Here the air felt thick, greasy. As he gazed into the darkness beyond, his mind pitched and yawned and he could hear his heartbeat in his head.
"Here."
Jyro startled, spun around.
The vagrant with the taped glasses stood behind him, offering a penlight. "I found it in the bedroom, along with a bunch of tools." He licked his lips, and added soberly, "In case you're thinking of going in."
The rosary!
Jyro panicked. He jerked his gaze back and forth between the bathroom, the vagrant with the glasses, and the floor. In an instant of terror, he saw that someone had lifted the wooden charm,
my god it's gone no no no
…but was immediately relieved to see Timothy approaching, clutching it in his right hand.
Find him…
He held it out toward Jyro. "Perhaps we can use this to protect us."
Jyro nodded in silence, wondering again if the rosary were meant for Timothy. Could it be that the altar boy was the one to 'find',
find him
, and that he would help to protect them from the evils unleashed here?
He looked around. The small group of homeless men had formed a distant semi-circle near the bedroom door, and Jyro couldn't help but contemplate them: the thin lip-licking man with broken glasses; the scrawny elderly man with long straggly hair and faded tattoos covering his arms; the bearded man in his late twenties with dreadlocks down to his waist and tiny bones piercing his earlobes; the tall, bald, muscular black man with eyes that penetrated Jyro like lasers; and then Rollo with his bible clutched tightly against his chest, standing alongside Marcus who was nervously smoking a cigarette; and finally, the heavy-set vagrant with a mane of blond hair, blue eyes, and a cherub-like face who in a mindless ramble yesterday had introduced himself as Weston.
Jyro looked back to the bedroom. The albino who'd fled inside was now perched at the door, hair wispy thin and snow-white, hanging over eyes as red as rubies.
All the men stared at Jyro pleadingly, and it came to reason that he had by default become some sort of leader. Jyro locked gazes with Timothy, hoping for a partner in crime. The boy remained silent as he rubbed the rosary over his hands—hands that didn't appear as burned as they were just minutes earlier.
"Do we have a choice?" Jyro asked, peering into the dark bathroom.
"I don't know…I mean, all I'd really come here for was my duffle bag."
Jyro paused, looked back at Timothy. "So why then, after two months, did you decide to return for it today?"
The boy shrugged, eyes glossed over. "I…don't…know."
Disconcerted, Jyro peered back into the looming darkness of the bathroom, its stench leaking out more profusely than ever. "You do now," he said, and when Timothy didn't question him, he aimed the penlight inside. "C'mon…let's go find out why we were called here."
I
n an attempt to keep himself from falling, Father Anthony Pilazzo brushed his fingertips against the facing of the storefronts he passed, pulling away only when an oncoming pedestrian got in his way. He'd walked like this for thirteen blocks to 103
rd
Street, where the Church of Holy Innocents stood waiting like an oasis in the desert.
Upon being forced to leave St Peter's two months earlier, Monsignor Thomas Sanchez at Holy Innocents had enthusiastically offered Pilazzo residency at his parish. They'd been childhood friends, having attended Catholic school together in the Bronx where they consented to the livid tendencies of the schoolmarms, all of whom were ready, willing, and able to wield their mighty wooden rulers should any shenanigans occur in their classrooms. Their weekdays were spent playing stickball in the streets until their mothers called them in for dinner at six, and on Sundays the boys would fritter away their afternoons at each other's homes, discussing religion and arguing about whose mother made better meatballs and sauce.
Unlike The Church of St Peter—one of the last remaining churches in Manhattan that'd offered all-day masses—Holy Innocents provided services only once an evening, Monday through Saturday, and then all day on Sunday. Pilazzo found it odd, despite its apparent norm, to walk into an empty church in the middle of the day. Having performed two masses daily at St Peter's, he'd wondered what he might do with his free time, knowing that he'd probably end up in the confessional. Here in the city, those seeking forgiveness of their sins were more than willing to cough up every detail of their indiscretions, something Pilazzo, despite his pledge to society, hesitated sitting in judgment of.
I am a priest, not a psychologist.
Today the church offered much of what he'd become used to: emptiness. Like most days, not a single passing individual sought a few moments of undisturbed prayer in the church, the pews bare and vacant and inexplicably opposing in spirit. The lamps overhead were dimmed, basking everything in dull, amber light, the fragile luminescence reflecting dully off the polished pews and etched-wood nave. The painted walls, normally bursting with convincing hues, lay drab and ghostlike in the gloomy atmosphere. Candles flickered from the pulpits assembled on either sides of the altar, their crimson casings casting a reddish glow against the Jesus and Mary statues peering remorsefully at the communion rail.
Pilazzo moved forward, his footsteps echoing in the tomblike silence, the faint smell of incense hanging inertly in the air. He reached the transept positioned directly before the altar, knelt and performed the sign of the cross. After a moment of prayer, he stood and paced to the far right corner of the church where the two confessional booths stood, their black curtains showing signs of wear and tear—a consequence of those eager hands anxiously seeking solace behind them.
He unlocked the first confessional, reached up and turned the light switch on. Two bulbs ignited beneath faux brass shades, a white one in the compartment he entered, and a green one opposite the sliding plastic grate, where the open curtain welcomed religious comfort to those pursuing it.
Closing the door, he sat in silence upon the cushioned bench, his thoughts at once racing with the events of the day: the foreman Henry Miller and his haughty arrogance; the odd behavior of the construction workers on the subway platform; the homeless man on the train and the prophesizing image he seemed to cast into Pilazzo's mind.
