Authors: Angella Graff
Mark was not just an ordinary man
. He was ageless, immortal. He had been that way for just over two thousand years. He looked in his thirties, but his eyes told a different tale. They were heavy with life, with living more years than any human could possibly grasp, and he was tired. He was alone, as well, which wasn’t as it should be.
Mark traveled with a companion during his stay on earth, a stay he didn’t fully understand, and that person had gone missing. That person was also special, weighed down with gifts that drove him mad, and made their mark on the world.
He’d been following the news trail of reported incidents and those incidents led him to San Francisco where the trail had finally gone cold. He went into his small living room and pulled out his laptop. It fired up instantly and he went straight to his internet browser, where he typed in the search, “Miracle healings.”
With a sigh, nothing new loaded onto his screen. Mark sat back and pinched the bridge of his nose. The trail had been cold for months now, and he was starting to feel discouraged and a little frightened. It wasn’t like his companion to stay away for this long, and though they’d been walking the earth, immortal, tired, and
ageless for centuries, Mark started to worry that something had truly gone wrong.
Chapter
Three
The office was just too quiet, and it was in the quiet moments that Ben started to panic. Silence echoed words like tumor, surgery, terminal, non-operable, metastasized, and malignant. In the quiet moments, despite his doctor telling him it was impossible, he swore he could feel the tumor pressing, stretching through the soft tissue of his brain.
Adrenaline firing, Ben stood up, grabbed his coat and stormed out of the office. He ig
nored the few hellos he received from the uniformed officers as he raced through the parking lot and jumped into his car.
It was a new car; the captain had decided it was time for one a few weeks prior. He'd been working for the department for ten years now. Anniversary gift, as it was, but the seats were too soft, and Ben never really liked that new car smell that his other coworkers raved about.
He turned the engine on, flipped down the sun visor to reveal the dimly lit mirror. His eyes were red, which only seemed to enhance the brightness of the green, and make the brown flecks inside even darker. The tip of his nose was bright, something that usually happened to him when he was stressed, and he hoped no one had noticed.
Brushing a lock of brown hair from his eyes, Ben sat back and turned the ice cold air on, hoping it would calm him, or at least shock him out of his thoughts for a little while. He tapped the button, turning on the police radio, and he let out a breath.
The monotone voice of the dispatcher was soothing right then, nothing hysterical, nothing over the top. Someone had been shot, just another day. A pedestrian struck two blocks away, routine. Ben rubbed his face with his clammy palms and put his car in drive.
He wasn't supposed to be on the road at the moment. He had mounds of paperwork to finish up for his impromptu time off for surgery. He had no active cases, which was good for the detective, because he wasn't sure he could focus on anything right then, and the very idea that he was going to have to turn over his other cases to another detective was absolutely terrifying.
“Terminal,” he whispered, testing the waters, seeing how he'd react to the word aloud. He wasn't sure it was terminal; no one knew. Not until he went under the knife and they did a biopsy to figure out what exactly the mass was.
“
I’ve seen this before, and I can tell you more than likely, it’s malignant.” The doctor had been frank and crude, just the way Ben preferred his medical professionals.
Ben checked his face in the rear view mirror as he pulled up to a coffee cart and rolled down his window. He was white as a sheet and shaking. The freezing air pouring out of the vents wasn't helping his cause, and he decided to turn it off.
He ordered an espresso, double, extra hot. The bitter, rich brew didn’t do his adrenaline any favors, but it tasted good. He pulled into a parking spot near the coffee cart and turned the radio up.
“Report in for the one-thousand block of California Street, Grace Cathedral. Reports of an assault, white male, long black hair, bleeding from the hands and side,” the dispatcher droned out. “Victim is a twenty-two year old male, unconscious but responsive and breathing. Squad car seven-oh-two and seven-six-four, please respond.”
Benjamin Stanford was not a beat cop. He was a veteran detective, graduated from the academy at the top of his class, a Master's degree in forensic science. Benjamin Stanford did not respond to beat-cop assault calls. For some reason, however, this one he did. Something in him made him decide to go, something he didn’t quite understand.
He switched on the engine, realized he was only a block away, and he pulled out of the parking lot. Rushing down the street, Ben managed to find a parking spot on the side of the road just a hundred feet from the church where he could see an already gathering crowd.
He threw his light on top of the car, jumped out with badge in hand, and raced forward. He'd arrived faster than the ambulances and uniformed officers, something he was a little smug about, as he pushed his way through the crowd.
A headache was forming, the kind he was growing all-too familiar with. The corners of his vision were growing whiter, and he knew he was probably going to have a seizure if he wasn’t careful. “Keep it together,” he muttered as he pushed his way through a group of women staring at the inside of the church.
“San Francisco PD,” Ben said loudly as he pushed forward. The entrance of the church was immense. Ben knew this church, had gone to Christmas mass there for years with his mother and sisters, and it still looked exactly the same.
Now, however, on the polished floor of the entrance was a long trail of blood, smearing down into the main chapel, leading to a man who was slumped beside the last pew. He was dressed in ragged jeans that looked as though they hadn't been washed in ten years. He wore a filthy, army green colored coat, and his long, pitch black curly hair was matted and all over the place.
