The Church of Deinze

Karel Klaus was a linen merchant from the Meetjesland who rode to the market at Tielt every Thursday to sell his wares. The road home took him through Deinze, a small town on the river Leie that he knew well. Usually he reached Deinze well before dark, drank a beer at the inn, and continued on his way. But on that particular November evening, everything went differently.

The market had lasted longer than planned. A quarrel over the price of ten ells of Flemish linen had delayed him, and by the time he finally hitched his cart, dusk was already settling over the fields. Halfway to Deinze a wheel broke. Karel cursed, tied the wheel fast with a rope, and limped on, but by the time he reached the Leie it was pitch dark and rain was pouring down in sheets.

The inn was shut. No light burned behind the shutters. Karel Klaus stood dripping wet in the market square and looked around. There was only one place that offered shelter without needing to knock: the porch of the Church of Our Lady, the old church near the Leie bridge. The heavy wooden door stood ajar — the sexton had forgotten to lock it.

Karel slipped inside, found a corner beside the baptismal font, and rolled himself up in his cloak. The church was freezing cold and silent save for the drumming of the rain. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. But sleep would not come. Around midnight he heard footsteps — not from outside but from within, from the choir. Slow, regular, like a procession no one had announced.

Karel did not dare look. He pressed himself against the wall, pulled his cloak over his head, and prayed in silence. The footsteps continued, accompanied by a soft chanting that seemed to have no words — more a sigh than a song. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, everything stopped. The silence that followed was heavier than the sound.

At first light Karel crept outside and fled to the market square. There he met sexton Sies, who had come to open the church for early mass. Karel seized him by the arm and told him what he had heard. Sies listened, turned pale, and said nothing. Together they entered the church. Everything stood in its place — the candles, the statues, the chalices. But in the choir, on the spot where the footsteps had sounded, a ring of candle wax lay on the stones, fresh and still warm.

Sexton Sies locked the church and did not speak another word that day. According to the people of Deinze, his hair was snow-white the next morning, though he was barely forty. Karel Klaus never again spent a night in a church. And the Church of Our Lady at Deinze was henceforth locked with a double bolt each evening — not to keep thieves out, but to ensure that no one inside would hear what was not meant for human ears.