The rectory had never lain in such silence. No televisions played, no distant laughter transpired. There were no shuffling feet, nor emanating snores. All Father Anthony Pilazzo could hear were the whispered mumblings of Monsignor Thomas Sanchez as he remained buried in impassioned prayer.
Pilazzo stared at his friend for a moment, fear running through his body in leaps and bounds. The situation had become very real, and all too undeniable. Something terrible was happening, Sanchez's words now revealing its import to be far more striking than the mental perils of his own lost cause.
This was a message of warning from God.
God…
Pilazzo tightened his grip on the dresser. All his life he'd prayed to God, thanking Him for His forgiveness, all the while assuming Him to be some iconic, spiritual essence, a praiseworthy figure of goodness and devotion placed in a role of authority to provide faith, hope, and love to those seeking serenity in their lives.
But now? He took a deep breath, making every effort to absorb the truth of the matter: God was
real
, a sentient, omnipotent being watching over them, delivering a message to them.
Follow the message that God delivers to you. Heed His word and do your part to bring down the evil that promises man the end of days…
Pilazzo took one last glance around the room before exiting. In the hallway, he leaned up against the wall, contemplating for a moment the drowning state of depression Monsignor Sanchez was in.
All our lives we've waited for God to show himself to us, to deliver to us a message of His existence. Well, here it is, and it's not the one we've been hoping for. What made us think that He would arrive on some silver-lined cloud healing the evils of disease, war, and famine? Instead, here is God, the Almighty One, coming out after all these millennia to inform us that we're knee-deep in some kind of otherworldly mess that promises to bring man the 'end of days'.
His body was shaking so badly, he nearly collapsed as he gazed down the empty hallway. He moved slowly and painstakingly, palms against the wall for balance. He peered into every dark room as he went by, witnessing the priests and deacons in their quarters, kneeling on the floor before the crosses hanging upon their walls, their lips spilling whispers as they turned to God for answers to their sudden plight.
And Pilazzo wondered:
Messengers have come to me…and yet here I am, still riddled with doubt and confusion. Clearly something terrible is happening, and I wonder: am I to play a role in its unfolding? If so, then why have I not yet been placed to task as my brothers have? Where am I to go, what am I to do now? Pray?
He paced to the end of the hall, seeing no alternative but to allow the anomalous events to unfold around him while he awaited his directive to come.
If one comes.
He lingered in bitter silence, the strength threatening to run out of his legs and drag him to the floor. He stared at the door to his room, the only one in the hallway that was closed. He gripped the knob. A static shock tickled his sweaty fist. He swallowed a soft lump in his throat, and went inside.
Everything appeared as it should: the bed, the dresser, the television, the desk and computer, untouched and entirely insignificant. He turned to close the door, and then thought better of it, as all the other bedroom doors in the rectory had been left opened.
He'd noticed that all of his brothers had been dressed in their robes, so he straightened his collar, removed a clean robe from the closet, and put it on. Gooseflesh appeared on his arms as he did so.
He turned and peered in the mirror.
His eyes widened.
One hand went to his mouth.
Oh my God…
Here was his message from God.
He stepped to the mirror and placed his fingertips against the warm glass, thinking for a moment that he might be able to reach through the reflection and touch it. A vibration rushed through him as he came in contact with the mirror's surface, not unlike the one he felt upon placing his hand on Sanchez's shoulder. For endless seconds he stared at the message, the events of the day returning to him with all the hazy qualities of déjà vu:
Henry Miller, homeless men, construction workers, visions of apocalypse...
Scrawled in black ash on the wall behind him was his message, written in reverse so they could be read in the mirror's reflection:
Your Church Awaits You
He turned to gaze at the wall, but saw nothing. No evidence at all that the words he saw in the mirror had ever been written there. His mind suggested that he might be experiencing some sort of optical illusion, that the words could have been drawn upon the surface of the mirror itself. But when he looked back into the mirror, and again saw the sprawling, jagged letters on the wall above his bed, he knew this could not be.
Frightened, he wondered for a fleeting moment what messages his brothers had found in their rooms. Unique directives perhaps, coercing them away from their duties (were there parishioners sitting in the church at this very moment, waiting for the six-o'clock mass to commence?), and into prayer.
Prayer…is that what I am to do next?
He gazed down at his hands and all but fainted from sick horror.
Like the words he glimpsed in the mirror, his mind insisted that it had to be an illusion. A hallucination.
There was blood on his hands…seeping out from what appeared to be punctures in his palms.
Stigmata.
The sacred wounds of the Lord. His calling to those free of sin.
Free of sin…
He dropped to his knees and held his hands up before his face, staring fearfully at the blood as it dripped down over his wrists, beneath the sleeves of his robe. His jaw locked up beneath the weight of dread consuming him—at the sudden pain striking his feet, his chest. A perfumed aroma rose out of the blood, that of roses and sandalwood.
The odor of sanctity
, his mind whispered.
He shot a fleeting glance into the mirror and saw that the scrawled message had vanished.
My message has been delivered
.
His eyes bulged, wet with tears. He looked toward the door, still open as he left it. He heard a creaking noise and fixed his gaze upon the pain-filled eyes of the Jesus figure on the cross above the entrance. A shudder worked through him as he found himself instantly drawn to the cross, the terror of the moment suddenly diluted with an utter want for prayer, with a burning desire to beseech God for His guidance in the difficult time to follow. His breathing quickened. Despite his current state of bewilderment, he knew, from years of spiritual study and guidance, that he was being called upon to allow the mystical body of Christ to suffer through him and guide him toward a task of reducing the level of suffering in the world.
