured. In my desperation, I tried to go to him to help, but he signaled with his hand for me to stop, not to approach. I started to moan, frozen in place. Then he said, "I did not come by my own will—they sent me. Here I tremble always. I am dizzy. I want to die, but I cannot." "Ah, what you said, Foti, came true. Do you remember, a few days before I died, when you came to my house and spoke to me about faith? You warned me about my friends, how they were unbelievers like me. While you spoke, they only smiled. When you left, they mocked you, saying it was a shame that a man like you believed in such nonsense. Another time, I told you, as I often did, 'Brother Foti, save your money, or you’ll die penniless. Look at me—I have plenty, but I still want more.' You asked me if I had any guarantee I would live as long as I wanted. I told you, 'I’m 75 now; I’ll live past a hundred. My children are provided for, my son makes good money, my daughter married well, and my wife wants for nothing. Not like you, listening to what priests say.' I told you that Christians end their lives with nothing, and what do they gain from giving money to the church? 'Your God made the poor for me to help? Nonsense. I know all these tricks. Let the simple-minded believe it. Not you, my Light—you’re educated and yet you’re lost. You’ll die before I do, leaving your family behind. But I tell you as a doctor—I’ll live to 110.'" As he spoke, he twisted about as if roasting on a spit, pulling something dumb from his mouth. "Ah! Ah! Ouch!" He calmed down for a while and continued, "But in a few days, I died. I lost the bet. What a riot. What horror I endured! Helpless, I would sink, then rise, and cry for mercy. But no one heard me. A current spun me around like a dead mouse. What agony! Everything you said came true. You won the bet. When I was alive, I was clever—a doctor, respected. I mocked religion, dismissed the afterlife. Now I see what I once called fairy tales are real. This is the agony, the gnashing of teeth the saints spoke of." After that, he vanished, though I could still hear his moans fading into the distance. I must have slept for a while, but suddenly I felt a cold hand push me. I opened my eyes and saw him again—smaller now, more hideous, the size of a child with an old man’s head shaking to and fro. He opened his mouth and said, "Soon it will be dawn, and those who sent me will come to take me." I asked who sent him, but his answer was confused, unintelligible. He told me that where he was, there were many others like him—people who mocked my faith. Now they understood that cleverness ends at the grave. There were others, too, whom I had treated well, and they spoke badly of me. The more I forgave, the more bitter they became, for kindness made them feel defeated. These souls are in an even worse state, unable to leave their prison as he had. "They are tortured even more, beaten with the scourge of love, as a saint once said. The world is not as we see it—it is upside down from what we thought. Now we understand that our cleverness was foolishness, our talk was empty, our joys were false. You, who have your heart in Christ—you have won the great bet between believers and unbelievers, the bet I lost. I am lost, trembling, sighing, without peace. In Hades there is no repentance. Woe to those who walk the path we walked. We mocked belief in God and the afterlife, and many applauded us. We called you fools and hypocrites, and the more patiently you accepted our insults, the more our malice grew. I see even now how saddened you were by our evil, but how patiently you accepted the arrows we shot at you, calling you names. If only the unfortunate could see what I see now, they would be horrified at their actions. I want to warn them, to tell them to change, but I have no permission—just as the rich man begged Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers, but was refused. And so, the wicked are condemned, and those who walk with God are saved. I have wronged the unjust, the defiled, and the righteous, for years, as the scripture says..." And then he faded away.