The man was curled up, his body trembling, and he was holding his hands out. The centers of his wrists were bleeding, the blood running down his hands and dripping between his fingers, rushing to the floor, staining the wood and side of his jeans.
“What's your name?” Ben asked.
“He doesn't speak English, I don't think,” came the calm voice of one of the priests who was dressed in his less formal attire. He was an older man, nearly bald, short, and very rotund. “He came in here about twenty minutes ago. I thought he was just a homeless man looking for charity. He stopped there,” the priest paused to point at the immense cross where the figure of Jesus hung crucified, “and began to cry. Moved as I was, the moment I tried to approach the man, he began to scream in a language I didn’t understand. Charles,” the Priest pointed over to a man who was being tended to by a couple of nuns, “tried to subdue him, but the man managed to throw him over the pews. I think he's probably got a few broken ribs.”
“How did he sustain those wounds?” Ben asked. He heard the sounds of sirens and realized that the ambulance and officers had arrived.
“Stigmata,” one of the nuns said in heavily accented English. “Stigmata!”
Ben frowned. “What the hell is Stigmata?” The word was familiar, but right then the meaning escaped him.
“The wounds of Christ,” the priest said. “Truth be told, I never really bought into such things, but I can tell you now that this man wasn't bleeding when he came into the church. It seems rather... spontaneous.”
The man on the floor began to weep. He was babbling in what Ben recognized as a Semitic language, but one he wasn't familiar with. His wounded hands were raised to his face, matting blood into filthy hair, but he didn't seem to notice.
He was now up on his knees, still staring up at the figure of Christ, and he began to rock, shaking his head, near convulsions. Ben, confused and worried not only for the others standing by, but for the man, walked over to him swiftly and touched him.
The moment Ben touched him something happened. It was like a white light inside of his head, blinding him, rushing down to the center of his chest where it seemed to explode out of him. His breath rushed out in a gasp, his fingers trembling, unable to take his hand off the man's shoulder as though an electric current was holding him in place.
His head swam, his eyes full of impossible white light, and ears buzzing. He felt sick, suddenly, and his knees buckled, though he still kept hold of the man's shoulder, unable to move away. He started to sink to the ground, but just before his knees touched the blood-stained wood, it stopped.
It was over. Just like that. The light was gone, the buzzing over, his head stopped spinning. The wave of nausea passed, and Ben was able to stand upright again. The man was slumped over, his brown eyes staring directly at Ben. He'd fallen over slightly, his hands splayed palms up, and impossibly, the wounds were gone.
Ben blinked a few times, and looked over at the Priest who seemed to be watching as though nothing had happened.
It was a blur, the next few moments, as the paramedics came in, two going for the victim, and two pushing Ben aside to tend to the fallen man. They saw the blood, but when they asked him about it, the man's eyes closed and he went unconscious.
Ben recognized the beat-cop who pulled him aside as the paramedics went to fetch a gurney for the fallen homeless man. His name was Thomas Richardson, he was older, friendly for the most part, and always got along with Ben when he saw him.
“Detective Stanford,” he said, pulling Ben outside, “did you see the assault?”
Ben shook his head, pinching his eyes shut a moment with his thumb and forefinger as they came to rest by the low, stone wall. “I was on this street when I heard the call and stopped. The man was already on the floor when I came in.”
“The priest told Andrews,” he said, referring to his partner, “that the man was hysterical when he came in. Did you happen to get a name?”
“Unfortunately no,” Ben said. “I took his shoulder and then...” Ben paused and thought better of relaying the whole story. “He sort of slumped over and then you came in. He was bleeding out of his wrists, but when I looked, the wounds had closed.”
“Andrews thinks it's one of those stigmata fanatics trying to stir up religious attention,” Richardson said with a shrug. He scratched the back of his iron grey hair with his silver ink pen and shrugged. “We'll book him for the assault and see about getting him into a facility.”
Ben nodded. “Yeah, sounds about right.”
“Thanks for responding so quickly,” Richardson said.
Ben shrugged. “Duty and all that. Besides, I was right here anyway.” He paused as he felt his vision give a little lurch, and he sucked in his breath quietly. “I have espresso in my car getting cold, I should take off. I'll email you my report this afternoon of the incident.”
“You okay?” Richardson called out as Ben started towards his car. Ben turned and frowned. “You look really pale.”
“Yeah, I'm fine. Long day already,” Ben said, forced a smile and then hurried into the car before he was asked any other questions. He pulled out his phone and sent a quick text message to his boss.
Need to take the rest of the day off.
Will work at home. Thx.
He didn't wait for a response, and instead turned his car on, drove straight to his apartment, popped one of the sleeping pills his doctor had given him, and hoped that the oblivion of drug-induced sleep would help him feel right again.
Chapter Four
Mark stood facing the wall in his room. Normally there would be a mirror there, but a mirror was useless for a blind man, even one who was only pretending to be blind. On the little table sat his secret box of contacts and contact liquid that he used to complete the illusion.