Dear God, help me…
A tunnel of black clouds filled his vision, blurring his ability to see peripherally—to see the blood on his hands. Only the cross on the wall remained in view, and he crawled toward it, feeling his mind drifting…drifting…drifting away from all that he knew and understood at the moment; nothing else mattered but the carved cross and the power and strength it diffused into him, little by little, drop by drop. He could feel it filling his veins, his mind, his soul...a power like he'd never felt before, charging his blood and body through the punctures in his hands, his feet.
Stigmata
! He remained motionless,
paralyzed
, unable to move or hear or see anything other than the Jesus figure and its utterly persuasive message of power that ever so slowly descended upon him, granting him the fortitude to face the unlit road ahead.
The unlit road, soon to be illuminated beneath a wall of raging fires and rising smoke.
T
he group of vagrants rushed Jyro and Timothy into the bedroom. Jyro staggered forward and collapsed down onto one of the beds. His clothes were soaked with sludge, which spread all over the bare mattress as he skittered back against the iron headboard. Gazing incredulously at the footprints he left behind on the floor, he screamed in a hoarse, demanding way, "Shut the goddamned door! Don't let it in here!", wondering if the sludge on him would begin moving like it had in the bathroom. It didn't.
The old, tattooed vagrant slammed the door shut, closing them inside the bedroom. A dreadful silence consumed the room, nearly absorbing the labored breathing of the vagrants as they stared wide-eyed at the closed door.
"Is everyone here?" Jyro shouted, tossing his gaze around like a soldier would in a sniper's sights. The men looked at each other frantically, mentally adding their total numbers and perhaps having trouble doing so. Jyro counted ten bodies in total, including Timothy.
"Got us ten men," Weston blurted breathlessly, head bobbing up and down. The burly man looked down at Jyro, eyes bloodshot and scared, blonde hair matted across his forehead in greasy strands. He put his head down to Jyro's. As he did so, the large black man stepped in behind him, dripping beads of sweat from his bald head. A tiny cross dangled from his right ear and glinted against the sunlight filtering in through the window. His oil-stained jeans and too-tight polo shirt accentuated his muscles and delivered a little wave of security to Jyro.
Weston whispered, "We're dead meat, ain't we?"
Jyro pulled his eyes away from him and looked across the room. The man with the dreadlocks was setting Timothy down on a bed. The boy wore a suit of waste from head to toe. His eyes bulged whitely beneath the dark mask of filth on his face. He jittered and twitched like a tangled marionette. Rollo stood at the edge of the bed with his bible open, the Lord's Prayer spilling from his lips in wavering stammers.
Weston snapped his fingers in front of Jyro's face, then jerked a swollen, red thumb over his shoulder. "This here's Wrath. He—"
"What went on in there?" Wrath's voice was deep and booming and set the room into immediate silence. "You were in there for hours."
"Hours?"
That seemed absolutely impossible to Jyro; it seemed as though only twenty minutes had passed since he'd first gone into the bathroom to check out where the moving blood had gone.
Weston nodded interminably, up and down, up and down, even as he spoke. "We waited for you to come out. Both me and Wrath banged and kicked at the door, but it was useless. Even tried to break it down with a hammer from the crazy guy's stash." He motioned toward the hallway where one-eared Larry still lay unconscious. "But the
flames
…"
"Flames?" Jyro looked at the black man, then contemplated Weston again, whose large wild eyes appeared more than capable of witnessing a murder with little or no remorse. Jyro noticed a small patch of dried blood on the man's chin, and there was a faint yellow bruise beginning to form on his cheek. He wondered if he'd recently been in a fight.
Weston kept on nodding, and Jyro figured the man had a nervous tic that kept him forever moving his head. "Every time one of us touched the door, these blue flames shot out of it. The doorknob…it was…on fire. Burning up everyone's hands. When Wrath kicked the door, it burned his leg. There was no way we could get you out of there. Look at my hands…" He spread his scorched fingers into a starfish shape, then grimaced, clearly regretting the action.
Jyro looked at the big man's pants. They were gone to the knees, charred at the edges and displaying blistered skin beneath. Recalling that the boy's hands had been burned as well, he glanced over at Timothy and saw him staring at his palms with strange fascination, mouth hanging open, a runner of snot carving a swath through the filth on his face. He looked far gone, as though dreaming while awake.
Jyro muttered, "Christ…what kind of mess are we in?"
Various discussions rose up as the men, barrel-eyed and edgy, shouted and gestured maniacally, much to the dismay of Jyro, who thought it might be best to keep things quiet. Weston and Wrath talked about the mysterious flames that had materialized and were examining their wounds with a great sense of uneasiness. The albino, perched alongside the closed door, measured Jyro for a moment, then pulled his red eyes away, keeping as still as an ash tree on a cold winter's day.
Jyro closed his eyes, vainly trying to close out the clamor. It had been only a few minutes since he and Timothy escaped the bathroom, and he wondered if they would survive much longer. He placed a hand over his mouth, hoping to restrain the screams of insanity threatening to make their way out. He'd never experienced such a fright before, in spite of all his years on the streets confronting drug dealers, muggers, and addicts.
He had an uneasy feeling things were going to get worse.
The elderly man with the tattoos began shuffling back and forth, eyes bulging, tufted hair waving like webs in the wind. He spread his arms wide, looking at no one in particular as he spoke out: "I tried to leave, but the door leading into the church burned my hands!" Spit sprayed from his cracked lips as he shouted, alighting on those within five feet of him; Jyro could see a white foamy globule perched in his beard like a giant flea. He marched toward Jyro and displayed a map of smooth, red patches on his palms, peppered with white blisters. "See?" He paused, looked at Wrath and Weston, then back at Jyro. "Something ain't right here, man," he whispered, lips wrinkling back to show yellowed teeth. "They don't want us to leave."