An army of tattered men facing a great evil rising up before a wall of raging fires and blackened smoke…
The sound of the curtain sliding in the attached booth jarred Pilazzo from the intimidating images. He gazed at the opaque plastic partition, strangely hesitant to offer spiritual support to the unseen confessor. He peeked down at his watch and was startled to see that almost thirty minutes had passed since having settled down here. His hands trembled, inflicted by the baleful images haunting his mind.
Visions of fires rising, of apocalypse.
Tears welled in his eyes. He shook his head, cracked his knuckles, and slowly slid the plastic divider open.
At once he could hear deep, raspy breathing, implying that a man of poor health had taken residence in the confessional. A moment of uncomfortable silence passed, and in this time he briefly thought back to the hundreds of confessors he'd encountered over the years seeking God at the eleventh hour due to some life-changing operation, or diagnosis of cancer. Finally, Pilazzo uttered, "What is it that ails you, my son," feeling no need or desire to commence with a prayer.
"We are brothers," the man croaked. "Brothers in arms."
The stench of something rancid seeped through the plastic partition, its tiny holes allowing in more than just the man's voice. Pilazzo grimaced, realizing at once that in the attached booth sat a down-and-out veteran of the street: a homeless man.
"Then brothers we shall be," Pilazzo replied hesitantly.
"And as brothers, God's lambs, we shall fight evil hand in hand until death comes pounding on our doors. There is no promise of sanctuary in this world we exist in. Evil has arisen. And it awaits us…brother."
Pilazzo grinned pitifully...and then a bit uncomfortably. Having heard some unusual confessions in the past, he put nothing past this somewhat disconcerting display: a homeless man on his deathbed, in fear of the devil due to a life of iniquity and sin.
Is it that…or something else that drives this man?
"God forgives all those who've sinned in their lives, regardless if their failings amount to one, or many. You are His child, and you shall be forgiven. All you need to do is ask for His forgiveness through penance."
Silence, save for the man's labored breathing.
"Your guide into heaven lies—"
"We must fight evil hand in hand," the man whispered hoarsely. "As brothers. As God's lambs."
Lambs to the slaughter…
Pilazzo blew out a long breath—frustration toying with his already enfeebled state. "God asks that you face your fears—"
"NO!"
The man's bellow ricocheted throughout the church like a gunshot. Pilazzo startled, clutching the brass cross dangling from the chain around his neck. His heart-rate sped, not unlike it did when the vagrant on the subway grasped his shoulder. He reached forward and turned the latch on the door to his compartment, locking himself in as a precaution. Four years earlier, a priest at St. Joseph's in Harlem had been murdered in the confessional, slashed at repeatedly in the empty church while crowds of people lined the streets not two hundred feet away. Since then, a number of parishes had locks installed in the booths to be used at the priest's discretion should a confessor become unpredictably unruly.
This had become one of those instances.
Pilazzo peered at his watch again, keeping in mind that somewhere in the attached rectory a hundred feet away, his fellow priests and deacons were studying, playing cards, watching television.
Surely they heard the man's shout, and are coming to investigate?
He glanced around the booth, hearing only the labored breathing of the homeless man on the opposite side of the plastic partition.
The homeless man scratched his fingernails against the plastic partition, the grating sound sending shudders across the priest's tightening chest. In a strange monotone, the vagrant uttered, "Evil has dug its way out from the grave, brother."
Nervously standoffish, Pilazzo replied gruffly, "And just what is this evil you speak of?"
There was a pause, the seconds ticking like hours. Eventually, the man answered, "The evil that promises man the end of days."
At once fear and anxiety doused Pilazzo, his mind assailing him again with the now familiar haunting images of fires and smoke rising into the heavens before an army of tattered men.
Men who were suddenly coming into focus.
Oh my dear God…
He could see them now. The tattered. The torn.
The homeless.
Bewildered, Pilazzo squeezed the cross in his hand, the images in his mind as real as the words seeping through the plastic divider from the unseen vagrant. He'd never experienced such a hallucination before, such a personally distinctive vision that he could see,
smell
. He moved to speak, his tongue now coated, the words crawling sluggishly from his mouth in a harsh whisper. "What is this evil you speak of? Is it…is it an army of men?"
Light, throaty laughter emerged. "Now you see, brother."
Pilazzo nodded in the darkness, inhaling deeply the man's penetrating stench. The muscles in his neck tightened, delivering jolts of pain into his head.
"I see the army…and behind them, fires and smoke."
Is it a stench of urine and body odor I smell, or is it the charred embers I see burning in my sights?
"It is an image, brother, that will stay with you until
we
bring evil down."
"We…"
"You and I. As brothers, we will fight to the death against evil."
Pilazzo searched for a fitting response to the vagrant's darkly questionable demand. As he moved to speak, the sound of the curtain's hooks sliding on the plastic bar sifted through the partition. Racing footsteps followed, their ricocheted echoes fading quickly. He leaped up, twisted sharply at the latch. Forgetting it was locked, he caught his index finger between it and the wooden door. He cried out in pain, shook his hand with frustration, then unlocked the door and threw it open.
Ahead, the dark shadow of a figure sped out of the church, an invading beam of sunlight blinding Pilazzo a split second before thinning and vanishing behind the church's closing door.
Pilazzo sprinted from the booth to the nave, realizing with inexplicable remorse that his conversation with the vagrant was over. He stopped with his hands on his knees, gasping, mind racing in perplexing circles. As mad and unwise at it seemed, the coincidental occurrence of two homeless men delivering to him messages of looming destruction—of apocalypse—could not be completely ignored.
He gazed back at the confessional, then slumped down in the pew closest to him. Moments passed in restless silence, the priest unable to render his thoughts away from the strange events taking place today.